The Case for WMD's in Iraq

Politics International Politics
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New information, and additional specifics on previously reported stories,
have brought further substantiation to the belief that Saddam Hussein did have WMD’s
up until the Coalition Forces entered Iraq.
The following links tell the revelations that have surfaced.

[quote]Saddam Sent WMD to Syria, Former General Alleges
By Sherrie Gossett
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
February 2, 2006

(CNSNews.com) – A former Iraqi general alleges that in June 2002 Saddam Hussein transported
weapons of mass destruction out of the country to Syria aboard several refitted commercial jets,
under the pretense of conducting a humanitarian mission for flood victims.

That’s one of several dramatic claims made in the book by former Iraqi General Georges Sada:
“Saddam’s Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussein.” Since the launch
of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Sada has served as the spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi
and continues to serve as national security advisor. He is the former vice marshal of the Iraqi
Air Force. Sada was interviewed at the headquarters of Cybercast News Service on Jan. 30.

Sada contends that Saddam took advantage of a June 4, 2002, irrigation dam collapse in Zeyzoun,
Syria, to ship the weapons under cover of an aid project to the flooded region.

“[Saddam] said 'Okay, Iraq is going to do an air bridge to help Syria,” Sada recounted. Two
commercial jets, a 747 and 727, were converted to cargo jets, in order to carry raw materials
and equipment related to WMD projects, Sada said. The passenger seats, galleys, toilets and
storage compartments were removed and new flooring was installed, he claimed. Hundreds of tons
of chemicals were reportedly included in the cargo shipments.
CNSNEWS.COM[/quote]

[quote]Iraqi General: Syria Gave Al-Qaida Saddam’s WMDs

A former senior military advisor to Saddam Hussein is warning that the chemical weapons used
by top al-Qaida terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi in a foiled 2004 plot to attack Amman, Jordan
were the same weapons Saddam Hussein transported to Syria before the U.S. invasion.

Gen. Georges Sada offered the stunning revelation Saturday while explaining why he didn’t decide
to go public about Saddam’s hidden WMD stockpile until recently.

“As a general, you see, we should keep our secrets,” Gen. Sada told WABC Radio’s Monica Crowley.
But when news broke of the foiled WMD attack on Amman, he changed his mind.
newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/1/2 … shtml?s=ic[/quote]

[quote] Bush Was Right: Syria Hides Saddam WMD
by J. Grant Swank, Jr., Jan 26, 2006

US President George W. Bush was correct in saying there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
under the Saddam Hussein two decades-plus murder rule. Recall that numerous Democrats prior to
Mr. Bush’s election to the Oval Office said the same. Further, many said the same after Mr. Bush
moved into the White House.

Now we have proof.

It comes from none other than Hussein’s General Georges Sada. The nub of his data is this: Hussein
flew WMD into Syria before Operation Iraqi Freedom. They were loaded onto civilian planes with seats
removed to make room, so states Hussein’s second in command official in Hussein’s air force.

“Saddam’s Secrets,” is the name of his recently released book. There details are exposed, according
to The New York Sun’s Ira Stoll.

“‘There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and
returned to safe hands,’ Mr. Sada said. ‘I am confident they were taken over.’”
postchronicle.com/commentary … 4562.shtml[/quote]

[quote]Iraq’s WMD Secreted in Syria, Sada Says
By IRA STOLL - Staff Reporter of the Sun, January 26, 2006

The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein’s air force says Iraq moved weapons of
mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which
the passenger seats were removed.

The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, “Saddam’s Secrets,” released this
week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.
nysun.com/article/26514?page_no=3[/quote]A subscription website.

[quote]A senior Syrian journalist reports Iraq WMD located in three Syrian sites
06 January, 2004, AFP

Nizar Nayuf (Nayyouf-Nayyuf), a Syrian journalist who recently defected from Syria to Western Europe
and is known for bravely challenging the Syrian regime, said in a letter Monday, January 5, to Dutch
newspaper

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Saddam must have timed this proverbial transfer during coffee breaks at the National Reconnaissance Office given that it was watching Iran, Iraq and Syria like a hawk during that time period for any signs of mass movement and weapons of mass destruction:

"From 150 miles in space, the current generation of KH-11 satellites can distinquish objects as small as three inches across . . . good enough to see a license plate lying in the middle of a road, but not good enough to read the numbers. . . a new generation of radar imagery satellites, called VEGA, also makes it possible to obtain high-resolution imagery of the ground even when there is heavy cloud cover.

