From: John Freeman,MD (trainer18d@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Feb 03 2003 - 16:39:25 PST
GROUP: FYI<a friend sent this news report from
Australia:
Saddam's bodyguard warns of secret arsenal
02feb03
SADDAM Hussein's senior bodyguard has fled with
details of Iraq's secret
arsenal.
His revelations have supported US President George W.
Bush's claim there is
enough evidence from UN inspectors to justify going to
war.
Abu Hamdi Mahmoud has provided Israeli intelligence
with a list of sites that
the inspectors have not visited.
They include:
AN underground chemical weapons facility at the
southern end of the Jadray
Peninsula in Baghdad;
A SCUD assembly area near Ramadi. The missiles come
from North Korea;
TWO underground bunkers in Iraq's Western Desert.
These contain biological
weapons.
William Tierney, a former UN weapons inspector who has
continued to gather
information on Saddam's arsenal, said Mahmoud's
information is "the smoking
gun".
"Once the inspectors go to where Mahmoud has pointed
them, then it's all over
for Saddam," Tierney said.
Tierney, who has high-level contacts in Washington
that go to the White House,
said the information we publish today on Mahmoud's
revelations "checks out,
absolutely checks out".
Mahmoud was a mem ber of the elite unit that protects
Saddam.
It is called the Murasiq Qun – the "Inner Circle".
He was known as "The Gatekeeper".
Mahmoud is a muscular Saddam lookalike often
photographed standing behind
Saddam when he is seated, or to his left when on the
move.
Last week, Mahmoud was being debriefed at a
high-security base in Israel's
Negev Desert.
Ariel Sharon, the country's hard-line prime minister,
has only allowed snippets
of Mahmoud's sensational claims to be shared with the
CIA and MI6.
"Sharon intends to shatter the growing anti-war
movement," a source close to Mr
Sharon said.
"He plans to call all those European leaders who are
wavering to let them know
how Saddam has continued to fool Hans Blix and his
weapons inspectors."
Mahmoud's revelations include locations of five
bunkers buried beneath man-made
sand dunes.
Stockpiled in the bunkers are warheads identical to
the empty shell cases found
two weeks ago by the UN inspectors.
Mahmoud said those shells were on their way to be
refilled and stored in the
bunkers.
A transcript from his debriefing includes:
"Saddam's weapons of mass destruction are also
concealed in a tunnel complex
deep beneath the sewers of Baghdad and in an
underground complex in Ouja, to
the north of Tikrit.
"The complex was built five years ago with help from
Chinese engineers.
"The entrance to the site is through a house in
Tikrit. It is the home of one
of Saddam's cousins and is more than half a mile from
where the weapons are
stored."
In another excerpt from his debriefing, Mahmoud
boasts: "I was inside the
innermost circle where Saddam eats and sleeps.
"I was among the handful of bodyguards closest to him.
"Very few people are allowed close to Saddam.
"Many of the TV images you see of him were taken years
ago. Most people now
only speak to him over the phone. He usually calls
them.
"If they have to call him back with information he
wants, it is passed through
his sons (Uday and Qusay) or (Deputy Prime Minister)
Tariq Aziz.
"All those close to him have codes, which they use to
access the outer circle.
But even they can only come so close to Saddam before
there is a cut-off point
– the Inner Circle. Even Tariq Aziz is checked to
see
if he is carrying
weapons.
"Saddam knows fortunes are being offered to have him
assassinated."
Saddam's paranoia increased after Uday, his eldest
son, narrowly escaped
assassination when gunmen riddled his car with bullets
in 1996. Uday was
partially paralysed and uses a wheelchair.
To avoid falling victim to even his own bodyguards,
Saddam is a walking
arsenal.
"He has concealed guns all over his body," Mahmoud
said.
"He also has panic buttons to press if he even
suspects somebody is about to
attack him."
Israeli intelligence sources have hinted that the deal
with Mahmoud included
smuggling his family out of Iraq.
Mossad agents have done this before.
At the start of Saddam's reign of terror, they
persuaded an Iraqi pilot to fly
his Russian fighter to Israel – after spiriting out
his wife and children.
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