Sadaam had WMD

[dude1394]

From Investor's Business Daily. This will probably be printed like Mohammed Cartoons by US media.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/I...issue=20060224

Saddam Had WMD

Posted 2/24/2006

WMD: Now that Leno and Letterman have had their way with Vice President Cheney's hunting accident and the port controversy, maybe we can get back to something really important — like Saddam's WMD program.

Yes, the linchpin of opposition to the Iraq War — never really strong to begin with — has taken some real hits in recent weeks. And "Bush lied" — the anti-war mantra about the president, Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction — looks the most battered.

Inconveniently for critics of the war, Saddam made tapes in his version of the Oval Office. These tapes landed in the hands of American intelligence and were recently aired publicly.

The first 12 hours of the tapes — there are hundreds more waiting to be translated — are damning, to say the least. They show conclusively that Bush didn't lie when he cited Saddam's WMD plans as one of the big reasons for taking the dictator out.

Nobody disputes the tapes' authenticity. On them, Saddam talks openly of programs involving biological, chemical and, yes, nuclear weapons.

War foes have long asserted that Saddam halted his WMD programs in the wake of his defeat in the first Gulf War in 1991. Saddam's abandonment of WMD programs was confirmed by subsequent U.N. inspections.

Again, not true. In a tape dating to April 1995, Saddam and several aides discuss the fact that U.N. inspectors had found traces of Iraq's biological weapons program. On the tape, Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law, is heard gloating about fooling the inspectors.

"We did not reveal all that we have," he says. "Not the type of weapons, not the volume of the materials we imported, not the volume of the production we told them about, not the volume of use. None of this was correct."

There's more. Indeed, as late as 2000, Saddam can be heard in his office talking with Iraqi scientists about his ongoing plans to build a nuclear device. At one point, he discusses Iraq's plasma uranium program — something that was missed entirely by U.N. weapons inspectors combing Iraq for WMD.

This is particularly troubling, since it indicates an active, ongoing attempt by Saddam to build an Iraqi nuclear bomb.

"What was most disturbing," said John Tierney, the ex- FBI agent who translated the tapes, "was the fact that the individuals briefing Saddam were totally unknown to the U.N. Special Commission (or UNSCOM, the group set up to look into Iraq's WMD programs)."

Perhaps most chillingly, the tapes record Iraq Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz talking about how easy it would be to set off a WMD in Washington. The comments come shortly after Saddam muses about using "proxies" in a terror attack.

9-11, anyone?

In short, let us repeat: President Bush was right. We had to invade to disarm Saddam — otherwise, he would have completely reconstituted his chemical, nuclear and bio-weapons programs when inspectors left.

Saddam probably knew better than to use them himself against the U.S. But it's likely he wouldn't have hesitated giving one or more to terror groups with which he had routine contact.

Lest you think we're making the case entirely based on these tapes, let us assure you that other evidence — mounting by the day — points to the same conclusion.

We've been very impressed by the story told by Georges Sada, the former No. 2 in Iraq's air force. He has written a book, "Saddam's Secrets," that details how the Iraqi dictator used trucks, commercial jets and ships to remove his WMD from the country. At the time, the move went largely undetected, because Iraq pretended the massive movement of materiel was to help Syrian flood victims.

Nor is Sada alone. Ali Ibrahim, another of Saddam's former commanders, has largely corroborated Sada's story.

So how was Saddam able to use his "cheat and retreat" tactics without being found out? He had help, according to a former U.S. Defense Department official.

"The short answer to the question of where the WMD Saddam bought from the Russians went was that they went to Syria and Lebanon," said John Shaw, former deputy undersecretary of defense, in comments made at an intelligence summit Feb. 17-20 in Arlington, Va.

"They were moved by Russian Spetsnaz (special ops) units out of uniform that were specifically sent to Iraq to move the weaponry and eradicate any evidence of its existence," he said.

These are extraordinary developments. They deserve a full airing in the media, since they essentially validate part of Bush's casus belli for invading Iraq and deposing the murderous Saddam.

But once again, the mainstream media have dropped the ball. They seem more interested in Dick Cheney's marksmanship and American port management than in setting the record straight about one of the most important developments of our time.

[Ninkobei]

jeezus. I wonder how much of this is true. if all of it is then I can see Bush's rating climbing from record lows to record highs... at least until the iraqi civil war causes oil prices to go up again. ;/

[dude1394]

From what I understand these are all legit tapes. The quotes are quotes from Sadaam and his government.

But Ninkobei, I expect that the MSM will not be that interested in publishing these, it doesn't match the agenda.

[Thespiralgoeson]

Originally Posted by dude1394

From what I understand these are all legit tapes. The quotes are quotes from Sadaam and his government.

But Ninkobei, I expect that the MSM will not be that interested in publishing these, it doesn't match the agenda.

Unfortunately dude, you're right. If the tapes suggested the opposite, if they suggested that Saddam's regime had no WMD progams and that Bush did lie, you bet your ass this would be on the front page of every major news paper for quite some time. Hell, the Times had something like 48 front-page stories about Abu Graib. I mean, it was a big story, but 48 front pages?

Something like this should be huge news, but it's not.

[Drbio]

The most disgusting thing is that if the tapes had been Saddam saying he had no WMD's this would appear on 100% of all front pages in America above the fold in the morning.

[Rhylan]

I think we should all hang tight... for starters, this story is just taking shape. Secondly, there's a chance that there are other factors at play here intelligence-wise that prevent the White House from standing up and saying, "we told you so," because that could endanger some other info gathering program or whatever.

If it's true, it'll come out in due time.

[Drbio]

I heard a rumor down in Killeen about a week ago that said the U.S. had received some strongly credible information from Russian intelligence that implicated the Russians themselves. Interesting how that correlates to this new information isn't it? If this ends up bearing fruit, you can see why the White House would want to proceed slowly, deliberately and cautiously.

[Mavdog]

This was all over the newspapers and newscasts two weeks ago. the biggest news from the tapes isn't the discussion of wmd, but the revelation that hussein told the us and british about the islamic terrorist, and hussein stating that Iraq would not be a party to the terrorism.
---------------------------------------------
EXCLUSIVE: Saddam's Secret Tapes
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. "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.

One of the most dramatic moments in the 12 hours of recordings comes when Saddam predicts -- during a meeting in the mid-1990s -- a terrorist attack on the United States. "Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans a long time before Aug. 2 and told the British as well ... that in the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction." Saddam goes on to say such attacks would be difficult to stop. "In the future, what would prevent a booby-trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?" But he adds that Iraq would never do such a thing. "This is coming, this story is coming but not from Iraq."