As U.S. abilities to see from space have grown, so have its abilities to hear. Eight to 12 evesdropping satellites named Vortex, Magnum, Mercury and Orion which collectively provide what is known as SIGINT, or signals intelligence are in orbit at all times. From 22,000 miles in space, they can intercept and relay millions of low-powered radio and mobile phone signals."

You would think that after all the false leads and dead ends provided by would-be Iraqi whistleblowers of the last three years that a little skepticism would be in order until some hard evidence was available.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Rep … ce_on_Iraq

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Is this topic not a bit :flog: ??

But, is has to be asked - where is Fred when you need him? All this new info about Scooter, Katrina…etc…

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[quote=“Elegua”]Is this topic not a bit :flog: ??
But, is has to be asked - where is Fred when you need him? All this new info about Scooter, Katrina…etc…[/quote]Elequa -
Respectfully, No this isn’t “kicking a dead horse.” This is newly presented information that is, IMO, worthy of consideration.
I was actually hoping for some sincere thoughts and analysis of this new material.
As to the whereabouts of Mr. Smith, he would be touched by the concern. :wink:

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Good stuff TainanCowboy. I was initially opposed to the Iraq War because I was sickened by the President’s ever-changing reasons for going in, and the fact that so many military and construction contractors who donated to his campaign conveniently were awarded no-bid multi-billion dollar contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq gave the entire affair the stench of corruption. These new reports strengthen my conviction that we need to stay and finish the job, no matter the cost.

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Some of us went for gut feeling at the beginning.

But I’M not dropping names. :smiley:

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Maybe you guys should hold an annual convention – like the Trekkies.

The “We Still Believe” convention. I’d go. It would be fun.

The highlight would be a seminar recounting close encounters and sightings the previous year of WMD and who had come the closest to collecting the $25 million dollar prize for actually producing some evidence.

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[quote=“spook”]Maybe you guys should hold an annual convention – like the Trekkies.
The “We Still Believe” convention. I’d go. It would be fun.
The highlight would be a seminar recounting close encounters and sightings the previous year of WMD and who had come the closest to collecting the $25 million dollar prize for actually producing some evidence.[/quote]Spook -
So …still no comment on the items presented in the original post?

I think there will be further details coming out soon - when? I do not know.

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[quote=“TainanCowboy”][quote=“spook”]Maybe you guys should hold an annual convention – like the Trekkies.
The “We Still Believe” convention. I’d go. It would be fun.
The highlight would be a seminar recounting close encounters and sightings the previous year of WMD and who had come the closest to collecting the $25 million dollar prize for actually producing some evidence.[/quote]Spook -
So …still no comment on the items presented in the original post?

I think there will be further details coming out soon - when? I do not know.[/quote]

Well, I tried to inject a little healthy skepticism earlier in this discussion but “it didn’t take.”

I mean, when your chief witness General Sada says:

“There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands. I am confident they were taken over.”

:warning bells should go off because it doesn’t appear from his own words he actually saw anything himself.

Plus, common sense should tell you it would directly and indirectly have taken a hundred people or more to pull this off. Is nobody at all talking? After all, there’s a $25 million dollar reward offer out there for anyone who can provide any credible evidence that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction actually exist. Remember, Saddam’s own sons were turned in by one of the Hussein family’s closest supporters for a $20 million dollar reward.

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Some further related info on how these revelations are shaping thoughts about Saddam, the activities of his scientists and WMD’s.

