Wolfowitz says Saudi troop withdrawal was 'huge' reason for war with Iraq

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- European critics of the Iraq war expressed shock Friday at published remarks by a senior U.S. official playing down Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as the reason for the conflict.

In an interview in the next issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz cited "bureaucratic reasons" for focusing on Saddam Hussein's alleged arsenal and said a "huge" reason for the war was to enable Washington to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia.

"For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying.

He said one reason for going to war against Iraq that was "almost unnoticed but huge" was the need to maintain American forces in Saudi Arabia as long as Saddam was in power.

Those troops were sent to Saudi Arabia to protect the desert kingdom against Saddam, whose forces invaded Kuwait in 1991, but their presence in the country that houses Islam's holiest sites enraged Islamic fundamentalists, including Osama bin Laden.

Within two weeks of the fall of Baghdad, the United States announced it was removing most of its 5,000 troops from Saudi Arabia and would set up its main regional command center in Qatar.

However, those goals were not spelled out publicly as the United States sought to build international support for the war. Instead, the Bush administration focused on Saddam's failure to dismantle chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.

The failure of U.S. forces to locate extensive weapons stocks has raised doubts in a skeptical Europe whether Iraq represented a global security threat.

Wolfowitz's comments followed a statement by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who suggested this week that Saddam might have destroyed his banned weapons before the war began.

On Friday, the commander of U.S. Marines in Iraq said he was surprised that extensive searches have failed to discover any of the chemical weapons that U.S. intelligence had indicated were supplied to front line Iraqi forces at the outset of the war.

"Believe me, it's not for lack of trying," Lt. Gen. James Conway told reporters. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."

The remarks by Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld revived the controversy over the war as President Bush left for a European tour in which he hopes to put aside the bitterness over the war, which threatened the trans-Atlantic partnership.

In Denmark, whose government supported the war, opposition parties demanded to know whether Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen misled the public about the extent of Saddam's weapons threat.

"It was not what the Danish prime minister said when he advocated support for the war," Jeppe Kofod, the Social Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, said in response to Wolfowitz's comments. "Those who went to war now have a big problem explaining it."

Former Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen said he was shocked by Wolfowitz's claim. "It leaves the world with one question: What should we believe?" he told The Associated Press.

In Germany, where the war was widely unpopular, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeiting newspaper said the comments about Iraqi weapons showed that America is losing the battle for credibility.

In London, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who quit as leader of the House of Commons to protest the war, said he doubted Iraq had any such weapons.

"The war was sold on the basis of what was described as a pre-emptive strike, 'Hit Saddam before he hits us,' " Cook told British Broadcasting Corp. "It is now quite clear that Saddam did not have anything with which to hit us in the first place."

During a visit to Poland, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday he has "absolutely no doubt" that concrete evidence will be found of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

Wolfowitz was in Singapore, where he is due to speak Saturday at the Asia Security Conference of military chiefs and defense ministers from Asian and key Western powers.

He told reporters at the conference that the United States will reorganize its forces worldwide to confront the threat of terrorism.

"We are in the process of taking a fundamental look at our military posture worldwide, including in the United States," Wolfowitz said. "We're facing a very different threat than any one we've faced historically."

Okay. Is Fox good enough for you? They seem to be waving the neocon flag the hardest

