Pages 186 and 193 of document BIAP 2003 00090 carry one of the most important information revealed so far regarding Saddam Nuclear Program. In these two pages which document a summary of meetings held by members of The Military Office of the Iraqi Baath Party and dated May/12/2002 and June/9/2002 they have a section that discuss Saddam Hussein meeting with the Chairman of the Atomic Energy and an elite of researchers.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraq tribunal announced new criminal charges against Saddam Hussein and six others Tuesday, accusing them of genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from a 1980s crackdown against Kurds that included the gassing of thousands of civilians....
The new case involves Saddam's role in Operation Anfal, a three-phase move against Kurds in northern Iraq in the late 1980s. Anfal included the March 16 gas attack on the village of Halabja in which 5,000 people, including women and children, died. Human rights groups consider the Halabja attack one of the gravest atrocities allegedly committed by Saddam's regime.
March 2001 Document: Saddam Regime Recruits Suicide Terrorists to Hit US Interests (Translation)
Scripps Howard News Service | 06-APR-06 | By DEROY MURDOCK
STANFORD, Calif. -- With conservative congressional majorities at risk in next November's elections, President Bush repeatedly should remind everyone that a key reason coalition troops invaded Iraq was to padlock Saddam Hussein's Wal-Mart for terrorists. The administration finally is releasing intelligence documents captured in Baghdad. Bush should use them to detail how Hussein indeed was entwined with terrorists in general and al Qaeda in particular....
According to a March 23 ABC News analysis of several records, "an official representative of Saddam Hussein's government met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan on February 19, 1995, after receiving approval from Saddam Hussein." Bin Laden requested that Baghdad broadcast into Saudi Arabia sermons by radical Saudi mullah Suleiman al Ouda. He also proposed, as one file says, "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia....
Hussein approved bin Laden's requested broadcasts. As for "joint operations against foreign forces," ABC adds that "eight months after the meeting _ on November 13, 1995 _ terrorists attacked Saudi National Guard Headquarters in Riyadh, killing five U.S. military advisers. The militants later confessed on Saudi TV to having been trained by Osama bin Laden."....
This document CMPC-2004-000167 talks about a project that started in early 2001 by the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) to use components from the previously destroyed TAMUZ (also known as OZIRAQ) Nuclear Reactor to build a Nuclear Simulator Reactor. The TAMUZ Nuclear Reactor was destroyed by an Israeli air attack in 1981. In September 2002, after almost a year and a half since the start of this Nuclear Project and when it became very clear to the Iraqi Regime that the UN inspectors were coming back to Iraq, a decision was made to stop this Nuclear Activity project. What is interesting in this document that the IAEC was warned by the Monitoring Directory within the IAEC that this Nuclear Project is prohibited by the UN resolutions however the IAEC went on with it until September 2002 only when the UN inspectors were on the verge of coming back to Iraq.
Pentagon/FMSO website for Iraq Pre-war documents | April 24 2006 | jveritas
This document CMPC-2004-004404 contains memos dated from 1999 and 2000 about Saddam regime procurements of 81 mm in Diameter, 900 mm in Lenght HIGH STRENGTH AND HIGH QUALITY ALUMINUM TUBES. As many of you know the issue of 81 mm High Strength, High Quality Aluminum Tubes were subject for an intensive debate since 2002 because this type of tubes can be used in GAS CENTRIFUGES FOR URANIUM ENRICHMENT. Although the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said in its final report in 2004 the following about the procurement of these tubes “ Baghdad’s interest in high-strength, high-specification aluminum tubes—dual-use items controlled under Annex 3 of the Ongoing Monitoring and Verification Plan as possible centrifuge rotors—is best explained by its efforts to produce 81-mm rockets”. However the ISG could not prove definitively that these very special tubes were not used as part of Saddam Regime attempt to build its Nuclear Programs and Projects (see link to ISG report http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/chap4.html#sect6). In fact the ISG in its report says also the following “ The limited information found by ISG that ties Iraqi nuclear entities to the tubes also appears related to the 81-mm rocket program and the ISG report also says ” Purported high-level interest in aluminum tubes by Saddam and Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister—a potential indicator of a program of national importance, such as a centrifuge program.. A 6 March 2003 letter from the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate (NMD) to the IAEA’s Iraq Nuclear Verification Office (INVO) notes that the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) conducted material composition testing on a sample aluminum tube in early 2001 and In another translated memo “http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1620262/posts ” that talks about a secret project by the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission to re-instate the “Nuclear Reactor Simulators” using equipments from the “Old TAMUZ (OZIRAQ) Nuclear Reactor”. All this is a clear indication of Saddam intent to restart the Nuclear Programs.
Pentagon/FMSO website Iraqi Pre-War documents ^ | June 2 2006 | jveritas
Posted on 06/02/2006 11:13:28 AM PDT by jveritas
Document ISGQ-2003-00004530 dated September 15 2002 is a memo from a General in Saddam's Feedayeens to the Supervisor of those Feedayeens, who is none other than Uday Saddam Hussein. The memo talks about a hidden large container that contains a Chemical Material, and that it was buried under the ground near Fallujah back when Hussein Kamal Hussein was in charge of the Iraqi Military Industrialization Commission. Hussein Kamal was the brother-in-law of Saddam who fled to Jordan in 1995 and exposed to the world that Saddam still had WMD, and then Saddam tricked him to come back by granting him amnesty. When he returned to Iraq he was killed by the regime. If what is in this document is true, it shows that one of the obvious ways to hide the WMD was to bury it under the ground, and in this case the difficulty of finding it in a country the size of California.
Beginning of the translation of Document ISGQ-2003-00004530
Iraqi Chemical Weapons
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/
In a briefing for journalists reported on October 29, 2003, the director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency said satellite images showed a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria just before the American invasion in March 2003. Retired Air Force Lieutenant General James Clapper Jr. said he believed "unquestionably" that illicit weapons material was transported into Syria and perhaps other countries. He said "I think people below the Saddam- Hussein-and-his-sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse. ... I think probably in the few months running up to the onset of the conflict, I think there was probably an intensive effort to disperse into private hands, to bury it, and to move it outside the country's borders."