[quote]New questions on Saddam, WMD
EDITORIAL, February 20, 2006

More information has surfaced in recent days about Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction programs, and the possible roles of Syria and Russia in spiriting WMD and massive arsenals of conventional munitions out of Iraq prior to the start of the war three years ago.
The new information includes audio recordings of 12 hours of conversations from the early 1990s through 2000 involving Saddam Hussein and his top aides, in which Saddam discusses how to conceal Iraqi weapons programs from U.N. inspectors and the possibility that the United States could be the target of terrorist attacks. The recordings were provided by Bill Tierney, an Arabic speaker, who worked during the mid-1990s for the United Nations Special Commission that was responsible for overseeing Iraq’s disarmament.
One new piece of information revealed on the tapes, released Saturday by Mr. Tierney at the Intelligence Summit, a private conference held in Arlington, is that Saddam was actively working on a plan to enrich uranium using a technique known as plasma separation. This is particularly worrisome because of the date of the conversation: It took place in 2000, nearly five years after Iraq’s nuclear programs were thought to have stopped.
Perhaps most disturbing of all, according to Mr. Tierney, was the fact that the Iraqi scientists briefing Saddam about the uranium enrichment plan in 2000 “were totally unknown” to U.N. weapons inspectors. The plasma program also appears to have escaped the attention of the Iraq Survey Group, which reported two years ago that it had ended back in the late 1980s.
Mr. Tierney points out that the 12 hours of information that he has translated thus far is just a small fraction of the hundreds of hours of tape recordings and other raw intelligence data collected after the fall of Saddam."
(quite an interesting read at the link)
washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20 … -1788r.htm[/quote]

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So where did Mr. Tierney get the tapes? Has he been sitting on them since 2003 and just now gotten around to translating them?

He must have busy with more important things. :slight_smile:

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Didn’t Syria’s Abdula say something nasty about George’s dad once? Better launch the invasion next week

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So have you bob, watch out. :smiling_imp:

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Guess someone didn’t do his homework properly:

[quote]A spokeswoman for Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte said the tapes were “fascinating,” but they "do not reveal anything that changes their postwar analysis of Iraq’s weapons programs, nor do they change the findings contained in the comprehensive Iraq Survey Group report."

The Survey Group report, written by Charles Duelfer and published in October 2004, concluded that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded in March of 2003, but the regime intended to resume its WMD programs once U.N. sanctions were lifted.[/quote]

And, on a related note, this should finally lay rest to the argument that Saddam and the WMD he didn’t have were a threat to the US:

[quote]“Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans a long time before August 2 and I told the British as well, I think,” Hussein tells then-Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. “I told them that in the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction.”

He added, however, that Iraq would have no part in it. August 2 is believed to be a reference to the date of the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which sparked the Gulf War the following year.[/quote]

Source: On tape, Hussein talks of WMDs

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[color=blue]Deja duplicity:[/color]

“More information has surfaced in recent days about Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction programs, and the possible roles of Syria and Russia in spiriting WMD and massive arsenals of conventional munitions out of Iraq prior to the start of the war three years ago. . . Another speaker at the conference was John Shaw, former deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, who charged that Saddam’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were moved by Russian special forces into Syria and Lebanon.”

It’s a bit disingenuous – to put it diplomatically – to claim that “more information has surfaced in recent days about . . . the possible roles of Syria and Russia in spiriting WMD . . . out of Iraq prior to the start of the war . . . .” if the source is John Shaw. He’s been peddling that story for the last three years and the Pentagon found no evidence to substantiate it.

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Spirited debate…with only paucity of smarm from the usual suspects… :laughing:

It seems that one of the alphabet MSM’s has a story about this:

[quote]Tapes Show Son-in-Law Admitted WMD Deception
In Recording, Iraqi Dictator Is Briefed on Efforts to Hide Weapons Programs

"Feb. 15, 2006

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The new findings do not make a difference to my understanding of this war. I find it ironic that a country that has WMD would fight another country because they also have WMD.

The WMD will not bring back the thousands of lives that were lost. Would the weapons have been used to kill as many? I don’t know, let’s ask George what he plans to do with his arsenal of WMD…

This war is a non-sense regardless how I look at it.

bobepine

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[quote=“spook”]So where did Mr. Tierney get the tapes? Has he been sitting on them since 2003 and just now gotten around to translating them?

