HT Atlas Shrugs

Is President Bush's Administration now playing a Rove Trump card openly in the poker game with the French, the Russians, and the Chinese to rein in the Mad Mullahs of Iran?

The Israelis are signaling they will not allow the Mullahs to go nuclear. If that's the card in play, the US is now signaling we will support the Israelis to destroy the Iranians capacity to make nuclear weapons. This would not be good economically for this triad who are tied economically with Iran.

Atlas is breaking with a story of Iraq's WMD's Secreted to Syria.

Rocketsbrain

*****

In an explosive interview with The New York Sun, 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

The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book,“Saddam’s Secrets,” released this week. The man who served as theGeorge_sada 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. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.

Read it All

*****

Rocketsbrain has long held that Saddam's nuclear(?)/chem/bio weapons were moved to Syria and to Lebanon's Beka's Valley. This was done by Saddam's Regime in the run to Baghdad. This was aided by the Russians who were desperate that their fingerprints weren't found on any of this material once Iraq was overrun by the US and it's coalition partners.

There have been many pieces of this puzzle that have emerged overtime. All fell off the radar quickly. There was the "accidental" strafing run on the Russian diplomatic convey on a high speed run to the Syrian border when messages were sent what the "approved" exit routes were.

There was a report of four nuclear warheads encased in concrete that were dug up in Iraq. The new Iraqi media reported this but this was immediately given the Jedi wave off, "There's nothing here." This is wild speculation but if they were produced outside of Iraq their origin would be easy to track.

There was a "hot" (radiological) convoy of trucks seized at the Turkish border. Supposedly this was "Jawa" scrappers moving irradiated scrap metal to metal markets over the border. Initial reports indicated this was "very hot" stuff. This story never gained much traction.

There is also the little foray by Zarqawi's minions who were caught enroute to Amman, Jordan, to launch a massive lethal chemical cloud. These chemical agents allegedly were some of Saddam's stocks that were funneled through Syria.

Then of course there have been our "friends" at the UN Security Council led by the French. Mind you there has been speculation that the French co-opted the CYA with the Plame - Wilson affair with a disinformation campaign to cover their tracks on the Niger "yellow cake" and to discredit President Bush.

Further there are reports that the French prevailed upon Turkey to prevent the launch of American forces into Northern Iraq and use of their airspace. The carrot was admission into the EU. Had American forces been allowed to enter from the north through the Sunni Triangle, the Sunni led insurgency would have been significantly less.

And of course there is the "Oil for Food" scandal that high level French officials were up to there armpits in. The top receivers of Saddam's scam were the French, the Russians, and the Chinese (in that order) all permanent members of the Security Council. Further it was the French Ambassador who pulled the rug out from under Secretary Colin Powell at the last minute during UN meetings prior to the invasion. With "friends" like these, who needs enemies. At least French President Chirac appears to be coming around to the dangers of this radical ideology from the Religion of Peace with his threat to use nuclear weapons.

While there has been open turf war between the CIA (CYA'g) and the Office of the President, it's disingenuous that our intel community has remained silent on this. Either they are considerably dumber then the general consensus or there is a bigger political/psy-ops game afoot. The former would mean we are in deep "do do" (ala Michael Jackson).

I would suggest a middle of the road position while we have made many mistakes along the way as Victor Davis Hanson has written many times will occur in war. The key however to winning the war is to learn from them, adapt, take risks but most importantly keep engaging the enemy.

Assuming an US/Israeli raid on Iran is on deck in the immediate future, this may be a trump card that is being held close to the vest. The LL and MSM have been allowed to run with a long rope with the meme, "Bush lied people died." They have been so focused on this like a pack of dogs on a kill; they have not seen what may be in plain sight. Of course OBL, Al-Zawahri and other are consumers of the MSM as they craft their PR responses accordingly and use this as a wedge issue to divide the American people. This administration has done little to dispel this notion that the intel was wrong going into the Iraqi invasion and we continue to bumble through.

Rocketsbrain suggests this "trump card" will be played if it becomes necessary to launch a preemptive strike against the Mad Mullahs of Iran and President MAD. The LL and the MSM will be left dangling in the wind. Praise be to Allah for President MAD in clarifying the aims of Islamofascism ideology much to the chagrin of the mullahs. No wonder planes are "crashing" in Iran and there have been assassination attempts on President MAD, he's been too literal in his statements to the free world. DAMN!

Yes, this is highly speculative, but this is my current read of the tea leaves that gives some meaning to the puzzle pieces.

I will update this piece later today with links to the isolated stories I've mentioned. It will take awhile to find the links again.

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH US!

Rocketsbrain

[ed note: I've corrected some of the grammatical errors in the original post]

Just noticed that Michelle Malkin is on that case as is:

Right Wing Nut House
Powerline
Conservative Culture
The Jawa Report has a whiff.
Spook86 has it too.
Outside the Beltway is puzzled too
So is Weapons of Mass Destruction

Update:

I'm still working on finding the links again to the pieces I mentioned above.

Also the Strata-Sphere is discussing the Plame-Wilson Affair again.

Kobayahi Maru (TREK Reference) has an excellent roundup on the Syrian political scene with references to them holding Saddam's WMDs.

In the meantime here's some info re the credibility of Gen. Sada. Only time will tell. Michelle Malkin linked to this piece by Mark in Mexico that has extensive comments about the Sada:

Georges Hormis Sada graduated from Iraq’s Air Academy in 1959 and was trained by elite forces in Great Britain, Russia and the U.S. An ace fighter pilot who trained other pilots, he went on to become air vice marshal in Saddam Hussein’s military.