In an exclusive interview with The Sunday Telegraph published on January 25, 2004, Dr. David Kay, the former head of the Iraq Survey Group, said there was evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before the start of the war to overthrow Saddam. "We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."
Terror Links to Saddam's Inner Circle (newly revealed document)
FoxNews ^ | June 11, 2006 | Ray Robison
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1647586/posts
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,199052,00.html
"What was the relationship between Saddam Hussein's inner circle and Islamic terrorists? A newly released document captured in Iraq, but never before seen by the public, offers glimmers of new insight at the Pentagon's Foreign Military Studies Office Web site. The FMSO is a research and analysis center under the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command. This particular document mentions two men with similar names, each with ties to Pakistani religious schools known as madrassas, Jihad training camps, the Taliban and Al Qaeda."
"This original translation by my translator-colleague, who goes by the nom de guerre of "Sammi," comes from a notebook kept by an Iraqi intelligence agent. It provides evidence of a cooperative, operational relationship agreed to at the highest levels of the Iraqi government and the Taliban. The notebook is lengthy and we will present it on the FOX News Web site in a series of postings. It deals extensively with meetings between Maulana Fazlur Rahman, an Al Qaeda/Taliban supporter, and Taha Yassin Ramadan, the former vice president of Iraq, and other unnamed Iraqi officials."
"Saddam's Fingerprints on N.Y. Bombings"
The Wall Street Journal | 6/28/1993 | Laurie Mylroie
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1115387/posts
"Military retaliation from Baghdad was the main administration concern following Saturday's strike on Iraq. Yet U.S. officials should start thinking seriously about the question of retaliation through terror. It is quite possible, for example, that there was a connection between Saddam and recent attempts to blow up Manhattan. It is quite possible that New York's terror is Saddam's revenge.
"Speculation about the responsibility for last week's bombing plot and the earlier World Trade Center bombing has focused on Iran, Sudan, and the fundamentalist Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. Much energy has been spent linking the terror to Islamic fundamentalism. Yet Saddam, a secular tyrant, is also suspect.
"Information already in the public domain allows us to make this case. Start with the fact that the most important person in the Trade Center bombing is an Iraqi, Ramzi Ahmad Yusuf. Known in New York as Rashid, Mr. Yusuf has 11 aliases. The U.S. press has reported that he left Iraq in early 1992, transiting Jordan to Pakistan. He entered New York in early September on Pakistan Airways. Mr. Yusuf, traveling on his Iraqi passport, passed through immigration by requesting asylum. The FBI claims the plot began in August, while Mr. Yusuf was abroad."
US Government - Bin Laden and Iraq Agreed to Cooperate on Weapons Development
New York Times, Facts on File World News Digest | Novemeber 1998 | BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/985906/posts
"A Federal grand jury in Manhattan returned a 238-count indictment yesterday charging the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden in the bombings of two United States Embassies in Africa in August and with conspiring to commit other acts of terrorism against Americans abroad....
"The new indictment, which supersedes the June action, accuses Mr. bin Laden of leading a vast terrorist conspiracy from 1989 to the present, in which he is said to have been working in concert with governments, including those of Sudan, Iraq and Iran, and terrorist groups to build weapons and attack American military installations. Excerpts, page A8....
"Both indictments offer new information about Mr. bin Laden's operations, including one deal he is said to have struck with Iraq to cooperate in the development of weapons in return for Mr. bin Laden's agreeing not to work against that country."
10 WAYS THE LIBERATION OF IRAQ SUPPORTS THE WAR ON TERROR
The White House.gov ^
10 WAYS THE LIBERATION OF IRAQ SUPPORTS THE WAR ON TERROR With the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraq is no longer a state sponsor of terror. According to State Department reports on terrorism, before the removal of Saddam's regime, Iraq was one of seven state sponsors of terror.
Saddam Hussein's regime posed a threat to the security of the United States and the world. With the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime, a leader who pursued, used, and possessed weapons of mass destruction is no longer in power. Saddam Hussein would not uphold his international commitments, and now that he is no longer in power, the world is safe from this tyrant. The old Iraqi regime defied the international community and seventeen UN resolutions for twelve years and gave every indication that it would never disarm and never comply with the just demands of the world.
A senior al Qaida terrorist, now detained, who had been responsible for al Qaida training camps in Afghanistan, reports that al Qaida was intent on obtaining WMD assistance from Iraq. According to a credible, high-level al Qaida source, Usama Bin Laden and deceased al Qaida leader Muhammad Atif did not believe that al Qaida labs in Afghanistan were capable of manufacturing chemical and biological weapons, so they turned to Iraq for assistance. Iraq agreed to provide chemical and biological weapons training for two al Qaida associates starting in December 2000.
Senior al Qaida associate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi came to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment along with approximately two dozen al Qaida terrorist associates. This group stayed in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq and plotted terrorist attacks around the world. A safe haven in Iraq belonging to Ansar al-Islam -- a terrorist group closely associated with Zarqawi and al Qaida -- was destroyed during Operation Iraqi Freedom. In March 2003, during a raid on the compound controlled by the terrorists in northeastern Iraq, a cache of documents was discovered, including computer discs and foreign passports belonging to fighters from various Middle East nationalities.
The al Qaida affiliate Ansar al-Islam is known to still be present in Iraq. Such terrorist groups are now plotting against U.S. forces in Iraq. Law enforcement and intelligence operations have disrupted al Qaida associate Abu Musab Zarqawi's poison plotting in France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Russia. The facilities in Northern Iraq, set up by Zarqawi and Ansar al-Islam were, before the war, an al Qaida's poisons/toxins laboratory.
Abu Musa Zarqawi, the al Qaida associate with direct links to Iraq, oversaw those responsible for the assassination of USAID officer Laurence Foley in Amman, Jordan last October. Saddam Hussein's Iraq provided material assistance to Palestinian terrorist groups, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, HAMAS, and the Palestine Islamic Jihad, according to a State Department report. This included paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, according to testimonials from Palestinians and cancelled checks. Also, according to State Department reports, terrorist groups the Iranian Mujahedin-e-Khalq and the Abu Nidal organization were protected by the Iraqi regime.
