Posted on 04/23/2004 7:02:40 PM PDT by ThermoNuclearWarrior
Syria in the Gunsights
Jack Wheeler
Monday, April 26, 2004
The argument for taking out the government of Syria is growing by the day. The only things holding back the Marines from seizing downtown Damascus and imprisoning Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad as a war criminal are (a) the lack of manpower to prevent the place from collapsing into anarchic chaos before a transitional government can be set up, and (b) the literally hysterical objections of the State Department. Consider these justifications, any one of which would be reason alone to rid Syria of the al-Assad pestilence:
Syria has a 600-mile border with Iraq. Al-Assad is orchestrating the insertion of thousands of Al Qaeda, Hizbollah, and other Jihadi terrorists into Iraq, arming them, and letting them come back to Syria and resupply. It is these foreign terrorists that are primarily responsible for the atrocities in Fallujah and elsewhere, killing US and Coalition soldiers as well as innocent Iraqis.
As arms inspector David Kay has noted, Saddam’s “missing WMD” were shipped to Syria before the war began. Starting in January 2004, Al-Assad began flying shipments of WMD components to Sudan to hide them in warehouses in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. Afraid of the US response, Sudan’s leader Omar Bashir is now having second thoughts, and is ordering that Syria take back its Scud-C and Scud-D ballistic missiles and chemical weapons components.
On April 17, Jordanian police seized an amount of WMD chemicals being carried into Jordan from Syria by Al Qaeda terrorists. Three booby-trapped pickups were loaded with explosives and VX poison gas containers. Jordan’s King Abdullah and his intelligence chief General Kheir publicly announced that if the terrorists had succeeded in their confessed plan to detonate the VX in Amman near the American Embassy, over 20,000 people would have been massacred.
The evidence is becoming overwhelming that the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad provided the hiding place for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, that it has begun providing them to Al Qaeda terrorists, and that it is waging a proxy guerrilla war upon the U.S. and the Coalition military in Iraq.
Sanctions, such as those authorized by Congress last December in the Syrian Accountability Act, and other forms of political and economic pressure, are very rapidly becoming far-too-little-far-too-late solutions, and very dangerously so.
Twenty thousand human beings were almost slaughtered in Jordan this month. Whatever anarchic chaos occurs in Syria after a B2 strike obliterates the Presidential Palace in Damascus, it is preferable to al-Assad-backed terrorists succeeding in their next VX attempt.
Syria is leaving President Bush with little else than the military option. The sooner he exercises that option, the more lives will be saved, American, Jordanian, and Iraqi.
Jack Wheeler is the Publisher and Editor of To The Point at www.tothepointnews.com.
© 2004, To The Point, Inc.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/4/23/143043.shtml
From Monday, April 19, 2004 issue.
Suspected Terrorists Reportedly Planned Attacks in Jordan
Suspected terrorists arrested during the last few weeks planned attacks with a chemical bomb and poison gas in Jordan that could have killed thousands, Associated Press reported today (see GSN, April 16).
Targets for the simultaneous attacks included the U.S. Embassy in Amman, other foreign diplomatic missions, the Jordanian prime minister’s office, a Jordanian intelligence facility and civilian targets, according to officials.
The chemical bomb attack on the intelligence service could have killed up to 20,000 people, the officials said.
The plot was foiled by arrests in March and earlier this month of conspirators in a cell linked to al-Qaeda, they said. The arrests were made after suspects entered Jordan from Syria in at least three vehicles carrying explosives, detonators and other bomb-making materials, AP reported.
Jordanian King Abdullah II published a letter last week praising the authorities who led the effort.
Failure to uncover the plot would have resulted in “a crime that would have been unprecedented in the country in terms of the size of explosives mounted on the vehicles and the methods of carrying out the attacks or the civilian locations chosen,” the letter said.
There is no mention of VX, specifically, and no mention of any gas found or seized. Only of "plans" to use poison gas.
I,m laughing my ass off at you for believing in the "world community". That is a dopey statement.
Do the research, Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, your call..
Find a reliable source other than Loftus, that has verified the "finding or seizing of VX, or poison gas".
You can't..
If it were verified as true, it would be all over the news, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, FoxNews, would be trumpeting it from the rooftops, "WMD found, was hidden in Syria, Damascus Bombed"..
It ain't happenin'..
Let me guess... next you'll tell me how bad our economy is still doing... am I right?
Bush wins in a landslide with a 50-year-plus record voter turnout. It's in the bank.
;-/
I understand the "binary nature" of the weapon.
You are trying to rationalize something that is not there.
I say again, there is no verifiable source stating that ANY poison gas was ever found, or seized. NONE..
Back to the point; What are your qualificationsthat allow you to make this statement (education, jobs held, military experience ) and list your most recent experience in managing a theater of operations.
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