Saddam’s Secret Tapes
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Foreign Policy, The War On Terrorism, War
Wow, this is very interesting stuff.
From ABC News:
recordings of Saddam Hussein meeting with top aides during the 1990s, tapes apparently recorded in Baghdad’s version of the Oval Office.ABC News obtained the tapes from Bill Tierney, a former member of a United Nations inspection team who translated them for the FBI. Tierney said the U.S. government is wrong to keep these tapes and others secret from the public. “Because of my experience being in the inspections and being in the military, I knew the significance of these tapes when I heard them,” says Tierney. U.S. officials have confirmed the tapes are authentic, and that they are among hundreds of hours of tapes Saddam recorded in his palace office.
One of the most dramatic moments in the 12 hours of recordings comes when Saddam predicts â€â€? during a meeting in the mid 1990s â€â€? 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.”
And still more…
“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.
This is extremely interesting and I can’t wait to hear more about this story. Obviously, since this information has been sat on for so long, one thinks that the intelligence agencies may have discounted it. That’s certainly simply an assumption, but I think it’s an educated one. After all, Bush and company trumpets any substantive proof for the existence of WMDs when it becomes evident. Why not now? Obviously, it’s not the smoking gun, but it certainly points to Saddam’s efforts to decieve the UN.
More to come I’m sure…
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 16th, 2006 and is filed under Foreign Policy, The War On Terrorism, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 16th, 2006 at 2:54 am
I think they were hesitant on reporting this because the tapes give ammunition to the belief that Saddam didnt’ support terrorism, especially against the U.S. And that Saddam was willing to deceive the UN was something already mentioned in the Dueffler report. So for the administration they have more to lose than gain.
February 16th, 2006 at 8:51 am
None of the tapes analyzed so far were recorded after 9/11, so they don’t provide evidence for or against the existance of WMD stockpiles immediately before the 2003 invasion.
However, the tapes (if you believe them) may prove that Saddam had WMD at least until 1995 or 96, without the UN knowing about them, and there was a clear policy within the regime to conceal actual WMD stocks.
This story is not gonna be over anytime soon, no matter how much the MSM tries to play it down.
February 16th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
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