Posted on 02/26/2003 1:10:36 AM PST by kattracks
Daily News ExclusiveWASHINGTON - When the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq begins, dictator Saddam Hussein will launch a terror offensive that will be joined by extremists around the world, according to new intelligence bulletins obtained by the Daily News.
The warnings also report that Saddam's henchmen in foreign embassies are "awaiting the go-ahead signal from Baghdad," but one source indicated to The News that the operatives were under surveillance.
"We are quite familiar with who these agents are," the source said.
The bulletins distributed by the Defense Intelligence Agency on Feb. 11 and 13 were the strongest warnings yet about the likelihood of terrorism once war begins, and for the first time predicted an uprising that would spread from Al Qaeda to terror organizations that are not Islamic.
"Anti-U.S. terrorist attacks during any conflict with Iraq are a certainty," the defense agency informed intelligence and policy leaders in a Feb. 13 memo. "Indigenous terrorist groups in Greece, Turkey, Italy, Peru, Chile, Japan and Southeast Asia are the most likely to have some kind of terrorist response to U.S. military action in Iraq."
The Pentagon alerted its commanders in the U.S., Bahrain and Qatar this month that it was raising the terror threat level from "significant" to the maximum level, "high."
The classified memos express an unnerving certainty that terrorists will retaliate for a U.S. invasion of Iraq and contradict public statements by top officials who have insisted the nation's color-coded threat alert is not tied to a looming war.
A Feb. 11 agency memo reported that "at the onset of hostilities" with Iraq, Al Qaeda and other terrorists "will launch anti-U.S. terrorist operations, probably in the U.S. and Arabian Peninsula," where more than 150,000 G.I.s are assembling an invasion force.
But on Feb. 13, the agency said terrorists might attack U.S. interests if war "appears imminent."
Assassinations and small bombings are anticipated by Al Qaeda, and the agency said Iraqi agents "are more likely to target the U.S. homeland" than they were during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, according to the memos.
The only good news is that Iraqi counterattacks would lose steam as the regime collapsed during a U.S.-led military campaign, the agency said.
One of its memos said Iraq had only a "limited relationship with Al Qaeda." A source doubted that Saddam has passed any terror weapons to Osama Bin Laden's group but worried that Iraq may have helped terrorists developing their own chemical or biological weapons.
The Pentagon's threat analysis departs from statements by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, who has said the Orange Alert announced Feb. 7 "wasn't predicated on anything related to Iraq."
There was also no sign the administration was ready to lower the alert from orange, or high, to yellow, or elevated.
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