Not sure if this is the news most have been seeking but.

Per Drudge Report...

ABCNEWS PLANS AIRING OF SADDAM TAPES TONIGHT: Saddam talking with his advisors about hitting Washington with WMD, hiding weapons, etc... Developing...

I bet the video was filmed last week and was made as part of a plea bargain.

I bet the video was filmed last week and was made as part of a plea bargain.

LOL Saddam has started to act a little better in court (at least yesterday). Instead of shouting his way to getting a foot in his ass out the door, MPR reported that he and the judge "exchanged barbs".

Excuse me for being stupid, but Fool, are you saying that it could be real because of that, or it could be fake?

I bet the video was filmed last week and was made as part of a plea bargain.HAHAHAHAHHAH

Why is only ABC airing this? Shouldn't this be all over the news? Right now? I mean, this would leak in a second and be all over the major stations, they'd be breaking into ESPN. Hell Foxnews.com doesn't even have it, just something about how Republican Senators are criticizing Rice over Iraq.

I didn't know that Dan Rather was working for ABC now.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200602\NAT2006 0215a.html

Reportedly armed with 12 hours of Saddam Hussein's audio recordings, the organizers of an upcoming "Intelligence Summit" are describing the tapes as the "smoking gun evidence" that the Iraqi dictator possessed weapons of mass destruction in the period leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which according to the New York Sun has already authenticated the Saddam tapes, has reopened its investigation into the possible existence and location of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). But some long-time liberal skeptics are showing no inclination to change their minds.

In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003, the Bush administration argued that the war was necessary as a preemptive strike because the Iraqi president had WMD and there was a danger that he would use them against the United States.

On Oct. 6, 2004, Charles Duelfer, advisor to the director of Central Intelligence on Iraqi weapons, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Saddam did not have WMD at the time of the invasion and that the weapons were likely destroyed following the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. On Jan. 12, 2005, the U.S. announced that is was stopping its search for the weapons in Iraq.

But a four-day Intelligence Summit, to be held Feb. 17-20 in Arlington, Va., is re-igniting the debate over the Iraqi WMD. The featured discussion, on Saturday, Feb. 18, is titled: "Saddam's WMD Tapes: 'The Smoking Gun' Evidence." The agenda for the event indicates that the person who will speak about the tapes is at this point "anonymous."

The New York Sun on Feb. 7 reported that Rep. Peter Hoekstra's (R-Mich.) committee had obtained the audio tapes from former federal prosecutor John Loftus. According to the report, Loftus received the tapes "from a former American military intelligence analyst." Loftus is president of the Intelligence Summit, which is a yearly gathering of experts in the fields of counter-terrorism and intelligence gathering.

Jodie Evans of the anti-war group Code Pink, however, told Cybercast News Service that she does not think the Saddam recordings will lead to any new information. The government, according to Evans, has "said a lot of things for a long time."

"There's a difference between what they've been saying and what's real, and when they find something real, I'll comment."

Danny Schechter, author and producer of the film version of "Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception," said he is "weary of these intercepts."

"Nobody denies that Saddam Hussein did have a WMD program. The United States knows that, we have the receipts, we supplied some of the initial technology," Schechter said.

But the weapons were destroyed in 1991, after the first Gulf War, he asserted.

"The question is not, did he have a program, but did that program represent a threat to the United States, to England, or to anywhere else," Schechter said. "I would be hesitant about raw intelligence that has not been analyzed, but that is being used in a partisan way by members of Congress," he told Cybercast News Service.

"Saddam Hussein is probably one of the most demonized world leaders, with Dick Cheney a close second," Schechter added.

Saddam is currently on trial in Iraq for ordering the killings of more than 140 Shiite Muslims in 1982. One of his former military advisors and top generals, Georges Sada, has written a book titled: "Saddam's Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussein."

Sada, who is a national security adviser in Iraq's new government, alleges that in June 2002 Saddam transported weapons of mass destruction out of Iraq and into Syria aboard several refitted commercial jets, under the pretense of conducting a humanitarian mission for flood victims.

A Feb. 2 Cybercast News Service article quoted Jamal Ware, the communications director for Rep. Hoekstra as saying that "the chairman has read General Sada's book ... He will meet with General Sada to hear first-hand him laying out the case that this transferal may have happened." The New York Sun article from Feb. 7 indicated that Sada has since met with Hoekstra to talk about the issue.

I didn't know that Dan Rather was working for ABC now.

good one.

I'm going to wait and see on this one. It's such small news if it is true for some reason. The media talks about Cheney's bad aim over Saddam admitting they had weapons of mass destruction ready to hit America? I'm more than a bit skeptical.

I wonder why ABC is not promoting this more?

The lack of buzz about this makes me very skeptical, as does the quality of those links you posted Geck. No offense.

I wonder why ABC is not promoting this more?

