Nope, no state-sponsored terrorism round here..

I've moved this post to the top as details of the Intelligence Summit become available today. Further thoughts below. Feel free to add your own as well.

ABC News's exclusive "secret Saddam tapes" are hitting the airwaves tonight. Made by Saddam Hussein in the 90s and provided to ABC by ex UNSCOM inspector Bill Tierney, the tapes show the regime was continuing their efforts to hide weapons programs. Although Tierney probably turned them over to illustrate Saddam's devious fixation on WMDs, ABC's focus will instead be on this one dialog:

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."

Well, he didn't really say "Iraq would never do that". He said it was coming, but not from Iraq. The dictator wasn't a dummy. He knew that Islamic radicals proved much more useful tools than Mukhabarat agents, who had already blown several attempts at terrorism against America.

But alas, the big story here will be how Saddam proved Bush wrong, and the dems will once again be asking for hearings. Note to Stephen Hayes, this should be a reality check as to why the other documents haven't been released. The media trumps any morsel that hurts Bush.

Here's an easy prediction--the unhinged set will unequivacally believe Saddam regards his statement of misdirection, while completely disbelieving Cheney's answers about the hunting accident.

REMEMBERING APRIL 2/16/06

April Glaspie was the US Ambassador to Iraq during the runup to Saddam's attack on Kuwait. Saddam called her for a meeting about a week before he attacked. The left likes to point to her relaying a message that the US had no dog in Arab to Arab squabbles, tatamount to giving him permission to attack. Not really.

But something else was said in that conversation:

If you use pressure, we will deploy pressure and force. We know that you can harm us although we do not threaten you. But we too can harm you. Everyone can cause harm according to their ability and their size. We cannot come all the way to you in the United States, but individual Arabs may reach you.

Individual Arabs, eh. Sounds like those rootless, non-state actors we've heard so much about.

ht Hatfill Deception

MORE 2/16/06

Is Bill Tierney believable? Heard him interviewed on Hannity's show today. I was literally screaming at Sean to shut up and let him talk, since Tierney seemed on the verge of telling us something very important. He was strangely melodramatic, but perhaps that's justified if he's correct.

Correct about what, you say? Well, he buys into the premise that Saddam was actually behind or partially responsible for 9/11. Surely the "he's a nut" campaign will begin soon, although checking the lefty blogs it doesn't seem to be getting much play (they are still consumed with Cheney). For all I know he might be a tad flaky, but it doesn't take a nut to believe that if Saddam was himself still fighting "the mother of all battles" (whether we knew it or not) that he'd occasionally take a few shots.

At any rate, Tierney will be on the TV show tonight, so I may have to turn off the basketball and watch.

H&C 2/16/06

Tierney doesn't come across very well on TV, does he? Granted, Hannity and Colmes is hardly the forum for such a complex subject, but it's safe to assume the average viewer wasn't impressed.

Meanwhile, infighting has broken out at the group responsible for releasing the tapes. Board members John Deutch and James Woolsey, both former DCIs, have resigned their posts in the past few weeks, officially over something else. Woolsey is a very interesting character in that he presumably knows the real identity of WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef, which means he most definitely has an opinion on Tierney's "Saddam did it" premise. Funny, as the tapes come out he's now headed for the tall grass. That same cat also grabbed Deutch's tongue.

So what does it mean? Kay and Duelfer say there's really nothing new here, move along. Maybe. Or maybe there's another weird possibility. Perhaps Saddam didn't orchestrate or help with 9/11, but afterwards soon realized he was in the laser scoped crosshairs. With that he dispatched the anthrax letter writers to send a 'back off Iraq' message to Bush, who proceeded to call his bluff. Oops, no WMDs after all. And here we are.

Perhaps the tape release will clear all of this up. And perhaps pigs will fly.

CHASING BUTTERFLIES 2/18/06

It's early, but so far there's been very little fanfare surrounding the Intelligence Summit and their release of the Saddam tapes. Conversely, there's already evidence building that the story will garner much less attention than a Cheney misfire.

