Overheard on KDKA - Fred's at it again

Yesterday, I was listening (as I sometimes do) to Fred Honsberger and I heard him, yet again, use the "Georges Sada defense" in another bleak attempt to prop up dubya's decision to take this country to war.

A caller tried to point out the non-existence of Saddam's WMD as evidence of dubya's dishonesty and Fred dutifully snapped to attention with the above mentioned "Georges Sada."

Here's what he said (it's a paraphrase, I was taking notes):

We have Georges Sada. He was Saddam Hussein's Airforce General and he said
the WMD was flown into Syria before the war."

All of that, of course, is absolutely true. Georges Sada was a 2-star general in the Iraqi Air Force and he did say that the WMD were flown to Syria before the war. The stuff that Fred's leaving out (and this is stuff he should know about) shows how much spin is necessary in order to push this tired old excuse of a story.

Let's look at Sada's history. True he was a 2-star general in the Iraqi Air Force, but is he one now? According to Fred Nile, President of the Christian Democrati Party in Australia:

Sada was ordered to join Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party in 1986. He refused to do so and was thus forced to retire.

By my count that was 21 years ago. Nile goes on:

Shortly after Sada was forced out of the air force Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and Sada was the first man he called back into service. He was restored to his former position and put in charge of the air force. Sada was obviously a loyal citizen of Iraq but because he would not execute the American prisoners he was thrown into prison.

This, according to his aubiography was in 1991. By my count that's 16 years ago. Since then he'd held no role in Saddam's regime. His book quotes (though doesn't name) a couple of pilots as the source of the story. According to Sada, they flew the WMD to Syria in the Spring of 2002.

On whether he actually saw this taking place, Sada admits during an interview with Brian Lehrer that he was not an eyewitness to the events.

Remember Congressman Peter Hoekstra? He's the guy who, along with Rick Santorum, announced the "finding" of Saddam's WMD in the form of those 500 empty shells. The story proved to be bogus. The story does point out, though, that Hoekstra was one of those who believe that the WMD were in Iraq before the war. In the New York Sun on March 6, 2006 we can see these sentences:

Mr. Hoekstra said that after the committee's staff had interviewed former Iraqi regime officials recommended by a former general, Georges Sada, he could not confirm General Sada's account that weapons of mass destruction had been transferred to Syria in the spring of 2002 in a converted civilian aircraft.

"We have not been able to verify the claims made in General Sada's book," Mr. Hoekstra said. "We followed up pretty extensively. There were some interesting things. But we can't verify the aircraft transfer."

So. Fred's telling a story about a retired general who'd been thrown in prison by Saddam Hussein and had since had no official interaction with that regime ever again, no direct evidence of the transfer of WMD to Syria other than two unnamed sources, and no verification from a sympathetic member of Congress who himself was keen to find evidence of pre-war Saddam's WMD.

And it all comes up empty.

Fred, honestly, should you retire this story? It's over. It's untrue. There's nothing there.