Georges Sada was born into an Assyrian Christian family in northern Iraq and became a born-again believer in 1986. Georges had great favor with the former Iraqi dictator, as he is one of the few Iraqi men to ever publicly confront Saddam Hussein and live to tell about it. Georges believes a key reason why he served as one of Saddam’s most trusted advisors was to persuade him against attacking the nation of Israel with chemical weapons, something Saddam attempted to do on two separate occasions.

Now retired, Georges is director of the Iraqi Institute for Peace and also serves as spokesman for the newly elected prime minister of Iraq. He is also the president of the National Presbyterian Church in Baghdad and chairman of the Assembly of Iraqi Evangelical Presbyterian Churches.

In recent years, Georges held the position of principal advisor to the former Iraqi Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi. Additionally, he acted as the lead consultant for the reconstruction of all three branches of the Iraqi defense system. In June of 2003, Georges received the prestigious International Prize for Peace and Reconciliation presented by the Bishop of Coventry, England.

Read it All

HT Dr. Zin - Regime Change Iran

Like minds think alike!

*****

Gareth Porter, Asia Times:

Recent reports in the Turkish and German media of the US asking the Turkish government to support a possible attack on Iran and alerting allied countries of preparations for such an attack appear to be part of a strategy to pressure the Iranian regime rather than the result of a new policy to strike the country.

The stories appeared in Turkish and German newspapers after a December 12 meeting between US Central Intelligence Agency director Porter Goss and his Turkish counterpart. The Turkish center-left newspaper Cumhuryet reported that Goss had warned the Turkish government to be ready for possible US use of air power against both Iran and Syria. On December 23, the German news agency DDP quoted "Western security sources" as saying that Goss had asked the Turkish prime minister to support a possible strike against Iranian nuclear and military facilities. And the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegal cited North Atlantic Treaty Organization intelligence sources as saying the US had informed NATO allies that it was studying the military option against Iran.

The reports, which have not been widely picked up by US news media, seemed to suggest that the administration of President George W Bush was now closer to war against Iran. But the circumstantial evidence points to strategic disinformation planted by the administration - perhaps with help from friendly officials in NATO - to ratchet up the pressure on Iran over its position on nuclear-fuel enrichment.

Read it All

HT LGF

Here's more from General Sada. The plot thickens. Is this a cleaver disinformation campaign or is the dam about to burst on Saddam's little secrets.

*****

Saddam ordered WMD strike on Israel
JPost.com Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 28, 2006

The former deputy of the Iraqi air force, General Georges Sada, revealed on Saturday that that former dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, ordered him during the first Gulf War to bomb Israeli population centers with chemical weapons.

The ousted dictator, said Sada in recently published book, Saddam's secret's, ordered 96 Russian fighter jets to be armed with chemical weapons and sent to bomb Israel.

According to Sada, who recently served as a national security advisor to the temporary prime minister and was in the midst of a book tour in the US, said he succeeded in convincing Hussein to reconsider his order.

Sada said he convinced Saddam to abort the mission by telling him that the Iraqi pilots could not complete the mission with the equipment at their disposal, and that the Israelis had radar that could detect them before they reached their target.

In his book, which was written four years ago, Sada also claims that Iraq's chemical weapons were taken to Syria aboard civilian Iraqi "Boeing" airplanes just prior to the US invasion.

The 65-year-old Sada said that 56 flights of this type took place, but went largely unnoticed because they were flying under the guise of humanitarian aid.

Prior to the second Iraq war Israel warned that Iraq was moving chemical weapons from its territory into Syria.

Chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction were never found in Iraq by US-led allied forces.

Link

HT Town Hall

More info now coming out on Iraqi General Sada's book and claim that Saddam sent his WMD to Syria.

Bush lied. People Died?

Well maybe not true as the MSM, the LL, and Moonbats have whined. Perhaps some good objective investigative reporting by the Blogos is in order to run this to ground.

Rocketsbrain has commented on this twice before see links below. I did locate the links I mentioned in my previous post but lost them in a draft that died. I will get them again shortly.

*****

Saddam Sent WMD to Syria, Former General Alleges

By Sherrie Gossett

Feb 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. [See Video]

[...]

There is "no doubt" that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, according to Eberly. He adds that Sada's book is "evidence" of that. Eberly's F-15E jet was shot down on Jan. 19, 1991, the third day of the first Persian Gulf War. He credits Sada with saving his life after the Iraqi general refused an order from one of Saddam's sons to execute Eberly and 23 other pilots who had been taken as prisoners of war.

[...]

In a now-famous speech just three months after Hamza's testimony, President Bush asserted that "if the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year."

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted the weekend of Jan 20 indicates that 53 per cent of Americans say Bush and his administration misled the public about Iraq's WMD program as a justification for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Read it All

Update:

Sgt. Stryker has been saying this for the last 2 1/2 years

Thought I would post this here since I ran across it again. Source is a "senior" Syrian jounralist and was reported by DEBKAfile (you decide its credibility)

*****

A senior Syrian journalist reports Iraq’s WMD located in three Syrian sites.

Special report by DEBKAfile

January 8, 2004, 8:57 PM (GMT+02:00)

Nizar Najoef, 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 “De Telegraaf,” that he knows the three sites where Iraq’s WMD are kept. The storage places are:

1. Tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria. These tunnels are an integral part of an underground factory, built by the North Koreans, for producing Syrian Scud missiles. Iraqi chemical weapons and long-range missiles are stored in these tunnels.

2. The village of Tal Snan, north of the town of Salamija, where there is a big Syrian airforce camp. Vital parts of Iraq’s WMD are stored there.

