RBT is big fan of Iraqi Gen Sada having read his new book, Saddam's Secrets. Gen. Sada is a true Iraqi patriot and wants only the best for his country and people. Gen. Sada is a pilot's pilot and disobeyed a direct order from Saddam's son to execute downed US pilots in GWI at the risk of his own life.

RBT

*****

Liberating Iraq

By General Georges Sada
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 3, 2006

This speech was delivered on March 16 at the Wednesday Morning Club. -The Editors.

Colonel Buzz Patterson:

General Sada is quite an amazing man. There was a time in my life as an Air Force pilot back in the first Gulf War, we were looking out of my cockpit window, on my radar, into Iraqi airspace. General Sada was my enemy. I thought at that time the Iraqis were our enemies. I can tell you that, having spent this past summer in Iraq, talking to our soldiers and to the Iraqi people themselves, that our enemy was Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi people are our best friends and our best allies right now.

[...]

General Georges Sada:

[...]

I belong to a country in which it is very deep in 7,000 years of history. So when you talk here about 100, 200 or 300 years of history, for Iraqis this is very funny, you know, because we talk about 3,000, 4,000 and 5,000 years always. That’s why we will give you the chance to ask questions.

I still start with Iraq as the land of Father Abraham and Iraq as the land of Daniel. Of course, most of you know about Daniel in Babylon with Nebuchadnezzar. Then there is Iraq as the country of where Jonah came to Nineveh, which was the capital of the Assyrian Empire. I am very proud that to be descended from the Assyrians and that I am a Christian Assyrian from Nineveh. I am happy about that.

[...]

About myself, I’ll tell you that I joined the Air Academy in 1958. I was trained in Russia for four years and then, after that, I came back to Iraq. I flew the fighter aircrafts, the MiGs. In 1964, we had an exam in Turkey, seven guys, because Americans gave one seat for pilot instrument instructors to fly people at night in bad weather and instrument flying. They wanted the qualified people from Iraq, but only one man. So we took the exam and thank God I was number 1, so I came to Texas, Randolph Air Force Base, in Lackland, in 1964. I was trained as an instructor for bad weather, night and instrument flying. I came back home and then I did a lot of work in the fighter squadrons.

I served in the Air Force for about 40 years. I was retired in 1986 as two-star general. I was supposed to be promoted to three-star, but the Baath Party and the intelligence sent for me. They said, “You are the only general in this country who is not being a Baath Party member. So now a this time we will not invite you to come because we have been inviting you for 30 years and you didn’t accept it. So now, tell us why you are not becoming a member of the Baath Party?” I said, “You want the truth?” and they said, “yes.” I said, “You see, because in your ideology of the Baath Party, you say the body of the nation is Arab and the spirit of the nation is Islam. Therefore, I don’t fit in two ways. I don’t fit in the body because you are Arab and I am Assyrian. I don’t fit in the spirit because you are Islamic and I am a Christian. And I want to keep both of them, my nationality and my faith. And because of that, I don’t want to block you. I don’t want to block myself to get to this party because it doesn’t fit me.” They were very surprised.

[...]

[Command Staff briefing before GWI]

At last, the minister of defense and chief of staff asked the air force. They said, ‘Please, you as air force, can you tell us that we can operate on the ground without thinking of any enemy threat coming from air?’ The answer was, “Yes you can operate, there will be no threat coming from the air, because the Iraqi Air Force and the Iraqi Air Defense will tackle with that and will handle with them and they will not let the American forces to appear in the Iraqi skies.’”

Here I had to stop them. I said, “Excuse me.” The minister of defense said, “Yes, Georges, do you have anything?” I said, “Yes, I have got many things. I don’t agree with this presentation. It’s not going to be like this.” They said, “Do you have another idea?” I said, “Yes, and my idea is 180 degrees different.” He was surprised. I told them, “The supreme commander has given me these three tasks to do, so please I am the one who should do the presentation. Will you permit me to do the presentation?” Then, they could not say no.

So I went and I did my presentation. I told them, “Remember that you have been told that no enemy aircraft will be flying in the Iraqi skies. But I can tell you that thousands of the enemy aircraft will be flying over this country. Most of the targets will be destroyed and your army, our army, will be in very bad shape.” I spoke everything and then the chief of staff said, “Georges, did we bring you here to frighten us?” I said, “No, sorry, I am not frightening anybody, but I am telling you the truth to the best of my knowledge.”

I continued speaking about what an aircraft carrier is because, ladies and gentlemen, I understood that they thought an aircraft carrier is a fishing boat. I explained to them what an aircraft carrier is, what it can do, how many aircraft are there on deck and what are the three classes of aircraft carriers. I explained everything. Again, the chief of staff said, “Don’t you think you are exaggerating very much about what America can do?” I said, “No, sorry, I’m not exaggerating. But this is according to the paper given to me. But, remember, Americans can do even more than this.” Nobody listened.

[...]

[Gen. Sada personally saved the lives of downed US pilots from execution in GWI]

They said, “Sir, we have shot down one Tornado and two pilots are captured. One’s name is John Peter and the other John Nichol.” I told Saddam, “Sir, we have shot down a Tornado aircraft with two pilot captures.” He said, “What’s a Tornado?” I explained to him what a Tornado is. He said, “Are you sure the pilots are prisoners of war?” I said, “yes.”

He said, “Okay, I need one pilot to be responsible for the prisoner of war.” Then he came to me and said, “I want a man knows the tactics, offensive and defensive, and who speaks English. Georges, you are the one who will be responsible for the pilots.” I said, “Okay, Sir. My pleasure.” I told them to send the pilots. I am sure the Americans are very good pilots, but remember, even a good swimmer may sink in the sea and even a very good pilot, he may be shot down in the war.

So many good American pilots were shot down: F18s, F15s, F16s, Thunderbolts. Many pilots were shot down. At the last, I had 44 of them: 31 or 32 were Americans. The others were Saudis, Kuwaitis, British and Italians. I was responsible for them. I received orders to execute them on January 24 from the president through his son Qusay, who came to me in the operation room.

I refused. I told Qusay, “Look, these people are prisoners of war.” He said, “No, they are not prisoners of war. They are criminals of war.” At the time of this discussion, we were under bombing. He said, “Don’t you see how they are destroying the country?” I said, “Mr. Qusay, look, I have told you on January 12, this is what’s going to happen. But all of you said, ‘nobody will be attacked.’ So now, it’s war and wars have rules and you must go and fight according to the rules, and one of the most important rules concern how to treat the prisoner of war. These people should be treated according to this.”

I was carrying with me the book of the United Nations, the Geneva Convention. He said, “What is that?” I said, “This is the Geneva Convention, which Iraq has signed for. Therefore, we must respect our sign.” He said, “No, that is for prisoners of war, but these are not prisoners of war. These are criminals of war.” I said, “No, they are prisoners of war and they should be treated according to this. Please remember my rank and my seniority. I was brought out of retirement. I am an international officer. I cannot deal with these people except according to this one book, according to the Geneva Convention.”

