The Tipping Point of Truth
By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 27, 2006

Despite the terrible attacks of September 11, 2001 leftists here and in Europe almost immediately turned on America as a villain and opposed subsequent military responses to Islamofascist terrorism. They used guilt (“why do they hate us?”), foreign policy (“support for the occupiers of Palestine”), and anti-capitalism (“no blood for oil”) to excuse the terrorists and validate their motivation.

Perversely, these same people ginned up a new blame-George W. Bush campaign building on their irreconcilable hatred from a close, hotly-contested 2000 election that they refuse to concede to this day. Themes of “Bush lied” along with “no WMD” and “no al Qaeda-Iraq” ties were useful in undermining the war effort and smearing the president and his administration.

Many editorialists, columnists, and talking heads in the media, backed by like-minded management and production staff, picked up these themes and ran with them. Consequently even people who know better seem willing to concede the left’s foreign policy talking points. But how much longer will this travesty persist in the face of overwhelming counter-evidence?

Reams of documents – ultimately numbering in the millions of pages by the time CDs, hard drives, and computer memories are downloaded and printed – are slowly beginning to be translated and released for analysis. These documents – though only 2% or so are translated and available – substantiate without doubt the following allegations: Saddam Hussein and bin Laden, the Baathist regime and al Qaeda had extensive, wide reaching ties. Saddam was, at a minimum, a supporter of the 911 attacks if not a sponsor of them. Saddam’s intelligence services trained more than 8,000 al Qaeda terrorists, primarily from Somalia and Sudan, at camps such as Salman Pak and Ansar al-Islam within Iraq. And Saddam helped finance al Qaeda and similar terrorist groups.

Further, the documents substantiate a broad, on-going program Iraq had to develop nuclear weapons. Indeed, Saddam had instructed his minions to begin preparing to re-energize the program after UN sanctions were lifted, a hope he had reinforced by French, Russian, and German diplomats, and traitors like British Parliamentarian George Galloway, all of whom convinced him that delay and obfuscation of the UN would get him off the hook.

We also know, thanks to the work of former Iraqi Air Force General Georges Sada, that Saddam had several civilian aircraft – one Boeing 747 and a “group” of 727s - stripped of passenger equipment and converted into cargo planes. The aircraft flew 56 sorties between Iraq and Syria, delivering drums of the chemical weapon Sarin along with other chemical and biological weapons. The deal with concocted on Saddam’s orders by “Chemical Ali” his general in charge of special weapons, and Bashar Assad’s cousin, General Abu Ali. It was a rare occasion for cooperation between the rival Baathist states, but as Sada notes, “there was complete agreement between them.”

In addition to the air sorties an uncounted amount of WMD were transported to Syria by commercial trucks – familiar 18-wheelers – and other civilian vehicles, including ambulances. “Saddam was convinced,” according to Sada, “that commercial trucks could pass right through security checkpoints…and they did.” American CIA overhead assets – spy satellites – were on the lookout for military trucks and ignored “routine” commercial traffic.

General Sada is not a lone voice in this matter. The Mossad, Israeli intelligence service, has long claimed that the weapons were transferred out of Iraq. American generals Paul Vallely and Thomas McInnerny noted in their 2004 book, Endgame, that extensive stockpiles of WMD were hidden in three locations within Syria and in the Syrian-controlled terrorist camps of the Bekka Valley in Lebanon. Included in the stocks were nerve agents like Tabun, Sarin 1, and Sarin 2. They did not remain hidden for long.

Up to 20 tons of these chemical agents were intended for use by al Qaeda terrorists in attacking three targets in Amman, Jordan in 2004 – the Jordanian Ministry of Defense and Intelligence Service buildings, and the American Embassy. These were to be simultaneous truck bomb attacks that were thwarted by good counter-intelligence work. The trucks were large 15-ton capacity powerful vehicles that could power through barriers and obstacles to crash into the buildings. At that time the homicide drivers would detonate the ammonium nitrate load triggered by plastic explosives – probably C-4. Resting atop the explosive load were Saddam’s chemicals, sufficient to kill upwards to 100,000 people in downtown Amman, by conservative.

Supporting these allegations are details from post-war weapons inspectors Kay and Duelfer Reports that speak extensively to plans for continuing special weapons programs that they uncovered along with scientists who testified that they were told to memorize their research and destroy documents with the intention of reconstituting their nuclear programs “after the crisis passed.” Shockingly, the mainstream media has intentionally overlooked these data, preferring to advance its own agenda.

What is stunning is that intelligence officials in the Bush Administration has been so circumspect about releasing this information and that the president and his Cabinet members seem reluctant to discuss it publicly. After all, don’t these revelations fully vindicate the decision to liberate Iraq? One plausible reason for such counterintuitive behavior is that the entrenched bureaucratic intelligence agencies, particularly in CIA and State Department, so staked their reputations on their flawed analysis of both the WMD issue and the Iraq-al Qaeda ties (the “secular” Baathists would never work with the religious fanatics) that they refuse to admit error.

Another serious consideration is that mid- and high-level professionals in both organizations are highly partisan. Most lean strongly leftward. They openly oppose the president (walk through the State corridors and look at the anti-Bush cartoons, many quite virulent, pinned on office doors) and consciously disregard policy directives in favor of business as usual – they way they want to conduct it. This aberrant behavior has been characteristic of both organizations for decades and persists.

This combination of recalcitrance and embarrassment stifles administration counteroffensives to the mass denial that characterizes reporting from Iraq. Unable to get “clearance” at the staff levels, high level officials are reluctant to trumpet these revelations knowing full well that calculated “leaks” by career anti-Bush bureaucrats to friendly media will torpedo their efforts. Thus it has been left to the alternative media to assume expose the truth and the motivations of those so willing to suppress it for career or political reasons.

Talented individuals like author/analyst Laura Mansfield and former UNSCOM weapons inspector Bill Tierney have taken on the task to translate and release some of the avalanche of captured Iraqi documents grudgingly let go by the Director of National Intelligence, and under pressure from Congress. These brave citizens are being fought every step of the way. Next watch for personal attack and slander, the last resort tools the left employs when it want to avoid fact.

When will honest journalists in the print and TV media – there must be some out there –bow under the weight of this mounting evidence and concede their errors? We have passed the tipping point in the weight of evidence that vindicates the allegations of al Qaeda ties, WMD, and hostile intentions. Continued denial of the truth is unacceptable.

Ellie