DoD photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Charles 
Abell, U.S. Navy Military Interdiction   Ops troops
from San Diego in Persian Gulf hunt for
sanctioned chlorine & infant formula
I
R A Q
antebellum a r c h i v e
IraqDaily re "water supply"
Turkey, Syria & Iraq water issues
& links
extremely comprehensive links from
Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq

Fed. American Scientists re Iraq
Vatican campaign against Iraqi sanctions

DIA Water Vulnerability Report
Cong.Staff Delegation rpt 3.00
UN FAO report 9.13.00
UK & ICC Tribunal 8.25.00
DEATH STATISTICS IN IRAQ
UN imposed economic sanctions in place since the end of Gulf War in 1991. Sanctions had little effect on policies of Iraqi Govt, chilling toll on civilian population. The Iraqi Ministry of Health estimates that 109,720 persons have died annually between August 1990 and March 1994 as a direct result of the sanctions.
• From The Children are Dying: Reports by UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Since Aug. 1990, 567,000 children in Iraq have died as a consequence of the sanctions.
• THE LANCET, Volume 346 Number 8988. Saturday 12.2.95. After the sanctions, there was two-fold increase in infant mortality and five-fold increase in under-5 mortality.
• The LANCET Volume 346, Number 8988. Saturday 12.2.95 There are 4,500 children under the age of 5 dying each month from hunger and disease. In Central/Southern Iraq, 27.5% of Iraq's three million children (some 900,000) are now at risk of acute malnutrition.
• UNICEF Report Due to the hazards of the water supply, govt statistical office figures show 1,819 cases of typhoid fever in 1989 and 24,436 cases in 1994. Similarly, there were no reported cases of cholera in 1989, but 1,345 cases in 1994.
• 4/99 Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility effect of sanctions on Iraqi citizens, especially children. Intentionally defied sanctions with, visit, medicine, equipt & medical textbooks without required UN approval. or US travel permit.

9/5/00 PDF Human Rights Impact of Economic Sanctions on Iraq bkgd paper by Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights for ExecComm on Humanitarian Affairs U.K.

First use of poison gas bombs anywhere by the British in Iraq.
Steven Muhlberger, assoc. history prof.
Nipissing Univ. (Ontario, Canada)
"Be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels…"
Henry IV 4:4, counsel to his son   Shakespeare
Join delegation to Iraq sanctions challenge IV
1.16.01   Ship Medicine to Challenge Genocide

Bellicose Saddam jangles world nerves
Few believe Saddam still harbors enough military might to seriously trouble Kuwait shielded by US & UK
9.19.00  
AFP English

Dubai   With a finely timed accusation that Kuwait is stealing Iraqi oil, Saddam Hussein has set Western & Gulf nerves jangling once again. It took only a brief statement from Iraq's Oil Minister Amer Rashid last Thursday to ignite fears in Kuwait of a new war over the emirate's oil riches. The same accusation sparked the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, taking the world by surprise.
This time U.S. & Kuwaiti leaders immediately fired off warnings of grave consequences if Iraq's belligerency spills over. But Iraq has defiantly r7epeated the charges daily and warned it will take "adequate measures" to protect its rights and estimated the theft at 300,000 barrels per day.

    [ The U.S. is poisoning your water in violation of the Geneva Convention which kills a million of your kids, U.N. arms inspectors plant covert espionage devices under pretense of disarmament, neighbor Iran harbors wildcat rebels shooting 122mm rounds into your citizens' homes, neighbor Turkey flies twice weekly airstrikes whenever it pleases and neighbor Kuwait steals slant-drilled oil.   Wouldn't you be "bellicose" ? ]
    en famille
Blair is walking into a dogfight on Bush's ranch ¹
Internal rivalry & factionalism driving US policy on Iraq
3.31.02   Dan Plesch Independent UK

auth."Sheriff & Outlaws in the Global Village Menard Press,
sr research fellow Royal United Services Inst. for Def.Studies,
founder, BASIC (British American Security Info. Council)

By this time next Sunday, Tony Blair will have finished discussing the attack on Iraq at President Bush's Texas ranch. Mr Blair & his advisers are not just resigned to having to go along with the US; there is genuine enthusiasm for taking action against a dictator whom the PM believes to be public enemy no. 1. But these enthusiasms are confined to the inner circle at No 10. Chief of Defence Staff Sir Michael Boyce, has reflected the views of senior military establishment by suggesting we should learn to live with weapons of mass destruction, and that if, as he put it, Britain was deliberately going to put its "hand in the mangle" of Afghanistan, we should not simultaneously do so in Iraq. Scepticism about military expeditions to Iraq and recent troop deployment to Afghanistan has spread beyond the usual suspects. A retired wing commander rang me to express his fears about our troops operating under the command of the U.S. army. His peacetime service under U.S. air force generals had been bad enough, he said, and US army generals were of poorer quality.