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — An editor whose newspaper was in the forefront of a campaign against Muslim extremism (search) was removed from his post Tuesday, managers at the paper said.
No reason was given for the dismissal of Jamal Khashoggi, who joined the Al-Watan (search) newspaper in March, one manager said on condition of anonymity.
Staffers at the paper said Al-Watan's manager fired Khashoggi but that the decision came from the Information Ministry. Under Saudi press laws, the government approves the hiring and firing of newspaper editors. Newspapers are privately owned but government guided.
Al-Watan has run a number of stories, editorials and cartoons critical of extremists and the way in which the country enforces its religious values.
The newspaper published many critical articles in the wake of May 12 attacks in Riyadh (search) that killed 34 people, suggesting that Muslim fanaticism, long tolerated in the country, led to terrorism. On Saturday, Khashoggi writing about fanaticism, said: "It's time we treated the affliction and held those who strayed accountable."
Many fear the dismissal of Khashoggi, 45, will send a message to other newspapers that the government will no longer tolerate such criticism. Khashoggi declined comment.
A ministry official said only Minister of Information Fuad al-Farsi could comment on the dismissal but that he was not available.
Many Saudis who had hoped that their country was on a path toward change following the terror attacks against three compounds housing foreign workers were disappointed by the news of Khashoggi's dismissal.
"This is a bad sign," said Turki al-Hamad, a prominent writer. "This will be considered a victory by the extremists. It's like an invitation for more attacks."
Based in the southern city of Abha, Al-Watan has won a wide readership since its launch in 2000 owing to its liberal editorials and a policy of promoting a higher profile for women in conservative Saudi society.

Fox May 27,2003

LIVINGSTONE: Well, I think what they're looking at right now is that they've taken down some safe houses in Saudi Arabia; they've been following these guys. They know they didn't get any of them when they had the shoot- out with the Saudi police. They say -- think some of those guys were on their way to the United States or Western Europe.
In addition to that, there's a lot of chatter that's been going on. They say it's as great as prior to 9/11 (search), right now. That means electronic chatter and movements that they've been able to pick up. There's one other thing as well. Right now they know that Al Qaeda, from other sources that they have right now, is trying to get something going, because it's very important to them internally, to show that they can carry out an action, not just in an Arab country, but maybe in the United States, or Western Europe as well.

Birt Hume May 21,2003

Sounds like they're 'helping' out by fomenting an atmosphere safe houses can exist

A Saudi official said Tuesday that investigators were aware of about 50 militants, some now dead, believed to belong to three Saudi terror cells, including the one that carried out the May 12 bombings. Another cell has fled Saudi Arabia and the third is at large in the kingdom, the official said.
The official indicated the survivors were ready to volunteer for more suicide strikes, were tied to Al Qaeda and had hard-core sympathizers numbering "in the low hundreds."

Fox May 21

WASHINGTON, April 9 (UPI) -- The Saudi Arabian government has paid out at least $33 million to families of Palestinians killed or injured in the 17-month-old intifada and in December 2001 earmarked another $50 million for the payments, according to Arabic news agencies and the Saudi Embassy's Web site.
Similar payments promised by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein have drawn sharp condemnation from U.S. President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The Saudi Committee for Support of the Al-Aqsa Intifada distributes payments of $5,333 to the families of the dead and $4,000 to each Palestinian receiving medical treatment in Saudi hospitals. The fund is managed by Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz, according to the embassy.
The sum is far less than the $10,000 Iraq offers to the families of those killed and the $25,000 it gives to the kin of suicide bombers, but is nonetheless significant to the average Palestinian whose annual income is $1,575.
Saudi Arabia makes no distinction in compensation to families of suicide bombers and those killed by Israeli military action. There have been more than 50 suicide bombings since the intifada began in September 2000.

UPI link

So Saudi Arabia pays and Hussein gets condemned for the same thing? Yep, sounds logical to me!!!

ACCCKKK!!! Even the National Review calls Saudis the 'Federal Reserve of Terrorism'. Of course this was last year before the war. Have to keep the citizens of the respective states focused on one thing at a time, eh? Will it never end?!? LOLOL!!!