The lack of buzz about this makes me very skeptical, as does the quality of those links you posted Geck. No offense.

Yes I know. I am not saying this is the case but it may not be in the medias interest to break this case. I guess what I mean is that the media is very reluctant to talk about anything good in concern to Iraq, WMD or Bush admin.

I know that the media has yet to report on fighting going on between Iraq insurgents and Al Qaeda inside Iraq. The gen in charge over there says it's been happening for a long time and the insurgents are wiping out Alqaeda while slowiong down there bombing against them. Small moot point but hasn't been reported.

It seems main street media doesn't care anymore about WMD or what happened to it.

I have known about this Saddam tape for 2 weeks now and the talk stations I have listened to on XM (conservative talk) have been discussing it. Let's see where this goes. Maybe the tape is poor quality or subject to interpretation?

Here is some stuff I found from ABCnews website. If this is all there is then I can see why it might not really amount to "the smoking gun". Lots of generalities nothing specific.

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 August 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.)

Who cares what saddam says now?

He's the USA's bitch as of his capture. they control him. Whether it's drugs, intimidation, or just trickery they can get him to say whatever they want him to. His word doesn't mean shit to me now, and didn't mean shit before his capture either.

poor. Swat.

LOL@Saddam warning the US and British about terrorism. Dude tried to help them and he got arrested.

BTW: I watched the ABC news special. Nothing ground breaking being reported. Saddam speaks in general terms. It's obvious they had or willing to make WMD and were hiding things. Things we already know. 12 hours of him talking about make sure you hide this and that. Nothing that says we had a germ missle and buried it in the south corner of the east parking lot by the palm tree.

A gentle bump of this oldie but a goodie.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060321/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_wmd_tapes


Documents Show Saddam's WMD Frustrations

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
9 minutes ago

Exasperated, besieged by global pressure, Saddam Hussein and top aides searched for ways in the 1990s to prove to the world they'd given up banned weapons.

"We don't have anything hidden!" the frustrated Iraqi president interjected at one meeting, transcripts show.

At another, in 1996, Saddam wondered whether U.N. inspectors would "roam Iraq for 50 years" in a pointless hunt for weapons of mass destruction. "When is this going to end?" he asked.

It ended in 2004, when U.S. experts, after an exhaustive investigation, confirmed what the men in those meetings were saying: that Iraq had eliminated its weapons of mass destruction long ago, a finding that discredited the Bush administration's stated rationale for invading Iraq in 2003 — to locate WMD.

The newly released documents are among U.S. government translations of audiotapes or Arabic-language transcripts from top-level Iraqi meetings — dating from about 1996-97 back to the period soon after the 1991 Gulf War, when the U.N. Security Council sent inspectors to disarm Iraq.

Even as the documents make clear Saddam's regime had given up banned weapons, they also attest to its continued secretiveness: A 1997 document from Iraqi intelligence instructed agencies to keep confidential files away from U.N. teams, and to remove "any forbidden equipment."

Since it's now acknowledged the Iraqis had ended the arms programs by then, the directive may have been aimed at securing stray pieces of equipment, and preserving some secrets from Iraq's 1980s work on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Saddam's inner circle entertained notions of reviving the programs someday, the newly released documents show. "The factories will remain in our brains," one unidentified participant told Saddam at a meeting, apparently in the early 1990s.

At the same meeting, however, Saddam, who was deposed by the U.S. invasion in 2003 and is now on trial for crimes against humanity, led a discussion about converting chemical weapons factories to beneficial uses.

When a subordinate complained that U.N. inspectors had seized equipment at the plants useful for pharmaceutical and insecticide production, Saddam jumped in, saying they had "no right" to deny the Iraqis the equipment, since "they have ascertained that we have no intention to produce in this field (chemical weapons)."

Saddam's regime extensively videotaped and audiotaped meetings and other events, both public and confidential. The dozen transcribed discussions about weapons inspections largely dealt with Iraq's diplomatic strategies for getting the Security Council to confirm it had disarmed.

Scores of Iraqi documents, seized after the 2003 invasion, are being released at the request of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (news, bio, voting record), who has suggested that evidence might turn up that the Iraqis hid their weapons or sent them to neighboring Syria. No such evidence has emerged.

Repeatedly in the transcripts, Saddam and his lieutenants remind each other that Iraq destroyed its chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s, and shut down those programs and the nuclear-bomb program, which had never produced a weapon.

"We played by the rules of the game," Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said at a session in the mid-1990s. "In 1991, our weapons were destroyed."

Amer Mohammed Rashid, a top weapons program official, told a 1996 presidential meeting he laid out the facts to the U.N. chief inspector.

"We don't have anything to hide, so we're giving you all the details," he said he told Rolf Ekeus.

