Have some of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (wmd) been found in Jordan?
Around the first of April this year, the Jordanian authorities captured an al-Qaeda terrorist cell that worked out of Jordan. The terrorists had about 20 tons of chemicals, including poison gas! That’s right, 20 tons of chemicals—or weapons of mass destruction.
The al Qaeda leader in Jordan has confessed that they planned to kill 80,000 Jordanians with those chemicals.
King Abdullah ii of Jordan told the San Francisco Chronicle that “It was a major, major operation. … It would have decapitated the government” (April 17). Yes indeed—“a major, major operation.” This is chemical warfare of the worst kind! But it is getting hardly any attention from the media and politicians.
Do many of these institutions truly understand what the war against terrorism is and what the United States must do to win?
Where did these terrorists get the poison gas? The Jordanians know it came from Syria—which in itself is a dangerous act of war by that terrorist-sponsoring nation. But do America and Britain have the will to stop Syria’s terrorist activity?
Terrorism expert John Loftus was interviewed by Larry Elder of Creators Syndicate concerning the lack of media interest in the origin of the chemicals found in Jordan. Loftus, a respected author, lawyer and lecturer, is a former Army officer and Justice Department prosecutor who once held some of the highest security clearances in the world. Here is a part of that interview:
“John Loftus: There’s a lot of reason to think [the source of the chemicals] might be Iraq. We captured Iraqi members of al Qaeda, who’ve been trained in Iraq … and now they’re in Jordan with nerve gas. … You have to have obtained it from someplace.
“Larry Elder: They couldn’t have obtained it from Syria?
“Loftus: Syria does have the ability to produce certain kinds of nerve gasses, but in small quantities. The large stockpiles were known to be in Iraq. The best U.S. and allied intelligence say that in the 10 weeks before the Iraq war, Saddam’s Russian adviser told him to get rid of all the nerve gas. … So they shipped it across the border to Syria and Lebanon and buried it. … [T]here’s no doubt these guys confessed on Jordanian television that they received the training for this mission in Iraq. … And from the description it appears this is the form of nerve gas known as vx. It’s very rare, and very tough to manufacture … one of the most destructive chemical mass production weapons that you can use. … They wanted to build three clouds, a mile across, of toxic gas. A whole witch’s brew of nasty chemicals that were going to go into this poison cloud, and this would have gone over shopping malls, hospitals …” (May 6; emphasis mine throughout).
There may be more information revealed later about these chemicals, and this information could be slightly altered. Regardless, this is an Earth-shaking event that deserves headlines in our media! Unfortunately, little is being reported—even though the terrorists have made shocking confessions.
Here is more from that interview:
“Elder: You said that the Russians told Saddam, ‘There is going to be an invasion. Get rid of your chemical and biological weapons.’
“Loftus: Sure. It would only bring the United Nations down on their heads if they were shown to really have weapons of mass destruction. It’s not generally known, but the cia has found 41 different material breaches where Saddam did have a weapons of mass destruction program of various types. It was completely illegal. But no one could find the stockpiles. And the liberal press seems to be focusing on that.
“Elder: It seems to me that this is a huge, huge story.
“Loftus: It’s embarrassing to the [press]. They’ve staked their reputations that this stuff wasn’t there. And now all of a sudden we have al Qaeda agents from Iraq showing up with weapons of mass destruction.”
Unparalleled Shame of the Media
Is this “a huge, huge story”? You could double or triple the word huge, and still not emphasize this too much! King Abdullah also was repeating a word when he said this was “a major, major operation.” At least a few people are trying to show us the horrendous danger of this terrorist attempt.
And where is most of the media focusing? It would seem that they are focusing on finding stockpiles of wmd only in Iraq. But this is not “a huge, huge story” if you are focused only on finding wmd in Iraq! That is a dangerously shallow view. And surely many in the media know this.
Are some in the media withholding this Jordanian story so that their political candidate can win the U.S. election? Are they sacrificing the country’s welfare on the altar of politics? Perhaps they are over-indulging in self-flagellation over the abhorrent military scandal regarding Iraqi prisoners. That scandal is abominable, but it is now being used to hide this shocking al Qaeda capture in Jordan—which is 10,000 times more important!