This uncertainty means that Mr Blair has to take this opportunity to find out what military action Mr Bush really intends in his expanding war against terror. Almost as important is the need to get an understanding of how the US decision-making process works. As one US intelligence official told me, only 8 people in Washington are now allowed to read even quite low-level intelligence assessments, which for decades had been circulated to several dozen. Mr Bush's inner team already had a notoriously narrow worldview and are now preventing even their senior advisers from being properly briefed. The broad strategy is very clear. For GOP strategists, the desire to crush President Saddam Hussein is not really about revenge or weapons of mass destruction. It has far more to do with the need to show that it is not possible for any state or individual to fight the U.S. and survive. For today's GOP, "Make My Day" is a motto for the real world.

The plans being considered are intended to provoke internal coup & rebellion by the Kurdish & Shia minorities. The optimum scenario involves massive air attack supporting ground attack from 3 directions. An assault by 30,000 US troops already in Kuwait accompanied by seizure of Iraqi airbases by 82nd Airborne Div. with, in the north, assistance of the Turkish army. Supporters of this view outside govt include Pres. Reagan's former arms control adviser Ken Adelman, who believes that the war would be over in a month. It could take place as early as this summer, be preceded by the production of evidence of Saddam's weapons programs, and base its legitimacy under the UN on the argument that Saddam is in breach of the ceasefire agreement that ended the 1991 Gulf War. In this strategy, American troops would be hailed as liberators in Baghdad, and exiled Iraqi officers would form a new govt.

Concerns over Iraq's use of chemical or biological weapons on Israel, the reaction in the Arab world, and lack of international support would be dismissed as inevitable in any circumstance and so, it is argued, we might as well get it over with. Mr Bush's natural decisiveness is supported by his National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. She takes as a model the way she helped Mr Bush's father push through German unification in the face of objections from both Margaret Thatcher & François Mitterrand. A slower build-up, leading to an assault by 300,000 troops around the end of the year may be more likely, as it would give a higher chance of military victory, but it runs the risk that Saddam or other international events will delay things still further. In this scenario a cat & mouse game over UN weapons inspections would be allowed to run on until after the US mid-term elections and until a massive force could be assembled.

All the current sabre-rattling is simply designed to intimidate Saddam into compliance. But a game of triple bluff is also possible, in which Saddam is made to believe the current rhetoric is a bluff and then is attacked anyway.
It is unlikely that the decision has been made yet. For from behind closed doors can be heard the muffled sounds of an epic Washington dogfight among Mr Bush & his advisers. Public support for the President as well as the collapse of the Taliban have concealed incompetence & mismanagement of war against terror. Sr defence official in London recently told me he considered the "axis of evil" speech as little more than the justification for spending billions on hi-tech weapons favoured by DefSec Rumsfeld but largely irrelevant to the war on terrorism. Meanwhile, Mr Bush has left the coastguard underfunded. There is also no cash to produce a uniform system for turning Arabic words into English, so someone being observed by different agencies can elude detection simply by having his name written differently in English by the people trying to catch him.

US inter-service rivalries have also got in the way of the effective conduct of the war. At first USAF insisted on using B-2 & B-1 bombers as well as the veteran B-52s, in order to justify their vast cost, but their defects soon proved too obvious and the US fell back on the old and reliable B-52s. In recent weeks the ill-fated attack by U.S. army at Gardez was the product of the desperate attempt by the army to get in on the action, previously dominated by U.S. Marines. Up to Tora Bora, all the glory had gone to the USAF's carrier-based "top guns", special forces and the marines. Fearing that it would lose out in the defence budget, army chiefs pushed for a mission. The result was a laboriously planned attack by troops of the 10th Mountain & 101st Airborne Div. which was comprehensively ambushed by the guerrillas. The ensuing row resulted in the urgent request for British help, one of our major assets being that we are not part of the inter-service rivalries.

