Sada, the tapes, and WMD

Saddam Had WMD
The first 12 hours of the tapes -- there are hundreds more waiting to be translated -- are damning, to say the least. They show conclusively that Bush didn't lie when he cited Saddam's WMD plans as one of the big reasons for taking the dictator out.

Nobody disputes the tapes' authenticity. On them, Saddam talks openly of programs involving biological, chemical and, yes, nuclear weapons.

Gunsmoke On ABC
WMD: Did Saddam Hussein possess weapons of mass destruction? We've always thought so. But proof positive may soon be forthcoming if secret tapes of the Iraqi dictator turn out to be real.

The tapes in question, 12 hours in all, represent recordings of Saddam Hussein discussing the possibility of a terrorist attack on Washington, D.C., and the use of WMD.

To Tell The Truth
It's now a matter of record that virtually every major Western intelligence service and the U.N. thought Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction. It's also clear that he did in fact have them -- since he used chemical weapons against his own people in a well-documented attack on the city of Halabja in the late '80s.

There's also a growing body of evidence Saddam held on to those weapons, hiding them until he was able to get them out of the country, probably to neighboring Syria.

Iraq's WMD Secreted in Syria, Sada Says
The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.

The flights - 56 in total, Mr. Sada said - attracted little notice because they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in June of 2002.

Mr. Sada said that the Iraqi official responsible for transferring the weapons was a cousin of Saddam Hussein named Ali Hussein al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali." The Syrian official responsible for receiving them was a cousin of Bashar Assad who is known variously as General Abu Ali, Abu Himma, or Zulhimawe.