Posted on 01/28/2003 10:18:29 AM PST by ex-Texan
Saddam's Bodyguard Reveals Secret Arsenal
By Gordon Thomas
Saddam's senior bodyguard has fled from Iraq with details of Saddam's secret arsenal.
His revelations come the day the UN inspectors report to the Security Council whether they have found a smoking gun that will trigger war.
Abu Hamdi Mahmoud has provided a list of sites that so far the UN 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 bio weapons.
William Tierney, a former UN weapons inspector who has continued to gather information on Saddam's arsenal, described Mahmoud's information as "the smoking gun. Once the inspectors go to where Mahmoud has pointed them, then it's all over for Saddam".
Tierney still has high level contacts in Washington that reach into the White House.
He said that the information we publish today on Mahmoud's revelations "checks out, absolutely checks out."
Tierney believes it is "inevitable" that we will go to war.
Globe-Intel has independently obtained documents smuggled out of Iraq which show he does have weapons of mass destruction that have eluded discovery by UN inspectors.
The weapons include motorised underwater mines capable of creeping along the sea bed and then surfacing beneath a battleship or carrier.
Each mine is filled with chemicals that upon explosion can envelop the ship in a deadly cloud of poison.
The documents show that the mines and other weapons of mass destruction have been secretly developed at sites the UN inspectors have also not visited.
These are:
Al-Qaqa's State Establishment. Sixty miles south of Baghdad, it has produced what the documents describe as "self-detonating precise guided missiles".
Near State Establishment. It is on the western side of the Baghdad-Mosul road. It has produced "artillery rounds and other machined metal parts" for the mines.
The mines have been machine-finished at Hateen State Establishment, to the north of Baghdad.
In the past weeks, they have been moved to Basra - ready to be launched against the naval armada assembling in the Gulf.
One document reveals:
"The mines use a special camera to distinguish the target above it. The mines then stop under the target. Once in place they produce chemical materials which generates huge amounts of oxygen that guides the mine to the surface. When the amount of oxygen reaches a specific level, the pressure of the oxygen triggers the detonator which results in a tremendous explosion".
The documents reveal that test firings of the mine were carried out on Lake Tharthar on June 5 last year. The tests are described as "completely successful".
Mahmoud's revelations have also enabled both George Bush and Tony Blair to take an even stronger stand against anti-war protesters when they meet in Washington this week.
Mahmoud was a member of the elitist unit charged with protecting Saddam. It is called the Murasiq Qun - the "Inner Circle". He was known as "The Gatekeeper". Mahmoud is the muscular Saddam lookalike who is always photographed standing either behind Saddam when he is seated - or to his left when on the move.
He was trained to spot the slightest threat to Saddam. To deal with it, he had a throwing knife up his right sleeve.
"In any threat my first job was to throw myself over Saddam to protect his body and then use my knife", he has told his Mossad debriefers.
Now he's at the top of Saddam's kill list. But there is no way Saddam's own assassination unit - the Hamaya Khasa - can get to Mahmoud. He is now protected by a team of Israeli agents.
For weeks he was in secret negotiation with a Mossad agent in Baghdad. With the promise he could not be charged with any crimes he committed on behalf of Saddam, and he would be given a new identity - including having his appearance changed by surgery - Mahmoud agreed to desert. Last week he was being debriefed in a high security base in Israel's Negev Desert. Ariel Sharon, the country's hard-line prime minister has so far only allowed snippets of Mahmoud's sensational claims to be shared with the CIA and MI6.
But a source close to Sharon says he wants to use the revelations when, as expected, he returns to power after the country's election (tomorrow, Monday).
"Sharon intends to shatter the growing anti-war movement. 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 inspectors," said the source.
Mahmoud's revelations include:
Locations of five bunkers buried beneath purpose made sand dunes.
Stockpiled in the bunkers are warheads identical to the empty shell cases found two weeks ago by the UN inspectors.
Mahmoud has claimed those shells were on their way to be refilled and stored in the bunkers.
A portion of 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 build five years ago with help from Chinese engineers.
"The actual entrance to the site is through a house in Tikrit. It is the home of one of Saddam's cousins. The entrance is over half a mile from where the weapons are stored".
Mahmoud has also provided the first really detailed insights into how Saddam lives and is protected.
Mahmoud says since the Gulf War there have been nine assassination attempts on Saddam. The most recent was in February last year.
Mahmoud has described how he was selected.
"I was on gate duty at one of Saddam's palaces. One night he arrived in a 10-car convoy. I checked all the vehicles and Saddam stepped out of one car and asked why I inspected them all and not just his. I told him I was not sure in which car he was travelling and that it was in his honour that I checked all the cars. He replied, 'from now on you will be at my side all the time'. He also doubled my salary".
Joining the "Inner Circle", Mahmoud found himself in a world far removed from the life of the starving population of Iraq. He received the finest food and had the best weapons. He had access to top level intelligence - so that he could help to plan Saddam's protection.
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". The bodyguard has given a rare glimpse of what life is like with Saddam.
"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, Quasy or 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", Mahmoud has revealed.
The most protected of all Saddam's palaces is the Qesser al-Quwwa Sitta'shar in Tikrit - close to his birthplace. Mahmoud has described how the palace has four main entrances - and has the latest Chinese-manufactured surveillance equipment.
"There are sensors and matchbox sized cameras everywhere. There are doors which can only be opened by placing your face on a key pad.
"The palace has a number of escape routes that are outside the palace walls. At each escape point there are cars. A car is always parked at each exit. No one knows what exit Saddam will use. On the way to one he can change his mind and go to another. I have know him change his mind several times over thirty feet.
"Saddam's own living quarters in the palace are a labyrinth of doors. To even enter the private sanctum requires having the separate codes to open four doors. On the reverse side of each door is a monitor which shows the Special Guards on duty who is entering".
Saddam's paranoia has increased after his son, Uday, narrowly escaped assassination. He is now wheelchair bound.
To avoid even his own bodyguards being tempted to kill him, Saddam himself is, according to Mahmoud, a walking arsenal.
"He has concealed guns all over his body. He also has panic buttons to press if he even suspects somebody is about to attack him", the former bodyguard has said.
Israeli intelligence sources have hinted that part of the deal with Mahmoud was to smuggle out his family from Iraq. Mossad have done this before. At the start of Saddam's reign of terror they persuaded an Iraqi pilot to fly his Russian Mirage to Israel - after Mossad had spirited his wife and children there.
Maybe, but there is gonna be some "mother of all hernias" in Iraqi by the time everything is moved!
My guess is that he's been courting them because he's a long-range planner; and he probably thinks they are the only ones who can afford him any degree of protection from us.
On a side note, I happened to see a pastor with a TV ministry a couple of weeks ago (don't remember his name and I'd never seen him or the program before so I know nothing about his credibility). He claimed to have Iraqi friends who had told him that it was common knowlege in Iraq that after Saddam kicked the inspectors out, he built new facilities underground right beneath the old ones.
Why bother with the James Bond stuff, when a simple limpet mine under the keel will do just as well?
Why am I not surprised?
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