This past saturday, King Abdullah of Jordan revealed that a major plot to detonate several bombs ,in the Amman area of his country, has links to Al-Qaida was thwarted. The three intended targets were the HQ of Jordanian Intelligence, the Jordanian Prime Ministers office in Amman as well as the US Embassy. While threats of bombings are not uncommon, one factor shows and increasing shift from the use of general explosives....the fact that materials for the construction of both a chemical bomb and a poison bomb were discovered. Intrestingly enough, the 18 tons of explosives were traced back to Syria and the group themselves were discovered by Jordanian security forces just 75 miles from the border of the two countries.
While the exact chemicals and posions discovered and their origin has not been released yet, Jordanian officials admitted that if the materials were detonated, "....could have affected the people in a one-kilometer radius and cause the deaths of up to 20,000 people." King Abdullah went to great lengths to not implicate Syrian President Bashir Assad stating, "I'm completely confident that Bashir did not know about it." Thay may be true as Assad's goverment is mostly run by the old hard-liners and Assad himself is often seen as a political lightweight. Several members of an Al-Qaida cell were among those arrested by the security forces with connections to Bin Ladens 'go-to' guy in the region, Abu Musab al- Zarqawi...(so much for al-Jazeera's claim he died over a year ago...must be his ghost.)
The discovery of the Al-Qaida WMD plot is sure to revive the speculation that some of Saddams missing WMD's were moved and hidden inside Syria during the buildup to the war and that they have 'managed' to find their way into Al-Qaida's inventory. Personally, I'm not so sure of that just yet...although US satellite intelligence did show a substantual increase in vehical traffic between Iraq and Syria at the time in question...we may find that the chemicals and poisons discovered may have been of Syrian origin and not Iraqi...but it's too early to call either way...and in the end it shows an increase in terror groups, not just Al-Qaida, that seem to be 'Orgasmic' at the thought of aquiring these types of weapons...regardless of the fact that if used would kill many innocent Jordanians just so they could make a 'statement' ..in this case anyway...so much for destroying the infidels...go figure!