© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
THURSDAY
AUGUST 23
2001

U.S. General Tommy Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, has issued an ultimatum to Iraq's Saddam Hussein through his friend, Yemeni President Ali Salah, according to a report by the intelligence news service Debka-Net-Weekly.

The ultimatum? Get your forces out of Syria and Jordan or else.

The incursion into Jordan by Iraqi military forces was first reported jointly by Debka and WorldNetDaily July 26. Official sources in the U.S. and Israeli governments have denied any knowledge of the Iraqi incursion to WorldNetDaily. The focus of Franks' Mideast trip shifted from concerns about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to threatening moves by Iraqi military forces.

The Bush administration has given up on an anti-Saddam Arab coalition as backing for a major offensive against the Iraqi dictator, reports Debka. A high-placed Saudi figure close to Crown Prince Adbullah reportedly said: “If we could get the Americans to make a prior pledge to go all the way to Baghdad and come back with Saddam’s head, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates would help them in every way. But we know they will not touch him or his regime and so we can only contribute from the sidelines.”

General Franks’s mission was a blend of the military and diplomatic, yet another sign that the handling of Iraq, Persian Gulf and Middle East issues has passed out of the hands of the State Department to the White House, the National Security Council and the Pentagon.

U.S. Army intelligence discovered in early June that an estimated 150 Afghan fighting men had reached Iraq through Aden international airport from Mogadishu, Somalia. They are stationed in northern Iraq, training Iraqi and pro-Iraqi Kurdish tribesmen in commando combat tactics. It is not known if the imported Afghans are members of the special Islamic unit that guards Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban leaders and institutions, or a contingent especially trained for service in Iraq by Osama bin Laden’s instructors.

The transfer to Iraq of fighting men possibly associated with Bin Laden sent alarm bells clanging in Washington, reports Debka.

Franks asked Salah to explain the transit of weapons and combat forces through Yemen to Iraq. He also asked him to relay a final U.S. warning to Hussein: Either he halts his menacing military moves along Iraq’s Syrian and Jordanian frontiers, removes Iraqi contingents from both countries and withdraws from involvement in Middle East terrorism, or else American military punishment will rain down on his head and on the Iraqi army.

From Aden, Franks headed for Amman. According to Debka sources, he presented Jordanian leaders with the following intelligence data:

Aerial photos taken by a US F-16 which took off from Turkey’s Incerlik air base on August 15, entered Syrian airspace and remained over the Syrian-Jordanian border region for 23 minutes. The photos showed evidence of an Iraq troop presences in Al Malikiyeh and Qaratshuk in northern Syria and Khatunayeh in northeast Syria. An Iraqi armored command showed up in Khatunayeh.

American CIA and military intelligence have found Iraqi intelligence agents infiltrating groups of young Jordanian officers and turning them against the Hashemite rulers. They are creating a dangerous breeding ground for pro-Iraqi plots to overthrow the king.

Iraqi military intelligence operatives in Jordan have begun recruiting and forming into secret combat cells members of the 800,000-strong Iraqi workforce in Jordan, many of whom are either jobless or earn a pittance of $30 a month.

With presumed Iraqi encouragement, Syria has begun pumping Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas into Jordan, with large sums of money in their pockets to pay for the recruitment, training and arming of antiroyalist fighters, mainly in the Amman and Irbid regions. Their first missions are to carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli factories in those regions of Jordan. After Irbid, the intruders will turn their attention to national strategic facilities, like power stations, water works and phosphate production in the south.

The U.S. delegation and Jordanian leaders reportedly agreed that a U.S. Marines brigade would be dispatched to secure the triangular wedge enclosed by the Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi frontiers and arrest the creeping Iraqi military advance into the kingdom and Syria. Basing Marines in Jordan would also fit in with U.S. preparations for a military expedition against Saddam Hussein. The U.S. force is due to arrive in the kingdom in the coming days.

Franks’ next stop was Cairo, where he landed last Saturday for a discussion of the forthcoming U.S. operation against Iraq with Egyptian defense minister Gen. Tantawi and Egyptian army chiefs. Both the Jordanian and the Egyptian army chiefs received a strong impression of U.S. determination. Should Iraq invoke its secret defense treaties with Syria and move air, armored and missile units across the frontier, the United States will not hesitate to bombard them, meaning that an American offensive against Iraq may well reach into north Syria.