He was very angry and he said, “Okay, I will take them, I will put them in the targets. Let the Americans from up there kill the Americans on the ground.” I said, “No, no, no. You would be using them as human shields. You cannot do that. That’s also against the Geneva Convention.” It was a very big tough discussion between me and him, with the officers all surrounding us. One was saying, “Now Qusay will shoot him.” Another was saying, “Georges is finished.”

But believe me, I was doing this for two reasons. One was my faith in Jesus Christ and to make Him happy as His son. The second, because I am a high-ranking officer, I have experience, and I was not a Baath Party, to do what they like. I wanted to behave as an Iraqi general, loyal to this country and this country’s deep history, should behave.

[...]

[Saddam's plan to launch a chemical weapons attack on Israel during GWI]

Before any of this had happened, Saddam had wanted us to attack Israel with chemical weapons, using different aircraft: Sequoyah 24, Mirages, and MiGs. Again I stood in front of him and I told him, “Excuse me, sir. You are saying that these aircraft will attack Israel in two waves: one through Jordan and one through Syria. I know the Israelis have a plan to destroy all incoming aircraft before entering Israeli borders. This means that these aircraft are going to be destroyed by two waves, over Jordan and over Syrian. Of course, Israelis have got good air defenses, but still the pilots know that many aircraft still can penetrate. You know what’s going to happen, sir? There will be three attacks of chemical weapon on three countries: Jordan, Syria and Israel. By doing this, we will be giving the Israelis the right to retaliate by using their nuclear weapons. They have got very good delivery systems to carry the nuclear weapons. The delivery systems are rockets are called Jericho 2. They are going to destroy Mosul, Baghdad, Basra and all our cities.”

[...]

I will keep it for your questions but I will tell you about Saddam. He is the man who killed more clerics from Sunni and Shia in the history of Iraq. He is the man who killed more Baath Party members, starting from central command, since the party was founded in 1947. Saddam is the man who killed more of his own people. Saddam is the man who killed more Tikritis, his own cousins from his city, than anyone since Iraq was founded in 1920.

Saddam is the one who killed more Kurds. In the Amfal operations, he killed 203,000 Kurds. He used chemical weapons. In Halabja, he killed 5,375 people, all women, children and old men, in one attack—only one attack. Saddam killed more officers from the Iraqi army since the army was founded in 1921. Saddam did this with the hatred that I know was in his heart. With his revenge, only God knows what he was going to do. Because he had love of power, of making Muir rockets, paying millions to make some development for rockets to go further and warheads to become more destructive and to have weapon of mass description.

At last Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They were used against our nation in the north and south, and even against the Iranians when they penetrated the last defense lines in our terroritory. They were used by helicopters, by fighters and even by transport illusion 76, which it is not for bombing. But they were used in order to stop the invasion of Iran to the east of Basra, south of Iraq.

This is Saddam. I want all the Americans please to know what Saddam was and then to make the assessment: Was it worth it? Was it good that America took the decision to go and liberate that country by removing Saddam’s regime or not?

[...]

From what I know about Iraq and about Saddam, I am now one of the people who believes very, very, very clearly that the decision taken by this blessed nation, America, to go and liberate Iraq from the evil regime of that dictator, it was the right decision and the proper time.

I don’t want to interfere in your politics. You are a free nation. You are the nation of democracy. It’s up to you, you have got many parties. I respect everybody in this country. I love America but this is the truth as an Iraqi I want to tell you that this was a great decision. I am very sorry for those who lost their beloved ones. I know it is difficult for them. But you should remember always you have done a great job. You have done a dramatic change in that country and you have liberated 27 million people from a dictatorship regime.

Read it All

Riverside Press-Enterprise - March 31, 2006

Where Are the Heros of the Iraq War?
[RBT's caption]

RBT

*****

Korean vet repaid debt to America with his heroism -
America's newest Medal of Honor recipient Tibor Rubin
[Palm Springs, CA]

[...]

The Medal of Honor recipient, decorated for heroism during the Korean War, spoke of his love for America this week during a ceremony sponsored by the Palm Springs chapter of the Jewish War Veterans.

[...]

Tibor Rubin, 76, was liberated from a Nazi death camp by the U.S. Army. He was so greatful to his liberators that after he immigrated to America he enlisted as a "G.I. Joe" to serve in the Korean War. He was sent to the front lines where he fought heroically and was later captured, serving three years as a prisoner of war.

Years later, he made good on his promise. Sent to the front lines right after the outbreak of hostilities in Korea, Rubin distinguished himself for gallantry while a rifleman with the 1st Cavalry Division.

He survived several savage battles, including one 24-hour engagement in which he single-handedly held off hundreds of enemy troops while fighting from his exposed foxhole.

Captured after a firefight during the Korean War, Tibor Rubin nursed dozens of fellow prisoners back to health and bolstered their morale with a never-give-up attitude. He's credited with saving as many as 40 Americans.

Captured after yet another fight, Rubin nursed dozens of fellow prisoners back to health, stole food from their captors and gave it to his comrades, and bolstered their morale with his never-give-up attitude.

He is credited with saving as many as 40 Americans.

[...]

READ IT ALL & VIDEO!

RBT has yet to read similar stories by the MSM from the Iraq War. If it wasn't for the firsthand accounts of citizen jounalists like, Michael Yon, and the Milblogs no one would ever know of the gallantry of the American men and women serving in this war.

The MSM as a whole is following the lede of the major American news dailies that the Iraq War is a failure and hammers the meme, "Bush Lied. People Died!" A case can be made the MSM has actually fallen into a trap in the War of Information.

A new view is now to emerging from the alternative media - citizen journalists and the Blogos that the MSM's lede/meme is an untruth.

The MSM from its biased reporting and naivete is aiding and abetting the enemy. The MSM is perversely rooting for the enemy like some underdog against an imperial invading army. This is no Sunday afternoon football game. There can be no appeasing this enemy. There is no moral equivalence to the enemy's religous cultlike ideology.

This is an enemy that seeks to subjugate us, to destroy our very way of life, and to take away our most cherished value - FREEDOM!

The Blogos is steadily crunching away at the newly released documents from the Saddam Regime. More and more interesting findings are discovered everyday. Saddam's hands are dirty in many areas including collaborating with AQ and other Islamofascists when it was in his best interest.

This is directly contrary to what the State Department and CIA bureaucracies maintained before the war and to some degree still do. The CIA is in outright organizational warfare to CYA with the Office of the President to the detriment this Country and winning the GWOT.

Saddam and the Islamofascists whether they be Shiia or Sunni will work together when it's in their short-term interests to do so. Especially when the Great and Little Satans are the common enemy.

America needs its heros.

Like our fathers and mothers before who fought the Great War (WWII), there are acts of heroism going unreported because of the MSM's biased blindness.

It is crucial to win the GWOT, that the American people hear these stories of valor. As President Bush so rightfully said, this war is of Good vs. Evil. We are in a clash of civilizations and cultures. A modern one that recognizes the free will of men and women, against a Medieval ideology of fascism that seeks our total destruction.

