FROM DEBKA INTELLIGENCE FILES
Iraq back in U.S. sights
Anthrax attacks make Hussein major priority
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.comThe anthrax attack on America is gradually overcoming the Bush administration's reluctance to go to war against Iraq synchronously, or shortly after, the capture of Kabul, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Washington sources.
The U.S. administration's initial targets after Afghanistan were to have been Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and, further down the list, Somalia. Ten days ago, Iraq virtually dropped off the list under massive Arab pressure. Arab rulers, especially the Saudis, demanded that the Americans refrain from going after any Arab or Muslim country but Afghanistan. According to Persian Gulf sources, Arab demands in this regard rose to the strident pitch of threats in such terms as: If American strikes at Iraq or Syria, the Persian Gulf will go up in flames and the regimes friendly to Washington will go under.
But now, the anthrax menace is beginning to outweigh the threat from the Arabs.
The danger to U.S. diplomats, military and expatriates around the world facing deliberate infection, together with the gathering pile of intelligence data attesting to Iraqi biological and chemical warfare experts having trained the disseminators of the disease last year and early this year in Iraq, are bringing the Bush team round to a reappraisal. A large-scale operation against Iraq is once again in Washington's cards.
This review was further fueled by American anger over the discovery that the anthrax bacteria loosed on America had undergone genetic mutation to increase their potency and their hardiness to known antibiotic treatment. Experimentation to achieve these effects is known to U.S. intelligence to have taken place in only two parts of the world: Iraq and North Korea.
More evidence is accumulating that, from late 1999 to the end of July 2001, Iraq ran courses in the handling of destructive biological and chemical substances for followers of bin Laden's al-Qaida and Ayman al-Zuheiri's Egyptian Jihad Islami.
The courses took place in two sections of Iraq's main biological and chemical warfare facility at Salman Pak. The facility features a mockup of a small American town with characteristic dwellings and shopping streets, and a short aerial landing strip. There, on a vintage Boeing 707 without engines, trainee-terrorists can practice biological and chemical assaults on a hijacked plane full of passengers, both in mid-air and on the ground.
Intelligence has also reached Washington of similar courses taking place in the Kurdish region of north Iraq. It comes in, not only from foreign or Kurdish sources, but from American agents on the ground there.
The U.S. military blueprint for Iraq is built around options. One is a three-stage program:
- A saturation blitz on Saddam Hussein's palaces, residences and the hideouts known to U.S. intelligence;
- The systematic destruction of Iraqi government centers and armed forces headquarters, thereby paralyzing Baghdad and its outlying towns:
- Dropping 100,000 U.S., British and French troops to hold Baghdad to siege until it surrenders. They will not be sent into the city for fear of heavy resistance and high casualties.
Another optional plan is to seize south Iraq and capture Basra and the oilfield.
The third is to occupy north Iraq where help will be available from Turkish army units standing on the ready on the border. The target here will be the capture of the town of Mosul and the region's oilfields.
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