3 Terror Suspects Gunned Down in Jordan

AP ^ | Tue, Apr 20, 2004 | AP

[Eurotwit]

AMMAN, Jordan - Police killed three terror suspects Tuesday in a shootout in the Jordanian capital, the authorities said.

Working on a tip, police stormed a hideout in east Amman where the suspects had been hiding, the police said in a statement carried by the official Petra news agency.

Police had called for the suspects to surrender, but they responded with gunfire, the statement said. The incident took place at 2:20 p.m. in the predominantly Palestinian district of Hashemi, the statement said.

"Information made available to security authorities pointed to the presence of an armed group which had plotted to carry out terror attacks," the statement added.

Two of the three men killed were foreigners, according to police.

Jordan, a moderate Arab nation with close ties to the United States and a peace treaty with Israel, has been targeted by the al-Qaida terror organization of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and other groups.

[Dog Gone]

Thanks for your excellent analysis of this complicated situation. It's a great service to those of us who are following these events closely.

[blam]

" It would appear that the government "decapitation" was planned to roughly coincide with the secret war with Syria and Iran."

What secret war?

[swarthyguy]

BUMPing!

[Angelus Errare]

I'm assuming he's referencing the Iranian involvement with Sadr as well as the 300 or so well-organized fighters that our troops fought off at Qaim recently. Both of these incidents are more or less acts of war if we truly want to be technical about it.

[blam]

Okay, got it. Thanks.

[Boot Hill]

"We have zero confirmation that the poison gas in question reported in al-Hayat even came from Syria..."

Actually, the fact is that we have no confirmation that there was any poison gas at all, and that was the thrust of my post. If there had been a large amount of a serious chemical weapon found, such as sarin, tabun, soman, VX, etc., that would be a major developement and we would heard some kind of confirmation by now.

To clarify, I don't generally consider the use of cyanide gas to be an effective chemical agent of mass lethality ("could have killed 20,000") when dispersed in open areas via a bomb. Nor would I consider the discovery of a nominal amount (say 20 pounds) of VX nerve agent to be a significant find, under these circumstances.

However, I do agree with your points 1-5.

--Boot Hill

[Angelus Errare]

Al-Hayat claims that there was and at least some of their information regarding the car and truck bombs appears to have panned out as genuine. I don't take a lack of official confirmation as being too disturbing in this instance, given that the Jordanians may not have the facilities necessary to analyze whatever it was they found. Zarqawi's last planned round of chemical attacks was also in Europe, so the European agencies are likely to have the best hands-on experience in dealing with these folks. We have been told very, very little about the specifics of this plot even on the conventional angle, suggesting at least to me that the possibility of a Jordanian-mandated news blackout should not be ruled.

Regarding the 20,000 casualty count figure, I think that's more of an expression of the intended scale of the attack rather than any kind of a scientific figure. Everything we've seen from official Jordanian sources (including the king, and you don't get more official than that) suggests that thousands would have been killed had these attacks gone through, a definitively an indication that whatever this was, it was something major.

[Boot Hill]

Your sniffer suggests that this story may, in fact, be true (about the chemical weapons), while my sniffer detects the faint odor of BS. We'll see. Actually, I'd prefer that your hypothesis be the true one.

--Boot Hill

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for the excellent analysis.

[Cap Huff]

Freeper Wretchard’s blog called attention to significant action along the Syrian border that has drawn scant attention in the major news media:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1119855/posts

And that was lent some support in this post:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1120537/posts

It would seem that quite a bit has been going on more or less behind the scenes.

For Angeles Errare: That is indeed what I was thinking of. "Secret war" may be over stating the reality, but IMHO the media calling recent events an Iraqi "insurgency" is perhaps understating the situation in that it totally glosses over what appears to be significant foreign involvement.

[blam]

Thanks for the follow-up. I've been unusually busy lately and haven't stayed right on top of things ...as I like to do.

[Coop]

Calling in the Europeans is interesting, because if true it might imply that his people found something that they have neither the facilities or expertise with which to analyze.

Or that the king doesn't completely trust his own people with the investigation.