Informed Speculation

CNN (whose website is leaps and bounds better than their TV coverage) has a pretty even-handed look at the Saddam Tapes up (if anything, they let the somewhat dubious promoters of the information off the hook too easily). The consensus from most of the establishment seems to be: interesting, but not materially relevent to 2003. A sample of reaction:

A U.S. official said the tapes “do not change the story” on Saddam’s weapons programs in any substantive way.

“We already knew he had them in the early ’90s and wanted to get them again after he lost them but was not able to,” the official said.

A spokeswoman for Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte said the tapes were “fascinating,” but they “do not reveal anything that changes their postwar analysis of Iraq’s weapons programs, nor do they change the findings contained in the comprehensive Iraq Survey Group report.”

The Survey Group report, written by Charles Duelfer and published in October 2004, concluded that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded in March of 2003, but the regime intended to resume its WMD programs once U.N. sanctions were lifted.

Of the tapes, Duelfer said, “The tapes tend to reinforce, confirm, and to a certain extent, provide a bit more detail, the conclusions which we brought out in the report.”