3. The city of Sjinsjar on the Syrian border with the Lebanon, south of the city Homs.

Najoef writes that the transfer of Iraqi WMD to Syria was organized by the commanders of Saddam Hussein’s Special Republican Guard, including General Shalish, with the help of Assif Shoakat , Bashar Assad’s cousin. Shoakat is the CEO of Bhaha, an import/export company owned by the Assad family.

[...]

Read More

Toledoblade.com

Article published February 4, 2006

Saddam's WMD
[By Jack Kelly]

LAST week a man who had been deputy chief of Saddam Hussein's air force claimed Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war began.

Special Republican Guard brigades loaded yellow barrels with the skull and crossbones sign on each barrel onto two airliners from which the seats had been removed, Georges Sada said. There were 56 flights in all.

"Saddam realized this time the Americans are coming," Mr. Sada told the New York Sun, one of a handful of news organizations that took note of what he had to say.

There are grounds for skepticism. Mr. Sada was deputy chief of the Iraqi air force during the first Gulf War, not the more recent one, and his account of the movement of WMD to Syria is secondhand. Mr. Sada said he was told of the WMD transfer by the pilots of the two airliners, who approached him after Saddam was captured.

But Mr. Sada's is only the most recent of a series of accounts by people in a position to speak with authority who say (some of) Saddam's chemical and biological weapons wound up in Syria.

w●Last month Moshe Yaalon, who was Israel's top general at the time, said Iraq transported WMD to Syria six weeks before Operation Iraqi Freedom began.

w●Last March, John A. Shaw, a former U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said Russian Spetsnaz units moved WMD to Syria and Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

"While in Iraq I received information from several sources naming the exact Russian units, what they took, and where they took both WMD materials and conventional explosives," Mr. Shaw told NewsMax reporter Charles Smith.

w●Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong was deputy commander of Central Command during Operation Iraqi Freedom. In September, 2004, he told WABC radio that "I do know for a fact that some of those weapons went into Syria, Lebanon, and Iran."

w●In January, 2004, David Kay, the first head of the Iraq Survey Group, which conducted the search for Saddam's WMD, told a British newspaper there was evidence unspecified materials had been moved to Syria from Iraq shortly before the war.

"We know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD program," Mr. Kay told the Sunday Telegraph.

w●Also that month, Nizar Nayuf, a Syrian journalist who defected to an undisclosed European country, told a Dutch newspaper he knew of three sites where Iraq's WMD were being kept. They were the town of al Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria, the Syrian air force base near the village of Tal Snan, and the city of Sjinsar on the border with Lebanon.

w●In an addendum to his final report last April, Charles Duelfer, who succeeded David Kay as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said he couldn't rule out a transfer of WMD from Iraq to Syria.

"There was evidence of a discussion of possible WMD collaboration initiated by a Syrian security officer, and ISG received information about movement of material out of Iraq, including the possibility that WMD was involved. In the judgment of the working group, these reports were sufficiently credible to merit further investigation," Mr. Duelfer said.

w●In a briefing for reporters in October, 2003, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, Jr., who was head of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency when the Iraq war began, said satellite imagery showed a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria just before the American invasion.

"I think the people below Saddam Hussein and his sons' level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse," General Clapper said.

You haven't heard much about these reports, because they contradict the theory that Saddam either had no WMD, or destroyed them well before the Iraq war began. The captured files of the Iraqi intelligence service, still mostly untranslated, could shed light on what did happen to Saddam's WMD.

John Loftus, a former Justice Department prosecutor, said a civilian contractor who has been among those examining the Mukhabarat files has found audiotapes of meetings in Saddam's office where WMD were discussed. The contractor, a former military intelligence analyst, will make the tapes public Feb. 17 at a conference sponsored by Intelligence Summit, a private group that Mr. Loftus heads.

Mr. Loftus wouldn't disclose the identity of the contractor in advance of the conference, but said his tapes have been verified by the National Security Agency. "This isn't a smoking gun. It's a smoking cannon," he said.

Those who have bet their political futures that Saddam had no WMD may be starting to sweat.

Link

HT Mark in Mexico

Interesting piece that Mark just posted. Rocketsbrain has long suspected a much bigger game is afoot - Dr. Watson. This is a MAD Magazine Spy vs. Spy cartoon panel at its best.

See these prior posts:

UPDATE - SADDAM'S WMDs IN SYRIA

While there has been open turf war between the CIA (CYA'g) and the Office of the President, it's disingenuous that our intel community has remained silent on this. Either they are considerably dumber then the general consensus or there is a bigger political/psy-ops game afoot. The former would mean we are in deep "do do" (ala Michael Jackson).

I would suggest a middle of the road position while we have made many mistakes along the way as Victor Davis Hanson has written many times will occur in war. The key however to winning the war is to learn from them, adapt, take risks but most importantly keep engaging the enemy.

Assuming an US/Israeli raid on Iran is on deck in the immediate future, this may be a trump card that is being held close to the vest. The LL and MSM have been allowed to run with a long rope with the meme, "Bush lied people died." They have been so focused on this like a pack of dogs on a kill; they have not seen what may be in plain sight. Of course OBL, Al-Zawahri and other are consumers of the MSM as they craft their PR responses accordingly and use this as a wedge issue to divide the American people. This administration has done little to dispel this notion that the intel was wrong going into the Iraqi invasion and we continue to bumble through.

Rocketsbrain suggests this "trump card" will be played if it becomes necessary to launch a preemptive strike against the Mad Mullahs of Iran and President MAD. The LL and the MSM will be left dangling in the wind. Praise be to Allah for President MAD in clarifying the aims of Islamofascism ideology much to the chagrin of the mullahs. No wonder planes are "crashing" in Iraq and there have been assassination attempts on President MAD, he's been too literal in his statements to the free world. DAMN!

