Saddam’s Smoking Gun

 
Well, this is a surprise.

According to CNN,

Saddam in his heyday

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein told his Cabinet in the mid-1990s that the U.S. would fall victim to terrorists possessing weapons of mass destruction but that Iraq would not be involved, tapes released Saturday at an intelligence summit reveal.

Hussein also can be heard speaking with high-ranking Iraqi officials about deceiving United Nations inspectors looking into Iraq’s weapons program, which his son-in-law, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel, oversaw.

The tapes, which U.S. officials have confirmed are authentic, are part of a much larger cache of information on the nation’s weapons programs. Six translators listened to the recordings for CNN.

I don’t mean that the information itself is a surprise — every Iraq news junkie knew about the Salman Pak training camp, the suitcases of money going to terrorist groups all over the world, and the Iraqi connection with Ramzi Yousef and Project Bojinka and the first World Trade Center attack.

It’s the fact that it can be found through a headline on CNN’s website. Are they going to bury it after Sunday morning, so that very few people see it? Or have they changed their ways?

Watch and see if it shows up on the major networks or CNN in prime time newscasts. Keep an eye on the New York Times for any sign of it.

My guess it will be buried and consigned to the blogosphere, like all the others.

6 thoughts on “Saddam’s Smoking Gun

  1. Over at Ace of Spades I’ve read that there’s some translation issues- rather than claiming Iraq wouldn’t be involved, he may have said Iraq couldn’t be blamed.
    That was in the comments to this post:
    http://ace.mu.nu/archives/158338.php
    about a translator complaining that ABC preferred a softer, but less accurate translation of other threats he made in that announcement.

    Unfortunately, one of the sources is NewsMax, which is often first and also often wrong.

  2. You mistake the media’s intent. It is my understanding that they believe his saying that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had nothing to do with WMD’s. And that he was helpfully trying to warn us! That seems to be the spin of the lefty blogs. Short of finding a big cave in Iraq that contains decades worth of stockpiles of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons the MSM is not going to be convinced that Saddam was a threat to us. Even then, it will be a hard sell to the left who are determined to cling to their illusions beyond the grave.

  3. Well, Doc, that would explain the prominent play given the story.

    But still, don’t you think that saying, in effect, “Saddam tape proves he knew about 9-11 in advance” undoes all the hard work they’ve previously done, trying to disconnect him from such things?

    Seems to me, regardless of intent, they’re doing their own cause (i.e. discrediting the Bish administration) harm by airing this story. But maybe I’m wrong.

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