stool pigeon = rat, tattle tale ----------- Saddam's bodyguard warns of secret arsenal 02feb03 SADDAM Hussein's senior bodyguard has fled with details of Iraq's secret arsenal. His revelations have supported US President George W. Bush's claim there is enough evidence from UN inspectors to justify going to war. Abu Hamdi Mahmoud has provided Israeli intelligence with a list of sites that the inspectors have not visited. They include: AN underground chemical weapons facility at the southern end of the Jadray Peninsula in Baghdad; A SCUD assembly area near Ramadi. The missiles come from North Korea; TWO underground bunkers in Iraq's Western Desert. These contain biological weapons. William Tierney, a former UN weapons inspector who has continued to gather information on Saddam's arsenal, said Mahmoud's information is "the smoking gun". "Once the inspectors go to where Mahmoud has pointed them, then it's all over for Saddam," Tierney said. Tierney, who has high-level contacts in Washington that go to the White House, said the information we publish today on Mahmoud's revelations "checks out, absolutely checks out". Mahmoud was a mem ber of the elite unit that protects Saddam. It is called the Murasiq Qun – the "Inner Circle". He was known as "The Gatekeeper". Mahmoud is a muscular Saddam lookalike often photographed standing behind Saddam when he is seated, or to his left when on the move. Last week, Mahmoud was being debriefed at a high-security base in Israel's Negev Desert. Ariel Sharon, the country's hard-line prime minister, has only allowed snippets of Mahmoud's sensational claims to be shared with the CIA and MI6. "Sharon intends to shatter the growing anti-war movement," a source close to Mr Sharon said. "He plans to call all those European leaders who are wavering to let them know how Saddam has continued to fool Hans Blix and his weapons inspectors." Mahmoud's revelations include locations of five bunkers buried beneath man-made sand dunes. Stockpiled in the bunkers are warheads identical to the empty shell cases found two weeks ago by the UN inspectors. Mahmoud said those shells were on their way to be refilled and stored in the bunkers. A transcript from his debriefing includes: "Saddam's weapons of mass destruction are also concealed in a tunnel complex deep beneath the sewers of Baghdad and in an underground complex in Ouja, to the north of Tikrit. "The complex was built five years ago with help from Chinese engineers. "The entrance to the site is through a house in Tikrit. It is the home of one of Saddam's cousins and is more than half a mile from where the weapons are stored." In another excerpt from his debriefing, Mahmoud boasts: "I was inside the innermost circle where Saddam eats and sleeps. "I was among the handful of bodyguards closest to him. "Very few people are allowed close to Saddam. "Many of the TV images you see of him were taken years ago. Most people now only speak to him over the phone. He usually calls them. "If they have to call him back with information he wants, it is passed through his sons (Uday and Qusay) or (Deputy Prime Minister) Tariq Aziz. "All those close to him have codes, which they use to access the outer circle. But even they can only come so close to Saddam before there is a cut-off point – the Inner Circle. Even Tariq Aziz is checked to see if he is carrying weapons. "Saddam knows fortunes are being offered to have him assassinated." Saddam's paranoia increased after Uday, his eldest son, narrowly escaped assassination when gunmen riddled his car with bullets in 1996. Uday was partially paralysed and uses a wheelchair. To avoid falling victim to even his own bodyguards, Saddam is a walking arsenal. "He has concealed guns all over his body," Mahmoud said. "He also has panic buttons to press if he even suspects somebody is about to attack him." Israeli intelligence sources have hinted that the deal with Mahmoud included smuggling his family out of Iraq. Mossad agents have done this before. At the start of Saddam's reign of terror, they persuaded an Iraqi pilot to fly his Russian fighter to Israel – after spiriting out his wife and children.
I would have expected to hear about this ASAP. That's huge. I wonder how long it will take the Iraqis to move the weapons.
wow...thats all i can say. this will be pretty amazing if everything pans out. i think this is one of the reasons why the bush administration has been holding back on giving away what it knows about saddam. i think they were waiting for a top guy to defect or something like this so they would not be embarrassed if they had incorrect information since they didn't have specific knowledge of where the weapons were.
If the above story is true, Saddam's goose is cooked. I don't see any more problems with the UN security council or any other major US ally. The only problem I have with the article is that to many of the specifics have been leaked. One would think that the locations need not been mentioned.
If this is true, well, it's not like I'm glad since there is no positive in any of this, but we gotta do what we gotta do I guess. I imagine the Columbia tragedy has haulted Fox and CNN from paying attention to anything else. What is up with Sharon withholding info?