Yes, this is highly speculative, but this is my current read of the tea leaves that gives some meaning to the puzzle pieces.

[...]

Read More

Austin Bay - The Iranian Military Option
HT Austin Bay

UPDATED

The Blogos is ringing lately regarding a possible Israeli/US preemptive strike to take out the Mullahs' nuclear weapons building capacity.

As I said in other posts today, don't mess with Texas and don't mess with Texans!

If there is a military strike it will be lightning fast and extremely deadly for this is war. We have the ability to drive a stake into the very heart of the enemy and its ideology of hate and evil, Islamofascism. The only question is, do we have the political will and nerve? Or will we dither and only have to do it in the future at much greater cost?

[...]

Read More

*****

Iran between steel jaws of a trap?

I found this very interesting, albeit disturbing article in Asia Times Online through Lucianne. The article is titled Iran and the jaws of a trap. It was written by a Paul Levian who is identified as a former German intelligence officer. Interestingly, a Google search for Paul Levian turns up exactly zip, zilch, nada. A search of Google News turns up the same article, but this time on a UK news site called mathaba.net, subscription 2.95 pounds Sterling per month. Hmmm.

Mr. Levian, whomever he might be, is of the opinion that the United States has not only handled its Iran dossier much more skillfully than Iraq, but also managed to set up Iran for a war it can neither win nor fight to a draw.

He says that the Iranians are in for a shock.

If the Iranian leaders think they can deter an attack because the US is bogged down in Iraq they are already between the jaws of a well-set trap. Though a Western war against Iran will be a big geopolitical defeat for Russia and China, they cannot but resign themselves to this outcome if they are unable to convince the Iranians to accept the Russian proposal - ie uranium enrichment in Russia.

Levian believes that China and Russia have been forced by the US, UK and France to bail out on their support for Iran. If Iran refuses to allow the enrichment of uranium in Russia, then Levian says we're on.

Levian claims that Iran is basing its intransigence and belligerence on four fallacies.

1. Iran is much stronger militarily than was Iraq, a much larger state, much tougher terrain and much more difficult to attack, defeat, occupy and pacify.

2. Iran is counting on the threat of world-wide condemnation of any attack to forestall just such an attack.

3. The interruption of the flow of Iranian oil would be devastating to the world's economy.

4. The US and UK forces are too busy in Iraq to constitute a threat to the Mullahs.

Levian then sets about to debunk all 4 of the Iranian misconceptions.

1. The US has no intention of occupying and pacifying Iran as it is trying to do in Iraq (more on that later).

2. With all of the big 5 (US, UK, France, Russia, China) on board, who cares about world-wide condemnation?

3. The attacking coalition would go right for the oil fields. Any interruption is assumed to be minimal.

4. The US and UK forces can be quickly re-deployed, especially under the cover of the first few days of an allied air assault. Levian doesn't say so, but he seems to hint that this has been planned for a long time. Also, Levian claims that the US has more than adequate forces already in position along the Iran/Iraq border to contain the expected initial surge of Iranian forces. Levian adds, almost as an afterthought, that any widespread uprising against US and UK forces in Iraq would be viewed as a nuisance and would simply be met with overwhelming firepower.

[...]

Read it All

Things just keep popping up re Saddam's WMDs went to Syria in the run up to the Iraq war. I've commented on this before. We now have General Sadda's new book and John Loftus is making the rounds re tapes that he will unveil later this month. Coupled with these is the immense backlog of documents that were seized Iraq needing translation.

The Saddam Regime was just like the Nazis and kept very detailed documentation of their attrocities. I've mentioned before it reminds me of the final scene in the first Indiana Jones movie showing the Arc of Covenent being stored away in some vast governmental warehouse.

*****

Congress's Secret Saddam Tapes

BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
February 7, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/27110

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is studying 12 hours of audio recordings between Saddam Hussein and his top advisers that may provide clues to the whereabouts of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The committee has already confirmed through the intelligence community that the recordings of Saddam's voice are authentic, according to its chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, who would not go into detail about the nature of the conversations or their context. They were provided to his committee by a former federal prosecutor, John Loftus, who says he received them from a former American military intelligence analyst.

Mr. Loftus will make the recordings available to the public on February 17 at the annual meeting of the Intelligence Summit, of which he is president. On the organization's Web site, Mr. Loftus is quoted as promising that the recordings "will be able to provide a few definitive answers to some very important - and controversial - weapons of mass destruction questions." Contacted yesterday by The New York Sun, Mr. Loftus would only say that he delivered a CD of the recordings to a representative of the committee, and the following week the committee announced that it was reopening the investigation into weapons of mass destruction.

The audio recordings are part of new evidence the House intelligence committee is piecing together that has spurred Mr. Hoekstra to reopen the question of whether Iraq had the biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons American inspectors could not turn up. President Bush called off the hunt for those weapons last year and has conceded that America has yet to find evidence of the stockpiles.

Mr. Hoekstra has already met with a former Iraqi air force general, Georges Sada, who claims that Saddam used civilian airplanes to ferry chemical weapons to Syria in 2002. Mr. Hoekstra is now talking to Iraqis who Mr. Sada claims took part in the mission, and the congressman said the former air force general "should not just be discounted." Mr. Hoekstra also said he is in touch with other people who have come forward to the committee - Iraqis and Americans - who claim that the weapons inspectors may have overlooked other key sites and evidence. He has also asked the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, to declassify some 35,000 boxes of Iraqi documents obtained in the war that have yet to be translated.

"I still believe there are key individuals who have not been debriefed and there are key sites that have never been investigated. I know there are 35,000 boxes of documents that have never been translated. I am frustrated," Mr. Hoekstra said.