RBT would challenge the MSM to investigate why Iraqis continually lineup in large numbers at military and police recruiting sites when the enemy bombs them repeatedly? Partial answers can be found in Iraq Gen. Sada's new book, Saddam's Secrets and in Tibor Rubin's personal story.

RBT has written previously that it is time for our generation to suck it up, put down our caffe lattes, quit the whinning, and win this war decisively like our fathers and mothers did before us:

[This essay was prompted by Judge Young's sentencing remarks in the Shoebomber case in recognition of the sacrifices The Greatest Generation to perserve our freedon]

FREEDOM - Thx to The Greatest Generation for Preserving It


[...]

The whiners and snivelers of our generations must appear as ungracious wimps and whooshes. Yes, we are a spoiled and complacent lot and forget the precious gift you gave us. We have not experienced the pain and hardships you lived through. WWII was already past history to be read in our schoolbooks. WWII has no collective visceral memory for us. We have no first hand experience. You did not dwell on it and shielded us from its impact. You didn’t consider yourselves as heroes. You picked up and got on with life. While the Vietnam War is still fresh in our memories some thirty years later, WWII ended less than a decade before we were born and has less of an impact. Our collective memory only is of grainy film clips and those few first-hand stories you told us on rare occasion.

We demand instant gratification, super-human perfection, are quick to find fault and lay blame instead of solutions, and will equivocate on all things to achieve these ends. We too, of course, want it done by yesterday. And yes, if you please, it must be done in an antiseptic and politically correct manner, lest we offend anyone or give us queasy stomachs. Yes, we often stand for nothing and everything at once. We are unlike your generation who understood the difference between, RIGHT and WRONG, and GOOD and EVIL. You lived by these principles day by day. You are not swayed by situational ethics. You stood firm and resolute in what you held dear and believed in.

As President Bush said, we are again facing a new struggle of GOOD verses EVIL. Our very way of life and culture is threatened by the spread of radical Islamic extremism. The world’s equivocation on this new cancer has only emboldened our enemy in their religious zeal to kill or convert every one of us. Radical Islamic extremism is no enlightened religion, as we know it. Radical Islamic extremism as some call Islamofascism, is an ideology that favors, dictatorial government, centralized control of private enterprise, repression of all opposition, and extreme nationalism all rolled up into a theocracy. The priest, clerics, and seers of this movement have found in their own interpretations of the Koran, justification for their actions and the slaughter of innocents. Their quest is to “open up” other unbelieving lands to the enlightenment of Islam and to right the right wrongs they suffered of centuries past. In other words to conquer and impose Islamic theocracies. This extremism is a religious-like cult, a failed culture, and a false religion that is still locked in time in the 12th and 13th Centuries.


[...]

Read More

Update:

A quick scan of the Blogos reveals similar MSM discussions underway:

Joe at Winds of Change has two excellent threads, Fair Reporting and the Tipping Point, and TIME's Michael Ware: Shilling for Jihadist Access

Allahpundit who is guest blogging for Michelle Malkin, has this UNCONFIRMED: ABC SUSPENDS JOHN GREEN FOR ONE MONTH

Littlegreenfootballs (LGF) is linking to another essay by VDH.

Another excellent column that cuts right through the left’s cloud of unknowing, by Victor Davis Hanson: When Cynicism Meets Fanaticism.

LGF also has this piece that LGF subtitled, My Faith As an Instrument of Butchery an impassioned column by M. Zuhdi Jasser, chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, calling for a counter-movement within Islam: Cancer in its midst.

I have watched horrified as assassins have read out the words from my Holy Koran before slitting the throats of some poor innocent souls. To my non-comprehending eyes, I have seen mothers proudly support their sons’ accomplishment of blowing up innocent people as they eat or travel. It shatters some part of me, to see my faith as an instrument for butchery.

It makes me hope and pray for some counter-movement within my faith which will push back all this darkness. And I know that it must start with what is most basic — the common truth that binds all religions: “Do unto others, as you would have them do onto you.” The Golden Rule.

[...]

Night after night, I see Muslim national organizations like the Council for American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, cry out over and over about anecdotal victimization while saying and doing absolutely nothing about the most vile hate-speak and actions toward Jews and Christians in the Muslim world. It is the most self-serving of outrage.

Omar at Iraq the Model has this classic bit of advice when fighting a war to win:

Know your enemies, dudes! Pt II

[...]

You know that there is more than one kind of "resistance" over here; one represented by Zarqawi and his ilk, one by Saddamists, another by Islamist Sunnis backed by Syria and another by radical Shias like Sadr's thugs who are backed by Iran.

The latter two are being denounced and described as terror groups by each other and by the politicians more or less affiliated with them. Now the question goes to the politicians again; which wing of resistance/terrorism you think NesrAllah is referring to?

Was he referring to the Takfiri Wahabis who slaughter Shias in particular (and Iraqis in general) with cold blood? Or was he referring to Sadr's militias that leave dozens of dead shot and strangled "unidentified bodies" scattered in Baghdad on daily basis, not to mention intimidate their political partners and all civilians in their areas of power?

The truth is over there, just open your eyes and you will see it shining like the sun in a July afternoon.

And right on cue, wretchard of The Belmont Club has this in depth, insightful analysis of Omar's post and the Iraqi resistance conference with an update/assist from Bill Roggio of The Fourth Rail, The Battle for Baghdad:

Pretty pictures 2

It's kinda nice when an Iraqi resistance conference provides some confirmation for the pictures I've been drawing. Iraq the Model's latest posts throws more light on the relationship of the "political struggle" in Iraq to the insurgency.

Where is this quality of analysis and reporting from the MSM that seems content to report the daily gloom and doom and boom-boom reports from the Green Zone?

Gee, the MSM could have some fine stories by just reading the Blogos with or without crediting the source. IT'S FREE! After all the MSM has no qualms in using quotes from unidentified governmental sources that may be playing they're own games of disinformation.

This is just a small sampling of today's Blogos from the top
of RBT's blogroll. There is much more but I have to attend to domestic duties :--)

RBT

Update II:

Allahpundit at Michelle Malkin's has a new post that the GWOT is all about the clash of civilizations as seen by Tony Blair in his recent speech.

Rightwing Nuthouse has this alternative analysis of the situation in Baghdad, BAGHDAD AS IT IS, NOT AS WE WISH IT TO BE

No End But Victory has, The Point: News From the Front. Ends with tag line:

Now, go out and seek the truth from those who fight for all of us each and every day

And I'll end with reminder for all the news about Iran that you won't hear much in the MSM, go here for the best source in all the Blogos:

Dr. Zin at Regime Change Iran

The Mad Mullahs' caldron is about to boil over with atomic results.

Update III:

More disinformation from the MSM:

Say Anything Blog via Ace of Spades

Media: Casualties Are Always Rising, Unless They Fall, In Which Case It's Not To Be Mentioned

Say Anything wants to know why any month with high US casualties is filled with media stories about the "ever-escalating spiral of violence" and months with very low casualties merit nary a mention.

It's a puzzler, all right.

