The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest

Vol: 31 Issue: 19 - Monday, April 19, 2004

Where Are Iraq's WMD? Ask al-Qaeda!

An al-Qaeda-linked terror group was stopped before they could conduct a
chemical weapons attack against the Jordanian government's intelligence
headquarters.  The plot was allegedly hatched by abu-Musab al-Zarqawi.

Zarqawi is a major player in the terror war  who rose to infamy when a
memo from Zarqawi to Osama bin-Laden was intercepted in Iraq.  Zarqawi is
a Jordanian citizen.

Piecing things together from wire service reports and insider intelligence
reports, it appears that Zarqawi's plot involved the use of deadly VX gas
in a chemical bomb that, if detonated, would have killed everyone within a
square mile of Ground Zero.

According to a BBC report, another operation planned by the network was to
use "deadly gas against the US embassy and the prime minister's office in
Amman ... and other public buildings in Jordan".

According to the London-based Arabic daily,  al-Hayat, the "majority of
the members" were arrested, but not all of them. Two detained men
identified as Suleiman Khaled Darwish and Ali Adwan "established the cell,
which was funded by al-Zarqawi from Iraq and Iran," Jordanian sources told
al Hayat.

With the help of a third man, Azmi Abd al Fattah al Jayousi, they managed
to smuggle three cars packed with explosives. In one of the cars, security
forces found the chemical charge. The Jordanian authorities are still
looking for al Jayousi.

The Jordanian officials were quoted as saying, "The bomb, had it been
detonated, could have affected people in a one kilometer radius and cause
the deaths of more 20,000 people, according to estimates by bomb experts".
 
 

Assessment:

This story isn't getting very much attention in the US press.  The reason
that it is largely being either ignored or underreported is because it
raises questions the mainstream would prefer to leave unanswered until
after the US elections in November.

According to the UPI wire services, but ignored by most media, is the fact
an al-Qaeda car that was to be used in the attack was intercepted just 75
miles from the Syrian border.  All three cars that were eventually found
in Amman entered Jordan from Syria.

Time to set the Way Back machine to one year ago.  Just before the
outbreak of hostilities between the United States and Iraq,
reconnaissance photos showed convoys of tanker trucks and other heavy
truck traffic streaming from Iraq into Syria.  According to Israeli
intelligence, those convoys contained Saddam Hussien's chemical and
biological arsenals.

In July, 2003, Task Force 20, supported by helicopters and AC-130
gunships, struck the convoy and a housing compound "in a village not far
from the Syria border."

Task Force 20 captured 20 Iraqis, all of whom were later released.  It was
later revealed that the village 'not far from the Syria border' was on the
Syrian SIDE of the border -- 25 miles inside Syria.

The firefight killed at least eighty Syrian soldiers.

In early May, two top Iraqi biological scientists who had been hiding in
safe havens in Syria exfiltrated back to Iraq where they were captured by
US military forces.

Possibly the first prominent official to warn that Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction could go to Syria was former UN inspector Richard Butler. He
warned that when he worked in Iraq between 1997 and 1999, he saw
intelligence indicating that suspicious containers were routinely moved in
and out of Iraq from Syria, and that there was evidence they contained
banned materials.

Intelligence gathering, including defector testimony, indicated that even
in August 2002, before Saddam let UN inspectors back in, indicated that
Iraq was still receiving WMD components and materials through Syria.

On January 17th, according to Italian sources, Saddam Hussein signed a
secret agreement with Syria. Iraq would send three CDs of formulas and
technical information about weapons including nuclear explosions; 3
test-tubes full of anthrax and botulinum spores; and detailed analysis of
tests carried out with these weapons on people to Syria, in exchange for
Syria harboring Iraqi scientists, technicians and their information.

By the end of February, three Iraqi microbiologists and a small group of
technicians would be safely in Syria, and a top nuclear physicist and his
team soon arrived soon after, in early March.

Former head of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay,  confirmed that Saddam
Hussein sent convoys to Syria full of "Iraqi equipment" that could not be
identified, and that they could possibly have had weapons of mass
destruction.

He confirmed that senior Iraqi scientific and military officials who would
have access to technical documentation and knowledge of the programs fled
to Syria immediately before and during the war.

According to intelligence reports from the time, the major transfer of WMD
goods from Iraq to Syria and Lebanon occurred between January and March of
2003.

However, the first shipments occurred even before then. In December of
2002, Israel claimed that Syria was hiding Iraqi mobile biological weapons
labs, chemical and biological components and munitions.

By late June, Israeli Air Force commander Halutz was confident enough to
predict that Iraq's WMD would be found, probably in Syria. The West
identified Mustafa Tlas, the Syrian defense minister, as the man in charge
of the secret WMD transfers to Lebanon and Syria from Baghdad, Tikrit and
al-Qaim.

The intelligence indicated some weapons were destroyed, some left in Iraq
underground, and others sent to other countries. Much of it was buried
under an army base in northern Syria and in huge pits made by Syrian
engineers in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

According to Mossad, the search had been narrowed down to Syria's
al-Jazirah province, specifically an area known as Dayr Az-Zawr, which is
wedged in between the Turkish and Iraqi borders.

Syrian defectors are also confirming that Assad is hiding the weapons.
Nizar Najoef, a respected Syrian journalist who has received awards for
his integrity, has defected to Western Europe and told the Dutch press
that Syria is holding Saddam's weapons in at least 3 secret sites.

            1) Tunnels under al-Baida, near Hama in northern Syria in a
site that is part of an underground facility, built by the North Koreans
to produce SCUD missiles. Iraq's banned missiles are here.

            2) Talsnan, north of Salamija, at a secret air force base.

            3) Sjinsjar, on the border of Lebanon south of Hums.

The foiled Jordanian plot makes three things clear.  First and most
terrifying is the fact al-Qaeda is in possession of weapons of mass
destruction.

The chemical to be used in the Jordan attack was VX gas, a deadly nerve
gas that Saddam was believed to possess in great quantities.

The second is that the VX gas originated in Syria.  The bombs were
assembled there and driven across the border to Jordan.

Piecing together the wire services and intelligence reports, it is a
fairly safe assumption that Saddam transferred his weapons of mass
destruction to Syria, just before the war.

The third is that none one of the liberal mainstream news services
connected the dots that lead back to Saddam Hussein.  One would assume,
considering that America is at war with al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda is in
possession of chemical weapons, that might be an angle worth pursuing.

But connecting the dots might answer the question; "Where are Saddam's
weapons of mass destruction?"  If the answer is 'Syria' then it means Bush
didn't lie, after all.

The carefully constructed scenario of an out-of-control, warmongering Bush
administration that deceived the world in order to seize control of Iraqi
oil will be exposed for what it always was.

An effort to use US security as a partisan political tool to 'get' George
Bush -- no matter what the cost to the country.

In the new 21st century America, patriotism stops at the party line.