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Almost at the source.. this one from May, 2003

Powell Confronts, Assad Prevaricates
May 4th, 2003
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=482

Syria is reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources as having secretly disposed of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction by moving them into eastern Lebanon for burial in the Beqaa Valley. Iraq’s biological weapons may be there too. They were interred deep under the heroin poppy and cotton fields in two of the most fertile regions of Lebanon: the valley stretching between Jabal Akroum, the town of al Qbayyat and the Syrian border, and the land lying between the towns of Al Hirmil and al Labwah between the Orontes River and the Syrian frontier.

On February 14, about a month before the start of the war in Iraq, DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issue 97 ran an article captioned “Is Iraq’s WMD cache in Lebanon available to Al Qaeda?”

Now, our intelligence sources can disclose exclusively that the relocation of Iraq’s WMD systems took place between January 10 and March 10 and was completed just 10 days before the US-led offensive was launched against Iraq. The banned arsenal, hauled in giant tankers from Iraq to Syria and from there to the Bekaa Valley under Syrian special forces and military intelligence escort, was discharged into pits 6-8 meters across and 25-35 meters deep dug by Syrian army engineers. They were sealed and planted over with new seedlings. Nonetheless, their location is known and detectable with the right instruments. Our sources have learned that Syria was paid about $35 million to make Saddam Hussein’s forbidden weapons disappear.

Before US secretary of state Colin Powell arrived in Damascus on Saturday, May 3, the Syrians made the placatory gesture to Washington of speeding and upgrading the handover of Iraqi fugitives from the Saddam regime sheltering in Syria

DEBKA-Net-Weekly has learned from its most exclusive sources that on Monday, April 28, Dr. RihabTaha, a microbiologist known as Dr. Germ, was turned over to the Americans in Iraq. She had directed Iraq’s biological weapons program. Also turned over was Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, who headed Iraq’s anthrax project. No announcement was made of their capture. However, the surrender 24 hours later of Taha’s husband, General Amir Muhammed Rasheed, director of Iraq’s missile development program and best known by his nickname “The Missile Man”, was announced.

The United States is therefore fully apprised of the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of unconventional weapons and has taken custody of the scientists who developed them.

But DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources say Washington was nevertheless far from placated and Powell’s meeting with the Syrian president Saturday was a confrontation. The secretary of state laid down the following demands:

1. A map with the coordinates of the pits holding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

2. Surrender of Saddam’s most senior insiders who fled to Aleppo and Latakiya. After DEBKAfile blew the whistle on April 3, the group staying at the Cote D’Azur De Cham Resort in Latakia was whisked away leaving their families comfortably ensconced there.

3. Handover of the two senior Al Qaeda members now in Damascus. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and intelligence sources say their names and whereabouts were uncovered by US intelligence units in Iraq.

4. An explanation of Syrian motives in allowing two British terrorists, Assif Hanif, who blew himself up in Tel Aviv on April 30, and Omar Khan Sharif, who ran away, to transit Damascus en route to Israel. (One of the duo spent four months of preparation in the Syrian capital with the Hamas operations officer and associate of Hizballah Imad al-Alami, as reported exclusively by DEBKAfile.)

5. An immediate stop to the military-terrorist activities of the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Syria and Lebanon. Failure to do so, Powell explained, will result in a painful tightening of economic pressure on Syria, after the loss of $1b in oil revenues from Baghdad.

Powell suggested that Assad invite Abu Mazen, the new Palestinian prime minister, to Damascus. This step would further underline Yasser Arafat’s state of isolation in view of his never having been received in Damascus. It could lead to an invitation from the Bush administration to invite the leaders of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq’s new regime and the Palestinians to a regional conference that would set the stage for Syrian and Palestinian peace negotiations with Israel.

Powell told Assad bluntly to choose between confrontation and negotiations.

At the same time, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Middle East experts stress that Powell’s stance was tough yet exploratory. The Bush administration is still in option-weighing mode, pondering how best to proceed in the post Iraq war era to achieve its two main objectives: One is to advance America’s long-range strategic goals in the Middle East. The second is to get Bush re-elected as President in November 2004.

A lil' "covert ops" story from Early 2003

Ultimatum for Assad as US Special Forces Land

April 16th, 2003
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=466

Although President George W. Bush and administration spokesmen have carefully skirted any explicit threat of military action against Syria, DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Sunday night, April 12, small teams of American undercover troops were already inside Syria marking out the hideouts of Saddam’s close family, his top lieutenants, military leaders and the directors of his banned weapons programs. US special forces troops were additionally directed to locate the men who drive the operational arms of the Hizballah, Jihad Islami and Hamas terror groups.

Twenty-four hours later, Monday night, three events brought Syria even closer to becoming the object of direct American action, additionally placing France in Washington’s sights - albeit for a different kind of punishment. Syria faces imminent economic sanctions at best – although, since experience shows they never work, military action is very much on the cards. France stands to pay a diplomatic and financial price for certain actions that have come to light.

