Intelligence Summit, Part IV - WMD to Syria With Russia's Help

Two important items from the Intelligence Summit. (New readers might want to catch up on previous reports here, here and here).

First is a piece on WorldNetDaily by conference presenter Rachel Ehrenfeld. Don't let the title of the piece ('Embarrassing questions for Bush') or its opening paragraphs fool you. Ehrenfeld (author of "Funding Evil; How Terrorism is Financed – and How to Stop It," director of the American Center for Democracy and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger) documents what was all the buzz in the opening hours of the IIS: the conspicuous absence of significant numbers of pre-registered (i.e., pre-paid... i.e., your tax dollars at work) members of the intelligence community and other government agencies.

Ten days before the conference was scheduled to begin, the organizers announced that tapes of Saddam Hussein's cabinet meetings discussing Iraq's WMD and nuclear weapons would be released at the conference. Immediately thereafter, the listed participants begin to receive telephone calls, e-mails, faxes and even telegrams from anonymous "friends" in several U.S. government agencies, strongly advising them against attending.

Considering the timing of this substantial effort, the real reason for this intimidation campaign seemed to be the new information in 12 hours of recorded discussions from Saddam Hussein's cabinet meetings between 1992 – 2000 about concealing Iraq's WMD weapons programs from U.N. inspectors... [that] would have forced the intelligence community to admit that they misled President George W. Bush to state that Iraq had no WMD. Such admission, apparently, was something the intelligence community wanted to avoid by attempting to discredit this conference. [emphasis added]

This theory would be consistent with remarks Richard Perle offered at the conference that we blogged earlier this week:

Perle went on to talk about how the CIA has been openly "at war" with the Bush administration since the latter's election to office... The true nature of militant Islam he said, is very poorly understood at the CIA, an agency deeply flawed he opined, by "an appalling lack of knowledge" and that "doesn't understand the big picture": about the Koran, about Arabic language, about the goals of our enemies, about what's at stake and about what sources we should be relying upon in the region. [emphasis added]

This internal strife theory has merit (government divided against itself), but it doesn't take us all the way to what Ehrenfeld observes - a full-court-press to have no intelligence community presence there implicitly 'blessing' what was said. Which is where our second item comes in...

This interview in FrontPage Magazine with another IIS conference presenter, Ryan Mauro (H/T: Anchoress) is a must read. Mauro is a super-smart teenage geopolitical analyst for Tactical Defense Concepts, author of 'Death to America: The Unreported Battle of Iraq', founder of WorldThreats.com and a host of other credentials. Yes, Mauro was born late in Reagan's second term. Oh that makes us feel old.

My book was the first to make the claim that Russia was involved in moving Iraq's WMDs to Syria. After all the nay saying and criticizing I received for it, testimony at the Summit confirmed that this was true.

The evidence Mauro lays out in the interview is detailed, compelling and integrated: go read it. He makes reference to former Iraqi General Georges Sada (who we blogged about earlier this week) as one of several sources adding depth to the picture of how weapons were removed. The 'testimony' Mauro refers to includes not only the so-called 'Saddam Tapes' that former UN weapons inspector Bill Tierney presented at the conference (really just the tip of a large iceberg of as yet untranslated material) but also a talk by John A. (Jack) Shaw that we attended. Shaw was the Pentagon's Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for International Security. A quick Google confirms that Shaw has been the target of a smear campaign - the substance of which (if there's any substance at all) would have no bearing whatsoever on what he said at the IIS.

Our sketchy notes are confirmed and improved by this direct quote from Shaw's conference presentation, as picked up by NewsMax:

"The short answer to the question of where the WMD Saddam bought from the Russians went was that they went to Syria and Lebanon. They were moved by Russian Spetsnaz (special forces) units out of uniform, that were specifically sent to Iraq to move the weaponry and eradicate any evidence of its existence."

The only scenario we can imagine under which the Bush administration itself would be wanting to take focus off of the Saddam tapes would be one in which they knew that deeper investigation would lead to a critical mass of credibility behind the theory of Russian involvement in moving them to Syria.

And since it's absolutely critical - in the short term at least - that the U.S. not embarrass the Russians (so the thinking may go... i.e., in order to preserve any last-ditch hope of a non-military solution on Iran) then desiring to brush years-old Iraqi WMD movements under the rug would make sense (and here's the kicker) even if it was politically disadvantageous domestically. That is, the Bush administration would be doing the right thing by trying to take all possible steps to avoid a potentially apocalyptic and unpredictable military confrontation with Iran and taking political heat from both left and right to do so. Leadership.

That said, such a set of diplomatic trade-offs doesn't deal with the fact that WMD are very likely in Syria right now, under the control of a despot. Syria is a close Iranian ally on the Israeli border. And as we noted in January, Syria may also be acting as safe deposit box for Iranian weapons. Why? Again: Israel. Why bother with long range missiles when your friend lives next door and can just lob 'em over the border with a commercial airliner?

Net/net part I: Watch Syria.