Saddam, Al Qaeda, Taliban: OPERATIONAL TIES
FoxNews ^ | 7/7/2006 | FoxNews
This particular document mentions two men with similar names, each with ties to Pakistani religious schools known as madrassas, Jihad training camps, the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
This original translation by my translator-colleague, who goes by the nom de guerre of "Sammi," comes from a notebook kept by an Iraqi intelligence agent. It provides evidence of a cooperative, operational relationship agreed to at the highest levels of the Iraqi government and the Taliban. The notebook is lengthy and we will present it on the FOX News Web site in a series of postings. It deals extensively with meetings between Maulana Fazlur Rahman, an Al Qaeda/Taliban supporter, and Taha Yassin Ramadan, the former vice president of Iraq, and other unnamed Iraqi officials.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,199052,00.html
...examination of a newly-released document captured in Iraq, Robison offers further evidence that in 1999 the Taliban welcomed "Islamic relations with Iraq" to mediate among the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and Russia, and that the Taliban reciprocated with an invitation to Iraqi officials to visit Afghanistan.
The document appears to be a notebook kept by an Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) agent, and apparently captured in 2003. The translation is provided by Robison's associate, known here as “Sammi.” The notebook deals extensively with the meetings between a prominent Taliban supporter and former Saddam regime officials.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,199757,00.html
...translation from this notebook indicated that the Taliban under the leadership of Mullah Omar was seeking Iraq's support in mediating with Russia and the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. This translation reveals that the Saddam regime had expectations of assistance from the Taliban, and that the two agreed to a secret intelligence relationship. The Iraqi official tells the Maulana that they want the Taliban to support Iraq against U.S. actions. They also discuss their common enemy: the United States.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,199757,00.html
Iraq Pre-War Intel Being Ignored, Says Top Republican (purchase mustard gas and anthrax in 2000)
CNSNews ^ | July 12, 2006 | Monisha Bansal
The Republican chairman of the U.S. House committee with jurisdiction over foreign intelligence, conceded Tuesday that the many documents discovered by the U.S. military in Iraq following the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime are no longer a priority for most intelligence experts.
Those documents, as Cybercast News Service previously reported, included memos containing the letterhead of the Iraqi Intelligence Service and revealing Saddam's purchase of mustard gas and anthrax - both considered weapons of mass destruction - as recently as the summer of 2000 and his extensive ties to al Qaeda.
"I believe there is still a tremendous amount of stuff on pre-war Iraq that we do not know and that we do not understand," said U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Hoekstra said many intelligence experts consider the information irrelevant. "Everything that I'm working on within the intelligence community on pre-war Iraq and better understanding pre-war Iraq, tells me it is no longer a priority for the intelligence community," he said.
Last month Hoekstra and U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) cited the declassified portion of an intelligence report as evidence that approximately 500 weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed by American-led coalition forces since 2003 and that the U.S. and its allies were in a race against terrorist groups trying to control the remaining weapons.
In February Hoekstra's committee began examining 48,000 boxes of Iraqi documents that had not yet been translated or catalogued. The search reveals that "Saddam Hussein was not only trying to hide his illegal weapons program from the world, but was also interested in aiding international terrorists," Hoekstra said Tuesday.
As the war in Iraq becomes more unpopular with an increasing number of Americans, Democrats in collusion with the liberal mainstream media, continue to politicize the war by blatantly distorting the facts.
For example, a popular refrain is that President Bush lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in order to implement a grand strategy fashioned by neo-conservatives well before Bush actually took office. Said strategy was supposedly aimed at using military force to install democratic regimes friendly to the U.S. throughout the Middle East.
However, the left has never adequately answered the following question. If Bush knew there was no WMD, why would he send 150,000 troops into Iraq, since his "lie" would be immediately exposed by invading coalition forces and reported by a large contingent of media embedded within those forces?
Liberals also choose to ignore United Nations Resolution 144I, which clearly established that Iraq had WMD. That resolution was approved unanimously by the UN member nations.
Besides the illogic in claiming that President Bush lied about WMD, the liberal argument is discredited by comments by Democrats themselves in the years and months leading up to the 2003 invasion.
Herewith a substantial collection of quotes from "responsible professionals" about Saddam Hussein and WMD in Iraq:
"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." - From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998
"This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons prograMs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." - From a December 6, 2001 letter signed by Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford, & Tom Lantos among others
"Whereas Iraq has consistently breached its cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the United States, entered into on March 3, 1991, by failing to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program, and refusing to permit monitoring and verification by United Nations inspections; Whereas Iraq has developed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological capabilities, and has made positive progress toward developing nuclear weapons capabilities" - From a joint resolution submitted by Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter on July 18, 2002
"Saddam's goal ... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction prograMs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." - Madeline Albright, 1998
"(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983." - National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998.
"Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement." - Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." - Robert Byrd, October 2002
"There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat... Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He's had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001... He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn't have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we." - Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002
"What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad's regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs." - Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002
"The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." - Bill Clinton in 1998
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security." - Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002
"I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons...I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out." - Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen in April of 2003
"Iraq is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of mass destruction, but it is the only nation with a leader who has used them against his own people." - Tom Daschle in 1998
"Saddam Hussein's regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already used them against his neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal." - John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002
"The debate over Iraq is not about politics. It is about national security. It should be clear that our national security requires Congress to send a clear message to Iraq and the world: America is united in its determination to eliminate forever the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." - John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002
"I share the administration's goals in dealing with Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction." - Dick Gephardt in September of 2002
"Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." - Al Gore, 2002
"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction." - Bob Graham, December 2002
"Saddam Hussein is not the only deranged dictator who is willing to deprive his people in order to acquire weapons of mass destruction." - Jim Jeffords, October 8, 2002
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." - Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002
"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed." - Ted Kennedy, Sept 27, 2002
"I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force - if necessary - to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." - John F. Kerry, Oct 2002
"The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation." - John Kerry, October 9, 2002
"(W)e need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. ...And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War." - John Kerry, Jan 23, 2003
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandates of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them." - Carl Levin, Sept 19, 2002
"Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States." - Joe Lieberman, August, 2002
"Over the years, Iraq has worked to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. During 1991 - 1994, despite Iraq's denials, United Nations inspectors discovered and dismantled a large network of nuclear facilities that Iraq was using to develop nuclear weapons. Various reports indicate that Iraq is still actively pursuing nuclear weapons capability. There is no reason to think otherwise. Beyond nuclear weapons, Iraq has actively pursued biological and chemical weapons. Inspectors have said that Iraq's claims about biological weapons is neither credible nor verifiable. In 1986, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran, and later, against its own Kurdish population. While weapons inspections have been successful in the past, there have been no inspections since the end of 1998. There can be no doubt that Iraq has continued to pursue its goal of obtaining weapons of mass destruction." - Patty Murray, October 9, 2002
"As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." - Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998
"Even today, Iraq is not nearly disarmed. Based on highly credible intelligence, UNSCOM [the U.N. weapons inspectors] suspects that Iraq still has biological agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, and clostridium perfringens in sufficient quantity to fill several dozen bombs and ballistic missile warheads, as well as the means to continue manufacturing these deadly agents. Iraq probably retains several tons of the highly toxic VX substance, as well as sarin nerve gas and mustard gas. This agent is stored in artillery shells, bombs, and ballistic missile warheads. And Iraq retains significant dual-use industrial infrastructure that can be used to rapidly reconstitute large-scale chemical weapons production." - Ex-Un Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter in 1998
"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources - something that is not that difficult in the current world. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction." - John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002
"Saddam's existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq's enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East." - John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002
"Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Administration's policy towards Iraq, I don't think there can be any question about Saddam's conduct. He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do. He lies and cheats; he snubs the mandate and authority of international weapons inspectors; and he games the system to keep buying time against enforcement of the just and legitimate demands of the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States and our allies. Those are simply the facts." - Henry Waxman, Oct 10, 2002.
