PALESTINIANS CLAIM WMD CAPABILITY ~~ 20 types of weapons after three yr development....really????

The Fatah terrorist faction has claimed the capability of chemical and biological weapons and has threatened Israel with a WMD attack, according to the Jerusalem Post. Leaflets distributed in the Gaza Strip state that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade has spent the last three years developing the capabilty, the start of which seems oddly coincidental to the fall of Saddam Hussein (via Reliapundit):

If they're bluffing, they're making a very big mistake. And if they're not bluffing, then they have just signed the death warrants of both Hamas and Fatah and quite possibly the Palestinian Authority.

If these terrorists have acquired chemical and biological weapons, the IDF will rightly assume that they know have a choice only between which genocide will succeed. Given their history and strong sense of survival, they will certainly make the right choice -- and that will mean the end of the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The only reason the Israelis don't push them into the Jordan and Egypt is because of their identification with Western values that rejects ethnic cleansing as any solution.

Once the first chemical or biological weapon gets launched against Israel, that decision will have been taken out of their hands. The Israelis will almost certainly launch a massive strike against the Palestinians in both directions -- and while Hamas and Fatah do moderately well at targeting unarmed civilians, the IDF will slice through them like butter. And if the Palestinians expect the West to stop them, they will have miscalculated badly.

The question will be where they acquired these weapons. They do not have the research facilities to have developed WMD on their own. If they actually do possess them, it seems a probablility that someone supplied Fatah with WMD.

Who has WMD? What country stocked them, until three years ago? And where does Hamas and Islamic Jihad, at least, have themselves established? Syria -- who has long rumored to have received the Iraqi stockpiles in 2002 and 2003, just ahead of the American invasion.

The Palestinians have just tipped us off to where the WMD went, and now we know where at least some it may have ended up. The Israelis may not be alone in marching through Gaza and the West Bank.

PALESTINIANS INVADE ISRAEL FROM GAZA

The Palestinians have escalated their continuous attacks on Israel from Gaza, which no longer qualifies as occupied territory, by raiding Israel. 'Militants' crossed over into Israel using tunnels, killed two soldiers and apparently kidnapped another, before crossing back into Gaza:

The Israelis have fired missiles into Gaza in response to missile attacks by Islamic Jihad that started almost immediately after the Israelis withdrew from Gaza. The Palestinian Authority has refused to take any action to stop the rocket attacks by the Islamist terrorists, and Israel shortly afterwards started returning the fire.

Now that the Palestinians have escalated the conflict by invading Israel, we can surely expect a response in force by Israel. Their withdrawal from Gaza makes the invasion an act of war, although Israel will not likely try to invest Gaza again. What they will likely do is stage a raid in force by the IDF to clear out the region where the attacks originate and create a buffer area that they can patrol for long enough to make their point. They will also escalate their targeted attacks on terrorist leadership, including that of Hamas.

This will undermine both sides in the pending Palestinian civil war. Ismael Haniyeh will find himself having to go underground to avoid Israeli attacks, especially if their kidnapped soldier turns up dead. Abbas' efforts to return to negotiations will have to wait for the Israeli military response to reach its conclusion, and that may take a while. The best Abbas can expect will be a quick raid that might capture some of the rocket-launching terrorists, removing a headache for Fatah. Otherwise, both factions will find it difficult to reach any kind of understanding on proceeding with peace talks, and that will push them towards civil war. Sunday, June 25, 2006

Here's the article - from the NY Sun, Feb. 8th, 2006.

I sent this article to Tony Snow at Fox News on feb. 9th. February 8, 2006 Edition > Section: Foreign

Ex-Officer Spurned on WMD Claim

BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
February 8, 2006

URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/27183

A former special investigator for the Pentagon during the Iraq war said he found four sealed underground bunkers in southern Iraq that he is sure contain stocks of chemical and biological weapons. But when he asked American weapons inspectors to check out the sites, he was rebuffed.

David Gaubatz, a former member of the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations, was assigned to the Talill Air Base in Nasiriyah at the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom. His job was to pick up any intelligence on the whereabouts of senior Baathists and weapons of mass destruction and then send the information to the American weapons inspectors gathering in Baghdad that would later become the Iraq Survey Group. For his intelligence work he received accolades and meritorious service medals in 2003 and prior years. Before the war he helped uncover a spy in the Saudi military. He also assisted with the rescue and repatriation to America of the family of Mohammed Rehaief, the Iraqi lawyer who helped save Private Jessica Lynch.

Mr. Gaubatz said he walked the streets of the largely Shiite city of Nasiriyah, interviewing local police, former senior civilian and military leaders in Saddam Hussein's regime, and local civilians.

Between March and July 2003, Mr. Gaubatz was taken by these sources to four locations - three in and around Nasiriyah and one near the port of Umm Qasr, where he was shown underground concrete bunkers with the tunnels leading to them deliberately flooded. In each case, he was told the facilities contained stocks of biological and chemical weapons, along with missiles whose range exceeded that mandated under U.N. sanctions. But because the facilities were sealed off with concrete walls, in some cases up to 5 feet thick, he did not get inside. He filed reports with photographs, exact grid coordinates, and testimony from multiple sources. And then he waited for the Iraq Survey Group to come to the sites. But in all but one case, they never arrived.

