Y

esterday, upon the stair
I saw some WMD's that were not there
They were not there again today
I wish the heck they'd go away

About two weeks ago, just after returning from Aceh, I came across an article about one of Saddam's former officers who had been doing some interviews to talk about his new book. The man, General Georges Sada, and his book, "Saddam's Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussein," didn't seem to get much attention from the oldstream media, preoccupied as it was with toon jihad and the "domestic" wiretapping of terrorist communications. Gen. Sada had claimed, among other startling revelations, that in June 2002 Saddam had airlifted his WMD materials to Syria in a series of some 56 sorties by converted passenger aircraft, under the guise of "humanitarian assistance" related to a broken Syrian dam. Shortly afterwards, US congressional committees charged with investigating the Iraqi WMD issue quietly took it out of the "case closed" file, and put it back in the "to do" box.

Here is an interview with Gen. Sada, along with three video recordings (wai Wires from the bunker). This former Iraqi General also defied Saddam's order to execute 23 captured US pilots during the first Gulf War, according to one of the pilots involved. Now another former Iraqi official has confirmed Gen. Sada's revelations that Saddam's WMD's went to Syria. Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti was a commander of Fedayeen Saddam before defecting from Iraq just prior to the first Gulf War. Ryan Mauro has an interview with Ali Ibrahim (who is not "Chemical Ali" as some have mistakenly claimed) on his World Threats website (wai The American Thinker).

I wouldn't normally expect the lamestream media to give any more attention to the revelations of a former Fedayeen commander than it did for those of one of Saddam's senior generals -- after all, there are important "Duck" Cheney jokes to get out to the public. Yet it may prove impossible for them to stick with their priorities this week. Friday sees the opening of the Intelligence Summit Conference in Arlington, VA. The conference has been highly anticipated since it was revealed that some Secret Audio Tapes of Saddam's Mass Deception would be made public on the occasion. These tape recordings of Hussein in meetings with his gang of thugs, are reported to back up the allegations of the above mentioned former Saddamist officers that he did, in fact, have the notorious disappearing WMD's.

Maybe now when all this finally gets properly aired, I won't have to listen to the default fall-back position of those afflicted with BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) when they get backed into a corner -- "Oh yeah, so where are the WMD's then, smart guy?" But I wouldn't necessarily bet on it.

A summary of what is expected from the conference may be read on the The Intelligence Summit Blog. Apparently ABC News has acquired some of the tapes, and had plans to launch a pre-emptive publication on Nightline. The Intelligence Summit News page has a good list of terrorism-related stories and video links, and I see now that they do have a clip from last night's Nightline program. Nightline also has some background and transcript material here.