Read More

I thought I would end this series with the piece from the StrategyPage that says it all that more well-reasoned news and information is available from the Blogos than can be found in most news dailies and newspapers:

A StrategyPage Must-Read: Long term trends in Iraq

Austin Bay says this is a must read and I agree. The Sunnis have now figured out the alliance with AQ in the insurgency is no longer in their long term best interest.

If true then the all out civil war that the MSM has been beating the drum for the last several months will not occur. DARN! Now let's see how the MSM will spin this to blame President Bush.

Because of the nuances in this great piece that have gone on under the MSM's radar, I'm posting the article in it's entirety.

Please do visit the StrategyPage for great analytical pieces. Leave it to the online strategy gamersto produce more useful information than most conventional think tanks and news journals and newspapers.

[. ..]

Read it All

All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:

1. The EMP Threat: ElectroMagnetic Pulse Warfare
2. IRAQ - BUSH WAS RIGHT ABOUT IRAQ'S QUEST FOR URANIUM
3. PBS special redraws images of Crusade leaders...
24. FRONT PAGE - Iraqi Gen Sada - A MUST READ!
25. A True Hero from another War
26. IRAQ - Spook86 on Russian Wink & Nod on CENCOM Leak...
64. IRAQ - God Lied, People Died?
65. Intelligence Summit, Part IV - WMD to Syria With Russia's Help
66. IRAN NUKES - A Must Read for MSM and Blogos

HT Spook86 - In From the cold

You've Got to be Kidding

Today's howler comes from Secretary of State Condolezza Rice. She's asked her Russian counterpart for a "serious investigation" into claims that Moscow passed information on U.S. battle plans to Saddam Hussein just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

We already know what the Russians answer will be--and so does Secretary Rice. Her request is the equivalent of a "strongly worded diplomatic note," designed to create the impression of official action and concern. In a few weeks or days, the Russians will respond politely, assuring the U.S. that they didn't pass intelligence to the Iraqis in the run-up to the war, and they didn't have a spy (or spies) at our forward headquarters in Qatar (wink, wink). Meanwhile, our counter-intelligence officials will begin a quiet (and serious) search for potential moles within the military command structure.

[...]

. . . I still contend that the Russians gathered most of their information through their own, impressive intelligence network. A spy within CENTCOM wouldn't have hurt, but the movement of U.S. forces to the Middle East could hardly be concealed, and the Russians were more than capable of discerning our likely battle plans, based on what they observed in the Kuwait desert. That's probably why Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld hasn't made much of the claim.

[...]

One final thought: the search for leaks will not be confined to possible human spying. As illustrated by the Walker spy case, breaches in communications security (also known as COMSEC) can be even more damaging, allowing adversaries to access a veritable treasure trove of classified information. I'm guessing that our pre-war communications will also get a thorough review, to look for potential compromises in our creation, storage and transmission of information. In the meantime, I'm sure that Condi Rice is a little steamed for being sent on the predictably fruitless (and largely pointless) errand of confronting her Russian counterpart.

In From the Cold Link

HT Khaleej Times Online via Threatwatch.org

Interpol says Al Qaeda preparing for biological warfare
(DPA)

27 March 2006


SINGAPORE - Interpol said the Al Qaeda terrorist group is preparing to engage in biological warfare in urging countries to enact legislation allowing police to investigate scientific activity that can result in the manufacture of a bio-terrorist weapon.

Ronald Noble, secretary-general of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), told a conference in Singapore that captured terrorist suspects have admitted that their groups are plotting potential biological attacks.

There is enough evidence to show that Al Qaeda is preparing to engage in biological warfare, Noble said.

“It can’t be that we as a world community have to wait for a September 11 type of attack in bio-terrorism before we prepare,” Noble told government officials, police and health experts attending the Asian Terrorism Workshop.

“Institutions that are engaged in any bioscience need to make sure that the controls they have in place are sure that only legitimate scientific investigative activity is going on,” he said.

Police forces worldwide need to be trained, Noble said. They need to know how to investigate bio-terrorism-related cases and how to handle such an attack.

Read More

AKA

IRAQ - Saddam's Docs - The Tipping Point of Truth Part II

HT Ray Robison via Atlas Shrugs

I was going to add this to the previous summary post of today's Blogos post re Saddam Regime docs but I though it worthy of it's own post.

Also see this post in from Dr. Sanity re the LL and the MSM still in denial.

Spook86 from In From the Cold has his own take on today's NY Times article on the Saddam docs and the Blogos.

RBT

*****

Saddam's WMD and terrorist connections all proven in one document!!!

IZSP-2003-00003336

The Arabic original shows the Falcon emblem of the Iraq Intelligence Service. A translation is provided if you scroll down. I highlight the key wording but there is more:

March 11, 2003

The al-Quds liberation army division supplied us with information....as follows.

1. The Iraqi government will distribute the same leaflets that the American forces are distributing but it will contain anthrax.

2. Iraq imports uniforms resembling American forces uniforms for the purpose of killing Iraqi citizens....

3. Dig trenches around Baghdad...oil...burning...cause mayhem

Now this letter is from al-Quds, a Jihad organization that supports the Palestinians. Saddam was the patriarch and Iraq officers worked closely with them.

IZSP-2003-00000859 also talks about the al-Quds Basra division. This is a a letter from a paramilitary organization INSIDE Iraq and not from Palestinian territories. The al-Quds in Iraq are Palestinians who live in Iraq and also are involved in Palestinian activities. They fought for Saddam because Saddam supported them in Palestine. The officers were Iraqi.

The al-Quds are covering their own butts by telling the IIS what they have been ordered to do or even trying to get them to stop Saddam since the war is immanent. If Saddam wanted to kill Iraqis with anthrax to make it look like the U.S. did it, it would be wise for him to use Palestinians instead of Iraqis. Therefor, it makes sense that he ordered the al-Quds to do it.

Iraqis might not carry out the order.

They also would talk to their communities. the Palestinians would naturally be in more segregated ethic areas of Iraq, thus better security. Perhaps they would go back to the Palestinian territories when finished.

If Iraqis were caught by U.S. forces with the anthrax, then Saddam is caught. If the Palestinians were caught, he could deny it. See the post below on how he never admitted to using chemicals on the Iranians.

So these guys get this order and report it to the IIS to make clear it is not their idea.

The wording "the Iraqi Government" seems to indicate that they are clarifying that when they do this it will not be a Palestinian attack on the Iraqis but under the orders of Saddam. They also avoid saying "we will do it" in case things don't go Saddam's way. They don't want that in a record.

They don't want anybody at the IIS coming after them. They also realize Saddam might be setting them up to take the fall if it all goes bad. The IIS may not know about it.

It wouldn't take "stockpiles" of anthrax to do it, a few vials would be plenty.

This is the only logical reason why al-Quds would be telling the Iraq Intelligence Service what the Iraqi Government is going to do instead of the other way around.

When you think about it, it's very clever. Half the Arabs in the world would be all too eager to believe we used anthrax on Iraq. And the method of transmission would link it straight to us. The Jihad fighters we are facing now would be many times greater, enough to possibly save Saddam's regime.

[...]