Mr. Gaubatz's new disclosures shed doubt on the thoroughness of the Iraq Survey Group's search for the weapons of mass destruction that were one of the Bush administration's main reasons for the war. Two chief inspectors from the group, David Kay and Charles Duelfer, concluded that they could not find evidence of the promised stockpiles. Mr. Kay refused to be interviewed for this story and Mr. Duelfer did not return email. The CIA referred these questions to Mr. Duelfer.

The new information from the former investigator could also end up helping the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which recently reopened the question of what happened to the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Like many current and former American and Israeli officials, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, Peter Hoekstra, says is not convinced Saddam either destroyed or never had the stockpiles of illicit weapons he was said to be concealing between 1991 and 2003.

"I have no doubts the sites were never exploited by ISG. We agents begged and begged for weeks and months to get ISG to respond to the sites with the proper equipment," Mr. Gaubatz said in a telephone interview. He returned to his wife and daughter in July 2003, and then wrote letters about the sites to more senior officials in military intelligence. But he said he never received any satisfactory response and says that to this day the sites have never been fully checked out.

He says the reasons he was given by the survey group were that the areas of the sites were not safe, they lacked manpower and equipment, and at the time the survey group was focusing activities in northern Iraq. "The ISG team was not organized nor outfitted for this mission in my opinion and were only concerned to look in northern Iraq. They were not even on the ground during the first few weeks of the war, and this was the most critical time to go out and exploit sites. I feel very comfortable in saying the sites were never exploited by ISG," he said. In one instance a few inspectors did come out once to follow one lead, Mr. Gaubatz said. But they lacked the equipment and manpower to crack the bunker. "An adequate search would have required heavy equipment to uncover the concrete, and additional equipment to drain the water."

Mr. Gaubatz would not disclose the names of his Iraqi sources, but he said they were "highly credible" by his supervisors. He said some of them were members of the new government and others are now in America. "The four sites were corroborated with more than one source. The sources were deemed highly credible due to access and knowledge of the sites. Many of these sources and ourselves put their lives on the line to assist in identifying WMD. The sources would continuously ask us when the inspectors were going to come to the sites with heavy equipment to uncover the WMD," he said.

Mr. Gaubatz said each site he visited had similar characteristics. "Everything was buried and under water. They would drain canals and parts of the rivers. They would build tunnels underneath and they would let the water come back in," he said. But the water would only be allowed back into the tunnels after concrete walls were installed sealing off the secret caches of unconventional arms, Mr. Gaubatz said. He added that the tunnels in all four sites were wide enough for tractors. One of the giveaways, he said, was that homes near the sites were equipped with gas masks and other items to protect against a chemical weapons attack.

One site outside of Nasiryah, near the main highway in an isolated area featured a rock nearby that said, "Death to America," in Arabic. At this site, Mr. Gaubatz found gas masks, boots, and an imprint of an al-Samoud missile in the ground nearby a canal used to flood the tunnel. Mr. Gaubatz said he could find a wall under the earth and in the water whose dimensions were 50 by 75 feet. Another site near Umm Qasr contained the remnants of military activity as well, Mr. Gaubatz said. He said that former senior Iraqi military officers and local farmers confirmed there was military construction over the course of six months in 2002.

Today, Mr. Gaubatz is the chief investigator for the Dallas County Medical Examiner. On the weekends, he trains Texas state troopers in basic counterterrorism and basic Arabic. When asked about the weapons hunt by his students, he says he tells them, "Before we can say there is no WMD in Iraq, we must first look. I have no doubts WMD was and is still in Iraq."

February 8, 2006 Edition > Section: Foreign Sun, Feb.

I suspect that it was Mr. Gaubatz that Neil had on his shown. Of the 4 AF Officers, only Mr. Gaubatz has chosen to be vocal about their finding being ignored.

Mr. Gaubatz appeared on Fox News with David Asman on Saturday at about Noon, CST, Feb. 11, 2006. I heard that he also appeared on Fox News on Sunday, Feb. 12, 2006, but don't know who interviewed him or what the time frame was. I have been attempting to get the transcripts of those two days from Fox News since I was informed of Mr. Gaubatz's appearance by a friend.

6. Conventional weapons in Iraq • Tons of conventional weapons located throughout southern Iraq • They were in isolated communities (schools) and the majority were never recovered by U.S. personnel • No doubt these same weapons were used and continue to be used by "Extremists" against U.S. forces

10. Conclusion A: Before we can say there is no WMD in Iraq, we must first look. B: If we do not check the sites I identified, WMD may get into the hands of the Extremists, and will subsequently be used against the U.S. C: We must better train our local, city, and state law enforcement officers in counter-terrorism issues (how to best obtain information and build rapport from the law abiding members of the Muslim community) http://www.intelligencesummit.org/speakers/DavidGaubatz.php

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