February 18, 2006
Saddam, Unplugged: A WMD Intel Expert Speaks
The selection below is from an email sent yesterday by a former soldier and defense analyst I've had the good fortune to work with on several stories in the past. These were his reflections on a recent television interview about the recently released "Saddam tapes."
Background here, here, and of course, here.
Last night, Bill Tierney was on Hannity and Colmes talking about the Saddam Tapes. I was fascinated as Bill Tierney defended the information he claims to be present on the tapes. How eerily familiar he looked. I realized it was like a mirror for me.I saw in him the frustration of knowing that the most significant reasons that President Bush led this nation to war against Iraq were legitimate reasons, yet the “conventional wisdom” is that we were at best wrong, and at worst criminal in that endeavor.
It looks to me to be the frustration of the vanquished, believing something to be true which was confirmed by your every sense, yet history being re-written round you as all that you believed and know is erased as flawed intelligence. This was obvious to me when he blew up at Alan Colmes telling him he wouldn't let Alan silence him on this issue, showing that Bill, like me is very tired of having to remain silent as idiots who have no first hand experience to the subject constantly define and redefine the issue.
Yes I recognize his frustration and for that reason I lend his words great credence on this matter. I get you Bill. Bill “knows”.
He made one bad mistake. He brought his evidence to what would seem to be the P.T. Barnum of our age, John Loftus. More and more it appears this intelligence summit is crumbling. It was a mistake for Mr. Tierney to choose the Loftus intelligence summit to be the vehicle of disclosure. It was a mistake for Mr. Tierney to allow John Loftus to take the tapes to ABC news for translation and reporting, a huge mistake.
Today, Mr. Tierney is reporting that the tapes were mistranslated and misreported by ABC news. I find this very believable from my experience working with translators with the Iraqi Survey Group.
How many people did ABC news have translate the material they had? With ISG, it was common practice to have important items reviewed by at least 2 linguists. Usually this was done by a cleared linguist as a reviewer, usually an Arab American with a security clearance. What provisions did ABC take to make sure that what it reported was accurate?
Often time's nuances are lost on a transcript, such as sarcasm. As soon as I heard the tapes I got what Saddam was saying. According to the ABC news transcript, Saddam said “This is coming, this story is coming but not from Iraq.” For anyone who has studied Saddam, you get the feeling that what he is really saying is “of course this is our objective, but we are getting our story straight here and now because we have told the world that we have no WMDs and this can never be traced back to us.”
Having worked with ISG in the audio and visual department, I was privy to the exact type of information that Tierney has released. The CD he has copied probably came from me or a coworker in my shop. I can not explain the level of frustration that I have had to live with for over a year now.
The Duelfer report was supposed to tell the story. It didn't, not completely. It is a fine start, but missing key evidence to form conclusions. What Mr. Tierney has in the form of those tapes has nothing to do with the credibility of Mr. Loftus. What is on those tapes has nothing to do with one translator for ABC news.
For these reasons I urge Mr. Tierney to immediately make the full tapes available to Fox News and disconnect himself from Mr. Loftus. I urge him to go on Hannity and Colmes tonight and show all his cards before no one is paying attention anymore. Wait and see until the full tapes are released and analyzed. Don't give up ground on the creditability of those tapes based on John Loftus. I watched Bill Tierney last night and he “knows”.
About the Author
Ray Robison is a Sr. Military Operations Research Analyst with a defense
contractor at the Aviation and Missile, Research, Development, Engineering
Command in Huntsville Alabama. His background includes over ten years of
military service as an officer and enlisted soldier including the Gulf War
and Kosovo operations. Most recently he worked as a contractor for DIA with
the Iraqi Survey Group. He holds a B.S. degree in Biology, Pre-med from the
University of Tampa and is a graduate of the Combined Arms and Services
Staff School.
Full tapes are available now on their website:
http://www.intelligencesummit.org
Scroll down to see them
Posted by: Richard1 at February 18, 2006 03:44 PMThese tapes prove that Saddam was developing chemical weapons. If they were more widely distributed, the librul MSM myth that "there were no WMD" would be thoroughly debunked once and for all. It's a shame they're not getting wider distribution.
Posted by: Leonidas at February 19, 2006 11:02 PMI can sympathize with your desire to see this story play-out, but before you promote it, are you aware that:
- William Tierney, the former UN weapons inspector who translated and released these tapes (after stealing them from the FBI) has claimed that the location of Saddam's WMDs were revealed to him by God and confirmed by a friend's clairvoyant dreams?
- Tierney previously reported his findings of WMDs in 2003 on a talk-radio show devoted to paranormal phenomena?
- Tierney also has presented "proof" of Iraq's involvement in the 1993 WTC bombings AND the Oklahoma City bombing (for which American Timothy McVeigh was executed.)
- The organizer of the "Intelligence Summit" where the tapes were presented, former federal prosecutor John Loftus, has written books about the Bush family's wealth stemming from their support of Hitler during WWII, Al Qaeda's connection to the Enron collapse and other wild conspiracy theories? He has also claimed that a federal investigation into the Enron-Al Qaeda connection was blocked by Dick Cheney who, he claims, is in cahoots with Al Qaeda.
- The sole sponsor of the "Intelligence Summit", Michael Cherney, is an Israeli citizen who has been denied a visa to enter the U.S. due to his ties to the Russian mafia. And a key element of the story is how the WMDs were smuggled out with the aid of his nemesis - the Russian government.
- The congressional committee that is now investigating these tapes has called into question the translation done by Tierney and is having them re-translated.
- Many of Saddam's former officers have admitted to lying to him about their WMD capabilities in order to win favor. So even if the tapes do contain discussions of WMDs, such tapes have previously been dismissed.
If these tapes were real, no one could use them more than the Bush administration. But if I were you, I would follow their lead and distance yourself from them.
Mr. Braseth,
I apperciate your concern, but if you read this post again, my source (Ray Robinson) is independant of William "God is my weapons inspector" Tierney, and is a member of the Iraq Survey Group who handled some of these document and sources personally. I've worked with him in the past, and has never proven to be unreliable.
If he says that these or other similar evidence collected bears further scrutiny, I'll trust his professional, objective judgement.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at March 1, 2006 12:04 AM
