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Iraqi General: Syria Gave Al-Qaida Saddam's WMDs
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.
Story Continues Below 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. Gen. Sada, however, said he had no doubt that Zarqawi intended to use the same chemical weapons Saddam had sent to Syria. Telling Crowley that he was "shocked" when news of the Zarqawi plot broke, Saddam's former top advisor recalled thinking: "My God, I know many things. How can I keep them [secret any longer]." Gen. Sada also detailed on Saturday the Iraqi dictator's plan to launch his own WMD attack during the first Gulf War, explaining, "He wanted to attack Israel with chemical weapons." The top Iraqi military man recalled a meeting of senior defense ministers where Saddam ordered: "I want you to do two things that are very important - to attack Israel and to attack Saudi Arabia with chemical weapons." Gen. Sada said the planned WMD strike was to be carried out by 98 aircraft, including Soviet-built Sukhoi 24s, MiGs and French-built Mirage jets. "One wave would fly through Syria and the other wave through Jordan and then penetrate to Israel," he said. Gen. Sada recalled that he was the only one to raise objections, warning Saddam that such an attack would surely provoke a nuclear response from Tel Aviv. "I told all this directly [to Saddam] and everybody was listening. If a needle was dropped on the carpet you would hear it," he told Crowley. After presenting a nearly two-hour-long argument against the WMD attack, Gen. Sada said Saddam was finally persuaded to pull the plug on the deadly operation.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Al-Qaeda
Inside Cover Stories
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