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*****

DOGMA , DENIAL, AND DIBS ON THE KOOL-AID

Just a few days ago I predicted that the left would be unable to deal with the information coming out in the recently released Iraq documents:

[...]

Now we have the MSM coming out swinging to discredit any information that might come from the documents as reported by Stephen Hayes in the Weekly Standard:

[...]

I suggest we simply declare the left an official "church" and let them have the same religious freedom to worship whatever nonsense they desire; carefully controlled by the high priests and priestesses (or is it Imams? I forget) The NY Times can be named the official church newsletter (though it might have to compete for that honor) that goes out to the congregation. That way, we can stop pretending that they are a "news" organization and let them be the organ for transmitting official leftist dogma to the converted.

Compare the completely closed minds that greet these very real, detailed and voluminous documents from within Saddam's regime--documents that threaten their belief system; with the gullibility and credence given to a blatantly forged document; leaked by a blatantly anti-Bush individual to blatantly partisan journalists from a blatantly partisan media outlet.

Then ask yourself who has dibs on the kool-aid.

Read it All

*****

HT Spook86 - In From the Cold

Today's Reading Assignment
After remaining silent for almost two weeks on the Iraqi documents story, The New York Times finally weighed in today, trying to downplay the significance of the documents, which (among other things) confirmed links between Saddam's regime and Al-Qaida prior to 9-11.

The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, one of the first journalists to write about the documents (and illustrate their importance) nicely deconstructs a Times news article and op-ed on the subject. As he reminds us, the publication of these documents liberates us from the "opinion of former intelligence officials, who obviously knew little about Iraq before the war. Well said, Mr. Hayes. Well said, indeed.

In From the Cold Link

HT Dr. Rusty at The Jawa Report

RBT has long maintained that the French had other under the table interests in Iraq other than their high moral interests as played out in the UN Security Council.

RBT

*****

Declassified Iraqi Intel Documents Reveal Ties to French State Owned Oil Company

Loik Le Floch-Prigent.jpgAnother translated Iraqi intel document has been released which implicates a French state run oil company in efforts to stop the U.S. led invasion of Iraq. Document: ISGZ-2004-028179 as translated here ties two European businessmen convicted in France's largest corruption scandal to the Saddam Hussein regime. The first is Loik Le Floch-Prigent, the former head of the French state owned oil company Elf-Aquitaine, convicted of fraud and bribery late in 2003. His conviction revolved around a scandal involving bribes and kickbacks to various corrupt oil rich governments around the world. His conviction also implicated the Socialist government of Francois Mitterrand in the scandal. Because Elf-Acquitaine is a state owned enterprised, it has long been thought to be a secret arm of French diplomacy.

[...]

What is so interesting about this is the depths of the relationship between the French oil company and Iraq and just how blatantly obvious it is that France's national interests were not served by the Iraq war. As I've argued dozens of times here, the Democratic arguement that Bush's failure to gain UN approval and to draw in a larger coalition for the Iraq war was a failure of diplomacy is utter nonsense. Nations go to war because they believe it is in their national interests, and coalitions form when those interests are aligned. No amount of diplomacy or talking can realign those interests. Whether or not Madeline Albright was Sec. of State or Al Gore was President of the United States mattered not one iota. Iraq was not a failur of diplomacy, it was a failure to have allies with mutual interests. Nothing more, nothing less.

Read it all

HT Dr. Zin at Regime Change Iran


Iranian military on alert.

* Rooz Online reported that military, intelligence, security and police forces in Iran have been put on alert during the Persian New Year holidays and that all leaves have been suspended.

[...]

Operational units of Army Aviation, Passdaran Air Wing, air defense units, operational divisions of military air bases, and all military command posts have been put on full alert.

It appears that this high level alert has been put into effect because of recent US threats against Iran, raising the possibility of limited military operations against the country in the forthcoming weeks.

Read More

HT National Review Online via Dr. Zin at Regime Change Iran

*****

Iran Is at War with Us
Someone should tell the U.S. government.


Michael Ledeen, National Review Online:

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, is dying of cancer. But he is convinced that his legacy will be glorious. He believes that thousands of his Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers effectively control southern Iraq, and that the rest of the country is at his mercy, since we present no challenge to them — even along the Iraq/Iran border, where they operate with impunity. They calmly plan their next major assault without having to worry about American retribution.

The mullahs have thousands of intelligence officers all over Iraq, as well as a hard core of Hezbollah terrorists — including the infamous Imadh Mughniyah, arguably the region’s most dangerous killer — and they control the major actors, from Zarqawi to Sadr to the Badr Brigades.

Khamenei and his top cronies believe they have effectively won. They think the U.S. is politically paralyzed, thanks to the relentless attacks of President Bush’s opponents and the five-year long internal debate about Iran policy, and thus there is no chance of an armed attack, even one limited to nuclear sites. They think Israel is similarly paralyzed by Sharon’s sudden departure and the triumph of their surrogate force, Hamas, in the Palestinian elections. They despise the Europeans, and hardly even bother to pretend to negotiate with them any more. They believe they have a strong strategic alliance with the Russians and they think they have the Chinese over a barrel, since the Chinese are so heavily dependent on Iranian oil. Recent statements from Beijing and Moscow regarding the chance of U.N. sanctions will have reinforced the Supreme Leader’s convictions.

Hapless in the Beltway

Above all, Khamenei believes he has broken the American will, for which he sees two pieces of evidence. The first is that there seems to be very little American resolve to do anything about punishing Iran for the enormous traffic of weapons, poisons, and terrorists into Iraq from Iran. Khamenei must inclined to believe that the Bush administration has no stomach for confrontation.

We have done nothing to make the mullahs’ lives more difficult, even though there is abundant evidence for Iranian involvement in Iraq, most including their relentless efforts to kill American soldiers. The evidence consists of first-hand information, not intelligence reports. Scores of Iranian intelligence officers have been arrested, and some have confessed. Documentary evidence of intimate Iranian involvement with Iraqi terrorists has been found all over Iraq, notably in Fallujah and Hilla. But the "intelligence" folks at the Pentagon, led by the hapless Secretary Stephen Cambone, seem to have no curiosity, as if they were afraid of following the facts to their logical conclusion: Iran is at war with us.

[...]

Read it All

The Blogos is now chewing away on the Saddam Regime's docs that are now being doled out by the government.

RBT will comment on this in another post very soon.

The Saddam Regime Documents can be found at this site:

Foreign Military Studies Office
Joint Reserve Intelligence Center

Operation Iraqi Freedom Documents

At the request of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the US Army Foreign Military Studies Office has created this portal to provide the general public with access to unclassified documents and media captured during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The US Government has made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy of the information contained therein, or the quality of any translations, when available. Users who come across documents they feel are inappropriately released may contact the responsible officers at docex@center.osis.gov. The ODNI press release and public affairs contact information is available at http://www.odni.gov/

or cut and paste this link:

http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/index.htm

RBT
*****

HT FrontPageMagazine

The Tipping Point of Truth
By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 27, 2006

Despite the terrible attacks of September 11, 2001 leftists here and in Europe almost immediately turned on America as a villain and opposed subsequent military responses to Islamofascist terrorism. They used guilt (“why do they hate us?”), foreign policy (“support for the occupiers of Palestine”), and anti-capitalism (“no blood for oil”) to excuse the terrorists and validate their motivation.