As the record clearly shows, if G.W. Bush lied about WMD, he was joined by most, if not all, prominent Democrats at the time.
John W. Lillpop is an independent columnist
Dave Gaubatz, however, says you could not be more wrong. Saddam’s WMD did exist. He should know because he found the sites where he is certain they were stored. And the reason you don’t know about this is that the American administration failed to act on his information, ‘lost’ his classified reports and is now doing everything it can to prevent disclosure of the terrible fact that, through its own incompetence, it allowed Saddam’s WMD to end up in the hands of the very terrorist states against whom it is so controversially at war.
Saddam WMD: Findings and Analysis Based on Captured Iraqi Documents (Part I)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1822157/posts
April 23 2007 | jveritas
Posted on 04/23/2007 11:00:26 AM PDT by jveritas
“It was clear that there is another branch committee from the Industrial Committee headed by Dr. Mahdi Shakr Ghali that currently evaluates the Researches That Cannot Be Declared, Researches with relation to the previous Prohibited Programs... This is an important subject and it is dangerous in case this information is leaked one way or another.”.
That was a quote General Housam Ahmad Amin, one of Saddam regime top officials on September/16/1998 talking about secret programs related to WMD according to Iraqi document CMPC-2003-002284.
Below is part I of my findings and analysis based on the captured Iraqi documents that I read. This part deals with Saddam regime programs related to Chemical Weapons. The documents that I read regarding this issue were written by high ranking officials in Saddam regime in particular “Iraq Military Industrialization Committee (MIC)” as well as top officials in Saddam Presidential circles. Based on the content, format, style, signatures, and seals, there is no doubt that these documents are authentic.
Qusay Hussein coordinated Iraq special operations with bin Laden’s terrorist activities
YOSSEF BODANSKY - National Press Club
Now that Saddam’s sons are dead, there is talk the “resistance” againts US troops should decrease.
This makes sense in that these two brothers most likely oversaw the cash to pay those attacking US troops. And it has killed their liason with al Qaeda, Qusay.
Back in 1999 Yossef Bodansky had this to say:
The other state that is rising up — and I’ve elaborated a lot in the book about that — is Iraq. Bin Laden has been dealing with Iraq intelligence since the early 1990s, where they cooperated in Sudan and in Somalia. This has been a love-hate relationship because of the Iraqi secular policies and Saddam Hussein’s disdain for Islamism and even persecution of Iraqi Islamists, including veterans of Afghanistan. But in recent years, Hassan al-Turabi, the spiritual leader of Sudan and bin Laden’s patron, if you want, spiritual patron, mediated a deal between Iraq and bin Laden that has since been cemented and became practical.
The important thing of the recent development that should be a cause of tremendous worry is that Saddam Hussein empowered his son, Qusay to deal with the day-to-day relationship with bin Laden and coordinate the Iraqi special operations with bin Laden’s terrorist activities. Last week, Qusay Hussein has been elevated into the declared successor and had taken a tremendous amount of new powers, particularly in issues of national security, intelligence operations and the like. And that will of course elevate also the standing of bin Laden and the cooperation that they have been working on. And we should be very worried about that development.
Source is Federal News Service, AUGUST 6, 1999, FRIDAY, HEADLINE: PRESS CONFERENCE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB MORNING NEWSMAKER WITH YOSSEF BODANSKY, AUTHOR SUBJECT: INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM NATIONAL PRESS CLUB WASHINGTON, D.C.
How soon all the “guerilla attacks”, as they are more and more being referred to as, continue will be reflected in how much Qusay and his also dead brother oversaw the coordination and payment for the attacks and whether or not they have anyone who was a top aide to them who can or will take over.
Dems have been loving the “guerilla attacks”. Flashbacks of their perceived past glory — Vietnam — dance in their heads.
They ignore or downplay any relation or coordination of the Hussein regime with al Qaeda or terrorist groups. They will most likely be disapointed by the decrease in attacks on our troops in the same way the CA legislators were overheard discussing how a crisis in the state would benefit them politically.
Yet it was under the Clinton administration that the info about Iraq and al Qaeda came forth near the end of 1998, early 1999.
It came in wake of the visit of Farouk Hijazi, Iraq’s Ambassador to Turkey at the time, to bin Laden in Afghanistan.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/951911/posts
The Al Qaeda Connection AND The Al Qaeda Connection, cont.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/ ^ | 5/12/03 AND 7/11/03 | Stephen F. Hayes
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/944617/posts
The Al Qaeda Connection: Saddam’s links to Osama were no secret.
