Saddam tapes being distorted by news media
By Jim Kouri
web posted February 20, 2006
When former federal prosecutor and terrorism expert John Loftus announced in Janurary that his organization Intelligence Summit would host a special conference in order to reveal the contents of 12 hours of Saddam Hussein audiotapes discovered in Iraq, there was hardly any press coverage. But once the blogosphere, talk radio and Fox News Channel -- on which Loftus is a contributor -- got wind of the contents of Saddam's conversations with underlings, some media organizations decided to cover the story -- sort of.
Unfortunately, it appears the mainstream news media are not being honest with the American people, according to journalist Sher Zieve and former UN weapons inspector and translator Bill Tierney. For instance, ABC using their own translator is reporting that there's nothing new in the tapes and they don't provide any information on weapons of mass destruction.
The blogger-attorneys at Powerline -- who uncovered CBS News anchor Dan Rather's use forged documents to smear President Bush -- say the tapes 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."
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," he said.
Intelligence Summit's Loftus has maintained for years that Saddam's stash of WMD was moved into Syria prior to the US invasion. An opinion shared by many intelligence experts. This is being confirmed by two of Saddam's military commanders.
A couple of weeks ago, a General Sada, formerly Sadaam’s number two Air Force commander, told the New York Sun that Sadaam’s WMD was moved to Syria just six weeks before the US-led invasion. Now Ali Ibrahim, one of Saddam's commanders in northern Iraq confirms this and explains the underlying strategy of Saddam:
"I know Saddam’s weapons are in Syria due to certain military deals that were made going as far back as the late 1980’s that dealt with the event that either capitol [Damascus or Baghdad] were to be threatened with being overrun by an enemy nation. Not to mention I have discussed this in-depth with various contacts of mine who have confirmed what I already knew. At this point Saddam knew that the United States were eventually going to come for his weapons and the United States wasn’t going to just let this go like they did in the original Gulf War. He knew that he had lied for this many years and wanted to maintain legitimacy with the pan Arab nationalists. He also has wanted, since he took power, to embarrass the West and this was the perfect opportunity to do so."
After Saddam denied he had such weapons why would he use them or leave them readily available to be found? That would only legitimize President Bush, with whom he has a personal grudge. What we are witnessing now is many who opposed the war to begin with are rallying around Saddam saying we overthrew a sovereign leader based on a lie about WMD. This is exactly what Saddam wanted and predicted.
The tape recordings of Saddam discussing WMDs are said by Ryan Mauro of Worldthreats.com to be a “smoking cannon.” If all of this information proves out, the left in the US and UK are going to face an enormous embarassment and loss of credibility. As usual, it will take some time for the new information to travel from the blogosphere to the alternative media, and finally into the so-called mainstream media. Even then, the Bush haters will not concede that Saddam was a threat to the US. 
Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he's a staff writer for the New Media Alliance. He's former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. He's also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. Kouri writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He's appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc. His book Assume The Position is available at Amazon.Com. Kouri's own website is located at http://jimkouri.us