WMD or Not?

It seems that the debate continues ... much to the dismay of anti-war left wingers. The Saddam video tapes (only 12 hrs. / 100 hrs. so far) show Saddam chatting about WMD and blowinig up D.C. in the mid to late 90's. And how Iraq had duped the inspectors. Hmmmmm. Is it conclusive evidence? No.
There are a couple other sources this week that claim Saddam had WMD when we invaded. A Syrian defector claims to know where they are, and a book is being published that claims knowledge of WMD in Iraq in 2002. They are a bit late it seems to me, but worth taking a look none the less. And these tapes are from years before our invasion ... but years AFTER the U.N. claimed the program was done and there were no WMD!!
Here's a quote about the tapes ....

War foes have long asserted that Saddam halted his WMD programs in the wake of his defeat in the first Gulf War in 1991. Saddam's abandonment of WMD programs was confirmed by subsequent U.N. inspections.

Again, not true. In a tape dating to April 1995, Saddam and several aides discuss the fact that U.N. inspectors had found traces of Iraq's biological weapons program. On the tape, Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law, is heard gloating about fooling the inspectors.

"We did not reveal all that we have," he says. "Not the type of weapons, not the volume of the materials we imported, not the volume of the production we told them about, not the volume of use. None of this was correct."

There's more. Indeed, as late as 2000, Saddam can be heard in his office talking with Iraqi scientists about his ongoing plans to build a nuclear device. At one point, he discusses Iraq's plasma uranium program — something that was missed entirely by U.N. weapons inspectors combing Iraq for WMD.

This is particularly troubling, since it indicates an active, ongoing attempt by Saddam to build an Iraqi nuclear bomb.

"What was most disturbing," said John Tierney, the ex- FBI agent who translated the tapes, "was the fact that the individuals briefing Saddam were totally unknown to the U.N. Special Commission (or UNSCOM, the group set up to look into Iraq's WMD programs)."

Perhaps most chillingly, the tapes record Iraq Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz talking about how easy it would be to set off a WMD in Washington. The comments come shortly after Saddam muses about using "proxies" in a terror attack.