Also at the meeting was Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who said Iraq was being wrongly accused of terrorism. "Sir, the biological is very easy to make. It's so simple that any biologist can make a bottle of germs and drop it into a water tower and kill 100,000. This is not done by a state. No need to accuse a state. An individual can do it."

The tapes also reveal Iraq's persistent efforts to hide information about weapons of mass destruction programs from U.N. inspectors well into the 1990s. In one pivotal tape-recorded meeting, which occurred in late April or May of 1995, Saddam and his senior aides discuss the fact that U.N. inspectors had uncovered evidence of Iraq's biological weapons program -- a program whose existence Iraq had previously denied.

At one point Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law and the man who was in charge of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction efforts can be heard on the tapes, speaking openly about hiding information from the U.N.

"We did not reveal all that we have," Kamel says in the meeting. "Not the type of weapons, not the volume of the materials we imported, not the volume of the production we told them about, not the volume of use. None of this was correct."

Shortly after this meeting, in August 1995, Hussein Kamel defected to Jordan, and Iraq was forced to admit that it had concealed its biological weapons program. (Kamel returned to Iraq in February 1996 and was killed in a firefight with Iraqi security forces.)

A spokeswoman for John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, said information contained in the transcriptions of the tapes was already known to intelligence officials.

"Intelligence community analysts from the CIA, and the DIA reviewed the translations and found that, while fascinating, from a historical perspective the tapes do not reveal anything that changes their post-war analysis of Iraq's weapons programs nor do they change the findings contained in the comprehensive Iraq Survey group report," she said in a statement.

"The tapes mostly date from early to mid-1990s and cover such topics as relations with the United Nations, efforts to rebuild industries from Gulf war damage and the pre 9/11 situation in Afghanistan."

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, says the tapes are authentic and show that "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." Hoeckstra says there are more than 35,000 boxes of such tapes and documents that the U.S. government has not analyzed nor made public that should also be translated and studied on an urgent basis.

Charles Duelfer, who led the official U.S. search for weapons of mass destruction after the war, says the tapes show extensive deception but don't prove that weapons were still hidden in Iraq at the time of the U.S.-led war in 2003. "What they do is support the conclusion in the report, which we made in the last couple of years, that the regime had the intention of building and rebuilding weapons of mass destruction, when circumstances permitted."

Tierney, who provided ABC News with the tapes, plans to make the 12 hours of recordings public at a nongovernmental meeting -- called Intelligence Summit 2006 -- this weekend in Arlington, Va. John Loftus, a former federal prosecutor, runs the meeting. "We think this is a tape that is unclassified and available to the public," says Loftus "[I] just want to have it translated and let the tape speak for itself."

[kg_veteran]

Duelfer and the ISG have a motivation to say that the tapes (which they haven't analyzed or translated) don't reveal anything new. It's called CYA.

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

This was all over the newspapers and newscasts two weeks ago. the biggest news from the tapes isn't the discussion of wmd, but the revelation that hussein told the us and british about the islamic terrorist, and hussein stating that Iraq would not be a party to the terrorism.

Cause whatever he is, Hussein's no liar.

[Mavdog]

first point is the news was not buried or overlooked/ignored, it was on primetime newscasts and also on the front page of most daily newspapers.

second, the tapes do not reveal anything further about the possible existence of any wmd in iraq or the possibility that they did n fact exist and were relocated to another friendly country before the invasion began.

nobody disagrees with the position that hussein wanted the wmd. the question is whether the sanctions and such were successful in keeping those weapons from being obtained/developed by iraq. so far the answer to the question is that iraq was unsuccessful in getting around the sanctions and there were not any wmd.

[kg_veteran]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

first point is the news was not buried or overlooked/ignored, it was on primetime newscasts and also on the front page of most daily newspapers.

There is a clear and obvious distinction between the amount of coverage given to what should be a bombshell discovery and the coverage given to something like, for instance, a hunting accident in South Texas which happened to involve the Vice President.

It may as well have been ignored.

second, the tapes do not reveal anything further about the possible existence of any wmd in iraq or the possibility that they did n fact exist and were relocated to another friendly country before the invasion began.

You do realize that informed opinions differ on this, right?

nobody disagrees with the position that hussein wanted the wmd. the question is whether the sanctions and such were successful in keeping those weapons from being obtained/developed by iraq. so far the answer to the question is that iraq was unsuccessful in getting around the sanctions and there were not any wmd.

It's still an open question that hasn't been conclusively proven or disproven. My bet is that within the next few years it will come to light that the WMD were removed from Iraq pre-invasion with the assistance of one or more countries. The possibility that Russia was involved has been quite clear to me for some time, but that would clearly be a delicate situation that the U.S. would want to proceed with cautiously. If we're going to accuse Russia of helping Saddam hide the WMD, we need concrete and convincing evidence.

[Drbio]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

first point is the news was not buried or overlooked/ignored, it was on primetime newscasts and also on the front page of most daily newspapers.

And that first point is incorrect. It was hardly on the front page of "most daily newspapers" and outside of ABC pimping their story I saw it not on CNN, NBC nor CBS. Not so amazingly it did appear on FoxNews though.

second, the tapes do not reveal anything further about the possible existence of any wmd in iraq or the possibility that they did n fact exist and were relocated to another friendly country before the invasion began.

Why would we take Saddams own words that he had them? We all know the libs know better. yawn.

nobody disagrees with the position that hussein wanted the wmd. the question is whether the sanctions and such were successful in keeping those weapons from being obtained/developed by iraq. so far the answer to the question is that iraq was unsuccessful in getting around the sanctions and there were not any wmd.

Maybe as far as you know. Maybe not. The tapes seem to contradict your supposed point of view.

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by kg_veteran

There is a clear and obvious distinction between the amount of coverage given to what should be a bombshell discovery and the coverage given to something like, for instance, a hunting accident in South Texas which happened to involve the Vice President.

It may as well have been ignored.

perhaps the answer is that this is NOT a "bombshell discovery"....

You do realize that informed opinions differ on this, right?

I realize that there are many "informed opinions" who put forth many assumptions and conjectures, but I also realize (and I hope that you do as well) that there is no basis for these assumptions and conjectures to be taken as truth.

