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Syria?s Weapons of Terror Aimed at Israel
CBN News at CBN.com ^
| April 17, 2003 | Chris Mitchell
Posted on 04/17/2003 11:50:27 AM PDT by
Geist Krieger
Syria?s Weapons of Terror Aimed at Israel
By Chris Mitchell
Middle East Bureau Chief
April 17, 2003
At a previously unknown missile test site southeast of Homs, the Syrians appear to be testing and improving their deadly arsenal.
CBN.com? JERUSALEM ? Secretary of State Colin Powell says he will travel to Damascus to meet Syria's President Bashar Assad. The meeting comes in the face of Syrian denials that it has weapons of mass destruction. But in the past six years, CBN News shown exclusive evidence that Syria does have such weapons, and the missiles to deliver them.
Satellite images obtained by CBN News show what could be described as Syria's Cape Canaveral. Harold Hough, an intelligence analyst and contributor to the world's leading military journal Jane's Intelligence Review, helped us analyze these images. "What we're seeing is a very sophisticated missile development program," he said.
In 1997, and again in 1999, Hough interpreted these exclusive satellite images obtained by CBN News. According to Hough, the pictures reveal the advanced capability of the Syrian missile arsenal, and they demonstrate that Syria aggressively developed its own missile program, independent of any outside nation.
"They are actually, apparently improving their missiles. They aren't satisfied with just missiles that they bought from the Chinese or North Koreans or even the Russians. They're trying to make them bigger, better and deadlier," Hough said.
Since CBN News first reported on Syria's missile program, new satellite imagery taken just months ago confirms that Syria has not only continued but expanded its aggressive missile program, even after Bashar Assad took power when his father died three years ago.
"What we see here are some very large decontamination ponds," Hough deduced from one satellite photo.
Perhaps the most disturbing revelation from our 1999 story are the areas Hough identified as large decontamination ponds. Hough believes the satellite shots confirm what some had suspected: that Syria is outfitting its missiles with deadly chemical weapons.
"These are incredibly large reservoirs of water and they have pipelines leading to bunkers. Now what that implies is that there are chemical warheads stored in this area and that they're loading these chemical warheads on Scud missiles and they have these decontamination ponds in case there's an accident," Hough said.
One photo of a barren spot protected by a S.A.M. missile battery shows a facility near the town of Homs, which experts suspect is a plant used for producing nerve agents such as VX gas. It shows how the chemicals are stored in small tanks away from the main facility under heavy guard.
At a previously unknown missile test site southeast of Homs, the Syrians appear to be testing and improving their deadly arsenal. Here under heavy protection, are bunkers where intelligence analysts say chemical warheads for the Scud missiles may be stored.
At another site near Hama, we see two full brigades of Scud C missiles ? missiles that are often deployed for use against population centers. These images suggest that Syria possesses far more launchers than previously thought. Analysts say this raises the stakes for a first strike capability.
"Look at it this way. Let's say you know your neighbor has one gun and maybe 1,000 rounds of ammunition. You might not worry. But you might worry a lot more if you found out he had 20 guns and 1,000 rounds of ammunition," Hough said.
The pictures confirm that Syria's weapons program has moved well beyond a defensive posture. "These are terror weapons. They're good for striking at Jerusalem, at Tel Aviv, Haifa and places like that, but they have a limited value on the battlefield," Hough said.
As this report shows, the exclusive satellite photographs reveal startling details about Syria's development of chemical weapons and missile sites. As the war with Iraq winds down, Syria's program for weapons of mass destruction appears to be a leading factor in the current showdown with the Bush administration
