WMD Tapes - You Call This Proof?

I watch with dismay as the news hounds leap upon these tapes of Saddam talking to his council as some kind of "new relevation." The right-wing blogs are practically giddy with delight that somehow, these 12 hours of droning conversations amount to proof that Bush was right to invade Iraq. Sadly, no, boys and girls, these Worthless, Meaningless, Dumb tapes only show to me a bunch of "yes-men" eager to stay alive and in Saddam's good graces by telling him what a great plan he has. It seems that Newsweek has the good sense to come out and say this plainly.

Government investigators are trying to determine how 12 hours of tape recordings of Saddam Hussein and his aides, acquired by U.S. personnel in Iraq, got into the hands of the organizers of a private "intelligence summit" to be held in D.C. next weekend. John Loftus, a former government prosecutor and self-described whistle-blower, claims the tapes "will be able to provide a few definitive answers to some very important—and controversial—weapons-of-mass-destruction questions." At one point Saddam muses how vulnerable D.C. would be to a "biological" attack, but adds that Iraq wouldn't do it.

House Intelligence Committee chairman Pete Hoekstra is reviewing transcripts to determine if U.S. officials missed WMD evidence after the war. But intel agencies are skeptical. The tapes were taken without permission from an FBI-run translation center, officials say, and are years old. Two government officials, requesting anonymity because of the sensitive subject, say the tapes in no way prove that WMD stockpiles or programs existed at the time of the U.S. invasion or were moved to another country before U.S. troops arrived.

There are a few other news sources that remain skeptical. Good for them. Did Saddam want to build and stockpile chemical and biological weapons? Sure. No question. Most of the nations in the Middle East want them, are in the process of getting them, or stockpile them today. What is important to remember - Charles Duelfer - is that we allegedly went into Iraq to take WMDs away from Saddam, not to overthrow a bad guy that had practically no capability to attack anyone in the Middle East, let alone Americans in the United States.

Yeah, yeah, please spare me the comments about how you all knew all along that we went in to overthrow the regime and create a democracy in the  Middle East, and that the Bush administration only threw in the WMD threat thing as a sidebar.  We spent a lot of time, money, and energy to look for those WMDs, the casus belli of the invasion. My point is, these tapes mean nothing. They certainly don't legitimize the Bush administration's preventive strike on Iraq.

Comments

[Jesse Clark]

I agree, the tapes are meaningless and they don't reveal anything we didn't already know.

But wouldn't it be fair to say that we still don't know what happened to the WMD, and we should be asking a lot more questions than we currently are?

[delen]

What the tapes do prove however, is that Saddam isn't the only one surrounded by "yes men eager to stay in the good graces", and on the payroll.

[J Thomas]

Jesse, what WMDs are you talking about?

There were iraqi government guys who should have known about the WMDs. We've had them in Gitmo for more than 2 years, some of them for almost 3 years. Under interrogation they've told us a variety of stories but none of the stories match up with any of the others, and none of them matches up with any evidence.

Maybe they knew the truth and we haven't gotten it out of them in 2 years at Gitmo? Then anybody who talks about a ticking bomb is completely clueless.

Much more likely, they simply didn't know. The WMD program was gone. No such thing.

Or maybe there were terrorists with a WMD program that they didn't tell the iraqi government about....

Give it up. There weren't any WMDs. It was entirely a fantasy from the beginning, left over from the days the UN caught Saddam with a WMD program and he gave it up. It's time for you to give up too.

[Phillybits]

I too wrote abuot this on my own site, as well as on DailyKos. I'd written a few articles linking back to RedState where, yes, the wingers seemed certain, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this was going to be the definitive proof they needed to blast the Dems and prove, once and for all, that Bush was right.

The problem, of course, was that these tapes didn't prove a goddamn thing:

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."

As I wrote at the bottom of this post:

Intentions, although they may be bad, ARE NOT WMD's, the leading charge being possession of said WMD's by Saddam, that led us to war in Iraq.

[Stephen Michaud]

So the feeling here is by some that 35,000 boxes of Iraqi documents, that are still not deciphered, 12 hours of tape MAKE???

There may be some egg on some faces IF we can get to the truth, as we are having a huge problem getting to the truth of Able Danger. The BIG, BIG question on both counts is WHY? why are the boxes not deciphered yet, and why have these Saddam tapes not been publicized before now? And why the stonewalling of ABLE DANGER?? Who is scared of WHAT? and WHY?

THERE is the question, whether one believes their authenticity or not, answer the damn questions!

