Debka reported this months ago. The source was Israeli intelligence. This was also reported by World Net Daily. Also to add fuel to the fire...
The powerful blast that reverberated across eastern and central Lebanon Sunday, December 29, was caused by the explosion of a big surface missile in Hizballah hands and of Iraqi origin. Reporting this, DEBKAfile’s exclusive military and Lebanese sources reveal that the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group has recently taken delivery of a shipment of surface missiles, presumed to be medium-range, from the Iraqi army. The blast occurred at a Hizballah training camp near a village called Janta in the northeastern section of the Beqaa Valley close to the Syrian frontier. This camp is also used by the group as a testing ground for new weapons, short range missiles and explosive devices. The blast was heard at a distance of 20 km indicating a warhead of one ton at least. According to our sources, the missile exploded suddenly, catching the Hizballah team handling it unawares and causing a large number of casualties, as indicated by the long line of ambulances and rescue teams reported by witnesses to be racing to the blast scene from northern and central Lebanon. Among them were Syrian military rescue vehicles. The Hizballah quickly sealed off the ravaged area, allowing no one through but the rescue teams, their own operatives and Syrian officers.
If it is true that the CIA also ignored this evidence that was staring them in the face, it is just more proof that we need to fire everyone in the CIA and start over...I am still mad about the following...
An unsigned CIA memo on Oct. 5 advised that "the CIA had reservations about the British reporting" on Iraq's alleged attempts in Niger, Hadley said. A second memo, sent on Oct. 6, elaborated on the CIA's doubts, describing "some weakness in the evidence," such as the fact that Iraq already had a large stock of uranium and probably wouldn't need more, Hadley said.
While the uranium he had was not enriched...don't forget about the centrifuge found in the rose garden.
Also of interest in this is the following story....
Washington---The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) continues to misstate the degree of success it achieved on dismantling Saddam Hussein’s covert nuclear-bomb program during nuclear inspections in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, according to an analysis by the Nuclear Control Institute (NCI), a non-proliferation research and advocacy center.
“IAEA’s recent claims that they have ‘neutralized [Iraq’s] nuclear-weapon program’ and ‘destroyed all their key buildings and equipment’ related to weaponization are patently false, and the Agency’s own inspection reports prove it,” said Steven Dolley, NCI research director.
On September 26, IAEA challenged a statement by President Bush that the IAEA had concluded Iraq was six months away from acquiring nuclear weapons in 1998. An IAEA spokesman stated that no such IAEA report existed.[1] The Agency also took issue with the conclusion of a report by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), released earlier this month. The IISS report posited that if Iraq “were to obtain fissile material from abroad --- steal it or buy it in some way --- we certainly believe [Saddam] has the ability to put together a nuclear weapon very quickly, in a matter of months.”[2]
In response, IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky declared:
I don’t know where they [IISS] have determined that Iraq has retained this much weaponization capability because when we left in December ’98 we had concluded that we had neutralized their nuclear-weapons program. We had confiscated their fissile material. We had destroyed all their key buildings and equipment.[3]
Additionally, on September 30 IAEA spokesperson Melissa Fleming claimed that, prior to the inspectors’ withdrawal in late 1998, IAEA had “uncovered Iraq’s secret nuclear program, and we dismantled it. We were successful last time. If we get unfettered access, we will be successful again.”[4]
“For IAEA to claim that they ‘neutralized’ Saddam’s nuclear weaponization capability is dangerously inaccurate, and muddies the waters of the Iraq debate,” said Dolley. “Since 1997, the Agency has operated under the assumption that Iraq could successfully fabricate a working nuclear bomb if they managed to acquire a sufficient amount of fissile material. The Agency’s latest statement correctly points out that no one outside Iraq knows the current status of Iraq’s nuclear-bomb program, in large part because there have been no inspections in nearly four years. But for IAEA to suggest that it completely eliminated Iraq’s weaponization capability prior to 1998 is irresponsible in the extreme. The Agency should recant this statement.”
Several Iraqi nuclear weapons facilities and much equipment were indeed dismantled or destroyed by U.N. inspectors between 1991 and 1998. However, substantial and significant issues about Iraq’s ability to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program remained unresolved when the inspectors left the country.
Dolley, citing IAEA’s own inspection reports as documentation, said: “Iraq has never surrendered to inspectors its two completed designs for a nuclear bomb, nuclear-bomb components such as explosive lenses and neutron initiators that it is known to have possessed, or almost any documentation of its efforts to enrich uranium to bomb-grade using gas centrifuges, devices which are small and readily concealed from reconnaissance.”[5] Moreover, IAEA has previously conceded that Iraq’s weaponization R&D---small-scale technical research devoted to the design of a nuclear bomb’s components---is not readily detected by means of inspections. IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei stated in 1998 that “no matter how comprehensive the inspection, any country-wide verification process, in Iraq or anywhere else, has a degree of uncertainty that aims to verify the absence of readily concealable objects such as small amounts of nuclear material or weapons components.”[6]
The IAEA’s own guidelines for the safeguarding of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium gives the conversion time for transforming these materials into weapons components as on the order of seven to ten days or one to three weeks, depending on the form the materials are in (metal, oxide or nitrate) when the materials are acquired by means of diversion or theft.[7] Thus, Iraq could be capable of producing a nuclear weapon in less than a month with sufficient diverted or stolen fissile material if it has managed to fabricate and conceal all of the non-nuclear components of a weapon.
