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AP in Saddam Tape WMD Flip-flop?
The Associated Press is now reporting that tape recordings of Saddam Hussein chairing his Revolutionary Command Council show that the Iraqi dictator was telling the truth all along when he claimed that he had no weapons of mass destruction. But only last month the wire service reported that other recordings show a top Saddam aide boasting about how he concealed Iraq's WMD's from U.N. weapons inspectors. In its latest version of the Saddam tapes, the AP claims: "Exasperated, besieged by global pressure, Saddam Hussein and top aides searched for ways in the 1990s to prove to the world they'd given up banned weapons.
Story Continues Below "'We don't have anything hidden!' the frustrated Iraqi president interjected at one meeting, transcripts show. "At another, in 1996, Saddam wondered whether U.N. inspectors would 'roam Iraq for 50 years' in a pointless hunt for weapons of mass destruction. 'When is this going to end?' he asked." However, Saddam didn't sound nearly so exasperated in another meeting taped the year before, as his son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, explained how he'd hidden Iraq's WMD stockpiles from inspectors. In quotes reported by the AP on Feb. 16, Kamel told the Iraqi dictator: "We did not reveal all that we have. We did not reveal the volume of chemical weapons we had produced." Kamel boasted that he had managed to conceal "the type of weapons, [and] the volume of the materials we imported." In other comments not covered by the AP, Saddam's son-in-law went on to note: "None of [the information we gave the U.N.] was correct. They don't know any of this." As translators continue to pore over more of the 500 hours of tapes ordered released by President Bush last week, the outlines of Saddam's deception become even more clear. In one recently released snippet, the Iraqi president orders his advisors to prepare for what sounds like an upcoming weapons inspection: "We want to make them fail at the last minute, squeeze them to the end. We have to create situations where the Special Commission will go search for one time, the Special Commission, not the team that is coming. Now at the same time I want two inspections to be simultaneously conducted; one for the things that we are going to ignore in the special locations the Special Commission will search only once." Comments like that don't exactly jibe with the AP's latest claim that an innocent Saddam was doing everything he could to prove he'd given up his WMDs. Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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