He must have busy with more important things. :slight_smile:[/quote]

Oh, he has been:

[quote]“No, we’re not going to go home,” said Bill Tierney, a young daughter at his side. “Terri is not dead until she’s dead.”

Mr. Tierney, a former military intelligence officer in Iraq who works as a translator and investigator for private companies, cried as he talked about watching the Schiavo spectacle on television and feeling the utter need to be at the hospice.

Like many of the protesters, Mr. Tierney said he had experienced proof in his own life that God is real. He held out his left hand showing the traces of scars from injuries he suffered in a gas explosion in 1987.

“You can hardly see it anymore,” he said, the tears cascading down his sun-darkened cheeks. “And I was burned all the way from my waist up. By the laws of physics, I should be dead. So I’ve seen miracles.”[/quote]
nytimes.com/2005/03/28/national/28scene.html

[quote]After explaining his various psychological tactics to the audience, interrogator Bill Tierney (a private contractor working with the Army) said, ‘‘I tried to be nuanced and culturally aware. But the suspects didn’t break.’’

Suddenly Tierney’s temper rose. ‘‘They did not break!’’ he shouted. ‘‘I’m here to win. I’m here so our civilization beats theirs! Now what are you willing to do to win?’’ he asked, pointing to a woman in the front row. ‘‘You are the interrogators, you are the ones who have to get the information from the Iraqis. What do you do? That word ‘torture’. You immediately think, ‘That’s not me.’ But are we litigating this war or fighting it?’’

Some listeners murmured in assent; others sat in rapt attention. In all the recent debates about the Bush administration’s stance on torture, this voice, the voice of the interrogators themselves, has been almost entirely absent.

Asked about Abu Ghraib, Tierney said that for an interrogator, ‘‘sadism is always right over the hill. You have to admit it. Don’t fool yourself - there is a part of you that will say, ‘This is fun.’’’[/quote]

boston.com/news/globe/ideas/ … /spy_world

And his methods of locating Saddam’s hidden WMDs, from this pre-invasion report:

[quote]Bill Tierney, a former weapons inspector who worked with UNSCOM in Iraq in the late 1990s, was the guest for the first two hours of Friday night’s show. He believes that Iraq has nuclear capability and the intention to use such weapons. Further, Tierney claims that he has pinpointed a hidden location in Iraq (map here) where there is a uranium enriching processing facility. “You can’t put an underground chamber on the back of a truck,” Tierney said, indicating that if an inspection were made in this suggested area, the Iraqis would not be able to haul off the evidence.

Tierney’s methods of ascertaining this location were rather unconventional. “I would ask God and just get a sense if something was valid or not, and then know if I needed to pursue it,” he said. His assessments through prayer were then confirmed to him by a friend’s clairvoyant dream, where he was able to find the location on a map. “Everything she said lined up. This place meets the criteria,” Tierney said of a power generator plant near the Tigris River that he believes is actually a cover for a secret uranium facility. [/quote]
coasttocoastam.com/shows/2003/02/14.html

Give him a map of Syria and a Ouija board, and get those pussy-footing bureaucrats out of the way…

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I’m suprised that these “new findings” didn’t show up before the war actually happened. How nice to find “evidence” after the fact.

Better to find “evidence” before action, I think.

What took them so long, anyway?

If I was going to try to make my country give me support over a contreversial war for reasons that were not fully supported by the public. I would sure as hell try to prove my case, even if it meant fabricating evidence.

If you were trying to borrow a huge amount of cash in order to do something powerful, wouldn’t you try to butter up the facts a bit?
I would.

Hey, of course Saddam had WMD"s. We found out later that this is what he did with them. Never mind that we have had them since forever, and so have our allies. We don’t want this guy to have them. We don’t want his neighbors to have them either. We want to have all the eggs, and the chickens too.

Ok, somebody’s got to have all the power. It may as well be the USA. Better the country you know than the one you don’t. I’m glad. Really.

And really paranoid.

I don’t trust the ideals of the people who are in power in the world. None of them. They don’t know me or care about me or anything I will ever do in my life.