[...]

Read it All

SADDAM'S SECRETS - How an Iraqi General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussien

By Georges Sada with Jim Nelson Black

I bought a copy at Barnes & Noble last week and have been reading it in my spare time. I posted some background info on the author that lends to his credibility.

In reading the first few chapters I too believe Iraqi General Georges Sada is sincere, credibible, and a true patriot of the new Iraq. General Sada tells why it was so important to remove Saddam from power. General Sada personally knows Saddam.

The key factor of General Sada's credibility is that he is an Iraqi Christian and was not a member of the Baathist party. He is a pilot's pilot and his true love is flying. He was trained at both US and Russian flight schools.

HT In from the Cold

Iraq's WMD File

From the Unfinished Business Department, there are new claims about what might have happened to Saddam's WMD. In a new book, a former senior general in Iraq's Air Force claims that large quantities of WMD materials were flown to Syria in the months before the U.S.-led invasion. The retired Iraqi officer--Air Marshal Georges Sada--reports that two Iraqi transport aircraft made more than 50 WMD flights to Syria, under the guise of humanitarian relief missions for flood victims. Mr. Sada said he learned of the flights from the pilots who flew them.

The original New York Sun story can be found here, and Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse has more on Sada's report. As Rick points out, none of Sada's claims have been fully corroborated, and he's relying on second-hand information, at best. But the reported flights fit a pattern of pre-war activity that saw a steady flow of traffic from Iraq to Syria. This traffic--which consisted mostly of vehicle convoys--has been confirmed by other sources, ranging from the head of the U.S. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (retired Lieutenant General James Clapper), and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Gen Clapper, Mr. Sharon and other experts believe the detected traffic was related to the movement of Iraqi WMDs and related material to Syria.

Sada was something of a rarity in Saddam's Iraq--a non-Baathist and Christian who rose to the upper echelons of power. Since the overthrow of Saddam, he has worked as an advisor Prime Minister Allawi, and also serves as Iraq outreach director for an Oklahoma-based evangelical group. Sada never provides any explanation as to why he waited so long to "go public" with his story (other than the fact he's hawking a book). There's also the issue of how reliable the Air Marshal's information might be; he was forced out of the Iraqi Air Force in 1986 (because he refused to join the Baath Party), recalled in 1991 (to interrogate Allied POWs), then tossed into prison himself because he refused Qusai Hussein's order to execute the POWs. He was clearly an "outsider" in the last days of Saddam's regime, although he retained contacts within the Iraqi military.

At the very least, Air Marshal Sada's story sounds credible, and matches pre-war activity that has been confirmed by other, independent sources. He is also highly respected by post-war Iraqi leaders and by American evangelicals who have worked with him, including Dr. Terry New. I've met Dr. New and know him as a man of great integrity who has risked his life to spread the Gospel throughout the Middle East. Dr. New has only the highest praise for Georges Sada, and says "everything he's told me has completely checked out." Given his background and references, Sada's claims cannot be arbitrarily dismissed. But I'm guessing that Sada's book will receive virtually no attention from the MSM, because his information doesn't fit the "Bush lied" template.

Link

From GOPUSA

Insider's Book Should Blow Lid Off WMD Debate
By Doug Patton
February 13, 2006

On Sunday morning, February 12, 2006, in a church in Bellevue, Nebraska, I couldn't escape the feeling that I was a witness to history. There, at the sparsely attended 8:30 service, stood Gen. Georges Sada, a retired Iraqi general from Saddam Hussein's air force. As he shared his personal testimony, I found myself wondering how long the so-called mainstream media could ignore the message he was imparting.

Sada is a member of the board of directors of World Compassion, headed by Dr. Terry Law, an Oklahoma minister who accompanied the general on Sunday morning. The reasons for Sada's presence in the church were two-fold: to profess his own Christian faith and to let Americans know that liberating Iraq was the just and right thing to do.

[...]

But most significantly, Sada's book reveals information that should blow the lid off the whole debate over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Remember those WMDs that supposedly don't exist? Well, according to the general, they not only did exist but still do -- in Syria.

[...]

Gen. Sada says that a plot to kill thousands of people in Amman, Jordan, using these same weapons, has since been foiled, thus indicating that they have fallen into the hands of al-Qaida.

Watch for the national media to begin their reluctant coverage of this story. Fox News and talk radio will force them to cover it. And since Sada's documentation is reportedly being examined by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., they can't ignore it forever. Or can they?

-----------

Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has worked as a political speechwriter, communications consultant and advisor to conservative Republican candidates and elected officials, as well as public policy organizations. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including GOPUSA (www.gopusa.com), where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.

Link

Time will only tell if John Loftus is on the mark with this one. Rocketsbrain has mentioned before there are stacks of Saddam's documents awaiting translation. Saddam's Regime just like Hitler's Third Reich kept very accurate records of their evil doings.

This tends to fit with the now emerging view that Saddam's WMD went to Syria in the run up to the current Irai War. The pieces of this puzzle have been floating around the Blogos for the last several years. This just resurfaced again with Iraqi Air Force General Sada's book alleging portions of Saddam's WMD were flown to Syria in civilian aircraft that had the seats removed as "disaster relief supplies" after a Syrian dam disaster.

*****

Secret Saddam WMD Tapes Subject of ABC Nightline Special
By Sherrie Gossett
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
February 15, 2006

(CNSNews.com) -- Secret audiotapes of Saddam Hussein discussing ways to attack America with weapons of mass destruction will be the subject of an ABC "Nightline" program Wednesday night, a former federal prosecutor told Cybercast News Service.