Communication has virtually broken down between U.S. top commanders. Gen. Franks refuses to talk to or visit the Pentagon even to give press briefings. In a deliberate power play, Donald Rumsfeld walked out of a top White House meeting called by Ms Rice on options for attacking Iraq after just 5 minutes, saying he was too busy to stay.
Arab uprising down on the ranch Such is his influence that colleagues fear that he may simply stop by the White House one evening and get Mr Bush to sign the attack order on Iraq. His decisiveness might be reassuring. But both he & Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Richard Myers seem dangerously ignorant of critical details. At the press conference following the killing of 8t U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, neither was able to talk about the poor performance of helicopters at high altitude where their rotor blades struggle to get a grip on the thin air. Behind a cloak of public silence there is much ego- driven headbutting and a very narrow sense of what is important.

Such is the closed circle of US policy-making that whatever Tony Blair learns at the Crawford Ranch will be more valuable than anything that MI6 could produce. I recall the honest query of one of Mr Rumsfeld's aides: "Why are we getting all this support from Blair? Thatcher we could understand, but we know he's not one of us." Why indeed? Mr Blair needs to return from the depths of Texas with an answer to convince his own party, his military top brass and the British people. If he does not, much more than just his premiership will be at stake.

Prince Charles against war On Iraq
2.9.03   Phillip SF Indymedia

A serious rift has opened up between Prince Charles & the govt because he is seen to be against a war on Iraq and against Bush. Whitehall also believes the prince is sympathetic to the view of his Arab friends that war on Saddam Hussein is a bid by the US to grab a stake in the Middle East's oil. Despite being colonel-in-chief to 17 regiments, Charles has shown little public support for the soldiers, airmen and sailors about to risk their lives in a Gulf conflict. There are also worries that he makes no secret of his anti-American views in conversations with members of Arab royal families and their leading officials.

A Whitehall source said: "Downing Street tries not to involve the prince in anything because they have concerns over how he will react. He has this lunatic view he is the voice of the people." A diplomatic insider said: "It would be very unhelpful if the prince were to indicate anything other than unswerving support for the govt."
The prince's stance was illustrated last week when, in his role as colonel-in-chief of the Paras, he said a stiff, formal farewell to his men as they prepared to leave for the Gulf. His visit to the Parachute Regiment barracks in Colchester does not merit a single line on his official website. It was not announced by his own office. Yet his opening of an Islamic education ctr in Leicester 2 weeks ago is reported on the website with 19 paragraphs, 2 pictures and a full transcript of his speech.

Charles is rightly feted for his pioneering work creating understanding & tolerance between Islam & other faiths. He also holds many honorary military positions incl chief to the Welsh Guards, the Paras and the Gurkhas. He is Vice-Admiral in the Royal Navy, Air Marshal in the RAF and Lt General in the Army.
Critics say the prince likes to cut a dash in the Paras' coveted red beret with a chestful of medals on his tunic. But they ask how the men of the Parachute Regiment would feel if they knew their colonel's true feelings on the war. The prince's views have led to a worrying split with the American leadership. 2 months ago, Charles had to abandon an official visit to the U.S. because the White House made it clear he wasn't wanted.

The snub, directly from President Bush, came after security sources advised that Charles's presence in America would be "very unhelpful". Washington diplomats were concerned the prince would show his disapproval during meetings with President Bush. Charles, who reads the Koran every day & often adopts Islamic dress at home, spends long hours discussing MidEast problems with Saudi royal family members.

One of his closest friends is former Saudi ambassador Ghazi Algosaibi who wrote a poem in praise of the first woman suicide bomber. Algosaibi said that the "doors of heaven are opened for her".
He once described the Israelis as worse than Nazis and he was a regular guest at Highgrove, Prince Charles's country home, before he was recalled by his govt last year.

Charles is also close to King Abdullah of Jordan. His glamorous wife Queen Rania is a close friend of the prince's partner, Camilla Parker Bowles and is a regular guest at St James's Palace. In private the prince talks about "American imperialism" collapsing the whole of the MidEast. "Of course Saddam is an evil man, but American imperialism will not solve the problem," he said in one discussion.
He sympathises with his Saudi royal friends when they talk about their fears of America's true intentions in Iraq. One close friend said: "They believe the US intends to collapse the whole Gulf economy and take control of oil. "Once that happens the tensions in Israel & Palestine will explode."

