Originally Posted By TomSawyer <a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Iraq_WMD_Tapes.html" target="_blank">http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/ national/1107AP_Iraq_WMD_Tapes.html</a> Exasperated, besieged by global pressure, Saddam Hussein and top aides searched for ways in the 1990s to prove to the world they'd given up banned weapons. "We don't have anything hidden!" the frustrated Iraqi president interjected at one meeting, transcripts show. At another, in 1996, Saddam wondered whether U.N. inspectors would "roam Iraq for 50 years" in a pointless hunt for weapons of mass destruction. "When is this going to end?" he asked. It ended in 2004, when U.S. experts, after an exhaustive investigation, confirmed what the men in those meetings were saying: that Iraq had eliminated its weapons of mass destruction long ago, a finding that discredited the Bush administration's stated rationale for invading Iraq in 2003 - to locate WMD. The newly released documents are among U.S. government translations of audiotapes or Arabic-language transcripts from top-level Iraqi meetings - dating from about 1996-97 back to the period soon after the 1991 Gulf War, when the U.N. Security Council sent inspectors to disarm Iraq. Even as the documents make clear Saddam's regime had given up banned weapons, they also attest to its continued secretiveness: A 1997 document from Iraqi intelligence instructed agencies to keep confidential files away from U.N. teams, and to remove "any forbidden equipment." Since it's now acknowledged the Iraqis had ended the arms programs by then, the directive may have been aimed at securing stray pieces of equipment, and preserving some secrets from Iraq's 1980s work on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Saddam's inner circle entertained notions of reviving the programs someday, the newly released documents show. "The factories will remain in our brains," one unidentified participant told Saddam at a meeting, apparently in the early 1990s. At the same meeting, however, Saddam, who was deposed by the U.S. invasion in 2003 and is now on trial for crimes against humanity, led a discussion about converting chemical weapons factories to beneficial uses. <snip> Scores of Iraqi documents, seized after the 2003 invasion, are being released at the request of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, who says he's seeking evidence the Iraqis hid their weapons of mass destruction, or sent them to neighboring Syria. No such evidence has emerged. Repeatedly in the transcripts, Saddam and his lieutenants remind each other that Iraq destroyed its chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s, and shut down those programs and the nuclear-bomb program, which had never produced a weapon. "We played by the rules of the game," Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said at a session in the mid-1990s. "In 1991, our weapons were destroyed." Amer Mohammed Rashid, a top weapons program official, told a 1996 presidential meeting he laid out the facts to the U.N. chief inspector. "We don't have anything to hide, so we're giving you all the details," he said he told Rolf Ekeus. In his final report in October 2004, Charles Duelfer, head of a post-invasion U.S. team of weapons hunters, concluded Iraq and the U.N. inspectors had, indeed, dismantled the nuclear program and destroyed the chemical and biological weapons stockpiles by 1992, and the Iraqis never resumed production. Saddam's goal in the 1990s was to have the Security Council lift the economic sanctions strangling the Iraqi economy, by convincing council members Iraq had eliminated its WMD. But he was thwarted at every turn by what he and aides viewed as U.S. hard-liners blocking council action. The inspectors "destroyed everything and said, `Iraq completed 95 percent of their commitment,'" Saddam said at one meeting. "We cooperated with the resolutions 100 percent and you all know that, and the 5 percent they claim we have not executed could take them 10 years to (verify). "Don't think for a minute that we still have WMD," he told his deputies. "We have nothing."
Originally Posted By wahooskipper Well, since Saddam is much more trustworthy than the US Government, the British Government and the United Nations I offer up my sincerest apologies for having ever doubted the honorable and righteous former leader of Iraq.
Originally Posted By woody Assuming that Saddam's secretiveness has thwarted any attempt to discover the truth and the regime has thoughts of reviving its WMD program... and the verification is impossible (10 years to verify), Saddam could have taken the correct step to save his country.... RESIGN.
Originally Posted By cape cod joe Could that poison gas that killed all the Kurds be construed as WMD?