OOPS. In what could go down as the Mother of All Copyediting Errors, Babil, the official newspaper of Saddam Hussein’s government, run by his oldest son Uday, last fall published information that appears to confirm U.S. allegations of links between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. It adds one more piece to the small pile of evidence emerging from Iraq that, when added to the jigsaw puzzle we already had, makes obsolete the question of whether Saddam and Osama bin Laden were in league and leaves in doubt only the extent of the connection.
In its November 16, 2002, edition, Babil identified one Abd-al-Karim Muhammad Aswad as an “intelligence officer,” describing him as the “official in charge of regime’s contacts with Osama bin Laden’s group and currently the regime’s representative in Pakistan.” A man of this name was indeed the Iraqi ambassador to Pakistan from the fall of 1999 until the fall of the regime.
Aswad’s name was included in something Babil called an “honor list.” Below that heading, in boldface type, came a straightforward introductory comment: “We publish this list of great men for the sons of our great people to see.” Directly beneath that declaration came a cryptic addendum—included by accident?—in regular type: “This is a list of the henchmen of the regime. Our hands will reach them sooner or later. Woe unto them. A list of the leaders of Saddam’s regime, as well as their present and previous posts.”
Then comes the list of regime officials. It is in alphabetical order until, halfway down the page, it starts over with officials whose names begin with the letter “A.” It includes Baath party leaders, military heroes, ambassadors, intelligence chiefs, the commander of the “Saddam Cubs Training Center,” governors of Iraqi provinces, chemical and biological weapons experts, and so on.
U.S. intelligence experts have not conclusively determined what the list means. One possible explanation they have entertained is that part of the list came from an opposition source, and that Babil republished it as a gesture of defiance. This would account for the reference to “henchmen of the regime” whom “our hands will reach”—to say nothing of the candid description of Aswad’s duties.
Sounds plausible. But that explanation leaves unanswered one important question: Why would the regime, at a time when it was publicly denying any link to al Qaeda, publish anything admitting such a link?
Even if the identification of Aswad in the Babil list was nothing more than an embarrassing editorial oversight, several recent developments have bolstered the Bush administration’s case that Saddam Hussein had connections to the al Qaeda leader.
On April 28, senior administration officials announced that the United States had captured an al Qaeda terrorist operating in Baghdad. The operative is believed to have been an associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a top al Qaeda figure who plotted the assassination of Laurence Foley, an American diplomat gunned down in Jordan last fall. Zarqawi is also believed to have received medical treatment in Baghdad after he was wounded fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
That arrest came shortly after U.S. troops patrolling the Syrian border captured Farouk Hijazi, long believed to have been an outreach coordinator of sorts between the Iraqi government and al Qaeda. Hijazi, formerly a high-ranking Iraqi intelligence official, has confirmed to U.S. officials that he met Osama bin Laden in Sudan in 1994. He denies meeting with al Qaeda officials in 1998, but U.S. officials don’t believe him. At that time, a leading newspaper in Rome reported that Hijazi traveled to Afghanistan on December 21, 1998, to offer asylum to bin Laden. The Corriere della Sera described Hijazi as “the person who has been responsible for nurturing Iraq’s ties with the fundamentalist warriors since 1994.”
Back then, reports about a budding Hussein-bin Laden partnership were not limited to the foreign press. Newsweek magazine, in its January 11, 1999, issue, ran the headline “Saddam + Bin Laden.” The subhead declared, “America’s two enemies are courting.” The article was written by Christopher Dickey, Gregory Vistica, Russell Watson, and Joseph Contreras. The authors cited reports from an “Arab intelligence source” about the alliance.
According to this source, Saddam expected last month’s American and British bombing campaign to go on much longer than it did. The dictator believed that as the attacks continued, indignation would grow in the Muslim world, making his terrorism offensive both harder to trace and more effective. With acts of terror contributing to chaos in the region, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait might feel less inclined to support Washington. Saddam’s long-term strategy, according to several sources, is to bully or cajole Muslim countries into breaking the embargo against Iraq, without waiting for the United Nations to lift it formally.
(Interestingly, after Colin Powell’s presentation last month to the U.N. Security Council linking Hussein and al Qaeda, Dickey reversed course and referred to the evidence of these links as “egregious smokescreens.”)
The timing here is critical. Operation “Desert Fox” began on December 16, 1998, and ended after just 70 hours, on December 19, 1998. Two days later, Hijazi was dispatched to meet with al Qaeda leaders. And the Newsweek report detailing the increased collaboration appeared shortly thereafter. And it wasn’t just Newsweek.
In fact, Time magazine, in an issue also out January 11, 1999, one-upped its competitor by quoting bin Laden himself on the Iraq issue. “There is no doubt that the treacherous attack has confirmed that Britain and America are acting on behalf of Israel and the Jews, paving the way for the Jews to divide the Muslim world once again, enslave it and loot the rest of its wealth. A great part of the force that carried out the attack came from certain Gulf countries that have lost their sovereignty.”
U.S. intelligence officials who have expressed skepticism about a Hussein-bin Laden relationship often point to religious differences as the reason for their doubts. Hussein was secular, they say, bin Laden a fundamentalist. True enough. But, as bin Laden’s comments suggest, there were bigger concerns—that America and “the Jews” might “divide the Muslim world once again”—that would trump these differences and unite the two men against a common enemy.
The Hijazi meeting wasn’t the only Iraq-al Qaeda around that time. Eleven months before bin Laden spoke to Time, then-President Bill Clinton traveled to the Pentagon, where he gave a speech preparing the nation for war with Iraq. Clinton told the world that Saddam Hussein would work with an “unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers, and organized international criminals.” His warning was stern.
We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century. . . . They will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein.
The timing, once again, is critical. Clinton’s speech came on February 18, 1998. The next day, according to documents uncovered earlier this week in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein reached out to bin Laden. A document dated February 19, 1998, and labeled “Top Secret and Urgent” tells of a plan for an al Qaeda operative to travel from Sudan to Iraq for talks with Iraqi intelligence. The memo focused on Saudi Arabia, another common bin Laden and Hussein foe, and declared that the Mukhabarat would pick up “all the travel and hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden.” The document further explained that the message “would relate to the future of our relationship with him, bin Laden, and to achieve a direct meeting with him.” The document also held open the possibility that the al Qaeda representative could be “a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden.”