The Bush administration once again heard the cold, hard facts about Saudi Arabia's growing threat. And once again, they covered their ears.
"Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies," Rand Corporation analyst Laurent Murawiec told the Defense Policy Board last July 10. "The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," he continued in remarks to this advisory panel of former elected officials and security experts. He blamed Riyadh for "a daily outpouring of virulent hatred against the U.S. from Saudi media, 'educational' institutions, clerics, officials — Saudis tell us one thing in private, do the contrary in reality."
Senior administration officials would have none of this. When the Washington Post revealed this briefing on August 6, Secretary of State Colin Powell called Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud Faisal to promise him that it did not reflect U.S. policy. "The Saudis cooperate fully in the global war on terrorism," Pentagon spokesman Victoria Clarke added.
True, but on which side?
Saudi Arabia routinely targets Americans and Israelis. Behold a sample of its latest misdeeds:
Saudi Arabia is the Federal Reserve of terrorism. Israeli soldiers recovered records on the West Bank this spring that show that the Saudi Committee for the Support of the Intifada al-Quds (Jerusalem in Arabic) has paid $5,300 bonuses to the families of at least 102 Palestinian terrorists including eight involved in "suicide operations." Among them, David Tell noted in the May 20 Weekly Standard, were the relatives of Sufian Sabarin who detonated Jerusalem's No. 26 bus on August 21, 1995, killing Joan Devenny, an American citizen and victim of Saudi-funded terrorism. To continue such work, the Committee, controlled by Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, raised $109.5 million last April in a Jerry Lewis-style telethon for "Palestinian martyrs."
Documents indicate that another Saudi "charity," the International Islamic Relief Organization, gave $280,000 to 14 Palestinian groups including "Hamas-identified committees/bodies." Hamas, of course, sponsored the July 31 bombing in the cafeteria of Hebrew University's Frank Sinatra International Student Center in Jerusalem. The blast wounded 86 innocent civilians and murdered seven others, five of them Americans.
Here's what news accounts say NATO troops found last October at the Sarajevo office of the Saudi High Commission for Relief: Pre-and-post-attack photos of the World Trade Center, the USS Cole and American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; maps of federal buildings in Washington; materials for forging State Department badges; and a computer program on how to spread pesticides with crop dusters. (OOPS!)
Saudi ambassador to Great Britain Ghazi Algosaibi published a poem in the April 13 edition of Al Hayat, a London-based Arabic newspaper. Titled "The Martyrs," it praises Ayat Akhras, a Palestinian woman who exploded herself in a Jerusalem supermarket on March 29. She killed herself and two Israelis and injured 25 others.
"Doors of heaven are opened for her," Ambassador Algosaibi's poem says of "Ayat, the bride of loftiness." Akhras "embraced death with a smile while the leaders are running away from death," the poet adds. The ambassador, who has represented Saudi Arabia in London for more than a decade, takes a swing at America: He writes, "We complained to the idols of a White House whose heart is filled with darkness."
Top Saudis parrot Der Sturmer editor Julius Streicher, perhaps Hitler's loudest Jew hater. Sheik Abd-al-Rahman Ibn-Abd-al-Aziz al-Sudays, Chief Cleric at Mecca's Grand Mosque, claimed last April 19 that Jews are "the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the killers of the prophets and the grandsons of monkeys and pigs." In a June 21 sermon broadcast live on government-owned TV1, the imam prayed: "O God, deal with the Jews and Zionists for they are within Your power. O God, scatter their assemblies, make them a lesson for others, and let them and their property be a booty for Muslims."
The Saudi Commerce Ministry recently banned spoons, toy guns, candies, and laser discs emblazoned with Stars of David. "The Ministry is investigating the ways why [sic] these products had been brought into the Kingdom," the English-language Riyadh Daily explained June 25.
While such Muslim countries as Pakistan and Yemen courageously have permitted U.S. troops to prosecute the war on terror from their soil, Saudi Arabia prohibited American jets from using the Prince Sultan Air Base while America and its allies drove al Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan. Never mind that the base was built with U.S. tax dollars. Just yesterday, the Saudis announced their territory would be off limits in any new U.S. bid to invade Iraq.
Soon after the September 11 attacks, orchestrated by 15 Saudis among 19 hijackers, Saudi diplomats whisked several of Osama bin Laden's relatives on a private jet from America to Saudi Arabia and beyond the reach of U.S. investigators. Riyadh subsequently has stymied background checks on Saudi terror suspects and impeded American efforts to block al Qaeda's financial assets. Unlike nearly every other carrier, Saudi Arabian Airlines even refused to give the U.S. Customs Service the identities of passengers on its America-bound flights.
As the administration considers invading Iraq, it also should pursue regime change in Saudi Arabia. Saddam Hussein is essentially a better-armed Ferdinand Marcos. He is an egomaniac who craves power and crushes opponents. Hussein, a secular Muslim, professes no concrete ideology beyond his own cult of personality. Yes, he has treated his Kurdish minority to poison gas and likely is building chemical, biological and even atomic weapons of mass murder. Still, Hussein seems more of a regional headache than a worldwide menace.
The House of Saud apparently lacks such a weapons program, but it adheres to a globally ambitious, religious-based ideology. Saudi Arabia aims to hijack Islam everywhere — from Medina to Manila to Manhattan's Islamic Cultural Center on East 96th Street — and infect it with that religion's virulent Wahhabi strain. The goal? An energized, anti-Semitic, anti-Western, anti-American faith. Through the charities, religious schools and mosques they finance, Saudi Arabia would employ Wahhabism to build a bridge to the eighth century.
America should confront the Saudi dictatorship. For starters, President Bush and Secretary Powell should stop glad-handing Saudi officials. Statecraft may require them to work with Riyadh, but there is no need for Crown Prince Abdullah to hobnob at Bush's Texas ranch.
Abundant global oil supplies also would diminish Saudi Arabia's relevance. Thus, Washington should help Russia and West African nations boost their petroleum production. Africa needs the money, and a prosperous, Westward-looking Russia would not likely re-aim its ballistic missiles at America.
Topple Saddam Hussein, if we must. But Rand's scholar is right. Team Bush should stop pretending that Saudi Arabia is Holland with sand dunes.