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh The article seems to be saying that even though Saddam destroyed his stockpiles of WMD's, he purposely concealed things from the UN inspectors and sought to hold on to forbidden information and equipment, so he could resume production of WMD's once sanctions were lifted. Isn't the same thing the Duelfer report told us a year or two ago?
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh It's also kind of strange that some Iraqi officials had claimed to have destroyed all of their WMD's in the early 90's, and then admitted to possessing WMD's in the mid 90's. What did the UN inspectors destroy in 1996 if everything was destroyed in 1991? <a href="http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/02/13/whitepap.htm" target="_blank">http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1 998/02/13/whitepap.htm</a>
Originally Posted By Beaumandy Tom, Saddam is not coming back to run Iraq no matter how much you try and argue he was so innocent and simply misunderstood. Bush had a choice... listen to every intel. agency in the world who said Saddam had WMD's or listen to Saddam. As Bush said, he was not going to listen to a known liar and thug like Saddam so Bush did what any real leader in that situation would do who is not a total puss, he took Saddam out and changed the face of the middle east forever.
Originally Posted By DlandDug The author of this newspaper article has extrapolated a great deal from a single source, much of which does not mesh with known history. If, as these documents suggest, Saddam had indeed dismantled his entire WMD program, and disposed of all nonconventional weapons in the early nineties, why did he continue to hamper the efforts of Hans Blix and the inspectors? If you go back and look at the reports, and press releases, regularly issued by Blix in the months leading up to war, you will see that Saddam routinely hampered efforts to get at the truth. The new documents now emerging will not (in my opinion) contain any silver bullets. So far it is clear that Saddam was dealing in a dishonest manner not only with the West, but with his own inner circle as well. I would not be hasty in making the claim that this is in any way the definitive statement on this sublect.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 I predict these documents will provide plenty of grist for whatever mill someone wants to grind (if I'm not mixing metaphors too badly). Both conservatives and liberals may be able to say "Aha! See?!" at certain portions and the other side will say "Nu-uh. Not really. You see..." and on and on we go. There was this study...
Originally Posted By TomSawyer The documents aren't going to prove anything. The proof is in the fact that we haven't found what the President said we'd find.
Originally Posted By DlandDug The more I look at this new article, the more questions it raises... For example, why does the author make the following two assertions? 1.) >>Even as the documents make clear Saddam's regime had given up banned weapons...<< Oh really? The only thing made clear is that Saddam SAID he had given up banned weapons. Regretably, we have only his word on this. 2.) >>Since it's now acknowledged the Iraqis had ended the arms programs by then...<< But it has NOT been "acknowledged" that the Iraqis had ended their arms program. Indeed, the transcript goes on to say, >>At the same meeting, however, Saddam...led a discussion about converting chemical weapons factories to beneficial uses.<< So if the programs had ended, why were there chemical weapons factories? The UN weapons inspectors were still laboring in Iraq, right up to the eve of war, for the good reason that there was certainly NO acknowledgement that the Iraqis had ended their arms program. Later in the article we read: >>"We played by the rules of the game," Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said at a session in the mid-1990s. "In 1991, our weapons were destroyed." Amer Mohammed Rashid, a top weapons program official, told a 1996 presidential meeting he laid out the facts to the U.N. chief inspector. "We don't have anything to hide, so we're giving you all the details," he said he told Rolf Ekeus.<< Yet, the original round of articles generated by these documents say that Saddam's generals were stunned when they were informed that there were no WMDs... some five to ten years later. We are all falling down the rabbit hole right now, and these documents should not be construed as a reliable guide. As long as people persist in filtering all this through pre-conceived notions, the truth will remain elusive.
Originally Posted By DlandDug >>The documents aren't going to prove anything.<< They have already proved that George W. Bush didn't lie. (Even you agreed with that assertion.) >>The proof is in the fact that we haven't found what the President said we'd find.<< The proof of what?
Originally Posted By Beaumandy I thought of something the other day. Why arn't we torturing Saddam for information? According to the left we torture everyone, so why not Saddam?