Perversely, these same people ginned up a new blame-George W. Bush campaign building on their irreconcilable hatred from a close, hotly-contested 2000 election that they refuse to concede to this day. Themes of “Bush lied” along with “no WMD” and “no al Qaeda-Iraq” ties were useful in undermining the war effort and smearing the president and his administration.

Many editorialists, columnists, and talking heads in the media, backed by like-minded management and production staff, picked up these themes and ran with them. Consequently even people who know better seem willing to concede the left’s foreign policy talking points. But how much longer will this travesty persist in the face of overwhelming counter-evidence?

Reams of documents – ultimately numbering in the millions of pages by the time CDs, hard drives, and computer memories are downloaded and printed – are slowly beginning to be translated and released for analysis. These documents – though only 2% or so are translated and available – substantiate without doubt the following allegations: Saddam Hussein and bin Laden, the Baathist regime and al Qaeda had extensive, wide reaching ties. Saddam was, at a minimum, a supporter of the 911 attacks if not a sponsor of them. Saddam’s intelligence services trained more than 8,000 al Qaeda terrorists, primarily from Somalia and Sudan, at camps such as Salman Pak and Ansar al-Islam within Iraq. And Saddam helped finance al Qaeda and similar terrorist groups.

[...]

We also know, thanks to the work of former Iraqi Air Force General Georges Sada, that Saddam had several civilian aircraft – one Boeing 747 and a “group” of 727s - stripped of passenger equipment and converted into cargo planes. The aircraft flew 56 sorties between Iraq and Syria, delivering drums of the chemical weapon Sarin along with other chemical and biological weapons. The deal with concocted on Saddam’s orders by “Chemical Ali” his general in charge of special weapons, and Bashar Assad’s cousin, General Abu Ali. It was a rare occasion for cooperation between the rival Baathist states, but as Sada notes, “there was complete agreement between them.”

[...]

General Sada is not a lone voice in this matter. The Mossad, Israeli intelligence service, has long claimed that the weapons were transferred out of Iraq. American generals Paul Vallely and Thomas McInnerny noted in their 2004 book, Endgame, that extensive stockpiles of WMD were hidden in three locations within Syria and in the Syrian-controlled terrorist camps of the Bekka Valley in Lebanon. Included in the stocks were nerve agents like Tabun, Sarin 1, and Sarin 2. They did not remain hidden for long.

Up to 20 tons of these chemical agents were intended for use by al Qaeda terrorists in attacking three targets in Amman, Jordan in 2004 – the Jordanian Ministry of Defense and Intelligence Service buildings, and the American Embassy. These were to be simultaneous truck bomb attacks that were thwarted by good counter-intelligence work. The trucks were large 15-ton capacity powerful vehicles that could power through barriers and obstacles to crash into the buildings. At that time the homicide drivers would detonate the ammonium nitrate load triggered by plastic explosives – probably C-4. Resting atop the explosive load were Saddam’s chemicals, sufficient to kill upwards to 100,000 people in downtown Amman, by conservative.

[...]

What is stunning is that intelligence officials in the Bush Administration has been so circumspect about releasing this information and that the president and his Cabinet members seem reluctant to discuss it publicly. After all, don’t these revelations fully vindicate the decision to liberate Iraq? One plausible reason for such counterintuitive behavior is that the entrenched bureaucratic intelligence agencies, particularly in CIA and State Department, so staked their reputations on their flawed analysis of both the WMD issue and the Iraq-al Qaeda ties (the “secular” Baathists would never work with the religious fanatics) that they refuse to admit error.

[...]

When will honest journalists in the print and TV media – there must be some out there –bow under the weight of this mounting evidence and concede their errors? We have passed the tipping point in the weight of evidence that vindicates the allegations of al Qaeda ties, WMD, and hostile intentions. Continued denial of the truth is unacceptable.

Read it All

*****

HT The Daily Standard [The Weekly Standard] via GroupIntel

An Army of Analysts
Collective analysis of captured Iraqi documents may produce much more than just answers about pre-war Iraq.
by Michael Tanji
03/14/2006 8:59:00 AM


It is perhaps coincidental, but certainly apropos, that at the start of "Sunshine Week"--an annual promotion of openness and transparency in government--we receive word from Director of National Intelligence Negroponte that documents captured in Iraq will be released to the public for review and analysis. As someone who spent the last several years exploiting captured media for the U.S. government, I am keenly aware of the staggering scope and scale of the current effort. To be frank: Uncle Sam needs all the help he can get.

[...]

From a traditional intelligence perspective, a group analysis effort is something of a new concept. Intelligence "Community" projects are occasionally called for, but these are more collegial bouts over the odd debatable point--most analysts agree on 80 percent of any given issue area--than thorough and original examination of a given problem by any interested parties. Collective projects like the one analyzing documents on Guantanamo Bay detainees have produced encouraging preliminary results. Whether you call it a blog-swarm, the "wisdom of the crowds," or an "Army of Davids," the general concept is the same: the more determined individuals that are set on a problem, the better the result.

[...]

A successful collaborative analysis of Iraqi documents has implications that go beyond just this problem set. Such an endeavor will not go unnoticed by the reform-minded in the intelligence community. In fact, it could very well help accelerate currently nascent efforts at blogging and collective analysis that are creeping along in the intelligence community, which is ostensibly the information-based enterprise. The adoption of such tactics could help overcome problems like group-think (Saddam would never support terrorists, Sunnis and Shiites would never work together) and highlight previously unseen or under-appreciated gaps in our knowledge (WMDs in Iraq are a slam-dunk).

The results of any collective analysis of captured Iraqi documents may not provide proof positive of any particular pre-war assumption, but the knowledge gained in the trying could help ensure that future intelligence efforts against high value and hard targets are not post mortem affairs.

Read it All

*****

HT Chron.com

March 27, 2006, 3:44PM
U.S. Makes Seized Iraqi Documents Public

By ROBERT TANNER AP National Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

— The federal government is making public a huge trove of documents seized during the invasion of Iraq, posting them on the Internet in a step that is at once a nod to the Web's power and an admission that U.S. intelligence resources are overloaded.

Republican leaders in Congress pushed for the release, which was first proposed by conservative commentators and bloggers hoping to find evidence about the fate of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, or possible links to terror groups.

The Web surfers have begun posting translations and comments, digging through the documents with gusto. The idea of the government turning over a massive database to volunteers is revolutionary _ and not only to them.

"Let's unleash the power of the Internet on these documents," said House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich. "I don't know if there's a smoking gun on WMD or not. But it will give us a better understanding of what was going on in Iraq before the war."

[...]

"The secret of the 21st century is attract a lot of smart people to focus on problems that you think are important," said Glenn Reynolds, the conservative blogger at Instapundit.com and author of "An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths."

