New Evidence

It is rare that I get political on here. I agree with my friend Billy D. that arguments of politics and religion rarely solve anything. But, informed discussions based on fact could prove benifitial. That is why I'm showing you this story that my friend Mark (You can link to his blog on the right) e-mailed to me. Here is the story and a link so you can validate it's authenticity.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ibd/20060216/bs_ibd_ibd/2006215issues

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.
The tapes are held by John Loftus, a former U.S. prosecutor, who says they were given to him by a "former American military intelligence analyst." Loftus will officially reveal the tapes on Saturday, during the opening session of the Intelligence Summit, a private conference of former defense and intelligence officials from around the world. ABC News' "Nightline" scheduled a preview of the tapes for broadcast Wednesday night.
Loftus insists the tapes provide the "smoking gun" of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Meanwhile, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (news, bio, voting record), R-Mich., head of the House Intelligence Committee, said the tapes are authentic and show "Saddam had a fixation on weapons of mass destruction and he had a fixation on hiding what he was doing from the U.N. inspectors."
That's not surprising, since the recordings fit with what we already know: that Saddam had a program to make WMD and likely had some stockpiled -- though he also probably shipped them to Syria or Libya shortly before the March 6, 2003, U.S. attack.
That scenario has become clearer in recent days, as two former Iraqi military commanders have come forward to admit that, yes, Saddam had WMD and hid them.
Two weeks ago, we wrote here about Georges Sada, the former No. 2 in Saddam's air force who says Saddam moved his WMD to Syria six weeks before the U.S. invaded -- a claim bolstered by Western intelligence at the time.
Now Sada's claim has been confirmed by Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, a key commander of Saddam's Fedayeen militia and a close, hometown acquaintance of the former dictator, who says this was all part of Saddam's plan.
Ibrahim told Worldthreats.com: "What we are witnessing now is many who opposed the war to begin with are rallying around Saddam saying, 'We overthrew a sovereign leader based on a lie about WMD.' This is exactly what Saddam wanted and predicted."
Yes, it worked. Americans have heard repeatedly that "Bush lied" about WMD in Iraq to justify war. War critics agree that Saddam once had WMD, but they contend he destroyed them when sanctions were imposed after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
In fact, inspectors did find WMD -- 53 of them, to be exact, according to the Duelfer Report, the CIA's 1,500-page account of its intelligence mistakes in Iraq. And that report concluded: "We have clear evidence of his intent to resume WMD production as soon as (U.N.) sanctions were lifted."
U.N. arms inspector David Kay's report found much the same thing: "We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the (U.N.) during the inspections that began in late 2002."
It'll be interesting to hear what's on Loftus' tapes. They may indeed be a "smoking gun." If so, the case that so many have made against the war for so long will have been blown out of the water.

I missed the "Nightline" show, but I'm sure that once these tapes are released we'll hear even more about this... provided the liberal news media lets it out.

P.S. Yes, those were the actual pictures used in the article. I had NO fun what-so-ever finding those to include on this post. (You can click on each one to see it's full size!)