The tapes are being called the "smoking gun" of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. The New York Sun reported that the tapes have been authenticated and currently are being reviewed by the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

[...]

On Tuesday night, Loftus told Cybercast News Service that ABC's "Nightline" would air an "extensive report" on the tapes Wednesday night. Loftus also described an ABC News "teaser," which reportedly contains audio of Saddam Hussein discussing ways to attack America with WMD. "Nightline will have a lot more," said Loftus.

The tapes are scheduled to be revealed to the public Friday morning at the opening session of The Intelligence Summit, a conference which brings together intelligence professionals from around the world.

[...]

The exclusive report featured documents showing numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans.

The documents also demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. The papers showed that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.

Read it All

The New Documents
The release of the Saddam tapes should neither be hyped nor dismissed.
by Stephen F. Hayes
02/15/2006 3:25:00 PM

[Re ABC News release tonight]

FOR MORE than a year, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has sought the release of documents captured in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have pressured Pentagon officials, cajoled intelligence analysts, listened to would-be whistleblowers, interviewed Iraqis and filed numerous Freedom of Information Act requests with multiple government agencies. Today, because of two developments that have nothing to do with these efforts, we will all learn more about the captured documents and what they tell us about our enemies in the global war on terror.

Yesterday, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, released 28 captured al Qaeda documents in connection with the publication of a study called, Harmony and Disharmony: Exploiting al Qaeda's Organizational Vulnerabilities. The documents come from the Department of Defense's HARMONY database. They provide a fascinating look into the ideology of terror that motivates al Qaeda members and sympathizers, the conflicts among these individuals and groups, and their widely disparate views on everything from Mohammad Farah Aidid in Somalia to the late King Fahd in Saudi Arabia, from working with "infidels" to the terrorists' reaction to the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

[...]

Estimates from people involved in the document exploitation project tell us the U.S. government has in its possession some 2 million "exploitable items." Of that number, less than 3 percent--somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 items--have been fully exploited. The information that will be made public by the end of this week--28 captured al Qaeda documents and 12 hours of audiotape from Iraq--will provide a glimpse of a fraction of a fraction of the total collection.

[...]

Similarly, on the al Qaeda documents: The scholars from West Point examine the relationship in the 1980s between the jihadists from the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and the former Iraqi regime. Saddam supported and trained some of these jihadists in his effort to destabilize the Syrian regime. On the one hand, this data suggests that whatever their religious and ideological differences, the jihadists and the allegedly secular Iraqi regime were not opposed to cooperating against a common enemy. This view is supported by an al Qaeda document that reports, among other things, that Osama bin Laden's chief deputy Ayman al Zawahiri sought assistance from both the Iraqi regime and Iran. On the other hand, another al Qaeda document sets forth "lessons learned" from the experience of the past jihadist-Iraq collaboration and concludes that such relationships can be counterproductive and are to be avoided in the future. It's all very interesting and it will be helpful to learn more.

What these documents demonstrate more than anything else is that the U.S. intelligence community and the Bush administration should make document exploitation a high priority.

Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.

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Brian Ross - ABC News Chief Ivestigative Correspondent

EXCLUSIVE: The Secret Tapes -- Inside Saddam's Palace

ABC News Obtains 12 Hours of Recordings of Saddam Hussein Meeting with Top Aides

By BRIAN ROSS and RHONDA SCHWARTZ

Feb. 15, 2006 — ABC News has obtained 12 hours of tape recordings of Saddam Hussein meeting with top aides during the 1990s, tapes apparently recorded in Baghdad's version of the Oval Office.

ABC News obtained the tapes from Bill Tierney, a former member of a United Nations inspection team who translated them for the FBI. Tierney said the U.S. government is wrong to keep these tapes and others secret from the public. "Because of my experience being in the inspections and being in the military, I knew the significance of these tapes when I heard them," says Tierney. U.S. officials have confirmed the tapes are authentic, and that they are among hundreds of hours of tapes Saddam recorded in his palace office.

Watch "World News Tonight" for more on the secret tapes, and watch ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross' full report on "Nightline" tonight.

[...]

Read it All

Investor's Business Daily
Issues & Insights
Gunsmoke On ABC

Posted 2/15/2006

WMD: Did Saddam Hussein possess weapons of mass destruction? We've always thought so. But proof positive may soon be forthcoming if secret tapes of the Iraqi dictator turn out to be real.

The tapes in question, 12 hours in all, represent recordings of Saddam Hussein discussing the possibility of a terrorist attack on Washington, D.C., and the use of WMD.

The tapes are held by John Loftus, a former U.S. prosecutor, who says they were given to him by a "former American military intelligence analyst." Loftus will officially reveal the tapes on Saturday, during the opening session of the Intelligence Summit, a private conference of former defense and intelligence officials from around the world. ABC News' "Nightline" scheduled a preview of the tapes for broadcast Wednesday night.

Loftus insists the tapes provide the "smoking gun" of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Meanwhile, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., head of the House Intelligence Committee, said the tapes are authentic and show "Saddam had a fixation on weapons of mass destruction and he had a fixation on hiding what he was doing from the U.N. inspectors."

That's not surprising, since the recordings fit with what we already know: that Saddam had a program to make WMD and likely had some stockpiled — though he also probably shipped them to Syria or Libya shortly before the March 6, 2003, U.S. attack.

That scenario has become clearer in recent days, as two former Iraqi military commanders have come forward to admit that, yes, Saddam had WMD and hid them.

Two weeks ago, we wrote here about Georges Sada, the former No. 2 in Saddam's air force who says Saddam moved his WMD to Syria six weeks before the U.S. invaded — a claim bolstered by Western intelligence at the time.

