In case you may have missed this story last year since all of the MSM reporters were on “comparative gulag” assignment at Abu Ghraib…
The Al-Qaida terrorists who were wanting to rid the world of Jordan as we know it with WMD, are on trial this week.
via “Atlas” at Jackson’s Junction and Instapundit…
Islamic militants planned to detonate an explosion that would have sent a cloud of toxic chemicals across Jordan, causing death, blindness and sickness, a chemical expert testified in a military court Wednesday.
Col. Najeh al-Azam was giving evidence in the trial of 13 men who are alleged to have planned what would have been the world’s first chemical attack by the al-Qaida terror group. The accused include al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq, Abu-Musab Al-Zarqawi, and three other fugitives who are being tried in absentia.
Jordanian security services foiled the plot in April last year. Jordanian officials say that had it been carried out, thousands of people would have died…
There are several things that I find interesting about this WMD plan by Al-Qaida:
* One is that Al Zarqawi was planning to blow up the very country where his close relatives live. I find this more morbid than usual. Not that there is any sense in any terrorist action.
* One of the terrorists involved in this foiled attack has already confessed to being trained in Iraq-
At least one of the al-Qaida plotters arrested in Jordan earlier this month as part of a weapons of mass destruction plot that Jordanian officials say could have killed 80,000 people revealed on Monday that he was trained in Iraq before the U.S. invaded in March 2003.
In a confession broadcast on Jordanian television, the unnamed WMD conspirator revealed: “In Iraq, I started training in explosives and poisons. I gave my complete obedience to [Abu Musab al] Zarqawi,” the al-Qaida WMD specialist whose base of operations was in Iraq.
* Al-Qaida had warned of a terrorist attack in Jordan-
Allegations that al-Qaeda was planning a chemical attack against Jordan have been denied in a new audio message.
But a voice said to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a senior member of the group, does say an assault was considered on Jordan’s intelligence headquarters.
The tape was broadcast on the internet and Arabic television four days after Jordan said it had uncovered a chemical terror plot against targets in Amman.
* The weapons were captured just 75 miles from the Syrian border–
According to United Press International, the al-Qaida car was intercepted just 75 miles from the Syrian border and “carried explosives, a chemical bomb and poisonous gas.”
The discovery of the al-Qaida WMD plot is sure to renew speculation that some of Saddam Hussein’s missing weapons of mass destruction were hidden in Syria before the U.S. attacked in March 2003, and have now found their way into al-Qaida’s hands.
* One idea about the weapons origin-
The provenance of the operation is also of note. The bomb trucks and funds are said to have entered Jordan via Syria. Last fall General James R. Clapper Jr., director of satellite intelligence for the Pentagon, said there had been an unusual amount of traffic–including possibly WMDs–between Iraq and Syria in the lead-up to war.
The terror cell’s ringleader, Jordanian Azmi Jayyousi, said he was acting on the orders of Zarqawi, whom he first met at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan: “I took courses, poisons high level, then I pledged allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.” Mr. Jayyousi said this attack had been plotted from Zarqawi’s new base of operations in Iraq. A Jordanian court sentenced Zarqawi to death this month for plotting the 2002 murder of U.S diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman.
* UN Inspectors said that Saddam had smuggled the WMD out of his country.
* Most importantly,…The chemicals were not being produced in Syria. And, Iraq was known to manufacture these exact chemicals- (via Powerline)
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.
But wait, you say Saddam had no connections to Al-Qaida?
That isn’t what Al-Qaida is saying (and even have posted on their website!)
