News for January 30, 2006

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Iraqi General: Syria Gave Al Qaida Saddam’s WMDs Video of former General (January 29, 2006) - A former senior military advisor to Saddam Hussein is warning that the chemical weapons used by top Al Qaida terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi in a foiled 2004 plot to attack Amman, Jordan were the same weapons Saddam Hussein transported to Syria before the U.S. invasion. Gen. Georges Sada offered the stunning revelation Saturday while explaining why he didn’t decide to go public about Saddam’s hidden WMD stockpile until recently. “As a general, you see, we should keep our secrets,” Gen. Sada told WABC Radio's Monica Crowley. But when news broke of the foiled WMD attack on Amman, he changed his mind. “I understood that the terrorists were going to make an explosion in Amman in Jordan . . . . and they were targeting the prime minister of Jordan, the intelligence [headquarters] of Jordan, and maybe the American embassy in Jordan - and they were going to use the same chemical weapons which we had in Iraq,” he told WABC. Last week, Gen. Sada generated headlines when he told the New York Sun that Saddam had shipped his biological and chemical weapons stockpiles to Syria in the weeks before the U.S. attacked in March 2003. But until yesterday, the former top Iraqi official had said nothing about al Qaida gaining access to those same weapons. “It was a major, major operation. It would have decapitated the government,” said Jordan’s King Abdullah at the time, in an interview about the Zarqawi plot with the San Francisco Chronicle. Had it succeeded, the WMD strike would have been the most deadly terrorist attack in world history, with Jordanian officials estimating that Zarqawi’s al Qaida team could have killed up to 20,000 people. While King Abdullah said that trucks containing chemical weapons had come from Syria, he did not identify Iraq as the ultimate source of Zarqawi’s WMDs. more...

Al-Zawahri Mocks Bush Over Terrorism War (January 30, 2006) - In a new video aired Monday, Al-Qaida’s No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri mocked President Bush as a “failure” in the war on terror, called him a “butcher” for killing innocent Pakistanis in a miscarried air strike and chastised the United States for not accepting Osama bin Laden’s offer of a truce. Al-Zawahri, wearing white robes and a white turban and speaking in a forceful and angry voice, also threatened a new attack in the United States - “God willing, on your own land.” The video, broadcast on Al-Jazeera TV a day before Bush delivers his State of the Union address, provided the first concrete evidence that Al-Zawahri was still alive after the Jan. 13 air strike in eastern Pakistan that targeted him but killed four other al-Qaida leaders and 13 villagers. The message came on the heels of a Jan. 19 audiotape by bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader’s first tape in more than a year. Bin Laden said his followers were preparing an attack in the United States and offered the Americans a conditional truce, though he did not spell out terms. A U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in compliance with office policy, said there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the al-Zawahri video, which U.S. intelligence officials were analyzing. more...

Vatican may include Muslims in dialogue (January 27, 2006) - The Vatican is exploring the possibility of expanding its Catholic-Jewish dialogue to also include Muslims, although talks are at a very initial stage, a Vatican official said Friday. Monsignor Michael Fitzgerald, who heads the Vatican’s office for interreligious dialogue, spoke in an interview after the World Jewish Congress said its chairman, Rabbi Israel Singer, had discussed the initiative with Fitzgerald and other high-ranking Vatican officials during a visit to Rome. The main point of the talks was to intensify the Vatican’s official dialogue with Jews, but they also included “specific possibilities to expand interfaith talks to also include representatives from the Islamic faith,” the WJC said in a statement. Details on establishing a “trialogue” were now to be discussed in bilateral and multilateral meetings, the statement said. more...

Hamas hints long-term truce, demanding Israel change flag (additional reporting) (January 30, 2006) - Hamas, which catapulted to power in last week’s Palestinian elections, might soon offer Israel a long-term cease fire but will not recognize Israel’s right to exist, the terror group’s chief Mahmoud al-Zahar told WorldNetDaily yesterday after earlier demanding the Jewish state change it’s official flag. Al-Zahar’s comments follow a WND exclusive interview in which a top Hamas leader said his group will soon make public a “peace initiative” in which it will offer to trade strategic land with Israel, cease attempts to capture parts of Jerusalem, and sign a 10-year renewable truce with the Jewish state with the aim of later destroying Israel. “I am not ruling out a long truce period with Israel during which we will hold back armed confrontation as long as the Israeli soldiers respect the truce and do not commit violence against the Palestinian people,” said al-Zahar, speaking to WND by cell phone from the Gaza Strip. Israel routinely conducts operations against terror groups in Gaza and the West Bank aimed at halting suicide bombings, shooting attacks and rocket firing. Hamas openly targets Israeli civilians. Al-Zahar deflected a question about whether he will modify Hamas’ official charter, which calls for jihad against Israel “by assaulting and killing.” Earlier he demanded Israel “remove the two blue stripes from its national flag. The stripes on the flag are symbols of occupation. They signify Israel’s borders stretching from the River Euphrates to the River Nile.” Israel’s national flag, adopted from a previously used Zionist movement flag, features a star of David within two blue stripes. The stripes signify the Talit, or Jewish prayer shawl, which is traditionally striped. more...