Stephen Parksville BC ww 2 vet.

[J Thomas]

Stephen, I'm not sure quite what your question is.

There's no particular hurry to look at the old documents. If you believe that our interrogation methods work, then those documents are of purely historical value.

A nuclear program needs a budget. Somebody has to hide the budget in the government budget. So you ask the guy who ran the treasury. He knew about various sorts of corruption but he didn't know about a secret program. So then if the top 50 corrupt money leaks were really fused together to make the secret WMD budget ... but they weren't. The secret program didn't have a budget.

You look at the guys who had the training. They were busy not doing a secret program. To do the secret progran they had to secretly train a bunch of new guys and let them do the program with no budget and no contact with the guys who had experience.

If there was a secret program, Saddam didn't know about it, none of the top guys knew about it, it had no budget, and it was done entirely by people who officially had no training.

Give it a few years and maybe you can get access to those thousands of boxes of documents, you can do a PhD in history with them or something. You might find something interesting in there but it isn't likely to be a WMD program.

Unless, of course, our interrogation methods don't work.

[staggerlee]

THE US DESTROYED THE WMD PROGRAM BACK IN 91 SCOTT RITTER HAS ALREADY PROVED THAT

[G Zuber]

There are already different interpreters saying that the some of interpretations have been taken out of context, especially Saddam's comments that an attack would not come directly from Iraq. It will take time to sort out the exact translations.

[Retired Army Guy]

Saddam Hussein was running a deception operation, pure and simple. It was intended to cow potential Mideastern adversaries and impress the Iraqi people. Unfortunately for him—and perhaps for Iraq, given how we've gone about things—the U.S. and other Western nations took him seriously. I doubt he thought we'd take him seriously. After all, the inspection regime was often pretty thorough. Sure, he would have liked to have had nukes—the only so-called WMD that really matter—but that was beyond him.

Poor Saddam. The strutting braggart hoist by his own petard. Poor us, led by people with no perception or sense of history, but a heap of well-grounded cynicism about the intelligence of the American people and their elected representatives. Secular Saddam, really nothing more than an old-time fascist, align himself with Islamic fanatics? Figure the odds.

I've posted before about my consternation about this whole "weapons of mass destruction" scam. It's nukes that matter. Nukes. The American people were hoodwinked by people who asked us to equate WW1 mustard gas with Hiroshima. And we bought it. Oh, my, oh my, there was a Sarin attack in a subway. Anthrax-laced letters. Holy shit, Martha. We'd better vote for some boys who can keep us safe.

Ignorance and cowardice will be the end of us.

[Rich]

Stay Tuned! This is only the tip of the iceberg. You Liberals who now wish to be called Progressives (Puff Daddy=P Diddy, Prince=The Artist)just keep discounting and dismissing and attacking the sources and see where it gets you. You are on the Titanic and it is sinking, there are no more lifeboats. Better Jump Fast. I am laughing very hard RIGHT now because first the Kooksville bloggers, next Looney Liberal MSM will follow your lead. When none of this works, your whacko elected Liberal leaders will form a committee to prosecute the source for leaking classified info. You are so predictable. This is hilarious. You have absolutely no credibility and longer. You will not take the house, senate, or presidency for a very long time. The Silent Conservative MAJORITY is no longer silent. You are a minority opposition party with no bite to your puppy dog, running away, tail between your legs bark. All we will do is kick you again! ROFLMAO

[Satan luvvs Repugs]

Hey Rich,
how are the goose-stepping lessons working out? Developed a good *snap* to that stiff-armed salute yet? Is that brown lipstick you're wearing, or have you been kissing GOP ass?

Go ahead, call everyone else "losers". But those "losers" didn't claim that there were WMDs in Iraq that were a threat to the USA. That was your side. So where are those damn WMDs, after all? And a tape of Saddam farting around with his 'buds, muttering "yeah, like it would be like SO COOL to have some WMDs." doesn't pass muster as evidence.

Well, not evidence of Iraqi WMD plans. But the reaction to the tape certainly is evidence of the disingenuousness and stupidity of right-wingnuts.

[Rich]

To Satans Pug:

Why is it that you resort to the Nazi insinuations? Did you memorize that from your communist International Answer protester indoctrination? Or was it Code Pinko? You left out calling me a fascist too. Why not defend your position with facts as opposed to the immediate personal attack.

Did you even get it? I said stay tuned because there will be more and I find it very interesting that the tired old rhetoric of "Bush lied" will finally be put to rest. Except by you of course.