It's still an open question that hasn't been conclusively proven or disproven. My bet is that within the next few years it will come to light that the WMD were removed from Iraq pre-invasion with the assistance of one or more countries. The possibility that Russia was involved has been quite clear to me for some time, but that would clearly be a delicate situation that the U.S. would want to proceed with cautiously. If we're going to accuse Russia of helping Saddam hide the WMD, we need concrete and convincing evidence.

So far the facts (facts only please) lead to the conclusion that the wmd did not exist as the intelligence orgs thought.

your theory is a great Le Carre plot for one of his fiction works imo. real enough to be seen as possible, but yet still fiction nonetheless.

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by Drbio

And that first point is incorrect. It was hardly on the front page of "most daily newspapers" and outside of ABC pimping their story I saw it not on CNN, NBC nor CBS. Not so amazingly it did appear on FoxNews though.

it was on the front page of both dailies I get, the DMN and the WSJ. It was also front page on the online NYT, LA Times and Washington Post. point is correct.

Why would we take Saddams own words that he had them? We all know the libs know better. yawn.

either one takes ALL the dialogue on the tape as credible or take NONE of the dialogue as credible. it is duplicitous to pick and choose which dialogue is credible while dismissing as false the dislogue that doesn't suit your purpose. the dialogue was how they want to get wmd, it does not say that they had restarted the wmd program, just that they were playing cat and mouse with the inspectors.
If you wish to give credibility to the dialogue, then you must admit that the tapes show that hussein had no connections to the terrorists....

Maybe as far as you know. Maybe not. The tapes seem to contradict your supposed point of view.

really? and how do these tapes "contradict" my pov?
thay don't.

[kg_veteran]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

perhaps the answer is that this is NOT a "bombshell discovery"....

I disagree.

I realize that there are many "informed opinions" who put forth many assumptions and conjectures, but I also realize (and I hope that you do as well) that there is no basis for these assumptions and conjectures to be taken as truth.

Right. I agree. We should never take assumption or conjecture as truth. Then again, all either side of the debate has at this point is assumption and conjecture -- at least based on what has been revealed to the public.

So far the facts (facts only please) lead to the conclusion that the wmd did not exist as the intelligence orgs thought.

No, they don't. Let me give a rudimentary example of why not.

Let's say you go out of town and leave your teenage sons at home by themselves for a couple of nights. While out of town, you get a call from a reliable friend one night who says he was just driving by your house and heard loud music and saw lots of cars parked outside the house. He says that he slowed down and noticed through the window that there were a bunch of teenagers dancing and partying. When he got out of his car and went to the window, he noticed a bunch of the kids, including your sons, drinking beer -- so he called you right away. You call the house, and nobody answers.

You'd rush home, but your flight back isn't until the next day. You call the airline and get on the first flight out the next morning. When you get home the next day about noon, there's no sign of a party at all. No beer cans, the house is in order and there doesn't appear to be any permanent damage. Your sons look a bit surprised to see you, but when you confront them they deny having a party.

Applying your rationale, the only logical conclusion is that your reliable friend was wrong and your kids didn't have a party. Only, there were about 25 of your close friends that drove by and saw the same exact thing. But they're all wrong.

Um, yeah.

your theory is a great Le Carre plot for one of his fiction works imo. real enough to be seen as possible, but yet still fiction nonetheless.

You'd make a great PR spin artist for those that want to believe that there were no WMD for political reasons.

[FishForLunch]

Dont worry if by chance we find out that the WMD's were tranfered to another country Mavdog will come up with another excuse to why invading Iraq was a bad idea anyway.

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by kg_veteran

Right. I agree. We should never take assumption or conjecture as truth. Then again, all either side of the debate has at this point is assumption and conjecture -- at least based on what has been revealed to the public.

we should take the facts and base our conclusions on those facts.

the theories that are put forth- such as that hussein had a vibrant wmd program (not validated by any facts), that he had wmd and moved them to syria (again, not supported by any known facts) or moved the wmd to russia (again, no facts) should be mentioned with the caveat they are just that- theories.

No, they don't. Let me give a rudimentary example of why not.

Let's say you go out of town and leave your teenage sons at home by themselves for a couple of nights. While out of town, you get a call from a reliable friend one night who says he was just driving by your house and heard loud music and saw lots of cars parked outside the house. He says that he slowed down and noticed through the window that there were a bunch of teenagers dancing and partying. When he got out of his car and went to the window, he noticed a bunch of the kids, including your sons, drinking beer -- so he called you right away. You call the house, and nobody answers.

You'd rush home, but your flight back isn't until the next day. You call the airline and get on the first flight out the next morning. When you get home the next day about noon, there's no sign of a party at all. No beer cans, the house is in order and there doesn't appear to be any permanent damage. Your sons look a bit surprised to see you, but when you confront them they deny having a party.

Applying your rationale, the only logical conclusion is that your reliable friend was wrong and your kids didn't have a party. Only, there were about 25 of your close friends that drove by and saw the same exact thing. But they're all wrong.

Um, yeah.

You'd make a great PR spin artist for those that want to believe that there were no WMD for political reasons.

nice story. makes me very glad that I have daughters....

the difficulty in the analogy is of course there were no eyes that saw stockpiles of wmd before the invasion.

I do want to find the truth, and if that truth is there were indeed wmd in iraq and they were relocated we need to know.

I am however skeptical that these theories will ever prove to be true. I am also hesitant to throw out all the facts that we have- facts such as the wmd have never been found, and that the ability of hussein to covertly move a huge stockplie of weapons is almost impossible due to the constant surveillance by air and satellite- and label the theories as plausible.

[kg_veteran]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

we should take the facts and base our conclusions on those facts.

the theories that are put forth- such as that hussein had a vibrant wmd program (not validated by any facts), that he had wmd and moved them to syria (again, not supported by any known facts) or moved the wmd to russia (again, no facts) should be mentioned with the caveat they are just that- theories.

Other than the fact that WMDs haven't been located inside the borders of Iraq, there is no other evidence to support the THEORY that Saddam didn't have WMD.

nice story. makes me very glad that I have daughters....

the difficulty in the analogy is of course there were no eyes that saw stockpiles of wmd before the invasion.

Well, actually, that was what the entire intelligence community the world over believed. You can take the position that they were all wrong and all stupid -- or you can concede the possibility that maybe they were right.

I do want to find the truth, and if that truth is there were indeed wmd in iraq and they were relocated we need to know.

I am however skeptical that these theories will ever prove to be true. I am also hesitant to throw out all the facts that we have- facts such as the wmd have never been found, and that the ability of hussein to covertly move a huge stockplie of weapons is almost impossible due to the constant surveillance by air and satellite- and label the theories as plausible.