"It's kind of like a swarm. It's a lot of individual minds looking at it from different angles. The stuff that's most interesting tends to bubble to the top," he said.

[...]

Read More

*****

HT

keshertalk.com

The Russian Connection

Gateway Pundit has a post with links detailing ties between the Russians and Saddam's Iraq in the days before the war began and the question of whether they gave the Iraqis the US war plan:

[...]

I turned on a few minutes of Meet The Press yesterday, because I wanted to see Condi, and there's Timmy Boy acting shocked! shocked! by this Russian development. And still bringing up the President's words about Putin delivered after 9/11, when Putin was in a different frame of mine than he was during Iraq. Condi had to remind Tim that Russia didn't support the Iraq War. You would think these high priced journalists would be able to keep better informed. Or alternately ask new questions, not the same old ones they have been asking in precisely the same formulas for years now.

Can't they dust off their brain cells?

[...]

But the reason why none of this surprised me in the least is this article by Ion Pacepa, former Romanian spy chief before he defected to the West - the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc, written in 2003. Pacepa surely knows more - through trained intuition and experience - about the mentality of how these Russian bureaus work from the inside out than almost anyone else currently writing in the free press and willing to shine a revelatory light on it.

As a former Romanian spy chief who used to take orders from the Soviet KGB, it is perfectly obvious to me that Russia is behind the evanescence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. After all, Russia helped Saddam get his hands on them in the first place. The Soviet Union and all its bloc states always had a standard operating procedure for deep sixing weapons of mass destruction — in Romanian it was codenamed "Sarindar, meaning "emergency exit."I implemented it in Libya. It was for ridding Third World despots of all trace of their chemical weapons if the Western imperialists ever got near them. We wanted to make sure they would never be traced back to us, and we also wanted to frustrate the West by not giving them anything they could make propaganda with.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

[...]
Read it All with Update with Michael Ledeen

*****

HT keshertalk.com

Even Chinese Intelligence Heard the WMD had been Moved to Syria

According to Iraqi Intelligence Document: ISGZ-2004-028179, from the Iraqi Files now publicly released.

Even the Chinese received intelligence that the WMD went to Syria, and this by January 10, 2003.

B. He mentioned that a meeting in Beijing in the beginning of this month was held between the Prime minister of China and the German Chancellor Schroeder in the occasion of the opening project for the fast train and the latter was asked about the information that was obtained by the Chinese intelligence and it says that Iraq has moved his mass of destruction weapon to Syria and the German Chancellor told him that the German intelligence did not indicate this. And after two days the US state secretary went to Damascus to check on this with the Syrian government that in turn denied this news...

I wonder if the Chinese also knew the Russians delivered them?

Read More

*****

HT Security Watchtower

Did Chinese Intelligence pickup on Iraq moving WMD to Syria?

According to a Free Republic translation of an Iraqi Intelligence document, Chinese Intelligence had picked up information that Iraq had moved their weapons of mass destruction to Syria. The document reveals Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji had held a meeting with German President Gerhard Schroeder and told him "the information that was obtained by the Chinese intelligence and it says that Iraq has moved his mass of destruction weapon to Syria and the German Chancellor told him that the German intelligence did not indicate this. And after two days the US state secretary went to Damascus to check on this with the Syrian government that in turn denied this news.”

The trip by Colin Powell to Syria in February 2001 may be what the document is referring to. According to the report, Secretary Powell announced a last minute, unscheduled visit to Syria, saying he was "going to be stopping in Damascus, Syria, to meet with President Bashir Assad" in order to hold talks and "present a report to President Bush as to what we should be doing."

Interestingly enough, at the same time Powell was travelling to the Middle East and apparently at the same time Schroeder was telling the Chinese that Iraq didn't move any weapons of mass destruction, the German Intelligence (BND) issued a report on the a status of Iraqs WMD programs. Intelligence chief August Hanning told Spiegel magazine that, "Since the end of the UN inspections [December 1998], we have determined a jump in procurement efforts by Iraq," adding that Saddam was rebuilding destroyed weapons facilities "partly based on the German industrial standard".

[...]
Read More

*****

Update:

Google Bot just hit on this latest piece by The Weekly Standard senior writer Stephen F. Hayes.

Hayes deconstructs NY Times front-page story and OP-ED piece that downplays the Saddam docs.

RBT

*****

HT The Daily Standard via Yahoo News - Opinion

Choosing Ignorance

Stephen F. Hayes Tue Mar 28, 5:24 PM ET

Washington (The Daily Standard) - THE NEW YORK TIMES today joined the debate about Iraqi documents with a front-page news article and an op-ed by Peter Bergen. It's been nearly two weeks since the first documents were released, but a belated acknowledgement of the news is better than nothing. One might have expected such a longtime champion of open government as the Times to have aggressively led the effort to have these once-secret documents released. Not this time.

The front-page story seeks to dismiss the importance of the documents while the op-ed by Bergen seems to find them only significant enough to warrant an attempted deconstruction. Both of these efforts fail badly. Reading the two pieces together, one gets the unmistakable impression that the Times doesn't want to know more about the documents, their contents and what they tell us about prewar Iraq. The Times, it seems, has chosen ignorance.

[...]

Leaving aside the relevance of al Qaeda application forms, there are two points to make. First, hard as it might be to believe, the U.S. intelligence community has only recently begun to exploit many of the documents captured in Afghanistan. In a report that aired on National Public Radio on March 14, 2006, reporter Jackie Northam interviewed Major General Jay Hood, the commanding officer of the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

[...]

t is worth noting that two 9/11 Commissioners also see value in the Iraqi Intelligence documents. The day after the 9/11 report was released, Commissioner John Lehman offered this prophetic warning in an interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD: "There may well be--and probably will be--additional intelligence coming in from interrogations and from analysis of captured records and so forth which will fill out the intelligence picture. This is not phrased as, nor meant to be, the definitive word on Iraqi Intelligence activities."

Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator who also served as a 9/11 Commissioner, recently told Eli Lake of the New York Sun that the Iraqi Intelligence documents offer "a very significant set of facts." While cautioning that the documents don't tie Saddam to 9/11, Kerrey added that they do tie Saddam to "a circle that meant to damage the United States."

[...]

Many questions remain. What came of Iraq's outreach to Saudi opposition groups? Are Allawi's documents authentic? What of Zawahiri's "contacts of his own" with the Iraqis? Did Iraq pass money to Zawahiri or other al Qaeda associates? Who were the "non-Iraqi Arabs" the regime trained in Iraq beginning in 1998?

It would be nice to know more. Unless, of course, you're The New York Times.
Read it All

*****

Update:

John Hinderaker at Powerline has another piece of the puzzle.

The Super Babe of the Blogos, Atlas Shrugs, has her own take on the picture begining to emerge from the Saddam Regime docs.