There is certainly much more to learn about the “contacts with bin Laden” after this meeting. What is clear, though, is that it is no longer defensible to claim there were no contacts. The skeptics, including many at the CIA, who argued that previous evidence of such links was not compelling, ought to be convinced now. They may well argue that, given the timing of the contacts, Saddam reached out to al Qaeda only when he felt threatened. The facts as we know them today are consistent with such a conclusion. But as journalists continue to pore over documents, and military analysts begin to do the same, it would be hasty to imagine that we’ve already uncovered everything there is to find on the bin Laden-Saddam tie.
Whatever the differences between al Qaeda and the Iraqi regime, the two shared a hatred of America. One Iraqi official, some weeks after the September 11 attacks, publicly criticized the United States for rooting out al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The official was quoted in a report in broken English carried on The Pakistan Newswire of October 29, 2001, which said: “He stressed the US to stop bombardment on Afghanistan resulting in death of innocent children, women and elderly people.” The official, who had been in his job since 1999, also expressed doubt that bin Laden was even a terrorist and responsible for 9/11. He “said the US President Bush should knock the door of international court of justice to address the situation because only court had authority to declare Prime suspect of September 11 tragedy ‘Osama Bin Laden’ terrorist or not.’”
You might recognize the official’s name. It was published in Babil last fall: Abd-al-Karim Muhammad Aswad, “intelligence officer, official in charge of regime’s contacts with Osama bin Laden’s group and currently the regime’s representative in Pakistan.”
____________________________________
The Al Qaeda Connection, cont. More reason to suspect that bin Laden and Saddam may have been in league.
by Stephen F. Hayes 07/11/2003 5:45:00 PM
THE INDISPENSABLE Glenn Reynolds has linked to an article in the Nashville Tennessean written by a Tennessee judge who believes he is in possession of documents linking Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
The judge is Gilbert S. Merritt, a federal appeals court judge invited to help Iraqis construct a legal system in postwar Iraq. He is, according to Reynolds, “a lifelong Democrat and a man of unimpeachable integrity.”
Here is an excerpt of his account:
The document shows that an Iraqi intelligence officer, Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, assigned to the Iraq embassy in Pakistan, is ‘’responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group.’’
The document shows that it was written over the signature of Uday Saddam Hussein, the son of Saddam Hussein. The story of how the document came about is as follows.
Saddam gave Uday authority to control all press and media outlets in Iraq. Uday was the publisher of the Babylon Daily Political Newspaper.
On the front page of the paper’s four-page edition for Nov. 14, 2002, there was a picture of Osama bin Laden speaking, next to which was a picture of Saddam and his ‘’Revolutionary Council,’’ together with stories about Israeli tanks attacking a group of Palestinians.
On the back page was a story headlined ‘’List of Honor.’’ In a box below the headline was ‘’A list of men we publish for the public.’’ The lead sentence refers to a list of ‘’regime persons’’ with their names and positions.
The list has 600 names and titles in three columns. It contains, for example, the names of the important officials who are members of Saddam’s family, such as Uday, and then other high officials, including the 55 American ‘’deck of cards’’ Iraqi officials, some of whom have been apprehended.
Halfway down the middle column is written: ‘’Abid Al-Karim Muhamed Aswod, intelligence officer responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group at the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan.’’
The story Judge Merritt relates is similar to an account reported in The Weekly Standard last May. Splashed across the front page of the November 16, 2002, edition of Uday Hussein’s Babil newspaper were two “honor” lists, one of which included Aswod (spelled “Aswad”) and identified him as the “official in charge of regime’s contacts with Osama bin Laden’s group and currently the regime’s representative in Pakistan.”
I stumbled upon this passage doing research for another piece. So I brought the article to the attention of administration officials, who hadn’t yet seen it, and asked for comment. Intelligence analysts were perplexed, particularly because of a passage in the text preceding the list. It read: “We publish this list of great men for the sons of our great people to see.” And below that: “This is a list of the henchmen of the regime. Our hands will reach them sooner or later. Woe unto them. A list of the leaders of Saddam’s regime, as well as their present and previous posts.”
The second description was clearly hostile in tone—”henchmen of the regime” and “woe unto them.” Analysts weren’t sure what to make of the introduction or the list, but suggested Uday Hussein may have simply republished a list of “henchmen” distributed by an Iraqi opposition group without realizing he was publicly linking his father to Osama bin Laden.
That still seems like the most plausible explanation to me. (Although Judge Merritt’s report that the front page of the four-page newspaper carried side-by-side photographs of bin Laden and Saddam is interesting.) Still, some intelligence officials believe that Aswad—who publicly raised doubts after September 11 about whether Osama bin Laden is a terrorist—was an important link between Iraq and al Qaeda.
If the newspaper reports are interesting but inconclusive, two other recent reports are more compelling. Jessica Stern, a Harvard professor and Clinton administration national security official, discusses the links in a fascinating and sober analysis of the Al Qaeda threat in the current issue of Foreign Affairs.
Under the subheading, “Friends of Convenience,” she writes:
Meanwhile, the Bush administration’s claims that al Qaeda was cooperating with the “infidel” (read: secular) Saddam Hussein while he was still in office are now also gaining support, and from a surprising source. Hamid Mir, bin Laden’s “official biographer” and an analyst for al Jazeera, spent two weeks filming in Iraq during the war. Unlike most reporters, Mir wandered the country freely and was not embedded with U.S. troops. He reports that he has “personal knowledge” that one of Saddam’s intelligence operatives, Farooq Hijazi, tried to contact bin Laden in Afghanistan as early as 1998. At that time, bin Laden was publicly still quite critical of the Iraqi leader, but he had become far more circumspect by November 2001, when Mir interviewed him for the third time.
Hijazi has acknowledged meeting with al Qaeda representatives, perhaps with bin Laden himself, even before the outreach in 1998. According to news reports and interviews with intelligence officials, Hijazi met with al Qaeda leaders in Sudan in 1994.
Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a member of the congressional commission investigating the September 11 attacks, added to the intrigue this week when he flatly declared, “there is evidence” of Iraq-al Qaeda links. Lehman has access to classified intelligence as a member of the commission, intelligence that has convinced him the links may have been even greater than the public pronouncements of the Bush administration might suggest. “There is no doubt in my mind that [Iraq] trained them in how to prepare and deliver anthrax and to use terror weapons.”