Nothing wrong with being skeptical, but I think you need to start acknowledging the possibility that a foreign power that wanted the U.S. to "step in it" helped Saddam secrete the weapons from the country when it became evident that we were going to invade.

[madape]

I'm sure that the thousands of Kurds who died at the hands of Saddam's WMD program would like to protest your "theory" mad dog. Unfortunaltey, they are dead.. rotted from the inside.. bled to death through their eyeball sockets... you know, the kind of death that one could "theorize" came from a chemical weapon.

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by kg_veteran

Other than the fact that WMDs haven't been located inside the borders of Iraq, there is no other evidence to support the THEORY that Saddam didn't have WMD.

that's a darn strong fact.
there also were no active clandestine labs, or depots, etc.

Well, actually, that was what the entire intelligence community the world over believed. You can take the position that they were all wrong and all stupid -- or you can concede the possibility that maybe they were right.

like I posted earlier, the charade that hussein manufactured was done to protect him from his enemies. the belief that he had wmd kept his enemies, both the domestic and also the international kind, at bay...up until the US led invasion, when the charade was exposed. the charade did protect him for a decade and then the charade was his undoing

Nothing wrong with being skeptical, but I think you need to start acknowledging the possibility that a foreign power that wanted the U.S. to "step in it" helped Saddam secrete the weapons from the country when it became evident that we were going to invade.

is it "possible" that hussein did have wmd up to the time the US invaded? sure.

it is also possible that we have been visited by aliens, and that the loch ness monster or bigfoot are alive.

put me down on the "highly skeptical" side please...

[Mavdog]

madape, the timelines are important.
in the context of iraq's wmd, the early 90's is vastly different from what came after the first gulf war and the imposition of sanctions.

remember, before gulf war 1 the us gave iraq huge amounts of weaponry and support. what iraq was capable of doing before then was very different than what they were able to do when the sanctions were in place.

[kg_veteran]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

that's a darn strong fact.
there also were no active clandestine labs, or depots, etc.

Not any stronger than the fact in my analogy above.

like I posted earlier, the charade that hussein manufactured was done to protect him from his enemies.

You realize that this is just a theory, right?

is it "possible" that hussein did have wmd up to the time the US invaded? sure.

it is also possible that we have been visited by aliens, and that the loch ness monster or bigfoot are alive.

put me down on the "highly skeptical" side please...

If you want to be a smart alleck, fine by me.

I'll allow you to apologize to me when the truth becomes known.

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by kg_veteran

If you want to be a smart alleck, fine by me.

I'll allow you to apologize to me when the truth becomes known.

"smart alleck"? maybe a wise guy, or even a provacateur, but not a smart alleck..

and how long will you go without an apology to me, or acknowledgement that there were no wmd?

[kg_veteran]

Why would I owe you an apology?

As for acknowledging there were no WMD, it's gonna take a heck of a lot more proof than has been compiled so far. In fact, given the implications of a foreign power assisting Hussein in hiding WMD, I doubt that we'll know the truth for quite a while.

[Mavdog]

I suppose that you would owe an apology in the same context that you see me owing you an apology.

[kg_veteran]

I haven't mocked you or implied that your theory was akin to visitation by aliens or the existence of Bigfoot of the Lochness Monster.

[Mavdog]

seriously. I apologize if you felt I was mocking you. never my intention. I do find your posts worthwhile and it is not my intent to belittle nor mock them.

when you disagee with me, I do wish to show them to be misguided.

now, with that being said, your theory does have many parallels to the hunt for bigfoot and the lochness monster..

[kg_veteran]

Open your mind, Mavdog...


Ex-Official: Russia Moved Saddam's WMD

Kenneth R. Timmerman
Sunday, Feb. 19, 2006

link

A top Pentagon official who was responsible for tracking Saddam Hussein's weapons programs before and after the 2003 liberation of Iraq, has provided the first-ever account of how Saddam Hussein "cleaned up" his weapons of mass destruction stockpiles to prevent the United States from discovering them.

"The short answer to the question of where the WMD Saddam bought from the Russians went was that they went to Syria and Lebanon," former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense John A. Shaw told an audience Saturday at a privately sponsored "Intelligence Summit" in Alexandria, Va. (www.intelligencesummit.org).

"They were moved by Russian Spetsnaz (special forces) units out of uniform, that were specifically sent to Iraq to move the weaponry and eradicate any evidence of its existence," he said.

Shaw has dealt with weapons-related issues and export controls as a U.S. government official for 30 years, and was serving as deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security when the events he described today occurred.

He called the evacuation of Saddam's WMD stockpiles "a well-orchestrated campaign using two neighboring client states with which the Russian leadership had a long time security relationship."

Shaw was initially tapped to make an inventory of Saddam's conventional weapons stockpiles, based on intelligence estimates of arms deals he had concluded with the former Soviet Union, China and France.

He estimated that Saddam had amassed 100 million tons of munitions - roughly 60 percent of the entire U.S. arsenal. "The origins of these weapons were Russian, Chinese and French in declining order of magnitude, with the Russians holding the lion's share and the Chinese just edging out the French for second place."

But as Shaw's office increasingly got involved in ongoing intelligence to identify Iraqi weapons programs before the war, he also got "a flow of information from British contacts on the ground at the Syrian border and from London" via non-U.S. government contacts.

"The intelligence included multiple sightings of truck convoys, convoys going north to the Syrian border and returning empty," he said.

Shaw worked closely with Julian Walker, a former British ambassador who had decades of experience in Iraq, and an unnamed Ukranian-American who was directly plugged in to the head of Ukraine's intelligence service.

The Ukrainians were eager to provide the United States with documents from their own archives on Soviet arms transfers to Iraq and on ongoing Russian assistance to Saddam, to thank America for its help in securing Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union, Shaw said.

In addition to the convoys heading to Syria, Shaw said his contacts "provided information about steel drums with painted warnings that had been moved to a cellar of a hospital in Beirut."

But when Shaw passed on his information to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and others within the U.S. intelligence community, he was stunned by their response.

"My report on the convoys was brushed off as ‘Israeli disinformation,'" he said.

One month later, Shaw learned that the DIA general counsel complained to his own superiors that Shaw had eaten from the DIA "rice bowl." It was a Washington euphemism that meant he had commited the unpardonable sin of violating another agency's turf.