Topple the House of Saud--Worse than Saddam.

Hmmm.... what else was going on around Feb 28, 1993?

1993 : (IRAQ SENDS CHEMICAL WEAPONS TO SUDAN THROUGH IRAN) In 1993, Iraq sent additional chemical weapons to Sudan, this time through Iran. - Yossef Bodansky, "The Iraqi WMD Challenge - Myths and Reality," TASK FORCE ON TERRORISM & UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. 20515 , February 10, 1998(* My note : With Iran's permission, or were they smuggled using some group?)

JANUARY 25, 1993 : (CIA SHOOTER KANSI SHOOTS FIVE PEOPLE< TWO CIA PERSONNEL) Five commuters in a morning rush-hour jam outside the gates of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., were shot by a gunman, Mir Amal Kansi, firing an AK-47 automatic rifle. All but one worked for the CIA. Two CIA employees -- Frank Darling, a communications engineer, and Lansing Bennett, a doctor -- died. Kansi's friends and relatives told U.S. officials that he had been mentally unstable since the death of his father, a wealthy tribal chief, in 1989. It is not known if the attack was politically motivated or if it was connected to the bombing of the World Trade Center, which came one month later. The alleged mastermind of that attack, Ramzi Yousef, followed a similar escape route. The feds interviewed his roommate, Zahed Ahmad Mir, who they said told them that Kansi wanted to use that rifle to attack a symbol of the United States. Kansi's trail had went cold by the time the FBI and the CIA tracked his path from his nearby apartment in Reston, Va., to Dulles International Airport-- the White House or the CIA. - "Man Suspected of Killing 2 CIA Agents Is Apprehended, " By TIM WEINER , NYT, June 18, 1997 via Afgha.com

FEBRUARY 10, 1993 : (US,YUGOSLAVIA) The Clinton administration said U.S. troops could be sent to enforce peace in former Yugoslavia provided warring factions there negotiated a settlement.

FEBRUARY 1993 , three weeks after Clinton's inaugeration : (HUANG CONTACTS WHITE HOUSE TO GET MEETING BETWEEN CLINTON & RIADY, CLINTON AGREED)

FEBRUARY 26, 1993, 5:12 PM : (NEW YORK, WTC -1 BOMBING, CYANIDE, YOUSEF) Car bomb exploded on the 2nd level of parking basement in the World Trade Center, killed 7 and injured hundreds. The bombers also left behind a device designed to release cyanide gas to kill emergency response crews and area residents, but the fire destroyed the cyanide. Bin Laden denied involvement. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who had been trained in Afghanistan, was named as an FBI suspect and added to the Ten Most Wanted list, with a $2 million reward. In 1985, Yousef was recognized in Pakistan, arrested, and extradited to the US. Yousef was convicted of being the "mastermind" of the 2/26/93 attack and sentenced to life in prison.