The Western nightmare: Saddam and Bin Laden versus the world
Iraq’s half-built chemical arsenal, and the planet’s most prolific terrorist - Julian Borger and Ian Black on a marriage made in hell
Saturday February 6, 1999
Guardian
It must have been a bitterly cold and uncomfortable journey. In the last days of December, a group of Iraqi officials crossed the Hindu Kush border from Pakistan to Afghanistan on their way to keep an appointment deep in the remote eastern mountains.
At the head of the group was a man by the name of Farouk Hijazi, President Saddam Hussein’s new ambassador to Turkey and one of Iraq’s most senior intelligence officers. He had been sent on one of the most important assignments of his career - to recruit Osama bin Laden.
Thus the world’s most notorious pariah state, armed with its half-built hoard of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, tried to embrace the planet’s most prolific terrorist. It was the stuff of the West’s millennial nightmares, but United States intelligence officials are positive that the meeting took place, although they admit that they have no idea what happened.
This was not the first time that President Saddam had offered Mr Bin Laden a partnership. At least one approach is believed to have been made during the Saudi dissident’s sojourn in Sudan from 1990 to 1996. On that occasion, the guerrilla leader turned the emissaries away, out of a pious man’s contempt for President Saddam’s secular Ba’athist regime.
But this time round Mr Bin Laden’s options have been rapidly diminishing. His hosts, the hardline Taliban militia which rules Afghanistan under Islamic auspices, have vowed publicly to stand by him. But they are at the same time discussing with his worst enemies - the Saudi monarchy and the American government - his eventual departure from Afghan soil.
Mr Bin Laden must surely have felt the noose begin to bite when he heard the news of the Taliban’s meeting this week with a US assistant secretary of state, Karl Inderfurth, in Islamabad.
But the most wanted man in the West may be at his most dangerous when cornered. And the increased pressure makes the prospect of a Saddam Hussein-Osama bin Laden alliance, once an improbable marriage of opposites, seem a more credible threat.
The US has been braced for more bombings since the attacks on its east African embassies in Tanzania and Kenya last August, in which more than 250 people died, most of them Africans. Retaliatory US cruise missile strikes followed, against Mr Bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan and a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant believed (mistakenly as US intelligence now privately admits) to be producing the nerve gas VX on his behalf.
US embassies throughout the Middle East have been on alert since December, when the CIA found what it called ‘strong and credible evidence’ of an imminent attack by members of Mr Bin Laden’s multinational organisation al-Qaeda (the Base).
The CIA also claimed to have foiled a plot last September by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group, an al-Qaeda affiliate, to bomb the US embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, The Egyptian suspects were deported to Cairo.
The US government has spent $2 billion (£1.2 billion) on counter-terrorist measures since the August embassy bombings. The Pentagon has set up national guard rapid response teams in 10 states around the country.
Overseas, US embassy windows are being coated with protective film to prevent them disintegrating into lethal shards under the impact of a blast. And the FBI is kitting out a Gulfstream 5 long-range business jet to fly specialist teams of agents at short notice to a terrorist incident anywhere in the world.
Amid these preparations are signs that the threat of non-conventional terrorist attacks looms ever larger on the American horizon. The justice department has distributed equipment and training grants to local fire departments to help them deal with possible chemical or biological weapons incidents, and it recently organised a huge multi-agency operation, codenamed Poised Response, to rehearse a co-ordinated reaction to such an attack on Washington.
But it is not just the US which finds itself in the putative firing line. Since RAF bombers took part in air strikes on Iraq in November, British citizens have also become primary targets.
Talking to the London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat a month after the air strikes on Iraq, Mr Bin Laden explicitly added British civilians to his ‘divinely-ordained’ list of targets.
‘The British and American people have widely voiced their support for their leaders’ decision to attack Iraq, which makes all those people, in addition to the Jews who occupy Palestine, into people warring [against God],’ he warned.
As Mr Bin Laden plans more attacks on the ‘infidels’ he regards as a contaminating presence at the Islamic holy sites of his home country, American and British intelligence services plot their own strategy. They aim to block his moves and contain him while waiting for a chance to strike themselves.
It is an unending game of chess between terrorism and counter-terrorism in which last year’s multi-million dollar cruise missile strikes are merely the bluntest of weapons.
Even before the embassy bombings in Africa, US special forces had been rehearsing daring ‘grab raids’ aimed at fighting their way into Mr Bin Laden’s mountain lair in Afghanistan and either abducting or assassinating him. But such an operation would almost certainly involve high American casualties and - like missile attacks - would require highly accurate information about the whereabouts of Mr Bin Laden.
According to journalists who visited him in December, the ascetic Saudi radical is these days more cautious than ever, continually shifting between tented camps and caves and never using satellite phones lest they betray his position to the US spy satellites that constantly hover overhead.
There has been at least one assassination attempt in recent months, carried out by Saudi intelligence.
Mr Bin Laden accused the governor of Riyadh, Prince Salman bin Abdul-Aziz (whom he also blamed for stripping him of Saudi citizenship in 1994) of offering $267,000 to three men to carry out the execution.
The terrorist financier told a Pakistani journalist that one of the would-be assassins, Siddiq Ahmed, had confessed, but did not say what had happened to him.
Prince Salman denied the accusation, saying that he had never heard of Siddiq Ahmed. But Vincent Cannistraro, the former head of CIA counter-terrorist operations, who maintains close contact with US and Middle Eastern intelligence networks, said an assassination bid did indeed take place.
‘The Saudis hired someone among his followers to poison him, probably in November. He suffered kidney failure but recovered, at least partially,’ Mr Cannistraro said.
Whether as a result of the assassination attempt or not, Mr Bin Laden is unwell, said Mr Cannistraro.
‘There is definitely something wrong. The intelligence people here described him as gravely ill.’
Mr Bin Laden has denied such reports and claimed that he remains sufficiently vigorous to play football and ride horses. But the journalists who met him in December said he was walking stiffly and leaning on a walking stick. And when a Pakistani reporter, Rahimullah Yusufzai, filmed him hobbling, Mr Bin Laden’s aides erased the tape.