The CIA responded in even more diabolical fashion. "They trashed one of my Brits and tried to declare him persona non grata to the intelligence community," Shaw said. "We got constant indicators that Langley was aggressively trying to discredit both my Ukranian-American and me in Kiev," in addition to his other sources.

But Shaw's information had not originated from a casual contact. His Ukranian-American aid was a personal friend of David Nicholas, a Western ambassador in Kiev, and of Igor Smesko, head of Ukrainian intelligence.

Smesko had been a military attaché in Washington in the early 1990s when Ukraine first became independent and Dick Cheney was secretary of defense. "Smesko had told Cheney that when Ukraine became free of Russia he wanted to show his friendship for the United States."

Helping out on Iraq provided him with that occasion.

"Smesko had gotten to know Gen. James Clapper, now director of the Geospacial Intelligence Agency, but then head of DIA," Shaw said.

But it was Shaw's own friendship to the head of Britain's MI6 that brought it all together during a two-day meeting in London that included Smeshko's people, the MI6 contingent, and Clapper, who had been deputized by George Tenet to help work the issue of what happened to Iraq's WMD stockpiles.

In the end, here is what Shaw learned:

* In December 2002, former Russian intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov, a KGB general with long-standing ties to Saddam, came to Iraq and stayed until just before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

* Primakov supervised the execution of long-standing secret agreements, signed between Iraqi intelligence and the Russian GRU (military intelligence), that provided for clean-up operations to be conducted by Russian and Iraqi military personnel to remove WMDs, production materials and technical documentation from Iraq, so the regime could announce that Iraq was "WMD free."

* Shaw said that this type GRU operation, known as "Sarandar," or "emergency exit," has long been familiar to U.S. intelligence officials from Soviet-bloc defectors as standard GRU practice.

* In addition to the truck convoys, which carried Iraqi WMD to Syria and Lebanon in February and March 2003 "two Russian ships set sail from the (Iraqi) port of Umm Qasr headed for the Indian Ocean," where Shaw believes they "deep-sixed" additional stockpiles of Iraqi WMD from flooded bunkers in southern Iraq that were later discovered by U.S. military intelligence personnel.

* The Russian "clean-up" operation was entrusted to a combination of GRU and Spetsnaz troops and Russian military and civilian personnel in Iraq "under the command of two experienced ex-Soviet generals, Colonel-General Vladislav Achatov and Colonel-General Igor Maltsev, both retired and posing as civilian commercial consultants."

* Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz reported on Oct. 30, 2004, that Achatov and Maltsev had been photographed receiving medals from Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed in a Baghdad building bombed by U.S. cruise missiles during the first U.S. air raids in early March 2003.

* Shaw says he leaked the information about the two Russian generals and the clean-up operation to Gertz in October 2004 in an effort to "push back" against claims by Democrats that were orchestrated with CBS News to embarrass President Bush just one week before the November 2004 presidential election. The press sprang bogus claims that 377 tons of high explosives of use to Iraq's nuclear weapons program had "gone missing" after the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq, while ignoring intelligence of the Russian-orchestrated evacuation of Iraqi WMDs.

* The two Russian generals "had visited Baghdad no fewer than 20 times in the preceding five to six years," Shaw revealed. U.S. intelligence knew "the identity and strength of the various Spetsnaz units, their dates of entry and exit in Iraq, and the fact that the effort (to clean up Iraq's WMD stockpiles) with a planning conference in Baku from which they flew to Baghdad."

* The Baku conference, chaired by Russian Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu, "laid out the plans for the Sarandar clean-up effort so that Shoigu could leave after the keynote speech for Baghdad to orchestrate the planning for the disposal of the WMD."

* Subsequent intelligence reports showed that Russian Spetsnaz operatives "were now changing to civilian clothes from military/GRU garb," Shaw said. "The Russian denial of my revelations in late October 2004 included the statement that "only Russian civilians remained in Baghdad." That was the "only true statement" the Russians made, Shaw ironized.

* The evacuation of Saddam's WMD to Syria and Lebanon "was an entirely controlled Russian GRU operation," Shaw said. "It was the brainchild of General Yevgenuy Primakov."

* The goal of the clean-up was "to erase all trace of Russian involvement" in Saddam's WMD programs, and "was a masterpiece of military camouflage and deception."

* Just as astonishing as the Russian clean-up operation were efforts by Bush administration appointees, including Defense Department spokesman Laurence DiRita, to smear Shaw and to cover up the intelligence information he brought to light.

"Larry DiRita made sure that this story would never grow legs," Shaw said. "He whispered sotto voce [quietly] to journalists that there was no substance to my information and that it was the product of an unbalanced mind."

Shaw suggested that the answer of why the Bush administration had systematically "ignored Russia's involvement" in evacuating Saddam's WMD stockpiles "could be much bigger than anyone has thought," but declined to speculate what exactly was involved.

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney was less reticent. He thought the reason was Iran.

"With Iran moving faster than anyone thought in its nuclear programs," he told NewsMax, "the administration needed the Russians, the Chinese and the French, and was not interested in information that would make them look bad."

McInerney agreed that there was "clear evidence" that Saddam had WMD. "Jack Shaw showed when it left Iraq, and how."

Former Undersecretary of Defense Richard Perle, a strong supporter of the war against Saddam, blasted the CIA for orchestrating a smear campaign against the Bush White House and the war in Iraq.

"The CIA has been at war with the Bush administration almost from the beginning," he said in a keynote speech at the Intelligence Summit on Saturday.

He singled out recent comments by Paul Pillar, a former top CIA Middle East analyst, alleging that the Bush White House "cherry-picked" intelligence to make the case for war in Iraq.

"Mr. Pillar was in a very senior position and was able to make his views known, if that is indeed what he believed," Perle said.

"He (Pillar) briefed senior policy officials before the start of the Iraq war in 2003. If he had had reservations about the war, he could have voiced them at that time." But according to officials briefed by Pillar, Perle said, he never did.

Even more inexplicable, Perle said, were the millions of documents "that remain untranslated" among those seized from Saddam Hussein's intelligence services.

"I think the intelligence community does not want them to be exploited," he said.

Among those documents, presented Saturday at the conference by former FBI translator Bill Tierney, were transcripts of Saddam's palace conversations with top aides in which he discussed ongoing nuclear weapons plans in 2000, well after the U.N. arms inspectors believed he had ceased all nuclear weapons work.

"What was most disturbing in those tapes," Tierney said, "was the fact that the individuals briefing Saddam were totally unknown to the U.N. Special Commission."