Charles's meeting 3 days ago with French President Jacques Chirac was fraught with diplomatic concerns. Before the meeting the Foreign Office asked the Prince of Wales's staff if he would promise not to discuss Iraq. They said yes, but Charles would feel free to give an opinion if Chirac raised Iraq first. Downing Street is understood to have washed its hands of winning Charles's support.
"At such a sensitive time his views are wrong, wrong, wrong," said a Whitehall source. "Unfortunately he is making them a little too widely known "


Saddam exchanged taunts with witnesses
12.31.06   Steven R. Hurst AP

Baghdad, Iraq   Iraqis awoke Saturday to television images of a noose being slipped over Saddam Hussein's neck and his white-shrouded body, the pre-dawn work of black-hooded hangmen. They went to bed as new video emerged showing Saddam exchanging taunts with onlookers before the gallows floor dropped away and the former dictator swung from the rope.

In Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, victims of his three decades of autocratic rule took to the streets to celebrate, dancing, beating drums and hanging Saddam in effigy. Celebratory gunfire erupted across other Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and other predominantly Shiite regions of the country.
There was no sign of a feared Sunni uprising in retaliation for the execution, and the bloodshed from civil warfare was not far off the daily average, 92 from bombings and death squads.

Outside the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of the capital, loyalists marched with Saddam pictures and waved Iraqi flags. Defying curfews, hundreds took to the streets vowing revenge in Samarra, north of Baghdad, and gunmen paraded and fired into the air in support of Saddam in Tikrit, his hometown.
Still, authorities imposed curfews sparingly in contrast to the several-day lockdown put in place after Saddam was sentenced to death 11.5.06

By several accounts, Saddam was calm but scornful of his captors, engaging in a give-and-take with the crowd gathered to watch him die and insisting he was Iraq's savior, not its tyrant and scourge.
"He said we are going to heaven and our enemies will rot in hell and he also called for forgiveness and love among Iraqis but also stressed that the Iraqis should fight the Americans and the Persians," Munir Haddad, an appeals court judge who witnessed the hanging, told the British Broadcasting Corp.
Another witness, national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told The New York Times that one of the guards shouted at Saddam: "You have destroyed us. You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution."
"I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persian and Americans," Saddam responded, al-Rubaie told the Times.
"God damn you," the guard said.
"God damn you," responded Saddam.

New video, first broadcast by Al-Jazeera satellite television early Sunday, had sound of someone in the group praising the founder of the Shiite Dawa Party, who was executed in 1980 along with his sister by Saddam. Saddam appeared to smile at those taunting him from below the gallows. He said they were not showing manhood.
Then Saddam began reciting the "Shahada," a Muslim prayer that says there is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger, according to an unabridged copy of the same tape, apparently shot with a camera phone and posted on a Web site.
Saddam made it to midway through his second recitation of the verse. His last word was Muhammad.
The floor dropped out of the gallows.

"The tyrant has fallen," someone in the group of onlookers shouted. The video showed a close-up of Saddam's face as he swung from the rope. Then came another voice: "Let him swing for three minutes."
The responses within Iraq to Saddam's death echoed the larger reaction across the Middle East, with his enemies rejoicing and his defenders proclaiming him a martyr. While Iranians and Kuwaitis welcomed the death of the leader who led wars against each of their countries, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the execution prevented exposure of the secrets and crimes the former dictator committed during his brutal rule.

Some Arab govts denounced the timing the 69-year-old former president's hanging just before the start of the most important holiday of the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Adha. Libya announced a three-day official mourning period and canceled all celebrations for Eid.
Within Iraq and across the world, the airwaves were alive with pictures of Saddam in death, a bruise on his cheek, his neck elongated and twisted impossibly to the right, grisly proof that the man who had tormented and killed so many during a bloody quarter-century rule was truly dead.

But some Iraqis, like 34-year-old Haider Hamed, a candy store owner in east Baghdad, wondered what would really change with the execution of Saddam, who was just four months shy of his 70th birthday.
"He's gone, but our problems continue," said the Shiite Muslim, whose uncle was killed in one of Saddam's many brutal purges. "We brought problems on ourselves after Saddam because we began fighting Shiite on Sunni and Sunni on Shiite."
At least 80 Iraqis died in bombings and other attacks Saturday, and police said 12 more tortured bodies were found dumped in Baghdad. The U.S. military announced six more service-members, 3 soldiers & 3 Marines, were killed.

