Hussein discusses hiding WMDs from weapons inspectors
It has been two days since besieged intelligence expert John Loftus released controversial audio tapes of meetings between Saddam Hussein and some of Iraq's upper- level leadership. Never mind Loftus' reliability -- the authenticity of the tapes is a matter seperate from whether or not Loftus himself should be taken seriously.
The tapes, while authentic, don't appear to include a "smoking gun" that conclusively proves Saddam Hussein hid WMDs in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, but they do provide direct evidence that he was engaged in hiding aspects of his WMD programs from UN weapons inspectors.
In the tapes, Hussein and his underlings speak of hiding WMD programs from UN inspectors. Hussein makes clear his direct involvement in that deception. Did Saddam Hussein actually hide WMDs? - it stands to reason that one doesn't try hiding something unless one actually has something to hide.
Recent statments by Iraqi Air Force general Georges Sada, who asserts that Hussein's WMDs were flown to Syria before the war, also bolster the probability that WMDs existed in Iraqi up until shortly before the U.S. invaded.
To believe that Iraq didn't hide its WMDs prior to the invasion, you must believe that all of the world's best intelligence agencies, including Israel's, France's, Germany's, Russia's and the U.S's were dead wrong in their pre-war assessments of Hussein's WMD capabilities. You must believe that Georges Sada is a liar. You must believe that massive truck convoys from Iraq to Syria just prior to the war held nothing WMD- related. You must believe that General Moshe Yalon, Israel's top commander during Iraqi freedom, is either lying or badly misinformed when he said that Iraqi chemical weapons were moved to Syria just prior to the war. And you must believe that thousands of politicians and weapons experts that believed Hussein had WMDs, were all wrong.
The Duelfer WMD report concluded that, based on ground searches in Iraq, there probably were no large stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq, a country the size of California, prior to the invasion. But at the end of his last report, he added a significant caveat --one the MsM and nearly everyone else chose to ignore. In the Iraq Survey Group's (ISG) final report, Duelfer said, "ISG was unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war."[emphasis added]
An interesting aside: A few years ago, Jordan thwarted a terrorist attack that it claims would have killed 80,000 people. The plot involved approximately twenty tons of chemical weapons to be dispersed by conventional explosives. The terrorists, with those weapons, had traveled from Syria and had been stopped 75 miles from its border. Where did those chemical weapons originate from?
To rational, non-Postmodern types, it seems ilogical that Saddam Hussein, a man who had been known to possess and to have used chemical weapons on his countrymen; who had always had an affinity for the development of such weapons and who had programs in place to hide those weapons, would suddenly cease developing WMDs and destroy or sell off his stocks of them. It is much more logical to conclude that, when faced with his unexpected failure to stop a U.S. invasion by bribing French, Russian and other government officials via the "Oil for Food" program and other such schemes, Hussein scrambled to sell off and hide the forbidden weapons before he was caught red-handed with them.
The MsM will never seek the truth of the WMD matter since its credibility, like the Democratic Party's, is completely staked on a "Bush lies" rationale. Both consistently engage in a policy of lying by omission to convince the general public that Bush had no legitimate reason to invade Iraq. No matter -- there is literally a mountain of Hussein-era documents and audio tape in Iraq yet to be translated and analyzed by intelligence experts. More evidence of Hussein's WMD programs will be forthcoming and with that, we will know what became of his WMDs. Syria cannot remain a closed society for much longer--it is simply a matter of time before its current Baa'thist regime is replaced by one seeking the advantages of better relations with the United States. When that occurs, the depth of Syria's complicity with Hussein's WMD deceit will be made known and Saddam's forbidden weapons will be found.