In addition, Tierney said, the plasma uranium programs Saddam discussed with his aids as ongoing operations in 2000 had been dismissed as "old programs" disbanded years earlier, according to the final CIA report on Iraq's weapons programs, presented in 2004 by the Iraq Survey Group.

"When I first heard those tapes" about the uranium plasma program, "it completely floored me," Tierney said.

[Drbio]

Originally Posted by kg_veteran

Open your mind, Mavdog...

They say that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains. Sadly, mountain sized faith is probably not enough to make this happen however.

[kg_veteran]

Of course, this is hardly a new story...

Russia Hid Saddam's WMDs
By Ion Mihai Pacepa
Washington Times | October 2, 2003
link

On March 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the U.S.-led "aggression" against Iraq as "unwarranted" and "unjustifiable." Three days later, Pravda said that an anonymous Russian "military expert" was predicting that the United States would fabricate finding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov immediately started plying the idea abroad, and it has taken hold around the world ever since.


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.


All chemical weapons were to be immediately burned or buried deep at sea. Technological documentation, however, would be preserved in microfiche buried in waterproof containers for future reconstruction. Chemical weapons, especially those produced in Third World countries, which lack sophisticated production facilities, often do not retain lethal properties after a few months on the shelf and are routinely dumped anyway. And all chemical weapons plants had a civilian cover making detection difficult, regardless of the circumstances.


The plan included an elaborate propaganda routine. Anyone accusing Moammar Gadhafi of possessing chemical weapons would be ridiculed. Lies, all lies! Come to Libya and see! Our Western left-wing organizations, like the World Peace Council, existed for sole purpose of spreading the propaganda we gave them. These very same groups bray the exact same themes to this day. We always relied on their expertise at organizing large street demonstrations in Western Europe over America's "war-mongering" whenever we wanted to distract world attention from the crimes of the vicious regimes we sponsored.


Iraq, in my view, had its own "Sarindar" plan in effect direct from Moscow. It certainly had one in the past. Nicolae Ceausescu told me so, and he heard it from Leonid Brezhnev. KGB chairman Yury Andropov, and later, Gen. Yevgeny Primakov, told me so, too. In the late 1970s, Gen. Primakov ran Saddam's weapons programs. After that, as you may recall, he was promoted to head of the Soviet foreign intelligence service in 1990, to Russia's minister of foreign affairs in 1996, and in 1998, to prime minister. What you may not know is that Primakov hates Israel and has always championed Arab radicalism. He was a personal friend of Saddam's and has repeatedly visited Baghdad after 1991, quietly helping Saddam play his game of hide-and-seek.



The Soviet bloc not only sold Saddam its WMDs, but it showed them how to make them "disappear." Russia is still at it. Primakov was in Baghdad from December until a couple of days before the war, along with a team of Russian military experts led by two of Russia's topnotch "retired"generals: Vladislav Achalov, a former deputy defense minister, and Igor Maltsev, a former air defense chief of staff. They were all there receiving honorary medals from the Iraqi defense minister. They clearly were not there to give Saddam military advice for the upcoming war—Saddam's Katyusha launchers were of World War II vintage, and his T-72 tanks, BMP-1 fighting vehicles and MiG fighter planes were all obviously useless against America. "I did not fly to Baghdad to drink coffee," was what Gen. Achalov told the media afterward. They were there orchestrating Iraq's "Sarindar" plan.


The U.S. military in fact, has already found the only thing that would have been allowed to survive under the classic Soviet "Sarindar" plan to liquidate weapons arsenals in the event of defeat in war — the technological documents showing how to reproduce weapons stocks in just a few weeks.



Such a plan has undoubtedly been in place since August 1995 — when Saddam's son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamel, who ran Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological programs for 10 years, defected to Jordan. That August, UNSCOM and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors searched a chicken farm owned by Kamel's family and found more than one hundred metal trunks and boxes containing documentation dealing with all categories of weapons, including nuclear. Caught red-handed, Iraq at last admitted to its "extensive biological warfare program, including weaponization," issued a "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure Report" and turned over documents about the nerve agent VX and nuclear weapons.



Saddam then lured Gen. Kamel back, pretending to pardon his defection. Three days later, Kamel and over 40 relatives, including women and children, were murdered, in what the official Iraqi press described as a "spontaneous administration of tribal justice." After sending that message to his cowed, miserable people, Saddam then made a show of cooperation with UN inspection, since Kamel had just compromised all his programs, anyway. In November 1995, he issued a second "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure" as to his supposedly non-existent missile programs. That very same month, Jordan intercepted a large shipment of high-grade missile components destined for Iraq. UNSCOM soon fished similar missile components out of the Tigris River, again refuting Saddam's spluttering denials. In June 1996, Saddam slammed the door shut to UNSCOM's inspection of any "concealment mechanisms." On Aug. 5, 1998, halted cooperation with UNSCOM and the IAEA completely, and they withdrew on Dec. 16, 1998. Saddam had another four years to develop and hide his weapons of mass destruction without any annoying, prying eyes. U.N. Security Council resolutions 1115, (June 21, 1997), 1137 (Nov. 12, 1997), and 1194 (Sept. 9, 1998) were issued condemning Iraq—ineffectual words that had no effect. In 2002, under the pressure of a huge U.S. military buildup by a new U.S. administration, Saddam made yet another "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure," which was found to contain "false statements" and to constitute another "material breach" of U.N. and IAEA inspection and of paragraphs eight to 13 of resolution 687 (1991).



It was just a few days after this last "Disclosure," after a decade of intervening with the U.N. and the rest of the world on Iraq's behalf, that Gen. Primakov and his team of military experts landed in Baghdad — even though, with 200,000 U.S. troops at the border, war was imminent, and Moscow could no longer save Saddam Hussein. Gen. Primakov was undoubtedly cleaning up the loose ends of the "Sarindar" plan and assuring Saddam that Moscow would rebuild his weapons of mass destruction after the storm subsided for a good price.



Mr. Putin likes to take shots at America and wants to reassert Russia in world affairs. Why would he not take advantage of this opportunity? As minister of foreign affairs and prime minister, Gen. Primakov has authored the "multipolarity" strategy of counterbalancing American leadership by elevating Russia to great-power status in Eurasia. Between Feb. 9-12, Mr. Putin visited Germany and France to propose a three-power tactical alignment against the United States to advocate further inspections rather than war. On Feb. 21, the Russian Duma appealed to the German and French parliaments to join them on March 4-7 in Baghdad, for "preventing U.S. military aggression against Iraq." Crowds of European leftists, steeped for generations in left-wing propaganda straight out of Moscow, continue to find the line appealing.