While waiting for a chance to grab Mr Bin Laden or get a clear shot at him, his enemies are constantly striving to narrow his room for manoeuvre and fold up his sprawling financial network one bank account at a time.
‘He’s certainly feeling the pinch; he can’t use his satellite phone and he can’t travel for fear of being kidnapped,’ said one British counter-terrorism expert.
‘He’s pretty much in a box and there are signs that action against his financial resources may have started to work.’
Mr Cannistraro believes that Mr Bin Laden’s financial resources (originally estimated at up to $300 million) are dwindling fast.
‘He went through his personal fortune long ago,’ he said. ‘He gets some income from trading through his companies. But his major source of income these days is fundraising, mostly among religious businessmen in the Gulf.’
The Saudi royal family, presumably stirred into action by last year’s bloodbaths in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, have closed down a number of Mr Bin Laden’s front charities, and have been tightening the screws on their erstwhile Taliban clients, whose ‘embassy’ in Riyadh was closed down in September.
The Taliban’s guiding light, Mullah Omar, has also rejected the entreaties of Prince Turki al-Faisal, the head of Saudi general intelligence, who visited Afghanistan twice last year in an attempt to lever Mr Bin Laden out of his hiding place.
‘Prince Turki also returned empty handed,’ Mr Bin Laden crowed soon after the last attempt in November.
‘It is none of the business of the Saudi regime to come and ask for handing over Osama bin Laden, who was stripped of his identification card, which is his right by birth, and whose assets were frozen, and who was forced to sever all relations with his kin.’
The Taliban’s reluctance to surrender Mr Bin Laden is understandable. An estimated 300 of the multi-ethnic volunteers under his command are thought to have died in the war against the Soviet Union, turning the Saudi guerrilla leader into a legend in Afghan hearts - and in his own mind. He once claimed to have ‘reduced the Soviet Union to a myth’.
But even the fanatics of the Taliban are dependent on a steady supply of funds, if only to wipe out their adversaries’ last remaining pockets of resistance. And in the last few months the Saudis have cut the flow of cash to a trickle.
Mamoun Fandy, a politics professor at Washington’s Georgetown University, believes that the pressure will eventually take effect. In his new book, Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent, to be published later this month, Mr Fandy writes: ‘The Taliban protection is not likely to continue forever. Taliban as a movement is subject to global pressures, especially from the United States and Saudi Arabia. Previously, under pressure from both, Sudan expelled Bin Laden from its territory. Under similar pressure, the Taliban may find it profitable to do likewise.’
In fact, in recent interviews with Mr Fandy, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah said he had won the personal assurances of Mullah Omar that Mr Bin Laden’s welcome was not indefinite.
‘Omar promised Crown Prince Abullah that ‘once things settled down’ in Afghanistan, it would be no place for Osama. It is a matter of time,’ Mr Fandy said.
This week’s meeting between US and Taliban officials in Islamabad shows how the sands can shift, less than a year after Mullah Omar sent Bill Richardson (who was then the US ambassador to the United Nations) away empty handed from secret talks about Mr Bin Laden in Kabul last April.
It is at this moment, with Mr Bin Laden increasingly vulnerable, that the Iraqi offer of shelter materialised from the mysterious figure of Farouk Hijazi.
Mr Hijazi’s arrival as Iraqi ambassador to Ankara last year was seen by Western intelligence analysts as President Saddam’s attempt to beef up his espionage and weapons procurement network in the region.
Despite being Palestinian born, the secret policeman won the Iraqi ruling family’s favour by the zeal with which he went about executing their opponents, both in Iraq and abroad. In the past decade he rose to become the head of external operations in the special security organisation run by President Saddam’s son Qusay.
An attempt to place him in North America failed when Canada refused to accept him as ambassador. After a few months’ hesitation, Turkey consented to his nomination late last year.
In a telling sign of the true function of the embassy, the outgoing ambassador, Rafi Daham al-Tikriti, was made head of the Iraqi mukhabarat intelligence service on his return to Baghdad.
Ahmed Allawi, who has been keeping tabs on Hijazi for the opposition Iraqi National Congress, said: ‘Turkey is the Iraqis’ biggest intelligence station abroad, and Hijazi is deeply involved in the secret overseas operations of the mukhabarat. He is the perfect man to send to Afghanistan.’
Mr Fandy believes that if Mr Bin Laden had to leave his Afghan stronghold he would prefer to seek refuge in the mountains of Yemen.
Although he was born in Riyadh, his family came from the Hadramout region of southern Yemen, and he has since cultivated contacts with the influential Sanhane tribe.
But Mr Fandy argues that even Yemen would not offer an entirely safe haven if the Saudi monarchy was determined to root him out. ‘Saudi Arabia can threaten the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh more than Bin Laden can threaten the Saudis.’
If Mr Bin Laden can be winkled out, it will be a significant victory for the West’s billion-dollar counter-terrorism machine, but no one on either side of the Atlantic believes it will spell the end of hostilities with radical Islamic groups.
‘It’s dangerous to characterise him as the be all and end all of this problem,’ said one British-based expert. ‘Political Islam is on the rise and terrorist groups will continue to organise in spite of all the security measures. And Bin Laden has faithful lieutnants so even if he’s assassinated the phenomenon isn’t going to go away.’
The paradox of the Bin Laden manhunt is that its target is, in many ways, the joint creation of the Saudi and Western intelligence services, a result of their covert war to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan.
Even then, some had qualms about cultivating that sort of client. ‘We did worry then about these wild bearded men,’ admits one British official. ‘But there was a lot of naivety around.’
Under the great organising principle of the cold war, with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan doing their double act against the evil empire, their enemy’s enemy was their friend.
Yet after the Soviet army left Afghanistan, it soon became clear that a dangerous genie had been let loose, as thousands of Egyptians and Algerians, Saudis and Yemenis, fired up by their victory over a superpower, went home to give a critical edge to indigenous Islamic fundamentalist movements which had yet to turn violent.
Now, while trying to undo the mistakes of the past, the US and Britain have to steel themselves for Mr Bin Laden’s promised next move.
If his flirtation with Baghdad is consummated, the struggle with the implacable zealot from Saudi Arabia could be drifting towards an exceedingly bloody end-game.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,3818220-111026,00.html
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