After all, Saddam Hussein inflicted such abuse on his people, and much worse, as a matter of routine.
What if the terrorists had been caught in New York City or Washington or Los Angeles with 20 tons of chemicals? Those 20 tons of chemicals could go a long way toward wrecking the economies of America, Britain or Israel if they were used against our nations. This is a story that goes far beyond politics or even one or two nations. It’s a world crisis of the greatest magnitude!
The media has been screaming about no wmd ever since Saddam Hussein was toppled. Now we find 20 tons and they go shamefully, shamefully quiet! How can we even describe such a disgusting failure to seek the truth (which is supposedly why they exist). Has most of the media totally lost sight of the bigger issues—the life-and-death issues of nations?
Here is more from the Loftus interview:
“Elder: David Kay [the man put in charge of searching for wmd in Iraq] said, in an interim report, that there was a possibility that wmd components were shipped to Syria.
“Loftus: A possibility? We had a Syrian journalist who defected to Paris in January. The guy is dying of cancer, and he said, ‘Look, my friends in Syrian intelligence told me exactly where the stuff is buried.’ He named three sites in Syria, and the Israelis have confirmed the three sites. They know where the stuff is, but the problem is that the United States can’t just go around invading Arab countries. … We know from Israeli and defectors’ intelligence that the son of the Syrian defense minister was paid 50 million bucks to bring the stuff across the border and bury it.”
Did Saddam Hussein have wmd? The world knew he had them. Saddam used these weapons against Iran and his own people. Can anyone really imagine this terrorist-sponsoring dictator ever destroying those weapons? There is not one scintilla of evidence that this was ever done.
Ignoring an Ally
The people of Jordan—friends of America, Britain and Israel—are a very special people in the Arab world. The bbc on April 30 wrote, “Her Majesty Queen Raniya on Thursday (April 29) participated with thousands of Jordanians in a national public rally pledging allegiance to the country, denouncing all forms of terror and calling for security and stability in the region.
“‘The silent majority decided to speak out against terrorism in a first-of-its-kind demonstration in the Arab and Muslim world on this scale,’ Queen Raniya told the Jordan news agency, Petra.
“Walking hand-in-hand with 9th-grade students from public schools, Queen Raniya joined around 250,000 Jordanians from all walks of life who converged on Amman from all over the kingdom to condemn all forms of violence and terrorism.”
How rare this is in the Arab world. Can we afford to virtually ignore such a noble effort in the radical Muslim world?
Jordan doesn’t have the power to defend itself from the terrorists, sponsored by Syria. Only America can do that. Our media should be supporting the U.S. government in stopping Syria by doing whatever is required. But that is not the case. Most of the media simply do not understand what the U.S. must do to win the war against terrorism.
Too many in the media and politics refuse to see the big picture. We aid the terrorists by practically ignoring friendly nations like Jordan, Afghanistan and, to a lesser degree, Pakistan and Libya. We went to war in Iraq with hopes of pressuring terrorist nations to become our friends and oppose terrorism. But at the same time, so many of our leaders in politics and the media do too little to support friendly nations in the Middle East!
King Abdullah also had this to say about the latest plot that was stopped: that his country had “lived through an extremely delicate situation in recent days, but divine protection has thwarted the plans of these criminals and saved the lives of thousands of civilians in what would have been a crime never before seen in the kingdom” (New York Times, April 14).
Jordan has been the target of several terrorist attacks. The really serious attacks have been foiled. (And that is the most fascinating and hopeful story of all. You can learn all about this subject in our Daniel booklet. Just ask for it—all of our literature is free.)
But still, “Given the best intelligence in the world, if you stop the terrorists time and time again and foil their plots, but never go out and eliminate them at the source, all you are doing is training them to do better next time” (Capitalism Magazine, Oct. 11, 2001).
Syria is one of those sources. And until the United States has the will to deal with such sources as Syria and Iran, it can never win the war against terrorism.