Mr. Putin's tactics have worked. The United States won a brilliant military victory, demolishing a dictatorship without destroying the country, but it has begun losing the peace. While American troops unveiled the mass graves of Saddam's victims, anti-American forces in Western Europe and elsewhere, spewed out vitriolic attacks, accusing Washington of greed for oil and not of really caring about weapons of mass destruction, or exaggerating their risks, as if weapons of mass destruction were really nothing very much to worry about after all.


It is worth remembering that Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, chose to live in a Soviet gulag instead of continuing to develop the power of death. "I wanted to alert the world," Sakharov explained in 1968, "to the grave perils threatening the human race thermonuclear extinction, ecological catastrophe, famine." Even Igor Kurchatov, the KGB academician who headed the Soviet nuclear program from 1943 until his death in 1960, expressed deep qualms of conscience about helping to create weapons of mass destruction. "The rate of growth of atomic explosives is such," he warned in an article written together with several other Soviet nuclear scientists not long before he died, "that in just a few years the stockpile will be large enough to create conditions under which the existence of life on earth will be impossible."

The Cold War was fought over the reluctance to use weapons of mass destruction, yet now this logic is something only senior citizens seem to recall. Today, even lunatic regimes like that in North Korea not only possess weapons of mass destruction, but openly offer to sell them to anyone with cash, including terrorists and their state sponsors. Is anyone paying any attention? Being inured to proliferation, however, does not reduce its danger. On the contrary, it increases it.

[dalmations202]

Why aren't these front page news, and the first story by MSM?

These stories are remarkably accurate, why aren't they being Publicized?

What is it that we "know" and "don't know" ?

[Drbio]

We know that all primary media is a whore to the democratic party and this type of story does not fit their agenda.

What they don't know is that we are smart enough to sort through the bullshit. The most recent Bush election shows that clearly. The alternate media is getting the true word out.

[Mavdog]

more info.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Even as U.S. Invaded, Hussein Saw Iraqi Unrest as Top Threat
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
and BERNARD E. TRAINOR
As American warplanes streaked overhead two weeks after the invasion began, Lt. Gen. Raad Majid al-Hamdani drove to Baghdad for a crucial meeting with Iraqi leaders. He pleaded for reinforcements to stiffen the capital's defenses and permission to blow up the Euphrates River bridge south of the city to block the American advance.

But Saddam Hussein and his small circle of aides had their own ideas of how to fight the war. Convinced that the main danger to his government came from within, Mr. Hussein had sought to keep Iraq's bridges intact so he could rush troops south if the Shiites got out of line.

General Hamdani got little in the way of additional soldiers, and the grudging permission to blow up the bridge came too late. The Iraqis damaged only one of the two spans, and American soldiers soon began to stream across.

The episode was just one of many incidents, described in a classified United States military report, other documents and in interviews, that demonstrate how Mr. Hussein was so preoccupied about the threat from within his country that he crippled his military in fighting the threat from without.

Only one of his defenses — the Saddam Fedayeen — proved potent against the invaders. They later joined the insurgency still roiling Iraq, but that was largely by default, not design.

Ever vigilant about coups and fearful of revolt, Mr. Hussein was deeply distrustful of his own commanders and soldiers, the documents show.

He made crucial decisions himself, relied on his sons for military counsel and imposed security measures that had the effect of hobbling his forces. He did that in several ways:

¶The Iraqi dictator was so secretive and kept information so compartmentalized that his top military leaders were stunned when he told them three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction, and they were demoralized because they had counted on hidden stocks of poison gas or germ weapons for the nation's defense.

¶He put a general widely viewed as an incompetent drunkard in charge of the Special Republican Guard, entrusted to protect the capital, primarily because he was considered loyal.

¶Mr. Hussein micromanaged the war, not allowing commanders to move troops without permission from Baghdad and blocking communications among military leaders.

The Fedayeen's operations were not shared with leaders of conventional forces. Republican Guard divisions were not allowed to communicate with sister units. Commanders could not even get precise maps of terrain near the Baghdad airport because that would identify locations of the Iraqi leader's palaces.

Much of this material is included in a secret history prepared by the American military of how Mr. Hussein and his commanders fought their war. Posing as military historians, American analysts interrogated more than 110 Iraqi officials and military officers, treating some to lavish dinners to pry loose their secrets and questioning others in a detention center at the Baghdad airport or the Abu Ghraib prison. United States military officials view the accounts as credible because many were similar. In addition, more than 600 captured Iraqi documents were reviewed.

Overseen by the Joint Forces Command, an unclassified version of the study is to be made public soon. A classified version was prepared in April 2005. Titled "Iraqi Perspectives on Operation Iraqi Freedom, Major Combat Operations," the study shows that Mr. Hussein discounted the possibility of a full-scale American invasion.

"A few weeks before the attacks Saddam still thought the U.S. would not use ground forces," Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister, told American interrogators. "He thought they would not fight a ground war because it would be too costly to the Americans."

Despite the lopsided defeat his forces suffered during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, Mr. Hussein did not see the United States as his primary adversary. His greater fear was a Shiite uprising, like the one that shook his government after the 1991 war.

His concern for the threats from within interfered with efforts to defend against an external enemy, as was evident during a previously unknown review of military planning in 1995. Taking a page out of the Russian playbook, Iraqi officers suggested a new strategy to defend the homeland. Just as Russia yielded territory to defeat Napoleon and later Hitler's invading army, Iraq would resist an invading army by conducting a fighting retreat. Well-armed Iraqi tribes would be like the Russian partisans. Armored formations, including the Republican Guard, would assume a more modest role.

Mr. Hussein rejected the recommendation. Arming local tribes was too risky for a government that lived in fear of a popular uprising.

While conventional military planning languished, Mr. Hussein's focus on internal threats led to an important innovation: creation of the Fedayeen paramilitary forces. Equipped with AK-47's, rocket propelled grenades and small-caliber weapons, one of their primary roles was to protect Baath Party headquarters and keep the Shiites at bay in the event of a rebellion until more heavily equipped Iraqi troops could crush them.

Controlled by Uday Hussein, a son of the Iraqi leader, the Fedayeen and other paramilitary forces were so vital to the survival of the government that they "drained manpower" that would otherwise have been used by Iraq's army, the classified report says.