Now Sada's claim has been confirmed by Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, a key commander of Saddam's Fedayeen militia and a close, hometown acquaintance of the former dictator, who says this was all part of Saddam's plan.

Yes, it worked. Americans have heard repeatedly that "Bush lied" about WMD in Iraq to justify war. War critics agree that Saddam once had WMD, but they contend he destroyed them when sanctions were imposed after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

[...]

It'll be interesting to hear what's on Loftus' tapes. They may indeed be a "smoking gun." If so, the case that so many have made against the war for so long will have been blown out of the water.


© Investor's Business Daily, Inc. 2000-2006. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or redistribution is prohibited without prior authorized permission from Investor's Business Daily.

Read More

Saddam talked of WMD attack in U.S.

Tapes show him ‘almost obsessed’ with weapons, don’t prove he had them

By Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit
NBC News
Updated: 6:29 p.m. ET Feb. 15, 2006

WASHINGTON - Among the treasure trove of information captured after Saddam Hussein's fall were tape recordings of the Iraqi leader discussing weapons of mass destruction with top aides.

Transcripts of Saddam's tapes reviewed by NBC News show him ruminating about future terror attacks in the United States using weapons of mass destruction.

"We shouldn’t be surprised to see a car bomb with nuclear [material] explode [in] Washington, either germ or chemical," Saddam tells aides. "So this is coming,” Saddam says on the tapes, “but not from Iraq," he adds, seeming to indicate that Iraq would not be the source of any such attack.

An unidentified Saddam aide replies that biological weapons are easy to construct: “… any biologist can make it in water tank and kill 100,000 person … so you can’t accuse a country, one person can do it. One American person can do it in a house, next to the White House.”

On another tape, Saddam says future terrorism will be with WMD. "It is possible in the future to see a booby trap and the explosion turns out to be nuclear, germ or chemical."

U.S. intelligence analysts have confirmed to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that Saddam’s voice on the audiotapes is authentic. The analysts believe most of the tapes were recorded in the ’90s, after the first Gulf War.

“What the tapes show is that between the first gulf war and the second gulf war, Saddam Hussein had not lost his appetite for, or interest in, weapons of mass destruction,” says Gary Milhollin of the Wisconsin Project, an advocacy group working to slow the spread of weapons of mass destruction. “To the contrary, he was almost obsessed by them.’’

[...]

Read More

HT Spook86 at In From the Cold

Lost in Translation?

According to former UN weapons inspector (and Arabic linguist) Bill Tierney, there are significant differnces between his translation of the Saddam tapes, and the ABC News version. Tierney was originally contracted by a civilian translation agency, working for the U.S. government. He told Sean Hannity that when he learned the disc with the conversations was unclassified, he offered them to ABC, which hired its own translator.


Among the differences: according to Tierney, Saddam never says a terrorist WMD attack "would never come from Iraq." There is also discussion, he says, of getting the French and Russians to help Iraq resolve its problems with UN weapons inspectors. That "assistance" is probably a reference to getting Paris and Moscow to lean on the UN and end the inspection process--a long-term goal of Saddam.

Tierney will appear on Hannity and Colmes at 9 pm tonight, on FNC. Recommended viewing, to say the least.

Link

HT Renew America

Rocketsbrain has been saying this for two years. The $64 question is why the Bush Administration choses to remain silent on this.

Rocketsbrain suggest this is being held as a trump card in a much larger game. See previous post, UPDATE - Saddam's WMDs IN SYRIA (Linked below).

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Saddam's WMDs: The Russian connection and the coverup
Wes Vernon
February 20, 2006


The free world may soon learn it has just been bamboozled by one of the most clever and well-organized propaganda campaigns in the history of this planet. No WMDs in Iraq? That is not the case, according to eyewitnesses and expert intelligence analysts.

Yes, Saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction.

Yes, he intended to use them.

Most Americans don't know that, because the public has been spoon-fed the line that multiple intelligence reports around the world got it all wrong, and that there "never were" weapons of mass destruction.

As it turns out, former CIA Director George Tenet was not wrong when he told President Bush it was a "slam dunk" that Saddam had WMDs. At least it was likely accurate at the exact moment he gave that assurance. Shortly thereafter or at about the time he said it, the weapons were removed.

But of course, you already know that, if you've been reading this column or have listened to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or watched Fox News. Much of the rest of the media have cheerfully assisted in the "No WMDs" mantra.

What you might not have known until now is that the Russians helped the Saddam deception of removing the WMD from Iraq prior to the war there. As Lt. General Thomas G. McInerney, a military consultant — said in a conversation with this writer — the Russians "masterfully laid it out into the free world that there were no WMDs. Politically, it was picked up [here at home] by the Democratic Party and other parties throughout Western Europe. It was brilliantly done by the Russians that there were no WMDs. And to this day [that story] has still got legs."

But the facts of the story are different from the false conventional wisdom.

At a private "Intelligence Summit" meeting that began Friday just outside Washington, military analysts and intelligence professionals heard the highlights of twelve hours of taped conversations between Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants. The Iraqi strongman did have a WMD program to include nuclear. How far along he was is another question, McInerney added. But he was still investing in that area. He was supporting terrorism.

General McInerney says Saddam could have had a role in the anthrax attacks in the United States shortly after 9/11 because "it was such a high grade of anthrax that it was not a low-cost energy effort. It was done masterfully."

McInerney adds the latest Russian dots "need to be looked at." They come from many different sources (including from Jack Shaw who gave a Pentagon insider's account of the Russian connection as he spoke before the Intelligence Summit on Saturday) as well as from Israel and other places around the globe.

