The CIA Paid This Guy 100K
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in The War On Terrorism, War
So why didn’t we PAY attention to what Naji Sabri told us about Iraq weapons programs?
In September 2002, Iraq’s top diplomat Naji Sabri traded information on Saddam’s alleged weapons programme for cash in a French-sponsored New York City hotel room meeting, NBC reported, citing intelligence sources. [...] During the cloak-and-dagger meeting, Sabri told the CIA’s middleman that Saddam possessed chemical weapons and wanted a nuclear bomb but needed much more time to build one than the CIA estimate of several months to a year. He also denied Saddam had any biological weapons.
Sabri was more accurate than the CIA on the nuclear and biological weapons programs. On the chemical weapons, both Sabri and the CIA were wrong, but Sabri’s estimates of how much Saddam had were much lower than what the CIA claimed.
Again…why did we not pay attention to this guy? Maybe because he wouldn’t play the PR game we wanted him to.
However, the foreign minister broke off his contacts weeks later after he repeatedly resisted CIA pressures to defect to the United States and publicly renounce Saddam, the sources told NBC.
Very interesting stuff here. Obviously this is all woulda, shoulda, coulda, but this was September 2002. This had to be THE most current intelligence we had from inside this government. Why ignore it?
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March 21st, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Or perhaps because he was just one voice among many, conflicting, voices.
It’s easy to ask in retrospect ‘OMG why oh why didn’t we listen to the one that turned out to be right?!’
March 21st, 2006 at 8:50 pm
Conveniently we didn’t listen to anyone who disagreed with the premise that we should invade Iraq.
March 21st, 2006 at 8:56 pm
Well, if the choices came down to:
invade Iraq, or
not to invade Iraq
We were going to have to conveniently not listen to one side or the other.
March 21st, 2006 at 9:03 pm
Agreed, but that’s what WE do.
Also, this was some pretty significant intel. In fact, it could have stopped the war. As Michael has suggested today, Bush wanted this war and so any intel that conflicted with the WMD claims they were making to drum up support was ignored.
In the end, this is an interesting footnote to this story and probably little else.
March 21st, 2006 at 9:51 pm
Well, Bush wanted the war just as much as Clinton before him. If you go back, back, back, you will find that initially the Democrats wanted to show up Bush One, then they wanted to stop Bush Two.
It’s all just political positioning. But, the Democrats were strong supporters of the WMD position long before it left Bush’s lips.
March 22nd, 2006 at 9:23 am
>
The only “nattering nabobs of negativity,” as I recall, were Democrats. Turns out they were largely right, and our warplanners chose not to listen to an Iraqi well-positioned to back them up. Doesn’t mean a hill of beans to where we are in Iraq now, but it shows a lot about how decisions were made.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:43 pm
Turns out they were largely right,
They were almost entirely wrong, except about the cost in dollars.
Also, this was some pretty significant intel. In fact, it could have stopped the war.
Great, we could have Saddam still in power, and actually building WMD instead of just pretending to have them. And Iraqis would still be enjoying their brutal tyranny with rape rooms and mass graves, instead of war that brought the relatively much greater freedom and democracy they currently have, which, even accompanied by some violence as it is, killed far fewer Iraqis than Saddam was, and for better cause.
March 22nd, 2006 at 11:33 pm
instead of war that brought the relatively much greater freedom and democracy they currently have, which, even accompanied by some violence as it is, killed far fewer Iraqis than Saddam was, and for better cause.
You’re kidding right?
Well, Bush wanted the war just as much as Clinton before him. If you go back, back, back, you will find that initially the Democrats wanted to show up Bush One, then they wanted to stop Bush Two.
It’s all just political positioning. But, the Democrats were strong supporters of the WMD position long before it left Bush’s lips.
You have to be kidding too…right?
It’s easy to ask in retrospect ‘OMG why oh why didn’t we listen to the one that turned out to be right?!’
Well, to quote a talking point from the President, this is just revisionist history. You can’t label anyone who had an anti-war opinion unpatriotic, and then when they all turned out to be right, start talking about 20/20 hindsight blah blah blah.
Where does the buck stop. Answer me that…please, someone, take some responsibility for SOMETHING.