Mr. Hussein was also worried about his neighbor to the east. Like the Bush administration, Mr. Hussein suspected Iran of developing nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Each year the Iraqi military conducted an exercise code-named Golden Falcon that focused on defense of the Iraq-Iran border.

The United States was seen as a lesser threat, mostly because Mr. Hussein believed that Washington could not accept significant casualties. In the 1991 war, the United States had no intention of taking Baghdad. President George H. W. Bush justified the restraint as prudent to avoid the pitfalls of occupying Iraq, but Mr. Hussein concluded that the United States was fearful of the military cost.

Mr. Hussein's main concern about a possible American military strike was that it might prompt the Shiites to take up arms against the government. "Saddam was concerned about internal unrest amongst the tribes before, during or after an attack by the U.S. on Baghdad," Mr. Aziz told his interrogators. Other members of Mr. Hussein's inner circle thought that if the Americans attacked, they would do no more than conduct an intense bombing campaign and seize the southern oil fields.

Steps to Avoid War

Mr. Hussein did take some steps to avoid provoking war, though. While diplomatic efforts by France, Germany and Russia were under way to avert war, he rejected proposals to mine the Persian Gulf, fearing that the Bush administration would use such an action as an excuse to strike, the Joint Forces Command study noted.

In December 2002, he told his top commanders that Iraq did not possess unconventional arms, like nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, according to the Iraq Survey Group, a task force established by the C.I.A. to investigate what happened to Iraq's weapons programs. Mr. Hussein wanted his officers to know they could not rely on poison gas or germ weapons if war broke out. The disclosure that the cupboard was bare, Mr. Aziz said, sent morale plummeting.

To ensure that Iraq would pass scrutiny by United Nations arms inspectors, Mr. Hussein ordered that they be given the access that they wanted. And he ordered a crash effort to scrub the country so the inspectors would not discover any vestiges of old unconventional weapons, no small concern in a nation that had once amassed an arsenal of chemical weapons, biological agents and Scud missiles, the Iraq survey group report said.

Mr. Hussein's compliance was not complete, though. Iraq's declarations to the United Nations covering what stocks of illicit weapons it had possessed and how it had disposed of them were old and had gaps. And Mr. Hussein would not allow his weapons scientists to leave the country, where United Nations officials could interview them outside the government's control.

Seeking to deter Iran and even enemies at home, the Iraqi dictator's goal was to cooperate with the inspectors while preserving some ambiguity about its unconventional weapons — a strategy General Hamdani, the Republican Guard commander, later dubbed in a television interview "deterrence by doubt."

That strategy led to mutual misperception. When Secretary of State Colin L. Powell addressed the Security Council in February 2003, he offered evidence from photographs and intercepted communications that the Iraqis were rushing to sanitize suspected weapons sites. Mr. Hussein's efforts to remove any residue from old unconventional weapons programs were viewed by the Americans as efforts to hide the weapons. The very steps the Iraqi government was taking to reduce the prospect of war were used against it, increasing the odds of a military confrontation.

Even some Iraqi officials were impressed by Mr. Powell's presentation. Abd al-Tawab Mullah Huwaish, who oversaw Iraq's military industry, thought he knew all the government's secrets. But Bush administration officials were so insistent that he began to question whether Iraq might have prohibited weapons after all. "I knew a lot, but wondered why Bush believed we had these weapons," he told interrogators after the war, according to the Iraq Survey Group report.

Guarding Against Revolt

As the war approached, Mr. Hussein took steps to suppress an uprising. Fedayeen paramilitary units were dispersed throughout the south, as were huge stashes of small-caliber weapons. Mr. Hussein divided Iraq into four sectors, each led by a member of his inner circle. The move was intended to help the government fend off challenges to its rule, including an uprising or rioting.

Reflecting Mr. Hussein's distrust of his own military, regular army troops were deployed near Kurdistan or close to the Iranian border, far from the capital. Of the Iraqi Army, only the Special Republican Guard was permitted inside Baghdad. And an array of restraints were imposed that made it hard for Iraq's military to exercise command.

Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai, Mr. Hussein's defense minister who had distinguished himself during the Iran-Iraq war, held an important title, for example. But he had little influence. "I effectively became an assistant to Qusay, only collecting and passing information," he told interrogators, referring to a son of Mr. Hussein.

To protect Baghdad, Mr. Hussein selected Brig. Gen. Barzan abd al-Ghafur Solaiman Majid al-Tikriti, a close cousin, to head the Special Republican Guard even though he had no field experience, had failed military staff college and was a known drunkard. Asked about his military skills, General Tai laughed out loud. Even so, the Special Republican Guard commander was closely monitored by Mr. Hussein's agents and later told American interrogators that he had held the most dangerous job in Iraq. "They watched you go to the bathroom," he said. "They listened to everything you said and bugged everything."

Once the war began, field commanders faced numerous restrictions, including bans on communications, to minimize chances of a coup.

"We had to use our own reconnaissance elements to know where the other Iraqi units were located on our flanks," the commander of the First Republican Guard Corps told interrogators. "We were not allowed to communicate with our sister units."

Even as the Americans were rapidly moving north, Mr. Hussein did not appreciate the seriousness of the threat. While the Fedayeen had surprised the allied forces with their fierce resistance and sneak attacks, Iraqi conventional forces were overpowered.

At an April 2 meeting, General Hamdani, the commander of the Second Republic Guard Corps, correctly predicted that the American Army planned to drive through the Karbala Gap on the way to Baghdad. General Tai, the Iraqi defense minister, was not persuaded. He argued that the attack in the south was a trick and that the main American offensive would come from the west, perhaps abetted by the Israelis. That day, Mr. Hussein ordered the military to prepare for an American attack from Jordan.

As a sop, General Hamdani received a company of Special Operations forces as reinforcements and was finally granted permission to destroy the Euphrates River bridge southwest of Baghdad. But it was too little, too late.

By April 6, the day after the first United States Army attack on Baghdad, the so-called thunder run, Mr. Hussein's desperate predicament began to sink in. At a safe house in the Mansour district of Baghdad, he met with his inner circle and asked Mr. Aziz to read an eight-page letter.

Mr. Hussein showed no emotion as the letter was read. But Mr. Aziz later told interrogators that the Iraqi leader seemed to be a defeated man, and the letter appeared to be his farewell. His rule was coming to an end.

"We didn't believe it would go all the way to Baghdad," a senior Republican Guard staff officer later told his interrogators. "We thought the coalition would go to Basra, maybe to Amara, and then the war would end."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/in.../12saddam.html