That is a big leak. Makes me think that we are about to hit them anyday now. Didn't LeGrouper say it was about to happen since his parents were evacuated?
Wow.........Looked for this story on www.cnn.com and www.reuters.com and came up with nothing...if this is true......its war time
To hell with www.cnn.com and www.reuters.com, it sounds good enough to me.... BOMBS OVER BAGHDAD! ! I would like to know what the circumstances were as to why and how he left as well as why he wanted to give his information to Israeli intelligence.
Funny, I was thinking this was about as sensational as most of the stuff that Glynch posts. I'm not saying this isn't true, but I'd like to see some corroboration before I buy any of this.
I imagine that for a defecting Iraqi, Israel is the closest nation that is unquestionably sided with the United States. Not to mention his personal safety is probably more secure with the Israelis than with any other country in the region.
The story did come from "Australia's biggest-selling daily newspaper" I still don't know why it was printed... seems as if it should've been kept under wraps for a while... if this is true, well.... nice knowin' ya Saddam... If it is true, I hope this, along with the rest of the evidence, is presented to the American people.
Wake me up when CNN (or even Fox "News") runs with this story. The timing of this "leak" raises an eyebrow. We shall see.
I was extremely unsurprised by this article: IRAQ'S THUG BARES EVIL POISON PLOT By URI DAN February 2, 2003 -- JERUSALEM http://www.nypost.com/commentary/67899.htm WHILE President Bush is being urged to provide proof of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, Israel has its own proof that Iraq is ready to use deadly poison in terrorist attacks. "I was told to be ready to spread poison in the major Israeli water pipelines, the River Jordan or the Lake of Galilee," said Mohammed Farouq Abu Roub, a former junior officer in Palestinian intelligence. "I got these instructions in Iraq, where I was given thousands of dollars to carry out mega-attacks." Abu Roub, 29, was quoted by Israel's largest newspaper, Yediot Aronoth, speaking from his prison after being arrested in a botched effort to dispatch a homicide bomber to Israel. Details of the Shin Bet's lengthy investigation of Abu Roub had already been passed on to the United States, sources told The Post. Abu Roub began looking toward Baghdad for a kindred spirit after he became disappointed with Yasser Arafat in February 2001, shortly after the Palestinian terror offensive began. "I made a strong commitment to Saddam, just as he made a commitment to the Palestinian people. Our destinies are interlinked," Abi Roub said. Abu Roub left his wife and three young daughters in their West Bank village of Kabatiya and traveled with two other would-be terrorists to Baghdad by way of Amman, Jordan. There they were contacted by Abu Abbas, the head of the Palestine Liberation Front - and best known as the commander of the 1985 seajacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and for the murder of New Yorker Leon Klinghoffer. Abu Roub and the two other recruits were taken to a secret military base called "al-Quds," a 90-minute drive from Baghdad, where they were trained in sabotage under concealed identities. "There was no problem getting weapons, ammunition, poisonous powders," he said. "Everything was in big quantities. There were no limits." When Abu Roub had finished training, Abu Abbas told him to prepare for the attack on the Israeli water supply - as well as on kindergartens or school buses that would traumatize Israeli parents. "I want a mega-attack with a lot of casualties that will paralyze the life of Israel," Abu Roub quoted him as saying. Luckily for the Israelis, their Shin Bet secret service caught up with Abu Roub before he was able to carry out any of the schemes.
If this story is true, and it looks questionable due to the fact that major news organizations aren't touching it, yet.. The story has been floated for days by such dubious sources as bushcountry.org. Given the big lies such as incubator babies and phony satellite photos of Iraqi troops massing on the Saudi border used for Gulf War I, we are wise to look for lies this time around. However, assuming these weapons are there as the supposed bodyguard says, then this is a good reason to allow the inspections to continue so that these weapons can be located and safely disposed of. If the weapons are there ,and are successfully deployed with significant US caualties ,would any of you have second thoughts about the war track rather than inspections and safe disposal track? I'm sure the families of service men and women would. In short, it is false to assume that if the bodyguard report is true and weapons are found, that war is the desireable and only legitimate option. At any rate it will be interesting to see if this story is true or just an attempt to plant disinformation in the mainstream press. Remember the curious story from a few months ago about the supposed 200 lbs or some large amount of weapons grade uranium that was supposedly seized in Turkey close to the Iraqi border. It turned out to be false.
You're too mega-kind. I always try my mega-best to keep the bbs mega-informed on pertinent mega-topics. Yet, for some reason, all I can think about right now is Mecha-Streisand.
