Rattle wrote:
] ] 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.
]
] Something about this does not seem right. Why is this public
] right now? If this is true, wouldn't it be best to keep it
] secret from everyone other then the weapon inspectors? They
] are the ones who need this information right now. If this is
] true, and its not acted on quickly by the inspectors, then
] when they get there they will find only burned out facilities.

Agreed, something doesn't smell right. I searched around at google.com/news, and everything just seems to come back to the above story in a Melbourne paper. It doesn't seem to be off one of the trusted "wires", so may be being squashed for other reasons. Maybe it's false, maybe it's supposed to be secret, maybe it's flat out propaganda, and maybe it's just that the wires won't pick it up until they can verify it from multiple or verifiable sources.

I did find some related stuff at a site called Debka, which referred to Saddam's chief bodyguard as "Hamdi Hamouda" (close to the Melbourne paper's spelling of "Abu Hamdi Mahmoud"). I can't rate the Debka site's reliability very high, but that article is here:

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=245

There's also reference to a "sacked" bodyguard named Jassem Abdullah, who's been claiming to know the location of secret caches for the last few weeks. That article (again, I can't rate it highly for reliability) is here:

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=247

One very frustrating thing about researching Arabic news, is the fluidity of how names are spelled and arranged. Sometimes a name might be spelled "Binalshibh" and sometimes "bin al'shib", and so forth. So there may be more information about Jassem/Hamdi/Hamouda and others, that I just haven't found yet. I definitely think it's a lead worth following though!

RE: Herald Sun: Saddam's bodyguard warns of secret arsenal [02feb03]