DEBKAfile’s Washington sources describe the White House as particularly incensed over the following pieces of intelligence:

A. Documents coming to light in Baghdad directly incriminate Syria as a full partner in the financing, development and concealment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs. A source familiar with the new data reveals that Syria was not only a full partner but active in every stage of these programs to the point that they deserve to be called Iraqi-Syrian, not just Iraqi, undertakings.

Well before the UN weapons inspectors came on the scene last year, the Syrian president Bashar Assad took it upon himself to conceal the banned weapons, one by one, as they came off the production line. Syria’s support for Iraq in the UN Security Council and the attacks leveled by foreign minister Farouk a-Sharah against Washington, for venturing to accuse Iraq of concealing weapons of mass destruction, were staged to misdirect attention from the biggest political, intelligence and military fraud perpetrated since the Cold War ended.

Washington’s indignation over these discoveries has been manifested in a torrent of warnings to, and charges against Damascus in the last three days. Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld took the opportunity of the warm welcome he gave the visiting Kuwait ruler on Monday, April 14, to produce intelligence that Syria had conducted chemical weapons tests in the last year.

He could have said more. According to DEBKAfile’s Washington sources, the defense secretary was also informed that in the same period Syria test-fired missiles fitted with chemical warheads from Aleppo in the north to Djebel Druze in the south near the Syrian-Iraqi-Jordan border junction. Damascus carried out the test on behalf of the Iraqi-Syrian partnership for developing unconventional weapons.

B. The details of the comprehensive military collaboration treaty Assad secretly concluded with the now deposed Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein that were first exposed in DEBKAfile in September 2000 are only now emerging in full. Under its terms, Syria was bound to furnish an escape hatch for fleeing Iraqi military, political, scientific and intelligence top echelons working on the banned weapons programs, as well as providing concealed locations for production to continue. Damascus was therefore committed to taking over the shared WMD projects from the point they were interrupted by a war emergency in Baghdad.

C. This discovery relates to the aid rendered Syria by France. DEBKAfile’s exclusive intelligence and military sources reveal that, from Monday night, April 14, groups of Iraqi military and scientific leaders have been transferred from Syria to France. This came about as a result of President Chirac consenting to help Assad live up to his commitments to Saddam Hussein and keep their forbidden weapons out of sight and their existence denied.

These discoveries led the Bush administration to slap down before Damascus a three-part ultimatum:

1. First, in view of Syria’s long record as sponsor of terror, the Assad regime is required to dismantle at once the command centers of the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Jihad Islami and Hamas Damascus headquarters and turn their leaders over to the United States. A list of names is supplied.

2. To hand over without delay all the weapons of mass destruction on its territory, whether they are “Iraqi” or “Syrian”.

3. To surrender to the Americans at once every one of the hundreds of Iraqi regime members, including Saddam kinsmen, granted asylum in Syria.

Assad’s failure to deliver would result in the United States acting to force his compliance.

Washington’s ultimatum evoked a frantic Arab reaction. Saudi foreign minister Saudi Al-Faisal went to Damascus to warn the Syrian ruler of grave consequences should he persist in defying the Americans. He advised him to call an urgent Arab foreign ministers meeting for Friday, April 18, and ask the Arab world to back him up in meeting Washington’s demands. The Syrian ruler has not yet informed the Saudi minister of his intentions.

Though not unaware of the danger hanging over his head, Assad is showing the same kind of stubbornness as Saddam Hussein his ally exhibited when he was urged by a procession of diplomatic well-wishers to show flexibility – or go into voluntary exile – so as to avert an American invasion.

A brief anecdote indicates the deceptive nature of the Syrian-Iraqi alliance. Iraq’s UN ambassador Mohammed Al-Douri, the first Saddam regime official to concede his country’s defeat (“The game is over”), aroused some sympathy when he burst into tears in New York and vowed to devote his life to a peaceful future for his people. He announced he would be going to Paris.

Well, DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources have discovered that the weeping ambassador stayed in Paris only long enough to catch the next plane to Damascus, where he joined his not exactly peace-loving brother, who turns out to be the deposed vice president Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri.

Al Qaeda Poised for Festival Strike

Osama bin Laden’s organization is reported preparing to stage a comeback by a fresh terrorist assault in Turkey against American or Israel/Jewish targets over Passover this week or Easter, next. Upon receipt of this intelligence, Ankara placed its counter-terror units on high alert, installing special security measures at its civilian and military airfields and around bases accommodating US forces.

According to DEBKAfile’s sources, Al Qaeda planners, established at a forward base in Iran, are plotting a dual strike against a hotel frequented by Israeli holiday-makers and an incoming Israeli airliner – on the lines of the attack the network mounted last November 28 in Kenya on the Israeli-owned Mombasa Paradise hotel and Arkia airliner. Al Qaeda may also seek out a large local Jewish gathering for the Passover Seder. As in Mombasa, the fundamentalist terrorists are preparing to use shoulder-launched Strela SA-7 anti-air missiles, whether against an incoming Israeli airliner or American aircraft ferrying American military personnel into Turkey.

Its operatives are reportedly lying in wait on both sides of the Turkish-Iraqi border to ambush American convoys and attack isolated US installations in Iraqi Kurdistan. In the last week, they the terrorists were seen slipping across from Iran into Turkey and northern Iraq.