The American Spectator

The Spectacle Blog

The lead editorial "Open the Iraq Files" in today's WSJ identifies Bill Tierney and his Saddam Tapes work as well as Steve Hayes of Weekly Standard and his work on DOCEX and HARMONY as two parts of the effort to learn the facts about Iraq's WMD and prewar connection to Al Qaeda and other terror cults.

Underline especially that the WSJ confirms that the DNI and his kindred of non-cooperation are no longer offering substantial reasons to withhold the documents and analysis. The DOD knows all this stuff but does not concern itself with unclassified material about past events. The DNI has all this stuff and now wants to replace the antique idea that "unclassified" means available with the newspeak idea that unclassified means "unavailable."

The intelligencesummit.org Saddam tapes (available for download in Arabic on the site) are evidence that points to the scale of the prewar denial and deception as practiced by Russia and France and others. They are also evidence that points to the scale of post-liberation denial and deception as practiced by DNI and other enities of the political apparatus.

More translations of the tapes are coming from several sources at least. The ABC Nightline work was inadequate and unconvincing with regard the WMD around the White House colloquy between Saddam and Tariq Aziz.

Bill Tierney reports to me on Monday the new information about the unlocated, unaccounted for warheads mentioned on the tapes.

topics:
Iraq, Russia