The execution took place on the penultimate day of the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops, with the toll reaching 109. At least 2,998 members of the U.S. military have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, according to an AP count.
Arab satellite television channels said Saddam's body had been be returned to Tikrit for Sunday burial next to his sons Odai and Qusai in the main cemetery in the nearby town of Ouja, where Saddam was born. The sons and a grandson were killed in a gunbattle with the Americans in Mosul in July 2003.
State-run Al-Iraqiya television later confirmed the body had been handed to the Salahuddin province governor and the leader of Saddam's Albu-Nassir clan.

Um Abdullah, a Sunni and teacher in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, said she would wear black to mourn the city's favorite son.
"Saddam will be a hero in our eyes," she said. "I have five kids and I will teach them to take revenge on Americans."
Police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took into the streets, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air and calling for vengeance.

Security forces also set up roadblocks at the entrance to another Sunni stronghold, Samarra, and a curfew was imposed after about 500 went into the streets to protest the execution.
Among minority Sunnis there was deep anger, born not only of Saddam's execution but of the loss of their decades-long political and economic dominance that began with Saddam's ouster in the U.S. invasion nearly four years ago.
"The president, the leader, Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs," said Yahya al-Attawi, who led prayer at a towering Sunni mosque constructed by Saddam in Tikrit.

There were cheers at the cafeteria of a U.S. outpost in Baghdad as soldiers having breakfast learned Saddam had been hanged. But members of the Army's 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, on patrol in an overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, said the execution wouldn't get them home any faster, and therefore didn't make much difference.
"Nothing really changes," said Capt. Dave Eastburn, 30, of Columbus, Ohio. "The militias run everything now, not Saddam."
Staff Sgt. David Earp, who also fought in 1991's Operation Desert Storm, said the execution worried him.
"In my opinion, something big is going to happen," said Earp, of Colorado Springs, Colo. "There will be a response. Probably not today because they know we are looking for one, but soon."

Saddam is itching to test another Bush
Iraq resists the U.S. push for 'smart sanctions'
7.2.01   K.Whitelaw, M.Mazzetti US News & World Rpt

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein did not wait long to challenge the new Bush administration. Responding to an American plan to create "smart sanctions," Iraq promptly turned off the spigot on the bulk of its oil exports. Saddam's envoys are touring capitals in a campaign to intimidate countries into opposing the U.S. plan. Iraq's military is on alert, while Baghdad is touting a reward for military personnel who shoot down U.S. or British jets patrolling the no-fly zones. "We are approaching a new confrontation," Saddam warned his people earlier this month. This time, Saddam clearly means business. He has spent the past several years chipping away at the decade-old sanctions regime and is eager to destroy it. He has billions of dollars in the bank. And he has rarely been so popular in the Arab world, with his support of the Palestinian intifada. Emboldened, Saddam is pledging to withhold his oil until Washington backs down. The showdown begins this week when the UN holds a public debate on the U.S. plan. "It's a game of chicken," says one U.S. govt analyst. "He is ready to stick it out for the long term." Officials believe he can hold out through 2001.

Failing sanctions
The current administration came into office eager to polish off the enemy that many of them faced in the Gulf War, when the elder George Bush was president. The first order of business: salvaging a failing sanctions regime. "Everybody knows that he can smuggle through the Jordanian and Syrian borders a whole herd of elephants and the Americans will know about it only when satellites spot the elephants grazing in the Baghdad amusement park," says Amatzia Baram, a leading Iraq expert at the University of Haifa.

Secretary of State Colin Powell's answer was "smart sanctions." The idea has strong intellectual appeal: Free up more goods to reach Iraqi civilians, while tightening controls on weapons-related materials and restricting Iraq's revenues from oil smuggling. But the reality is that new restrictions are likely unworkable. Tightening the embargo depends on Iraq's neighbors, many of whom are heavily reliant on Iraqi trade and oil. Take Jordan, which is known to be a busy corridor for smuggling into Iraq. The tiny nation receives its entire oil supply from Iraq at heavily discounted rates. An additional $450 million in exports to Iraq is a crucial stimulus for its weak economy. If Jordan clamps down on its border monitoring, Saddam has explicitly threatened to cut off the cheap oil and buy goods elsewhere. Going along with the U.S. plan "would be suicidal," says a Jordanian official.
The U.N. resolution only pares down the list of goods that Iraq cannot purchase under the oil-for-food program. New monitoring procedures are left to a later date. With Russia opposed, the plan's fate is uncertain. But even if it passes, the odds are that Washington will end up relaxing the sanctions without getting any corresponding tightening. So far, Saddam's oil cutoff has had little effect on world markets, mostly because Saudi Arabia pledged to fill the gap. "There seems to be little likelihood that Iraq can exercise political leverage by toying with the oil market," says James Placke of Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