As for the accusation of me being a "Nazi"....

YOU: yap yap yap yap yap yap yap

ME: KICK

One of my subtle points was that it is comments like yours, that also are made by Democrat leaders, and the attempt to scandalize any issue in order to impeach, have destroyed your credibility as a serious party. You can't impeach because you have to have control of the house and senate first and that just won't happen. It is a pipe dream.

Why is it that terrorists, dictators, and the Democrat Party have the same talking points?

I would love for any Democrat to have a plan about the Iraq war, besides being cut and run traitors and cowards and terrorist appeasers. A plan that is better than we have now, but all we get is Nancy Pelosi saying "We don't need a plan, we must stop him", referring to President bush. John F'n Kerry all through the campaign said "I have a plan", but not once did I hear what it was. I keep hearing rumor of a Democrat Plan but it has yet to materialize. Even if you don't agree with the GOP agenda, at least it is a plan. What's yours?

[Rich]

By the way Satans little Pug dog (kick again), every single one of your "losers", (as you said not me), Democrat leaders claimed that there were WMD in Iraq and that Sodomy Hussein was a threat. Do your research and you will find that before the war that they did say this and even when Bill Clinton was president. So your statement is false. Research your facts and take a look at the record before you attempt to make an argument.

Only when a Republican made the same statements and actually do something about it did the DemoRatz do the John F'n Kerry flip flop.

[J.]

"Why is it that terrorists, dictators, and the Democrat Party have the same talking points?"

Rich, pack up your gear and go back to Little Green Footballs or whatever American fascist organization you came from. If you want to polietly discuss the issues, fine, if you're here to be a troll, I really don't need to hear you snipe at all.

[J Thomas]

Rich, you asked for defense with facts and yet you provided no facts yourself.

Anyway, I'll do it.

Bush etc claimed that iraq was about to get nukes and he was ready to start an $80 billion war about it. It turned out that his information was all disinformation, he had nothing to base his claim on.

If it were to turn out later that there was a small secret program that hadn't gotten very far, that was so small and secret that it took us 3+ years to find out about it after the war, that does not give us any evidence whatsoever that Bush didn't lie.

Let me try to make that point clearer. Suppose I were to tell you I know that Bush regularly has BDSM anal sex with this Gannet guy on top. Really I have no evidence for that, I don't know it. I'm lying. If it later turns out that Bush is regularly doing that, it doesn't mean I'm not a liar, just because it turns out I was accidentally telling the truth.

[Rich]

To J. and J. Thomas and (Satans Pug),

The question was for Satans Pug to back up his statement "Democrats never claimed that there were WMD in Iraq that were a threat to us".

No trolling here. Just wanted intelligent debate regarding real issues. Guess I can't find it here. Oh and thanks for the Fascist accusation "J.", you proved my point once again. I bet you have know idea what the term actually means, you just spew the word out of ignorance. (Avoid debate and go into personal attack first).

United Nations Inspections Reports

This is proof that "Satans Pug" is wrong when he said that Democrat leaders never claimed that there were WMD in Iraq that were a threat to us.

If you respond, please stay focused on the topic without calling me a Nazi or Fascist as that is not intelligent debate. The words of these Democrat leaders reject the "Bush lied" theory and that is the point, as well as the politicization of WMD from the left, at the risk of our National Security.

Remember, focus on the issue, refrain from personal attacks such as the Nazi-Fascist name calling and back up your point of view with fact.

[J Thomas]

Rich, you're being very silly.

First, throw out the statements from 1998 when Saddam actually did have a WMD program and lost it.

Durbin's and Albright's 1999 statements don't say what you claim they do.

The statement signed by 4 democrats among others, says "reports indicate" -- but the reports they are quoting are Bush's disinformation. So throw that out.

The more recent quotes -- some of them don't say what you claim at all, and some of them are from Democrats who looked at the data Bush gave them, who gave him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't lying.

But now we know that he was lying. We have no reason to trust anything else he says, ever again, until it has been independently verified.

[J.]

Rich - I didn't call you a Nazi, I called you an American fascist. Read a little instead of just repeating the propaganda that the right wing blogs spew out.

[Alex]

Anyway, it is my humble opinion that Loftus is a fraud. His very noisy public statements on various issues, specifically the terrorists who tried to kill me on July 7th last, show that his knowledge is considerably less than his capacity for self-publicity.

Details here:
http://yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com/2005/08/john-loftus-anti-terrorist-hero-or.html