By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
April 27, 2004
John Kerry has based much of his presidential campaign on the notion that President Bush “lied” about there being a threat of weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein. According to Kerry, those weapons of mass destruction don’t exist. A month ago at the annual dinner for radio and TV journalists at the White House, a video spoof of the President looking under his desk for weapons of mass destruction was shown. Kerry, hoping to make political hay out of the video complained, “If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought.”
Now, if you had taken Kerry’s and the world media’s reaction to the weapons of mass destruction and Bush seriously, naturally you have to assume there really is no such threat. In fact, many sources, including several Democrat candidates for president, have been campaigning on exactly that issue. Iraq and its friends in the al Qaeda, we have been told, simply DON’T have weapons of mass destruction.
So, if terrorists don’t have WMDs, why is an Associated Press story about a foiled attempt by Al-Qaeda to destroy the government of the nation of Jordan and kill 80,000 people with chemical weapons, buried on the back pages of my morning newspaper? If that bomb had been detonated, instead of terrorists being captured, it would have killed nearly 2% of the population of Jordan. By comparison, the 3,000 who died on 9-11 in the United states killed about .001% of the US population.
I assure you this story was not buried in the Jordan Times. In a front page, banner news article Jordan Times writer Mahmoud Al Abed wrote:
“Suspects arrested earlier this month in connection with a major terrorist plot confessed to planning to carry out the first ever Al Qaeda chemical attack in Jordan.”
The targets were Jordan’s General Intelligence Department, the Jordanian Prime Ministry and the US embassy in Amman. Mahmoud went on to report:
“In taped testimonies broadcast on Jordan Television Monday, the suspects revealed that the mastermind of the operation was the Iraq-based top Al Qaeda leader, Ahmad Fadeel Khalaileh, better known as Abu Mussab Zarqawi.
Now where have we heard the name “Zarqawi” or “Zaqawi” before? How about when Secretary of State Colin Powell was speaking at the United Nations on February 5, 2003? It was in Powell's speech which has been repeatedly labelled as "misinformation" or "lies" of the Bush administration that warned of weapons of mass destruction and terrorists. In fact, Powell NAMED Zarqawi in that speech:
“But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Massad Al-Zakawi an associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants.“Zarkawi, Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialties, and one of the specialties of this camp, is poisons.
“When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zakawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp, and this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.”
Now let’s go back to yesterday’s Jordan Times account of the foiled chemical attack in Amman. The group’s leader who admitted on Jordanian TV to trying to destroy both Jordan’s government and the US presence in Jordan is Azmi Jaiousi. Mahmoud wrote of Jaiousi:
“Last week, authorities announced that they had killed four terrorist suspects, three of them reportedly Iraqis, in shoot-out in the Hashmi Shamali neighbourhood of Amman.“Jaiousi, who appeared in the televised programme, said that he met Zarqawi in Afghanistan, then in Iraq, where he was recruited to carry out the attack.
"'Abu Mussab assigned me to go to Jordan, with Mwaffaq Odwan. Our mission was to instigate military work on the Jordanian arena. He [Zarqawi] arranged for my infiltration to Jordan,’ Jaiousi testified.
“Jaiousi added that contacts with his leader were through prepaid mobile phone cards and through messengers who came from Syria.”
(Those who want to trash the Patriot Act because it authorizes law enforcement agencies to track cell phone calls, as well as phone lines, please take note. You are not living in the 1930s.)
“The first attack was planned against the General Intelligence Department, using three large trucks laden with 20 tonnes of chemical explosives and two small cars.“Using $170,000 Zarqawi sent him from Iraq, Jaiousi said the group purchased the vehicles and structurally reinforced them, bought the chemicals and manufactured part of them in a deserted house in a village near Irbid, then later in a warehouse near Ramtha.
"'I envisioned the result after executing the work. According to my experience as an explosives expert, the whole of the Intelligence Department would have been totally destroyed, and nothing of it would have remained, nor anything surrounding it. Destruction would have even reached far away areas,’ Jaiousi said.”
So, are terrorist threats, Iraqi financing and weapons of mass destruction mere figments of George W. Bush’s and Colin Powell’s imagination? Can we really afford to continue listening to people like John Kerry and most of the media that are trying to convince you that George Bush and Colin Powell are liars? Not according to the realities now being faced by one editor in Jordan who said in today’s editorial entitled: “The Threat is Real”:
“For those who still believe terrorist plots are conspired or fabricated to detract attention, it's time to face reality. The threats are real. The threats could be as close as the hospitals, schools, universities, bus stations, movie theatres, and malls we frequent."
Zarqawi, based on what he hears American politicians, media and anti-war activists saying about how terrible their president is and what he has seen America do in cutting and running out of Vietnam and Somalia, thinks his methods will eventually win. In fact, Zarqawi said recently,
“The Americans … as you know, are the most cowardly of God’s creatures. They are an easy quarry. We ask God to enable us to kill and capture them to sow panic among those behind them and to trade them for our detained shaykhs and brothers.”
In spite of the media misinformation, the political opportunism and the entertainment saturated lifestyle we seem to be experiencing these days, I sure hope we Americans prove Zarqawi wrong.
To Comment: Mary Mostert