IAEA’s recent statement that the Agency had “neutralized [Iraq’s] nuclear-weapons program” suggests that by 1998, IAEA had effectively eliminated Iraq’s ability to weaponize---that is, to manufacture and assemble the components needed for a working nuclear bomb, lacking only fissile material (plutonium or highly enriched uranium) to fuel it. This is simply not the case, and IAEA’s own previous findings directly contradict this claim. IAEA’s plans for ongoing monitoring in Iraq (discontinued in December 1998 when the inspectors left the country and were not allowed to return) were, as Director-General ElBaradei noted in June 1998, “predicated on the assumption that Iraq has the technical ability to design and construct a nuclear weapon and takes into account the large intellectual resource in Iraq in the corps of scientists and engineers who worked in Iraq's clandestine nuclear program.”[8]
The Agency’s own October 1997 review of its inspections in Iraq concluded that "Iraqi programme documentation records substantial progress in many important areas of nuclear weapon development, making it prudent to assume that Iraq has developed the capability to design and fabricate a basic fission weapon, based on implosion technology and fueled by highly enriched uranium."[9]
IAEA MISSTATES ITS RECORD ON DISMANTLING SADDAM’S NUCLEAR-BOMB PROGRAM
Syria has alot of **Good Cards to play...don't they.
Past decade has Syria build deep layered missile complexes ..some are inside Mountains with role out launch bays.
SCUD C/D..although it is a dressed up WW-2 V2..it can loft Bio/chem warheads...Syria could make things grevous for Israel in a war..but they would still get the living **** kicked out of them.
From what I have been able to glean on the intel...Syria is going to play 'Stubborn Mule' with Washington...get all they can out of it.
One article noticed from 2001..and believe to be the crux of the gaming by Syria...has some to do with Egypt.
Both nations are not signatory to anything as far as missiles and WMD.
Egypt wants to keep its missiles..and a low profile.
They are afraid..if Syria caves to U.S. pressure..thier Missile program will collapse too.
Syria fears same the other direction.
Syria also has a stubborn stance on Golan..they desire the U.S. to make sttlement with them and Israel before the Palie issue is settled..their terms are stubborn too.
So..alot of gaming..threat language..lying..etc.
Syria's Scud series will see its re-supply and update reality ended in regards to North Korea...unless Syria R and D's things they will have trouble just maintaining their missile force..let alone advancing its abilites.
Washington is putting the squeeze on Tehran too ..by cutting off the N.K. supply pipeline..even though Irans missile program is frought with launch explosions..stage seperation explosions..guidance failure...explosions : ).
So as missiles go..**Hamdi's having a rough time of it. : )
anyways..here is a past Debka article:
Washington to Syria: Hand over Saddam’s WMD First
DEBKAfile Special Report
April 21, 2003, 12:43 PM (GMT+02:00)
Sunday, April 20, Damascus surrendered a top official of the Saddam Hussein’s regime, one of the eight granted sanctuary (as listed by DEBKAfile last Friday, April 18), Republican Guards secretary Kemal Mustafa al Tikriti, who is married to Saddam’s youngest daughter. The Syrians pushed him across the border to Iraq where he ‘surrendered” to US forces.
This was Syrian president Bashar Assad’s first response to the newly-delivered US ultimatum: deliver Iraq’s WMD and regime leaders or face military action. President George W. Bush noted with satisfaction that Syria was beginning to “understand the message”. But, according to DEBKAfile’s Washington sources, the handover of all the high-ranking Iraqi fugitives sheltering in Syria will not satisfy the US government or get it off the Assad government’s back. The US ultimatum to Damascus consists of three demands, to be followed in the same order:
First ,give up the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam has secretly hidden in Syria.
Second , return to Iraq all the officials of the Saddam regime granted asylum.
Last Friday, DEBKAfile listed the top eight as being: former vice president Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri, Saddam’s bureau chief Abd Hamoud, Baath party boss Aziz Salah, special security service chief Hanni Tefalah, Republican Guards Secretary Kemal Mustafa, Republican Guards Commander Seif A-Din Suleih, Iraqi Intelligence Commander Taher Jaloul and Special Republican Guards commander, Gen. Barzan Suleiman Tikriti.
Kemal Mustafa was handed over Sunday.
Third ,disband the command structures of the Hizballah, Hamas, Jihad Islami and other Palestinian terrorist groups operating out of Lebanon and Damascus and give their leaders into American hands.
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and other Arab emissaries, diplomatic and covert, who called on the Syrian president on Sunday laid stress on the first of the three demands as paramount. They warned him that Bush and his team will not rest as long as Syria withholds the evidence to show the world that America fought a just war against Iraq. The evidence that Saddam developed weapons of mass destruction is hidden in Syria. Washington may hold back a few days but, ultimately, Assad will not be allowed to dictate the way the war ends by denying the United States the primary fruits of victory – and not just over Saddam and his regime. Exposure of his banned arsenal will show up the error of those opposed the war, the United Nations, France, Germany, Russia and international anti-war opinion.
The Syrian ruler’s responded initially to the triple demand by an offer to gradually turn over the eight Iraqi leaders. He denied knowledge of any weapons of mass destruction hidden in Syria but promised to check again. In confidence, he told his close aides, according to DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources, that baring a single Iraqi unconventional weapon to the Americans would be suicidal for him, whether personally or as an Arab leader. He dare not stand out as the first and only Arab leader to surrender an Islamic weapon of mass destruction to the United States. As for the terrorist groups that Syria sponsors and hosts, Assad declared firmly that he will always regard them as freedom fighters – not terrorists.
These maneuvers were the Syrian president’s way of defusing the bomb Washington had laid at his feet by breaking it down into components. It is hard to imagine Washington letting him get away with this tactic. DEBKAfile’s Washington and Middle East sources all agree that, while welcoming the handover of Saddam’s list of eight, the Bush administration will not relent on its first and primary demand for the forbidden weapons arsenal. If Syria fails to hand it over voluntarily, the United States will take forcible action to recover it from its hiding place.