DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources reveal that Washington and Dr. David Kay, senior US and coalition WMD hunter in Iraq - far from groping in the dark for Saddam’s prohibited weapons, as conventionally believed – have a very good idea of where they are hidden.
The search has narrowed down to a section of the Syrian Desert known as Dayr Az-Zawr in Syria’s 600 sq. mile Al Jazirah province, which is wedged between the Turkish and Iraqi borders. The missing weapons systems are thought to be buried somewhere under these desert sands. This area is now probably the most keenly watched area on earth – from its outer periphery. At its eastern edge, US special force units, Predator drones and reconnaissance airplanes and satellites make sure no one steps into this ultra-sensitive patch of desert. Turkish special forces, intelligence and air force units are guarding it from the northwest. The Syrians are nowhere to be seen, acting as though the target-area does not concern them.
DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly have consistently reported that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction were removed from the country and secretly buried in Lebanon and northern Syria with the connivance of Syrian president Bashar Assad.
But short of tearing up hundreds of miles of sand, the American hunters have reached an impasse in their searches. What can Saddam Hussein contribute to breaking the standoff?
DEBKAfile’s intelligence experts evaluate the situation thus:
If the ex-dictator continues to prevaricate instead of giving straight answers to questions, the US president has two options:
1. To bring crushing leverage to bear on the Syrian president and force him to order his engineering corps to dig up the hiding places marked on his charts and quietly hand over the wanted weapons to the Americans. For the present, Assad is tossing off any such demands with complete nonchalance.
2. To let American military and engineering units loose on the targeted miles and burrow until the weapons are found.
That course could bring American and Syrian armies into a major collision, a development that would rock the Middle East no less than the American invasion of Iraq.
But there is a third option.
It is that Saddam hand over to his American interrogators the details of the arrangements he worked out with the Syrian president for the transfer of the weapons of mass destruction to their present hiding places. He would have to name the Iraqi and Syrian officials who handled the operation. With this information in hand, President Bush could turn the heat on Assad and demand his cooperation in locating the buried items. If Assad continued to shrug the demands aside, then the evidence against the Syrian president would be laid before the UN Security Council and an international operation mounted to bring the prohibited weapons to light.
