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March 28, 2006
WMD and the Foreign Minister
We're all to believe that Bush Lied! us into Iraq, but as more and more details emerge we learn just how stupid that claim is.
Last Thursday we learned from a Washington Post story that Saddam's last foreign minister, one Naji Sabri, was a spy for French Intelligence, who in turn passed his information to us. Sabri was paid some $100,000 for his services, and according to the story, was motivated entirely by money.
He supplied us information about Iraq's "chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs more than six months before the war began in March 2003" according to the Post story.
Publicly Sabri was insisting that Iraq had no prohibited weapons of mass destruction. Privately, the sources said, he provided information that the Iraqi dictator had ambitions for a nuclear program but that it was not active, and that no biological weapons were being produced or stockpiled, although research was underway.When it came to chemical weapons, Sabri told his handler that some existed but they were not under military control, a former intelligence official familiar with the situation said. Another former official added: "He said he had been told Hussein had them dispersed among some of the loyal tribes."
Wow
The White House was far more interested in trying to get Sabri to defect than in the information he was providing on Iraq's weapons programs, in part because the intelligence community did not trust him, another former intelligence official said.
What of it?
If I was an intelligence officer in the CIA, and had received information from other sources that Saddam did in fact have at least some stockpiles of WMD, this would seem to secure the case for me. Reread that second paragraph quoted above (the 6th in the story): What is says is that Sabri believed that at least some chemical weapons existed but that they had been hidden by loyal tribes.
No it is not the "smoking gun". No Sabri didn't confirm that Saddam had "huge stockpiles" or even the amounts that we believed he did have. But what he did say was that he thought that Saddam had at least some chemical weapons, and wanted nuclear or biological weapons.
Only a completely irresponsible person would dismiss this and say "oh that doesn't mean anything". No, a reasonable person, adding this to all of the other evidence, would conclude that Saddam was hiding stockpiles of chemical and maybe biological weapons.
Posted by Tom at March 28, 2006 8:25 PM
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