This weekend, at a non-governmental meeting in Arlington, Virginia, tapes are due to be released which apparently contain voiced discussions between Saddam Hussein and his top brass over a period more than a decade in which he talks about how he is fooling the UN over WMD and names the countries in which he is hiding the stuff. The tapes have apparently been verified by US analysts as authentic, and cover hundreds of hours of recordings made in Saddam’s presidential offices from 1988 to 2000.

A report on ABC News says the tapes confirm the extent of Saddam’s deception of the UN during the 1990s, but do not prove that he was still hiding WMD by the time of the war that deposed him:

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.’ Shortly after this meeting, in August 1995, Hussein Kamel defected to Jordan, and Iraq was forced to admit that it had concealed its biological weapons program. (Kamel returned to Iraq in February 1996 and was killed in a firefight with Iraqi security forces.)

...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 US-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.’

In a radio interview broadcast on February 1, however, John Loftus, a former federal prosecutor who is running this weekend’s meeting, hinted that the tapes are rather more explosive. They go way beyond 2000, he said, they consist of conversations between Saddam and top officials including his deputy Tariq Aziz and the foreign minister, and reveal the countries which Saddam said was helping him hide WMD. The tapes, said Loftus, are ‘the most sensational historical find from the Iraqi era’.

Of course, it is possible that Loftus is exaggerating wildly. It is possible that the tapes tell us little that is new. It is possible that they are not authentic after all. But it is possible that they are as explosive as he suggests. It fits with another scarcely noticed interview that has surfaced on the web with a former senior Iraqi official. Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti was a southern regional commander for Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen militia in the late 1980s and a personal friend of the dictator. According to this site, units under his command dealt with chemical and biological weapons and he was known as the ‘Butcher of Basra’ due to his campaigns, defecting shortly before the Gulf War in 1991. He claims to maintain very close sources in Iraq and that some of Saddam’s key scientists are personal friends as well as other key leaders in the former Iraqi military. And he confirms what these tapes apparently reveal, that Saddam was planning to conceal his WMD from the US for a very long time – and that they have been hidden in Syria:

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 capitols were 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, who he has a personal grudge against.

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.

He goes further. Saddam was so much into deceiving the world over his WMD, he says, that he also used Libya to fool everyone:

Iraqi scientists were turned over to Libya along with many documents and research from Iraq on nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that Saddam was attempting to use Libya as a laboratory to further his nuclear development just like he was attempting to do by sending his weapons to Syria. Saddam knew after the Gulf War he needed to start shipping his weapons and programs outside of his borders to avoid detection which is exactly why Saddam became so emboldened and laughed at the West every time he stood in front of the camera. If you were to compare him in the 80's and 90's you would see a much more confident and defiant Saddam in the latter due to the fact he knew there was nothing to materially pin him on within the borders of Iraq.

He also confirms that Saddam was indeed in league with al Qaeda, with both camps putting aside their differences to fight the common enemy of the US:

As far as Al-Qaeda is concerned this support was limited for a long time, mainly due to the fact that Al-Qaeda had the hopes of creating an Islamic empire while Saddam wanted a secular Arab nationalist empire. They only really came to terms in the mid-90's due to the fact that both knew they shared the same short term enemy. Once they came to terms on this Saddam provided Al-Qaeda with intelligence support and whatever money or munitions they could provide. Saddam has had very long standing contacts in the black market as well as with Moscow and would provide whatever munitions he could through these contacts.

And he issues this stark warning to America about the way its accelerating internal collapse of nerve may turn its enemies’ false statements of its failure in Iraq into reality:

There is no doubt that the United States military has learned the mistakes of the past and are really getting on track in terms of the learning curve of the reconstruction of Iraq. My criticism was aimed at the politicians on the Hill who are beginning to run the war from Congress and taking this role from the military. I see this in the very near future. I have a lot of fears that with upcoming elections and poll numbers down for the Iraq war the politicians are sticking their fingers in the air and they are wanting to cut and run essentially and isolate themselves from the war.

I am optimistic that the Iraqis and the U.S. military can salvage whatever damage may be done due to this. There is much more progress in Iraq today than there was in Vietnam when we pulled out than. The biggest hurdle is going to be putting enough pressure on the Hill to just let the Pentagon run the war and allow our military establishment to do what we entrusted them to do. Win the war and reconstruct the country. The day the politicians take that away from the Pentagon is the day I really see a serious escalation in terrorism to continue a propaganda war from Iraq to persuade the politicians to cut and run. Zarqawi and the rest have been attempting to do this from day one and they are getting closer to their goal if you look at the sentiment within the Senate alone.

I am still quite optimistic that the Iraqis will prevail due to the amount of progress and reconstruction the United States military has made in Iraq but there is always that small amount of doubt and fear which I have. I have seen politicians try to rake the reigns of a war from the military and the war is lost almost immediately. The ball though is in the Iraqis court in terms of defending their newfound democracy and being able to energize the public enough to make this work irregardless of what happens in Washington or the number of troops left in Iraq in the near future.

Maybe this guy is actually out of touch and just shooting his mouth off. Maybe none of this is true. But maybe it is all true. What is undeniable is that there is a huge amount of information captured in Iraq which the US has not even looked at but which may shed light on these matters. It is almost beyond belief that the US has not yet analysed it. As Stephen Hayes comments:

Estimates from people involved in the document exploitation project tell us the U.S. government has in its possession some 2 million 'exploitable items.' Of that number, less than 3 percent -- somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 items -- have been fully exploited. The information that will be made public by the end of this week--28 captured al Qaeda documents and 12 hours of audiotape from Iraq -- will provide a glimpse of a fraction of a fraction of the total collection...What these documents demonstrate more than anything else is that the U.S. intelligence community and the Bush administration should make document exploitation a high priority.

Posted by melanie at February 16, 2006