-Caveat Lector- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26380
WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! FROM DEBKA INTELLIGENCE FILES Terror war shifts to Lebanon, Iran U.S. forces prep for major action targeting top bin Laden operative ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Editor's note: DEBKAfile's electronic news publication is a news-cum-analysis live wire, online round the clock seven days a week. A weekly edition,DEBKA-Net-Weekly, is now available through WorldNetDaily.com. Drawing on DEBKAfile's unique sources, analytical talents and forward-looking insights, it is presented as a compact, intelligence-angled weekly package. It is available as a direct e-mail feed or via the Internet. © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com U.S. military forces are preparing for a major operation in Lebanon to capture or kill one of Osama bin Laden's top operatives, according to the military and intelligence sources of DEBKA-Net-Weekly. Abu Zubaydah, one of bin Laden's five top lieutenants and a leading candidate to be his successor, has been pinpointed hiding in Lebanon by Israeli military intelligence, according to DEBKA sources. He is the first member of bin Laden's five-man inner operational team to be located since the war in Afghanistan began Oct. 7 – one, moreover, who is directly implicated in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 and the attack that crippled the USS Cole in Yemen two years later. Nabbing Zubaydah would be the biggest coup of the U.S. war on terror, sorely needed after the failure to bring any prominent al-Qaida leaders to Camp X-Ray in Cuba. Since last week, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rushed the news to President Bush, American troops, including special forces, have been pouring into Turkey, Israel and Jordan, preparing a major operation to throw the net over Zayan al-Abdeen Mohammed Hussein, better known by his nom de guerre of Abu Zubeidah. U.S. military spy satellites and a large number of manned and pilot-less surveillance planes have been diverted to keep tabs on his every move and make sure he does not escape. The wanted man arrived in Lebanon about two weeks ago, according to sources, and is closely guarded by three hefty layers of security. One consists of 30 to 35 al-Qaida loyalists willing to lay down their lives to defend him. A second is provided by 50 Hezbollah special security men, under the command of General Secretary Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, while the third is a band of Palestinian intelligence and security agents mustered by Sultan Abdul Ayan, strongman of the South Lebanese Fatah militias, who defers only to Yasser Arafat. Not far away lurk Iranian Revolutionary Guards units posted in south Lebanon and Baalbek in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and Syrian military intelligence officers. However, the United States has quietly warned Tehran and Damascus that they will feel the rough edge of American military might if their men raise a finger to help Zubaydah evade capture. Military sources report the American admonition to Tehran was blunt, spelling out threats of reprisals against Iranian military targets in Lebanon and beyond. Washington made a point of not addressing Arafat directly. Instead, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak dispatched Egyptian intelligence chief General Omar Suleiman to Ramallah Tuesday to caution Arafat severely on Washington's behalf of the peril he will incur if his security and intelligence forces interfere to save Zubaydah. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources, the al-Qaida operative's whereabouts and Iran's complicity in his escape were passed on to Bush before he delivered his State of the Union Address Jan. 29. It was one of the factors leading him to include Iran in his "axis of evil." Iranian leaders, for their part, rather than further strain their already sour relations with Washington, have resorted to a war of words against Israel. Hezbollah, nervous about a U.S. or Israeli attack in south Lebanon, staged half a dozen artillery attacks on Israeli air force planes flying regular reconnaissance missions over the Israel-Lebanese border. The Tehran-sponsored Shiite group has also placed its forces on supreme alert. Tehran sees it cannot explain away the incriminating picture emerging from the investigations that followed Israel's seizure of the Karin-A in the Red Sea Jan. 3 and the boat's tie-in with Zubaydah's assisted flight from Afghanistan. The top al-Qaida man was given safe passage through Iran and, according to the findings of Israeli military intelligence, was made welcome for several days on the Iranian island of Kish near the Straits of Hormuz, the same island from which the Karin-A took on its contraband arms cargo for the Palestinians. Zubaydah reached Lebanon aboard yet another of the arms ships plying the clandestine Iranian sea route ferrying weapons to terrorist end-users around the Middle East. Since mid-December, those vessels have smuggled arms to the Hezbollah in Lebanon, to Palestinians in Jordan plotting against the life of King Abdullah II, and to the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The route was partially suspended by the capture of the Karine-A. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Washington sources also say U.S. strategic planners are weighing the following bits of information: Iran and Iraq have secretly agreed to jointly extend military aid to the Palestinian Authority and the Hezbollah. In pursuance of this understanding, Iranian intelligence officers visited Baghdad for the first time in 30 years. These officers, members of the Revolutionary Guards, come from bases in Lebanon and duties in Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein has agreed to Iranian arms transports transiting Iraqi airspace to reach Syrian airfields. Those same planes will also transport fighting men, including hundreds of al-Qaida partisans stranded in Iran when the Karine-A's seizure partially severed Iran's weapons-smuggling sea route. Syrian President Bashar Assad has agreed to those Iranian cargo planes stopping off in Damascus en route to Lebanon. He has also consented to the smuggling of parts of those weapons and human shipments into the West Bank, through the Golan frontier of northern Israel. This traffic has been noted in the last two weeks, prompting Israel to reinforce its units on the Syrian frontier and speed up the construction of a new electronic frontier fence. Syria's assistance has made it possible for Iran, Iraq and the Palestinians to substitute a functioning arms-smuggling air corridor for their immobilized sea route. Saudi Arabia has offered to put up cash for the enterprise through private foundations. While Arafat keeps on insisting in U.S. and European television interviews that he has no military ties with Iran, American and Israeli intelligence have discovered he has set up an operational command center to coordinate Palestinian military operations with Tehran and Baghdad. PLO Secretary General Taeb Abdul Rahim has been put in charge of the Iranian connection and dropped out of sight on Arafat's orders. Rahim also conducts the clandestine operational connection between Arafat and the two Islamic extremist groups Hamas and Jihad Islami. The head of Palestinian West Bank general intelligence, Col. Tawfiq Tirawi, is in charge of Arafat's connection with Baghdad. Arafat, Rahim and Tirawi are said to meet secretly every few days to keep their operations closely synchronized. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! Write to same address to be off lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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