FEBRUARY 26, 1993 : (WTC1 PLOT, SALAMEH, RAHMAN, YOUSEF) Under the influence of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef organizes Mohammed Salameh and three others in plotting and carrying out a bombing at NY's WTC towers that caused mass destruction, six deaths and more than a thousand wounded. The group is comprised of Egyptians and Palestinians. His companion, a Palestinian named Ahmad Ajaj, who arrived on a fake Swedish passport, was arrested and found to have bombmaking videos and manuals in his luggage. Salameh entered the US in 1988 on a Jordanian passport and a visitors visa issued in Amman, Jordan. He applied for legal residence status [presumably asylee status], was turned down, and continued to be in the country on appeal of that decision. Abdel Rahman, an Egyptian religious leader charged with inciting a 1989 riot in Egypt, obtained a visa in Khartoum, Sudan which had no automated lookout system that would have identified him as a security threat. He entered as a tourist and applied for political asylum and received legal residence. An immigration judge ordered him deported in March, 1993, but he was still in the country four months later when he is arrested for terrorist acts.

FEBRUARY 26, 1993 : (WTC 1 BOMBING) World Trade Centre in New York, USA, badly damaged by a massive bomb planted by Islamic terrorists. The car bomb was planted in an underground garage and left six people dead and more than one thousand people injured.

FEBRUARY 26, 1993 : (WTC 1 PLOT : YOUSEF, FORMERLY A COLLABORATOR DURING IRAQ'S OCCUPATION OF KUWAIT, PLANNED WTC1 ATTACK) Ramzi Yousef is serving 240 years in a US prison for masterminding the 1993 attacks. Raised in Kuwait, he is known to have collaborated with Iraq during the occupation of Kuwait. - "Powell's mission: to link Saddam with terror," theage.com.au, February 1 2003 http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/01/31/1043804523375.html.

MARCH 1993 ?: (YOUSEF FLEES THE US ; HIDES IN THE PHILIPPINES, PLANS BOJINKA) Six months later [after he arrived in the US in Sept 1992], Yousef fled, having constructed the truck bomb that fellow Islamic extremists drove into the basement of the trade centre. While in hiding in Manila, [Yousef] then drew up plans to bomb 11 American passenger airliners over the Pacific. - "Powell's mission: to link Saddam with terror," theage.com.au, February 1 2003 http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/01/31/1043804523375.html.

1993 : (WTC1, YASIN, IRAQ) Abdul Rahman Yasin mixed and made the truck bomb which wrought destruction and killed six in the first New York World Trade Center attack - then coolly boarded a plane for Baghdad, where he still resides. There is strong evidence that Ramzi Yousef, leader of both the 1993 New York bombing and a failed attempt two years later to down 12 American airliners over the Pacific, was an Iraqi intelligence officer.

1993 : (WTC - 1 BOMBING AFTERMATH) In 1993, immediately following the World Trade Center bombing, federal prosecutors and FBI agents reexamined raw materials, documents, and data they had collected since the assassination of right-wing Rabbi Meir Kahane by El Sayyid Nosair in November 1990 and the murder (still unsolved) of the fundamentalist head of the Al Kifah office in Brooklyn, Mustapha Shalabi, in February 1991. Although it was too late to prevent the bombing, the boxes of material seized from Nosair's apartment following his arrest in 1990 contained the very seeds of the World Trade Center explosion. In 1993, the same materials seized in 1990 were found to be a roadmap to the jihad conspiracy in the US of the previous three years. Similarly, the documents and materials seized in 1990 from Nosair's home– many of which have been reexamined immediately following the twin embassy bombings – have now provided at least a partial roadmap to understanding and reconstructing the Bin Laden network. In particular, new attention has been focused on the Al Kifah Refugee Center, known in Arabic as the Office of Services of the Mujahideen, that gave birth, as prosecutors laid out in their complaints and indictments, to Bin Laden's secret terrorist organization.

