THE BEKAA BECKONS

Powell Confronts, Assad Prevaricates (DEBKA-Net-Weekly, May 4, 2003)

Syria is reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly?s intelligence sources as having secretly disposed of Saddam Hussein?s weapons of mass destruction by moving them into eastern Lebanon for burial in the Beqaa Valley. Iraq?s biological weapons may be there too. They were interred deep under the heroin poppy and cotton fields in two of the most fertile regions of Lebanon: the valley stretching between Jabal Akroum, the town of al Qbayyat and the Syrian border, and the land lying between the towns of Al Hirmil and al Labwah between the Orontes River and the Syrian frontier.

On February 14, about a month before the start of the war in Iraq, DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issue 97 ran an article captioned ?Is Iraq?s WMD cache in Lebanon available to Al Qaeda??

Now, our intelligence sources can disclose exclusively that the relocation of Iraq?s WMD systems took place between January 10 and March 10 and was completed just 10 days before the US-led offensive was launched against Iraq. The banned arsenal, hauled in giant tankers from Iraq to Syria and from there to the Bekaa Valley under Syrian special forces and military intelligence escort, was discharged into pits 6-8 meters across and 25-35 meters deep dug by Syrian army engineers. They were sealed and planted over with new seedlings. Nonetheless, their location is known and detectable with the right instruments. Our sources have learned that Syria was paid about $35 million to make Saddam Hussein?s forbidden weapons disappear.

Sounds dubious, and overly convenient, to us, but we'll take the pretext and we'd support going in just to eradicate the heroin source. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 4, 2003 8:11 AM