Sunday, May 4, 2003
Interesting piece via LGF concerning the inside scoop on just how straight-forward Powell's trip to Damascus really was. Given that it's Debka, how accurate is it? No way to know right now. As with many stories from Debka, it sounds a bit pat for my tastes, but it's worth checking out.
DEBKAfile - Powell Confronts, Assad Prevaricates
A couple salient quotes:
$35 million sounds like short money for something like this.
1. A map with the coordinates of the pits holding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
2. Surrender of Saddam’s most senior insiders who fled to Aleppo and Latakiya. After DEBKAfile blew the whistle on April 3, the group staying at the Cote D’Azur De Cham Resort in Latakia was whisked away leaving their families comfortably ensconced there.
3. Handover of the two senior Al Qaeda members now in Damascus. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and intelligence sources say their names and whereabouts were uncovered by US intelligence units in Iraq.
4. An explanation of Syrian motives in allowing two British terrorists, Assif Hanif, who blew himself up in Tel Aviv on April 30, and Omar Khan Sharif, who ran away, to transit Damascus en route to Israel. (One of the duo spent four months of preparation in the Syrian capital with the Hamas operations officer and associate of Hizballah Imad al-Alami, as reported exclusively by DEBKAfile.)
5. An immediate stop to the military-terrorist activities of the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Syria and Lebanon. Failure to do so, Powell explained, will result in a painful tightening of economic pressure on Syria, after the loss of $1b in oil revenues from Baghdad. [...]