FEBRUARY 28, 1993 : (BOSNIA-HERCEGOVINIA) The US begins an airdrop of relief supplies aimed at Muslims surrounded by Serbian forces in Bosnia.

FEBRUARY 28, 1993 : (WACO) Branch Davidion cult barricade themselves into their compound at Waco, United States, after an abortive Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms raid leaves four Federal agents and six cult members dead. Eighty six cult members, including their leader David Koresh, die when the compound burns down during an assault by Federal agents on 19 April.

FEBRUARY 28, 1993 : (NY DAILY NEWS WARNS THAT TERRORISM AKIN TO THE FIRST WTC BOMBING MAY HAPPEN AGAIN) New York Daily News warned that "this [terrorism like the WTC 1 bombing] may happen again." "The Clinton administration must treat the bombing not as a simple criminal act, but as an act of war," the Daily News wrote, adding that "measures aimed at controlling the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons" also were urgently needed. "Iraq, Iran and North Korea could end up with atomic bombs." - "A warning not heeded, " New York Daily News 2/26/03

MARCH 1993 : (GORE : CLIPPER CHIP PROJECT : AT&T TELEPHONE SECURITY DEVICE MEETING WITH BROWN, GORE, HUBBELL, RENO, PANETTA) One document released by the Justice Dept. is a March 1993 Justice Dept. memo from Stephen Colgate, Assistant Attorney General for Administration, to Webster Hubbell. In 1993, Webster Hubbell, the now convicted Rose office law partner of Hillary Clinton, served as the number two at the Justice Department. Both Gore and Janet Reno personally tasked Hubbell to run the Clipper project. Colgate's 1993 memo to Hubbell provides the details of the Gore plan. According to the Colgate memo, Vice President Al Gore chaired a meeting with Hubbell, Reno, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, and Leon Panetta in March 1993. The meeting was on the "AT&T Telephone Security Device".- "Secret Documents: Hubbell Wanted Federal Access to Phones, " by Charles R. Smith, NewsMax , 8/29/02

MARCH 1993 : (RAHMAN, WTC 1) A US immigration judge orders the deportation of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, but he was still in the country four months later when he would be arrested for terrorist acts..

MARCH 9, 1993 : (CLINTON, HUANG, RIADY, CHEN, THE PRC & TIANAMEN SQUARE MASSACRE) John Huang writes a memo to James Riady, regarding "Mr. Chen Xitong from China." Huang is attempting to coordinate a trip to Atlanta by Mr. Chen. Huang assures Riady, "I have already stressed the importance of this visitor to all of us." At the time it was written, Chen was a CCP Politiburo member, ranking 8th in the hierarchy. He was also mayor of Beijing, and Beijing was competing with Sydney, Australia, for the right to host the year 2000 Summer Olympic Games. Short of the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and ex-Premier Li Peng, it would be hard to find a more notorious and corrupt CCP official than Chen, or one with more blood on his hands from the June 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Chen signed the martial law decrees justifying the use of tanks and flamethrowers against unarmed civilians. After the streets had been cleared of blood, Chen gave the official verdict on the massacre in a report to the Standing Committee of the National Peoples Congress. He blamed the murder of thousands of innocents on a conspiracy originated by "some political forces in the West", so it would be extremely difficult for Huang to get a U.S. Visa for Chen. The memo would later be discovered by Senate Democratic staff in John Huang's files.

MARCH 20, 1993 : (IRA BOMB SHOPPING MALL ) Irish Republican Army bomb shopping mall in Warrington, England, killing two children and injury fifty six civilians.

APRIL 1993 : (CHINAGATE : MISSILE TECH & MOTOROLA) Motorola, Inc. bet hundreds of millions of dollars and its corporate prestige on the assumption that the Chinese could develop a new advanced version of the Long March rocket to launch a series of Motorola satellites at a time when the existing models of the Long March weren't reliable.