Net/net part II: We do not believe Russia is an ally in any of this. They are playing us for fools, using Iran and Syria (and previously, Iraq) as pawns. Why? Their short-term objectives are remarkably similar to those of the Islamofascists even if their longer-term vision (global kleptocracy) is not. Those short-term objectives: the castration of the liberal, open, capitalist West and the annihilation of Israel.

Mr. Gorbachev may have "torn down [the] wall" when Reagan said "I call 'em!" He did not tear down the firmly held belief system of one power-hungry KGB man: Vladimir Putin.

UPDATE I: The Wall Street Journal's editors address the same topic today ('Open the Iraq Files: American spooks don't want to release Saddam's secrets') free at OpinionJournal.

...if it hadn't been for the initiative of one Bill Tierney, we wouldn't know that Saddam Hussein had a habit of tape-recording meetings with top aides. The former U.N. weapons inspector and experienced Arabic translator recently went public with 12 hours (out of a reported total of 3,000) of recordings in which we hear Saddam discuss with the likes of Tariq Aziz the process of deceiving U.N. weapons inspectors and his view that Iraq's conflict with the U.S. didn't end with the first Gulf War.

In one particularly chilling passage, the dictator discusses the threat of WMD terrorism to the United States and the difficulty anyone would have tracing it back to a state. With the 2001 anthrax attacks still unsolved, that strikes us as bigger news than the DNI or most editors apparently considered it...

But these tantalizing tidbits represent only a fraction of what's in U.S. possession. We hear still other documents expand significantly on our knowledge of Saddam's WMD ambitions (including more on the Niger-uranium connection) and his support for terrorism, right down to lists of potential targets in the U.S. and Europe...

The intelligence community has a point that some caution must be exercised. For example, the senior intelligence official pointed out, some documents describe in detail rapes and other abuses committed by Saddam's regime--details that could still haunt living victims...

...[but] our alarm bells really rang when the intelligence official added another category of information that's never slated to see the light of day: "We cannot release wholesale material that we can reasonably foresee will damage the national interest." Well, what exactly does that mean and who makes the call? The answer, apparently, is unaccountable analysts following State Department guidelines.

But consider just one hypothetical: Is it in the "national interest" to reveal documents if they show that Jacques Chirac played a more substantial role in encouraging Saddam's intransigence than is already known? No doubt some Foggy Bottom types would say no.

H/T: Rocketsbrain.

UPDATE II: Fausta at the blog formerly known as 'Bad Hair' follows a similar line.

A week doesn't go by without someone telling me that Saddam had no real power and posed no real threat. Of course, people who read only the NYT are more likely to believe that, but selective amnesia also helps (any talk of Saddam's crimes is dismissed as "happening before the Gulf War") It might help if the NYT would disseminate information already available, such as was presented at the Intelligence Summit...

It's starting to look like our presence at the IIS and conversation there with Bill Tierney were fortuitous indeed. Could a blog swarm be starting to brew? Fausta also notes more startling revelations from Georges Sada in this interview with by Larry Elder over at Townhall.com:

Sada: Iraq possessed WMD and they were there, and they were chemical and biological, and nuclear weapons. [Saddam] have also deals with China... to have the atom bomb to be done in China, and he would only pay the money, and he did for $100 million, and $5 million were paid for down payment. I know the bank, I know the branch, and I know the accountant who did it.

Elder: What happened to the chemical and biological weapons?

Sada: The chemical and biological weapons were available in Iraq before liberating the country, but Saddam Hussein took the advantage of a natural disaster that happened in Syria when a dam was collapsed and many villages were flooded. So Saddam Hussein took that cover and declared to the world that he is going to use the civilian aircraft for an air bridge to help Syria with blankets, food and fuel oil, and other humanitarian things, but that was not true. The truth is he converted two regular passenger civilian aircraft, 747 Jumbo and 727... all the weapons of mass destruction were put there by the special Republican Guards in a very secret way, and they were transported to Syria, to Damascus, by flying 56 flights to Damascus... In addition... also a truck convoy on the ground to take whatever has to do with WMD to Syria.

So which sounds more credible? Did Saddam send humanitarian relief to Syria? Or as Sada says, he did he use it cynically as cover to move WMD? Hmm... let me ponder that... for a microsecond. The China bit certainly adds an interesting though hardly surprising wrinkle. Why build when you can buy off the shelf? Which raises the question: if China took a deposit from Saddam for building nukes there, why would they not be inclined to do the same for Iran now? Credit the lefties with one thing: wars are sometimes fought for oil. It's just that we didn't invent that motivation.

UPDATE III: Tom Barnett appears to disagree with our assessment of Putin.

...you can’t help but see South Korea or Japan for decades in the past, or Singapore and China today. Hell, if Putin took over Halliburton you might see some uncomfortable similarities to the U.S.! ...Is Russia in the Core? I gotta admit, this op-ed really opened my eyes to the argument that Putin will end up being exactly what Russia needed in this historical timeframe.