Where he could score politically would be in shooting down a U.S. fighter jet patrolling the no-fly zone. U.S. military officials have seen a marked increase in the accuracy of Iraqi air defenses in recent months. U.S. News has learned that the White House is concerned that the no-fly operation is not having much effect on Saddam's behavior. As part of a broader review, officials are looking for new targets they could hit to inflict more pain on the regime. The most controversial part of U.S. policy remains its commitment to effecting a change of regime. U.S. officials are sending an additional $6 million to the Iraqi National Congress, mostly to create a radio station to broadcast to Iraq. But in a conclusion many Western govts share, Israeli security sources dismiss Iraqi opposition groups as corrupt and ineffective, finding Saddam's grip as firm as ever.

A tyrant 40 years in the making
3.14.03   Roger Morris NY Times

On the brink of war, both supporters & critics of U.S. policy on Iraq agree on the origins, at least, of the haunted relations that have brought us to this pass. America's dealings with Saddam Hussein, justifiable or not, began 2 decades ago with its shadowy, expedient support of his regime in the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980's.
Both sides are mistaken. Washington's policy traces an even longer, more shrouded and fateful history. 40 years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency, under President John F. Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqi leader seen as a grave threat in 1963 was Abdel Karim Kassem, a general who 5 years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. Washington's role in the coup went unreported at the time and has been little noted since.
America's anti-Kassem intrigue has been widely substantiated, however, in disclosures by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and in the work of journalists and historians like David Wise, an authority on the C.I.A.

From 1958 to 1960, despite Kassem's harsh repression, the Eisenhower administration abided him as a counter to Washington's Arab nemesis of the era, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, much as Ronald Reagan & George H. W. Bush would aid Saddam Hussein in the 1980's against the common foe of Iran.
By 1961, the Kassem regime had grown more assertive. Seeking new arms rivaling Israel's arsenal, threatening Western oil interests, resuming his country's old quarrel with Kuwait, talking openly of challenging the dominance of America in the Middle East, all steps Saddam Hussein was to repeat in some form, Kassem was regarded by Washington as a dangerous leader who must be removed.

In 1963 Britain & Israel backed American intervention in Iraq, while other U.S. allies, chiefly France & Germany, resisted. But without significant opposition within the govt, Kennedy, like President Bush today, pressed on.
In Cairo, Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad, American agents marshaled opponents of the Iraqi regime. Washington set up a base of operations in Kuwait, intercepting Iraqi communications and radioing orders to rebels. The United States armed Kurdish insurgents. The C.I.A.'s "Health Alteration Committee" as it was tactfully called, sent Kassem a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief, though the potentially lethal gift either failed to work or never reached its victim.

Then, on 2.8.63, the conspirators staged a coup in Baghdad. For a time the govt held out, but eventually Kassem gave up, and after a swift trial was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad television.
Washington immediately befriended the successor regime. "Almost certainly a gain for our side," National Security Council aide Robert Komer wrote to Kennedy the day of the takeover.
As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 & 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.

According to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite, killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated.
No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.

The United States also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the U.S. had backed against Kassem and then abandoned.
Soon, Western corporations like Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business with Baghdad for American firms, their first major involvement in Iraq.
But it wasn't long before there was infighting among Iraq's new rulers. In 1968, after yet another coup, the Baathist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr seized control, bringing to the threshold of power his kinsman, Saddam Hussein.

Again, this coup, amid more factional violence, came with C.I.A. backing. Serving on the staff of the National Security Council under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in the late 1960's, I often heard C.I.A. officers including Archibald Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and a ranking C.I.A. official for the Near East and Africa at the time, speak openly about their close relations with the Iraqi Baathists.
This history is known to many in the Middle East and Europe, though few Americans are acquainted with it, much less understand it. Yet these interventions help explain why United States policy is viewed with some cynicism abroad. George W. Bush is not the first American president to seek regime change in Iraq. Mr. Bush and his advisers are following a familiar pattern.