APRIL 1993 : (MOTOROLA, CHINA) Motorola, Inc. bet hundreds of millions of dollars and its corporate prestige on the assumption that the Chinese could develop a new advanced version of the Long March rocket to launch a series of Motorola satellites at a time when the existing models of the Long March weren't reliable.

APRIL 9, 1993 : (IRAQIS PAINT US AIRCRAFT, US FIRES BACK) Iraqi antiaircraft 'paints' US aircraft. U.S. warplanes bomb or fire missiles at Iraqi anti-aircraft sites which had tracked U.S. aricraft

APRIL 13, 1993 : (BOSNIA-HERCEGOVINA) Clinton reports that U.S. forces were participating in a NATO air action to enforce a U.N. ban on all unauthorized military flights over Bosnia-Hercegovina.

APRIL 14, 1993 : (IRAQ TRIES TO ASSASSINATE US PRESIDENT H. W. BUSH IN KUWAIT) Iraqi intelligence service attempt to assassinate former US President, George Bush, during a visit to Kuwait. Two months later the US launches a cruise missile attack on the Iraqi capital Baghdad in retaliation. * Attempted assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait was the most brazen Iraqi act of terrorism in 1993. Kuwaiti officials discovered the elaborate scheme to kill former President Bush with an enormous car bomb shortly before he arrived for a visit. The group arrested for the assassination attempt was also planning a bombing campaign to destabilize Kuwait. 14 suspects--11 Iraqis and three Kuwaitis. Several of the Iraqi defendants worked for Iraqi intelligence, according to testimony in the trial. Forensic evidence also clearly linked Iraq to the abortive attack. "More recently, when Iraqi involvement in the plotted assassination of President Bush was verified in June 1993, President Clinton ordered a Tomahawk missile strike against the facility believed to have facilitated the planning of the operation, the headquarters complex of the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS). This attack (while later determined to be of questionable military effectiveness) provided a significant symbol of US resolve to punish those responsible involved in terrorism directed against its citizens. http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:O1TlMD7FAxgC:www.terrorism.com/terrorism/force.html+iraqi+international+terrorism+incidents&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 force.html
Iraq, notwithstanding UN Security Council resolutions requiring its renunciation of terrorism, continues terrorist attacks against political dissidents at home and abroad, many of them Kurds. Saddam Hussein is known to provide safe haven for terrorist groups, including the factions of the Palestinian Liberation Front, the Abu Nidal Organization, and the Arab Liberation Front (U.S. Department of State 1995, 26).

APRIL 18, 1993 : (IRAQ): Iraqi antiaircraft 'paints' US aircraft. U.S. warplanes bomb or fire missiles at Iraqi anti-aircraft sites which had tracked U.S. aricraft

APRIL 24, 1993 : (IRA BOMBING IN LONDON) City of London financial district devastated by IRA bomb; one civilian killed. It causes US $1.5 billion in damage.

1993 fall : (IRAQIS LIVING AND OPERATING IN SUDAN BY THIS TIME) With the UN inspections continuing, Baghdad committed itself to bolstering the regime in Khartoum -- a key storage site for Iraq's strategic systems. By the Fall of 1993, a large number of Iraqis moved into the area of the Red Sea mountain range -- in Madabay in Khawr Ashraf, Port Sudan, in the region of Dalawat on the Red Sea near Hala'ib, and the city of Tawker in region of Karnakanat. The Iraqis brought into these installations high-tech equipment and computers, missiles, defense systems, anti-aircraft systems and radar systems.By late 1993, the regions surrounding these installations were experiencing strict security measures and 24-hour armed patrols roam around it. In some areas, such as in the Port Sudan area, shepherds and nomads were completely removed from security zones with a 60 km circumference. - Yossef Bodansky, "The Iraqi WMD Challenge - Myths and Reality," TASK FORCE ON TERRORISM & UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. 20515 , February 10, 1998

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