RBT

*****

March 28, 2006
More From Saddam's Archives

A reader calls our attention to another of the audio tape recordings from Saddam Hussein's office. This one is ISGQ-2003-M0004667, and appears to have been recorded around 1996. Like most of the audiotapes, it is rambling, confusing and often incoherent. The ambiguity of most of what Saddam and his henchmen say is maddening. However, there are some interesting nuggets. This one suggests that the Russians have been paid off:

We have succeeded in a few of the U.N. paragraphs, we have won Russia, ahhh ... we have convinced Russia by way of generous accounts [payoffs], in which, you remember how and why it happened...

Iraq's lies to the U.N. inspectors are again acknowledged, although the actual state of Iraq's weapons programs at the time can't be deduced from the tape:

They have a bigger problem with the Chemical progam than the Biological program, a lot bigger... It is not the weapons, the size of the imported material, the size of [UNINTELLIGIBLE] that we presented to them or the size of the stockpile. They knew that not all of this was true. We have not told them about the size or kind of Chemical weapons that we produced, and we have not told them the truth about the imported material. Therefore, sir, if they want to raise an issue, I mean, they will see that our argument is the issue of the Biological program.

It is clearly stated that nuclear materials were moved out of Iraq, and it seems, although less clearly, that Iraqi "teams" were still working on nuclear weapons:

Sir, where was the Nuclear material transported to? A number of them were transported outside of Iraq. *** Sir, about the Nuclear program, we say that we have uncovered everything. In addition, we have an unannounced problem with the Nuclear program, and I think they know about it. I mean, there is working teams that are working and some of these teams are not known to anyone.

As we've said before, each of these documents is a very small piece of a very large mosaic, and it would be a mistake to try to draw conclusions prematurely. But some of these comments are certainly suggestive.

Powerline Link

*****
HT Atlas Shrugs

Saddam's Iraq WMD

Iraqi Documents Are Put on Web, and Search Is On - Scott Shane
[NY Times]

Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte has begun a yearlong process of posting on the Web 48,000 boxes of Arabic-language Iraqi documents captured by American troops. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who led the campaign to get the documents released, does not believe they have received adequate scrutiny. Hoekstra said he wanted to "unleash the power of the Net" to do translation and analysis that might take the government decades. (New York Times)

View the documents (U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office) [Ed note: I linked to the home page. The original link went to a specific doc]

Craig found some interesting little nuggets in newly released documents from Saddam's Iraqi files here (PDF file).

"I don’t claim to understand the full context, but it appears that these Iraqi officials were admitting to:"

* Bribing Russian officials to get specific UN Security
Council proposals changed.

* Lying about imported chemicals

* Transporting nuclear material outside of Iraq

Read More

HT Athena - Terrorism Unveiled

The CIA and the State Department should take note of Athena's observations. The Shiia and the Sunni will make deals with the Devil if it will further their short-term interests. Especially when the Great and Little Satans are the target.

As we are now learning from the Saddam Regime's docs, Saddam, a secularist, wasn't at all adverse to making deals with the Shiia and the Sunni when it advanced his own agenda.

RBT

*****

Think Outside the Box

But, that's my heart, and in my head I think his latest op-ed in the New York Times is just plain ignorant. He argues that Saddam and al-Qaida would not have worked together 1.) because of ideological differences and 2.) because of impracticability.

First, I would agree with Mr. Bergen that there is a lack of enough verifiable evidence of a real working relationship between the two. That's not the fallacious point that Bergen is pushing.

He's pushing that false assumption that differing ideologies, one secular and consumed with staying in power [Saddamism] and one globally Islamist and consumed with eradicating Middle Eastern leaders and getting to power [bin Ladinism], would have not worked together.

If the Muslim Brotherhood, who is the forerunner of al-Qaida ideology, can have a working relationship with the Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran, then we already see that each will make deals with the devil if they think its in their short-term interest. See "Rose Garden of the Martyrs" by Christopher de Bellaigue for citation (I'll supply page numbers once I get back to my place where the book is).

[...]

What would secretly working with Saddam give al-Qaida? Money, a base, and a real insult to the Saudi regime. As well as better posturing for "biting the hand that feeds you." Like a dog, al-Qaida would certainly turn on Saddam eventually. Saddam would've anticipated this most likely, and plan to end the relationship before it got to that point.

Everyone has it out for everyone, and everyone will use everyone. Neither, Saddam nor al-Qaida, has proven to taking the moral highroad as far as not working with other factions because it may tarnish their fashionably resplendent reputations.

Read it All

HT Sophistpundit

RBT's dream too.

*****

Ok. This is one of those things I dream about but never actually do. But what the hell. I'm gonna dream in public--what're blogs for, after all?

Ever since I watched Rob Curley of the Lawrence Journal-World give a lecture, I've thought about how cool it would be to take a stab at a real news website. You know. Instead of the decentralized, wandering life that a blog has.

[...]

On the one hand, I give you the Washingtonpost.com. Look at it. It has a professional looking front page. Each article has a summary underneath the link which takes to you to page for the article itself. Each article features a number of links to related subjects, as well as a printer-friendly version of the article itself.

But if I were running a news site, I would do things a little differently.

[...]

Read More

HT The Weekly Standard

Something New . . .
Condoleezza Rice sees significance in the Saddam documents.
by Stephen F. Hayes
03/27/2006 12:00:00 AM

SECRETARY OF STATE CONDOLEEZZA RICE on Sunday contradicted claims from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that documents captured in postwar Iraq and now being posted on the Internet will not contain anything new or significant.

"We're going to find some important and surprising things in these documents," Rice said in an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press.

Rice also addressed revelations, important but not surprising, that former Russian ambassador to Iraq, Vladimir Teterenko, passed the U.S. war plan to Iraq shortly before the war began. The charges, based largely on two Iraqi documents captured in postwar Iraq, came in a report issued by the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia, and released by the Pentagon late last week. Rice said she is not in a position to confirm or deny the claims but vowed to take "a hard look at the reports" of Russian betrayal.

[...]

Rice on Sunday missed an opportunity to highlight two other significant revelations from captured Iraqi documents. The "Iraqi Perspectives Project" study, which ignited the public discussion of Russia and Iraq, also reveals that beginning in 1998 Saddam Hussein's intelligence services began training "non-Iraqi Arab volunteers" at camps in Iraq.

Another captured document details the plan of the Iraqi Intelligence Service to invigorate its relations with Saudi opposition groups, including one headed by Osama bin Laden. According to that document, which a Pentagon task force determined "appears authentic," bin Laden requested assistance from the Iraqi regime on its anti-Saudi propaganda efforts and with attacks on U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. The documents indicate that Iraq agreed to rebroadcast al Qaeda propaganda and left open the possibility of working with al Qaeda on attacks.

Read it All

HT Gateway Pundit via Instapundit

Ouch! Photos Show Iraqi & Russian Defense Reps Days Before War!

Russia's UN mission spokesman blasted the Pentagon report released on Friday. The Pentagon report was based on documents taken from Iraq after the collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime. One translated memo addressed to a Saddam secretary from the Russian Ambassador to Iraq details US military plans on the eve of the War in Iraq...

But, it will be difficult for the Russians to slam photos of Russian military officials receiving awards from Saddam's Defense Minister for assisting the regime days before the startup to the war.

Read it All