In his final report in October 2004, Charles Duelfer, head of a post-invasion U.S. team of weapons hunters, concluded Iraq and the U.N. inspectors had, indeed, dismantled the nuclear program and destroyed the chemical and biological weapons stockpiles by 1992, and the Iraqis never resumed production.

Saddam's goal in the 1990s was to have the Security Council lift the economic sanctions strangling the Iraqi economy, by convincing council members Iraq had eliminated its WMD. But he was thwarted at every turn by what he and aides viewed as U.S. hard-liners blocking council action.

The inspectors "destroyed everything and said, `Iraq completed 95 percent of their commitment,'" Saddam said at one meeting. "We cooperated with the resolutions 100 percent and you all know that, and the 5 percent they claim we have not executed could take them 10 years to (verify).

"Don't think for a minute that we still have WMD," he told his deputies. "We have nothing."

Damn, I thought that would stir up a little conversation at least.

they told us something we already knew.

Where's Gecko?

Where's Gecko?
you find one republican who doesn't run for the hills when you unload on him and you can't leave him alone. [smilie=arrgh.jpg]

Its ok. I already know his response. "Democrats thought he had them, too."

Its ok. I already know his response. "Democrats thought he had them, too."

Of course, democrats never wanted to send 100,000 troops to invade, dethrone, and install a puppet regime, and only made statements in support of doing so after republicans intentionally lied to them and defrauded them into believing the WMD threat was worse than it was, with talk of yellowcake from Niger, aluminum tubes that could "only" (as in never) be used for WMD, smoking guns being mushroom clouds, etc.

taymelo this is sad. your obsession for political war is pretty bad huh? [smilie=arnold.gif]

Quiet, Gutz.

I'm busy arguing with myself - - - and I'm winning like a mutha!

I don't stop in much anymore, nor do I post on any other forums. My life at work and home is both too busy and important to be posting on forums. I do miss the interactions with many of you though.

I just got a chance to stop in and read the new stuff in here. GD, somehow knew that myself and TM would flock to this thread like flies on shit if he posted something...good call GD.


Anyways I won't answer the direct questions just leave today's revelations. This doesn't change much but just shows how new news can sway the emotion of opinion one way or the other for some.


http://abcnews.go.com/International/IraqCoverage/story?id=1734490&page=1

March 22, 2006 — Following are the ABC News Investigative Unit's summaries of five documents from Saddam Hussein's government, which have been released by the U.S. government.

The documents discuss Osama bin Laden, weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda and more.

The full documents can be found on the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office Web site: http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm.

Note: Document titles were added by ABC News.



"Osama Bin Laden Contact With Iraq"

A newly released pre-war Iraqi document indicates that an official representative of Saddam Hussein's government met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan on February 19, 1995 after approval by Saddam Hussein.

my edit: This is definitive proof here and it can no longer be said that Sadaam and Al Qaeda were not linked. Throw out the argument that Bush admin lied about this. It can now be said they did not on this one issue.


Bin Laden asked that Iraq broadcast the lectures of Suleiman al Ouda, a radical Saudi preacher, and suggested "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. According to the document, Saddam's presidency was informed of the details of the meeting on March 4, 1995 and Saddam agreed to dedicate a program for them on the radio. The document states that further "development of the relationship and cooperation between the two parties to be left according to what's open (in the future) based on dialogue and agreement on other ways of cooperation." The Sudanese were informed about the agreement to dedicate the program on the radio.

The report then states that "Saudi opposition figure" bin Laden had to leave Sudan in July 1996 after it was accused of harboring terrorists. It says information indicated he was in Afghanistan. "The relationship with him is still through the Sudanese. We're currently working on activating this relationship through a new channel in light of his current location," it states.

(Editor's Note: This document is handwritten and has no official seal. Although contacts between bin Laden and the Iraqis have been reported in the 9/11 Commission report and elsewhere, (e.g. the 9/11 report states "Bin Ladn himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995) this document indicates the contacts were approved personally by Saddam Hussein.

It also indicates the discussions were substantive, in particular that bin Laden was proposing an operational relationship, and that the Iraqis were, at a minimum, interested in exploring a potential relationship and prepared to show good faith by broadcasting the speeches of al Ouda, the radical cleric who was also a bin Laden mentor.


my edit: The document does not establish that the two parties did in fact enter into an operational relationship. I will concede that it isn't clear how the two parties were working together, whether casually or formal but they had operational contacts and sympathy none the less.

Given that the document claims bin Laden was proposing to the Iraqis that they conduct "joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia, it is interesting to note that eight months after the meeting — on November 13, 1995 — terrorists attacked Saudi National Guard Headquarters in Riyadh, killing 5 U.S. military advisors. The militants later confessed on Saudi TV to having been trained by Osama bin Laden.)

I agree 100% with Gecko. Any member of any group that would meet Saddam is evil and up to no good.










































http://cnparm.home.texas.net/911/Backg/Rumsfeld-Saddam.jpg

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