Super Bowl Sunday terror chatter high (January 30, 2006) - There is a high likelihood of a major terrorist attack next Sunday, say international terror analysts and intelligence sources. The warning is made on the basis of several factors, according to Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin: There is increased “chatter” in the terrorist world about a major new attack in the West – a sign often leading to an impending strike; The date Feb. 5 has been specifically referenced in some of this chatter; The date is significant to Osama bin Laden; Much of the western world will be watching television that day. The release of al-Qaida videotapes seems to provide clues about the dates of future attacks and, in this scenario, Feb. 5 becomes the most likely near-term terror strike date. Terror attacks seem to follow the release of al-Qaida videos by about 30 days. Some intelligence analysts are noting the significance of the release of videos recently by both Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zawahiri released his last video Jan. 6, making Feb. 5 the most likely target date, according to past attacks. Some analysts suggest the release of communiqués by both al-Zawahiri and bin Laden might be the precursor to a mega-attack – something even rivaling Sept. 11 in scope and devastation. more...

U.N. pushing to end nation-states (January 30, 2006) - The U.N. has a plan to make every Miss America Pageant contestant happy by bringing about “world peace.” All it will take, says the draft of a visionary proposal by the U.N. Development Program, is to getting rid of all the pesky nations of the world. In fact, the plan endorsed by prominent world figures including Nobel laureates, bankers, politicians and economists to end nation-states as we know them is also designed to end health pandemics, poverty and “global warming.” So far, the U.N. hasn’t mentioned whether the proposal will do anything for obesity. The U.N. says an unprecedented outbreak of co-operation between countries, applied through six specific financial tools, would serve as pretty much a cure-all for the world’s ills and generate an extra $7 trillion in economic growth. The authors of the ambitious report don’t expect nations to fold up and take the hint any time soon. But the idea is to start the ball rolling – and maybe years or decades from now the world will actually be ready to listen. Most of the focus of the U.N. plan is on global warming – a climate change phenomenon some consider to be more theory than reality. But it seems to be the central component in the U.N.’s globalization scheme for the future – the very organizing principal behind the push to eliminate borders, sovereign governments and autonomous nation-states. more...

Magnitude 2.8 - PORTLAND URBAN AREA, OREGON (January 29, 2006) - A micro earthquake occurred at 02:00:53 (UTC) on Sunday, January 29, 2006. The magnitude 2.8 event has been located in the PORTLAND URBAN AREA, OREGON. (This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.)

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal promised Tehran an Iranian embassy in Ramallah very shortly after its victory – five days before the Palestinian election (January 28, 2006) - The promise, indicating that Hamas was not surprised by its victory at the Jan 25 poll, was delivered at a secret meeting in Damascus on Jan. 20. On that day, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmanidejad interviewed 11 Palestinian terrorist leaders based in the Syrian capital with cameras flashing. Not so, Mashaal’s half-hour absence for a secret down-to-earth discussion with the Iranian Republic Guards Corps’ al Quds division commander Gen. Qassam Suleimi, who was in the presidential party. DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources know Gen. Suleimi as the Islamic Republic’s supreme commander of Iran’s terrorist activities in Iraq, the rest of the Arab world, the Palestinian Authority and Israel. His meeting with the Hamas leader was the follow-up to their talks in Tehran last December, when Mashaal spent three weeks making the rounds of Iran’s terror executives. The Hamas leader intends arriving in Palestinian territory in the wake of the victory his movement snatched from the Fatah. more...

Saddam Ordered WMD Strike on Israel (January 30, 2006) - The former deputy of the Iraqi air force, General Georges Sada, revealed on Saturday that that former dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, ordered him during the first Gulf War to bomb Israeli population centers with chemical weapons. The ousted dictator, said Sada in recently published book, Saddam’s secret’s, ordered 96 Russian fighter jets to be armed with chemical weapons and sent to bomb Israel. According to Sada, who recently served as a national security advisor to the temporary prime minister and was in the midst of a book tour in the US, said he succeeded in convincing Hussein to reconsider his order. Sada said he convinced Saddam to abort the mission by telling him that the Iraqi pilots could not complete the mission with the equipment at their disposal, and that the Israelis had radar that could detect them before they reached their target. In his book, which was written four years ago, Sada also claims that Iraq’s chemical weapons were taken to Syria aboard civilian Iraqi “Boeing” airplanes just prior to the US invasion. The 65-year-old Sada said that 56 flights of this type took place, but went largely unnoticed because they were flying under the guise of humanitarian aid. Prior to the second Iraq war Israel warned that Iraq was moving chemical weapons from its territory into Syria. Chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction were never found in Iraq by US-led allied forces. more...

Iranian Talk of an Attack on America (January 30, 2006) - It’s out in the open and they aren’t joking. There are growing indications that Iran may be planning an attack on American soil. These indicators are not secret — they appear in speeches, newspaper articles, TV programs, and sermons in Iran by figures linked to the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other government officials, all discussing potential Iranian attacks on America, which will subsequently lead to its destruction. A report on May 28 in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported that an Iranian intelligence unit has established a center called “The Brigades of the Shahids of the Global Islamic Awakening.” The paper claimed that it had obtained a tape with a speech by Hassan Abbassi, a Revolutionary Guards intelligence theoretician who teaches at Al-Hussein University. In the tape, Mr. Abbassi spoke of Tehran’s secret plans, which include “a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization.” In order to accomplish this, he explained, “There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West. We have already spied on these sites and we know how we are going to attack them.” It was reported that America expelled two Iranian security guards employed by Tehran’s U.N. offices on June 29, after the mission was repeatedly warned against allowing its guards to videotape bridges, the Statue of Liberty, and New York’s subway system.This was the third time the Iranians have been caught in such activities, which could be connected to the sites mentioned in potential plans to attack America. more...