(AP) Aide: Saddam Did Get Rid of Iraq WMD -No imminent threat?

<snip>
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A close aide to Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) says the Iraqi dictator did in fact get rid of his weapons of mass destruction but deliberately kept the world guessing about it in an effort to divide the international community and stave off a U.S. invasion.

<snip>

According to the aide, by the mid-1990s "it was common knowledge among the leadership" that Iraq had destroyed its chemical stocks and discontinued development of biological and nuclear weapons.

<snip>

Both Pentagon officials and weapons experts are considering this guessing-game theory as the search for chemical,biological and nuclear weapons continues. If true, it would indicate there was no imminent unconventional weapons threat from Iraq , an argument President Bush used to go to war.

<snip>

Iraqi scientists, including those currently held by the U.S. military, have maintained that no new unconventional weapons programs were started in recent years and that all the materials from previous programs were destroyed.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030802/ap_on_re_mi_ea/saddam_s_bluff

and for his efforts, when he was enticed back to Iraq, he was executed.

http://www.middleeastreference.org.uk/kamel.html

Here it is. It is so forgotten these days.

SNIP:.."Despite the significance of these claims, it was not known that Kamel made this assertion until February 2003. Kamel's claim was first carried on 24 February 2003 by Newsweek, who reported that Kamel told U.N. inspectors that Iraq had destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles, as Iraq claims (Newsweek, 3/3/03). Newsweek reported that the weapons were destroyed secretly, in order to hide their existence from inspectors, in the hopes of someday resuming production after inspections had finished. The CIA and MI6 were told the same story, Newsweek reported.

However, these facts were "hushed up by the U.N. inspectors" in order to "bluff Saddam into disclosing still more", according to Newsweek.

CIA spokesman Bill Harlow angrily denied the Newsweek report. "It is incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue," Harlow told Reuters the day the report appeared (Reuters, 24 February 2003).

On Wednesday (26 February 2003), a complete copy of the Kamel transcript -- an internal UNSCOM/IAEA document stamped "sensitive" -- was obtained by Glen Rangwala....."

:kick:

Eloriel

God only knows what that lying son of a bitch is up to but I feel we're being set up. No proof, just gut feeling.