Cap Weinberger: A Reassessment

Roger Ailes is a sensitive blog, and maybe it's been too hard on ol' Cappy Weinberger. After all, if he says that Saddam Hussein had "huge deposits" of WMDs, well, who would know better?

Regnery author and prolific wingnut Kenneth R. Timmerman lays out his case for Weinberger's knowledge of Saddam's arsenal:

Mr. Weinberger's ire over Pollard also had personal overtones. It was Mr. Weinberger who was the strongest promoter within the Reagan administration of the intelligence exchange between America and Iraq, which began as early as 1983, when the State Department removed Iraq from the list of terrorist nations. Besides providing the Israelis with satellite photographs of Iraqi weapons sites, Pollard says he also gave them evidence of the transfer to Iraq of U.S.-manufactured weapons -- a leak that made Mr. Weinberger furious, since he was the official who would have had to approve such a covert transfer.

Clearly, significant damage to national security was caused by the Reagan-era intelligence cooperation with Iraq. Western technology went toward improving Iraq's SCUD-B missiles that helped kill American soldiers and Israeli citizens during the war. U.S. intelligence techniques helped the Iraqis preserve strategic capabilities from Allied air strikes -- and perhaps also from United Nations inspectors, who continue to accuse Iraq of hiding stockpiles of biological agents and chemical weapons production equipment.

Could that explain why Weinberger's so interested in finding Saddam's remains?

Of course, you don't have to believe a wingnut to acknowledge the Reagan Administration's willingness to do business with Saddam, up close and personal. If anyone would know what weapons Saddam had, it would be Saddam's generous buds in the Reagan Administration.