The Weekly Standard, long on the front lines of the effort to persuade Bush administration officials to release the post-invasion captured Iraqi documents, expressed their frustratation today in an article entitled "Need to Know", where they detailed a recent meeting between Congressman Hoekstra and a Negroponte staffer:

Late last week, a top DNI staffer met with Hoekstra. The meeting did not go well. "If there are 100 reasons not to make this information available, I got every one of them," Hoekstra told The Weekly Standard last week.

According to the article the plan is to dribble out partially redacted and restricted bits of information over time, similar to what we're seeing with the AQ transcripts coming out of Harmony (don't miss Austin Bay's post on this).

But, with the less than stellar performance by Tierney and the recent resignations at the Intelligence Summit it's certainly possible this story will get swept under the nearest throw rug. The telltale might be Hoekstra or any other curious Congressional friends of his. If they back off it's probably over, no matter what the Weekly Standard says or does. It'll be relegated to a homework assignment our grandkids complain about someday.

2/19/06

CNN decided to weigh in, and not surprisingly they ignored the obfuscation sections in favor of Uncle Saddam's WMD attack warning. Matter of fact, it seemed to suggest the Butcher was some kind of Arab Bill O'Reilly--"the spin stops here, cause Saddam's lookin out for you".

A quick scan of the other majors shows a big fat goose egg, but perhaps that's the correct call. If you study the Power Point slide show (available at Intelligence Summit site) there's no rock solid smoking gun material. In other words we didn't hear Saddam saying, "position the nuclear warheads under that sand dune over there", or "how did the meeting go with Atta in Prague?". So let's not get carried away.

Still, the tapes did seem to prove the regime was attempting to scam the inspectors and hide their bio program. Recall that inspections were the very backbone of the left's hindsight solution to avoid a war. Who could forget the mantra--"let the inspectors do their job". Surely Saddam and company were chanting it right along with them.

THE REAL WAR 2/19/06

The MSM is largely finished with the Intelligence Summit. The few that covered it took what they wanted--that Saddam was helping or warning the US--and will leave the rest to the conservative partisan sites and blogs. The latter is already in motion, case in point this fascinating narrative from former Undersecretary of Defense John Shaw.

Shaw was watching for Saddam's WMD stocks before and after the invasion. His conference presentation alleged the Russians, using Spetsnaz Special Ops teams, cleaned out all the WMD residue in the months before the war. This comports with a previous statement from the former Director of Defense Mapping, who claimed to have seen convoys heading into Syria. That sorta leaves Georges Sada twisting in the breeze, though.

Frankly it's hard to buy anything anymore. The only thing certainly believable is the size of the stovepipes looming over DIA, CIA, State, NSA, GIA, and DoD. Analysts from each of these agencies are highly competitive and each wants to be correct about Iraq. So there's ample room for fantasy and name-calling on all sides. The Iraq war, if nothing else, has given us a glimpse into that macho underworld like never before.

But there's just enough plausibility to consider this one. Russia would not have wanted US military units, with embedded media onboard, to come across proscribed weapons systems marked "made in Russia" when we rolled in, especially if any were date-stamped after 1991. And, if true this would also explain why Bush cannot corroborate the WMD whereabouts, since the game is still on.

Speaking of Russians, this theory brings to mind the incident back in 2003 where a car full of them fleeing Baghdad was riddled with bullets by our forces. Most probably just the fog of war, right?

ROLL TAPE 2/22/06

Just viewed the Pajamas Media interviews with Bill Tierney, Jack Kelly and Richard Perle done by Roger Simon. Regarding Tierney I'll say one thing--if he's now the public face behind theories that Saddam was involved in terrorism through the 90s, those believing likewise may want to keep it under wraps.

Kelly's assessment of the event sounded plausible, and makes me wonder if these Intelligence Summit guys were really that ignorant or perhaps cleverly set-up by someone trying to put them out of business.