Monday, January 30, 2006

WMD Disclosures that Will Not Be to the Liking of Terrorists, of Saddamists, and… of the West's Bush- and America-Bashers

The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.
Thus starts the Sun article of Ira Stoll (shookhran, Carine, Resilience, and BarcePundit).
The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, … told the Sun that the pilots of the two airliners that transported the weapons of mass destruction to Syria from Iraq … told Mr. Sada that two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, Mr. Sada said. Then Special Republican Guard brigades loaded materials onto the planes, he said, including "yellow barrels with skull and crossbones on each barrel." The pilots said there was also a ground convoy of trucks.

The flights — 56 in total, Mr. Sada said — attracted little notice because they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in June of 2002.

"Saddam realized, this time, the Americans are coming," Mr. Sada said. "They handed over the weapons of mass destruction to the Syrians."

…Mr. Sada acknowledged that the disclosures about transfers of weapons of mass destruction are "a very delicate issue." He said he was afraid for his family. "I am sure the terrorists will not like it. The Saddamists will not like it," he said.

As much as the terrorists and the Saddamists will dislike it, I wouldn't be surprised if they dislike it less than will the West's Bush- and America-bashers around the world.

The average journalist, the average media pundit, the average citizen, the average Joe, the average Jane is in no way a military specialist, nor a specialist in Iraqi (and/or Syrian) geography, nor a specialist in geo-political strategy. And yet he (or she) knowsbeyond the shadow of a doubt (witness the scoffing, the snorts, the guffaws, and the scorn) — that: Saddam had no WMD, that Saddam was in no way involved with sponsoring terrorism, and that Bush and the neocons lied.

This, in spite of the fact that the world is regularly informed of secrets which it hadn't known about before, secrets that are/were 10 months old, 10 years old, 50 years old; or, at least, if it had reason for suspecting the truth, secrets that it wasn't sure about before.

However, as W Thomas Smith Jr points out,

Many in the mainstream media have been so successful at debunking any evidence, proof, or substantive facts as they relate to the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection, that any new information supporting any facts those of us in-the-know already know will simply be rejected.
It's all anti-Americanism, Ladies and Gents. That is all it is…

Philip Garber brings us a report concerning Saddam's confidential WMD tapes:

A former military intelligence analyst, who currently works as a civilian contractor, believes he has found a cache of extremely confidential--and very shocking--audio recordings of Saddam Hussein's office meetings. The audiotapes, which had apparently been overlooked, were found in a warehouse along with many other untranslated Iraqi intelligence files. These tapes are extremely significant, since they may be the best evidence yet of Saddam's secret intentions concerning weapons of mass destruction.

Before 9/11, many intelligence experts were convinced that a very strong and important Iraqi WMD connection existed, only to change their minds when no concrete evidence of that connection could be uncovered in the three years following the beginning of Iraqi war.

Because of the considerable historical importance of this stunning recent development, the contractor who obtained and reviewed these tapes plans to release them to the public on February 17, 2006 at the Intelligence Summit, a non-partisan, non-profit conference open to the public, scheduled to be held at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City Hotel in Arlington, Virginia that weekend.

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