Congress Analyzing Saddam Voice Recordings
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is studying 12 hours of audio recordings between Saddam Hussein and his top advisers that may provide clues to the whereabouts of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
The committee has already confirmed through the intelligence community that the recordings of Saddam’s voice are authentic, according to its chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, who would not go into detail about the nature of the conversations or their context. They were provided to his committee by a former federal prosecutor, John Loftus, who says he received them from a former American military intelligence analyst.
Mr. Loftus will make the recordings available to the public on February 17 at the annual meeting of the Intelligence Summit, of which he is president. On the organization’s Web site, Mr. Loftus is quoted as promising that the recordings “will be able to provide a few definitive answers to some very important – and controversial – weapons of mass destruction questions.” Contacted yesterday by The New York Sun, Mr. Loftus would only say that he delivered a CD of the recordings to a representative of the committee, and the following week the committee announced that it was reopening the investigation into weapons of mass destruction.
It will be interesting to see what comes of this. What a lot of people forget in the WMD’s debate is that we know Iraq had WMD’s at one time. Where we were wrong is expecting to find them in Iraq after we invaded. They went somewhere. “Where” is the question that has yet to be answered.
Maybe this audio recording will provide a clue.
Though, as far as I’m concerned, the WMD’s debate isn’t really all that important any more outside of political finger-pointing. They were part of our basis for invading, but now that invasion is done. We’re in Iraq. Our primary focus needs to be on completing what is left of our mission there and bringing the troops home.
(via Stop The ACLU)