Taken together, the dots indicate "there was WMD, [and] that it went out to Syria [three locations] and through Syria on to Lebanon [one location]." The Russian connection was "the orchestrator to move the weapons out. And they had the skill [with a crack team]" and two top generals — "one to help them on the air defense, and one who was to clean this WMD up."

Russian assistance was thorough, to say the least. "The archives and all that were taken out. It was brilliantly done, and then they laid in a program to follow it. And that's the information operations [propaganda] campaign," which General McInerney says was "brilliant." They spread it "into Western Europe, and then to the UN and to the diplomatic world. [And so] it became a part of the political lore that the Democratic Party and our Congress and the administration just backed away from it [the idea that Saddam's Iraq had WMDs]."

Jack Shaw was Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for International Technology Security at the time this was learned through intelligence sources.

Addressing the three-day conference at a hotel not far from the Pentagon itself, he revealed not only the Russian operation, but the effort — for whatever reason — to cover it up here at home.

When the Cold War ended, Russia's military aid to Iraq and Syria did not. Unlike Germany and Japan at the end of World War II, the free world allies were not able actually to occupy the old Soviet Union and de-communize" it the way Germany was "de-nazified." In Germany, the bums were killed, imprisoned, disgraced, or banished from public office. In Russia, the bums walked free and pulled strings, albeit under different banners. We are paying the price of that in today's Iraq War.

Shaw explained that Russia not only built up the military arsenals of Iraq and Syria, but also could "provide a pipeline through Syria to funnel weapons to Saddam as the pressure on him increased." Thus, they could "put beyond the reach of an invasion force such munitions [for which] Saddam wanted a safe haven." Or as Shaw put it, that "assured that the traffic in both directions would be directed and implemented by Russians providing deniability on both sides of the border." Not incidentally, that border has had a 3000-year experience in smuggling.

The chief mischief-maker on the Russian side apparently was General Yevgeny Primakov, who headed the Soviet foreign intelligence service in 1990, served as Russia's minister of foreign affairs in 1996, and as prime minister in 1998. You may remember him as the post-Cold War general who was given to outrageous and threatening outbursts.

Despite Iraq's 8 billion dollar debt to Russia, Primakov convinced the Russian government to invest anew in rebuilding Iraqi military forces after Saddam's humiliating defeat in the Gulf War. "Secret agreements, signed between Iraqi intelligence and the Russian GRU, provided for clean-up operations to be conducted by Russian and Iraqi military personnel — to remove WMDs, materials for production, technical documentation, etc., from Iraq, so that the regime could announce that Iraq was 'WMD free.'"

Part of the plan — specifically dealing with chemical weapons — was described by a Romanian intelligence official now living in protective custody after briefing U.S. intelligence for three years. The Russians specified that all chemical/bio weapons were to be burned or buried at sea in the event of potential capture. Just before war against Iraq by the allied coalition, two Russian ships set sail for the Indian Ocean. Shaw says it's not known whether they then headed for Syria or were destroyed. The point is they were out of Iraq and out of the reach of any invasion force.

In addition to undercutting the U.S. rationale for going to war, the Russians also secured important gains for themselves. Shaw says they increased their influence in Syria and "and put themselves in a position to support armed guerilla action in Iraq after the war." This is a reference to the terrorists (or "insurgents" in delicate media-speak) who have been killing innocent Iraqi citizens, as well as American military and civilian personnel.

None of this in any way contradicts the claims made by General Georges Sada — at one time the second highest ranking general in Saddam's air force — who says in his book "Saddam's Secrets" that he knew the dictator moved the weapons out of the country (see my column of January 29). He says they were moved by air. Some at the Intelligence Summit say weapons were also moved out by cattle trucks. McInerney says it is credible that different conveyances were used. "The fact is they probably went out in a combination of different ways."

The biggest puzzle in all this is why the Bush administration has not shouted this story from the rooftops, especially since it puts the lie to the "Bush lied-People died" propaganda. In our interview, General McInerney (you may have seen him as a military analyst on Fox News) said it is as clear as ever that "Russia was number one, China was number two, France was number three in providing [Saddam] conventional weapons. We know that. There's no question on it. It just hasn't been exposed." You will note those three regimes persistently voted in the United Nations against the U.S. efforts to marshal international force against Iraq with something more meaningful than another tired UN Resolution.

Shaw put it this way to his audience: "The question is not only how badly we got snookered by the Russkis, but why it is in the U.S. interest to continue the cover-up of the real story. It has been suggested that our knowledge of the movement of these weapons is not helpful as we cannot prove what happened without expanding the war. There is also the old intelligence rationale of not blowing your cover, so you can continue to mine your intelligence sources without compromising them."

General McInerney noted that Russia, China, and France are permanent members of the UN Security Council, and perhaps the Bush administration needs them to help in the global War on Terror. "So maybe [the Bush administration] did not want to create a big problem with them."

So Shaw is asking, "What is the current Bush administration's game plan? Does it have one? And who are the enforcers?"

The three-day Intelligence Summit conference here is a logical outgrowth of the concern on the part of military and intelligence professionals who are frustrated by cover-up after cover-up of the misdeeds of enemies and our so-called "friends" that have left Americans dead, while the bad guys get away with it.

There's much more to be told. One of the main conference participants — Bill Tierney, a translator and former weapons inspector — told conferees the cases involving the first (1993) World Trade Center bombing and the (1995) Oklahoma City bombing should be re-opened so as to bring to a closure the glaring inconsistencies and unanswered questions in the accepted versions of those mysteries.

But we'll get to that later. For now, the Russian connection is enough to ponder.

Wes Vernon is a Washington-based writer and veteran broadcast journalist.

© Copyright 2006 by Wes Vernon

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