The WMD Program And NightlineLorie Byrd has an
excellent post over at Polipundit on this.
Update 4:25: I just watched the video (actually I could only get the audio) from the ABC site. The following is my interpretation (paraphrasing) of what was said. Please hear it for yourself.
In the beginning of the tape, Saddam says terrorist attacks are coming to the US but they won’t be from Iraq. Tariq Aziz then tells him that it would not be hard to set off a nuclear, chemical or bio weapon in Washington, but that it was not necessary for a state to do it. There is then some discussion to the effect that anyone could easily do such a thing and it could be argued, says ABC’s Ross, that this could be interpreted as Saddam saying he fears Iraq would be blamed for such an attack. The second part of the tape includes discussion about how quickly Iraq could reconstitute their WMD capability. Duelfer was interviewed for the piece and he said it does not prove that Iraq had WMD, but it shows that Saddam was a master of deception with the intention of acquiring and using WMD. The ABC story linked above gives many quotes from the piece. It is quite interesting.Rick Moran urges
some caution:
Another aspect of this story that should give us pause is that the tapes come to us via a man named John Loftus. Loftus is known as something of a gadfly in intelligence circles and his book about the Nazi connection to the Vatican and American intelligence has been criticized for sloppy research. That said, Loftus really has nothing to gain from trying to perpetrate a fraud and the House Intelligence Committee felt them important enough to verify and examine.Indeed, I did some Googling of Loftus and found some interesting stuff. For example
he wrote an article claiming that the Bush family fortune came from their supposed connections with the Nazis. I have read the article and several like it and can get no clear idea of what Prescott Bush is supposed to have done for the Thyssens, and what he received out of it.
Now you know how that is; it certainly indicates he's unlikely to be shilling for the administration; on the other it marks him as something of a kook.