The Kassem episode raises questions about the war at hand. In the last half century, regime change in Iraq has been accompanied by bloody reprisals. How fierce, then, may be the resistance of hundreds of officers, scientists and others identified with Saddam Hussein's long rule? Why should they believe America and its latest Iraqi clients will act more wisely, or less vengefully, now than in the past?

Condoleezza war cry
8.17.02   James Hardy Mirror UK

GWBush's National Security Adviser yesterday admitted the President is pushing ahead with plans to topple Saddam Hussein. Condoleezza Rice said there was a strong moral case for a change of regime in Iraq and the West did not have "the luxury of doing nothing". Leaders in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia are reported to have received blunt letters from the US president warning them: "There will be no turning back from the military option.'' The nearly identical notes give notice of America's intent to oust Saddam and tell them to prepare public opinion. They are also said to disclose that the US is sending soldiers and military equipt to the region. Dr Rice's comments contradict claims by ministers here that war against Saddam is not inevitable.

She said: "He is is an evil man who, left to his own devices, will wreak havoc again on his own population, his neighbours and, if he gets weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, all of us, is a very powerful moral case for regime change." She added: "History is littered with cases of inaction that led to have grave consequences for the world. We just have to look back and ask how many dictators who ended up being a tremendous global threat and killing thousands and, indeed, millions of people, should we have stopped in their tracks. That is really the question." She claimed President Bush had not yet decided how to remove Saddam. But she added, in a BBC radio interview: "We believe the case for regime change is very powerful.
"This is a regime that we know has twice tried, and come closer than we thought at the time, to acquiring nuclear weapons. He has used chemical weapons against his own people, he has invaded his neighbours, he has killed thousands of his own people. He shoots at our planes in the no-fly zones And despite the fact that he lost this war, a war which he started, he negotiates with the UN as if he won the war. I think it is a fairly strong indictment."

Her hardline will cause problems for Tony Blair, already battling MPs opposed to a military attack. Labour MP Gerald Kaufman said: "Bush, himself the most intellectually backward American president of my political lifetime, is surrounded by advisers whose bellicosity is exceeded only by their political, military and diplomatic illiteracy." Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell said: "There will be no world order if the most powerful states are entitled to remove other govts at will."

Saddam to be hanged by Sunday   Ex-dictator’s execution expected to be carried out by start of Eid holiday   12.28.06   Richard Engel NBC News

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, sentenced to death for his role in 148 killings in 1982, will have his sentence carried out by Sunday, NBC News reported Thursday. According to a U.S. military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity, Saddam will be hanged before the start of the Eid religious holiday, which begins this Sunday. The hanging could take place as early as Friday, NBC’s Richard Engel reported.
The U.S. military received a formal request from the Iraqi govt to transfer Saddam to Iraqi authorities, NBC reported on Thursday, which is one of the final steps required before his execution. His sentence, handed down last month, ordered that he be hanged within 30 days.

Earlier Thursday, Saddam’s chief lawyer implored world leaders to prevent the United States from handing over the ousted leader to Iraqi authorities for execution, saying the former dictator should enjoy protection from his enemies as a “prisoner of war.”
“According to the international conventions, it is forbidden to hand a prisoner of war to his adversary,” Saddam’s lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi said in Amman, Jordan. “I urge all the international and legal organizations, the United Nations secretary-general, the Arab League and all the leaders of the world to rapidly prevent the American administration from handing the president to the Iraqi authorities,” he told The Associated Press.

Saddam met with two of his half-brothers on Thursday and passed on personal messages to his family, a lawyer said. Badie Aref, one of Saddam's lawyers, said the rare meeting with maternal half-brothers Sabawi and Watban Ibrahim Hassanal-Tikriti, who are in U.S. custody, was at the request of the ousted Iraqi leader and took place inside his heavily guarded prison cell in Baghdad.
Aref said Saddam was in very high spirits and had sensed “something was happening relating to the sentence” when prison guards took away a small radio he had been given several months ago.
“He met Sabawi and Watban and gave them letters to his family in anticipation.... He is clearly unaware of the details of what is happening around him and prepared to give his life as a martyr to his country,” Aref told Reuters by telephone.

Aref said prison sources who told him of the family meeting said Saddam was aware of an appeals court decision to uphold his death sentence for crimes against humanity during his 24-year rule.
“He was in very high spirits and clearly readying himself,” Aref said during a visit to Dubai. “He told them that he was happy he would meet his death at the hands of his enemies and be a martyr and not just languish in prison in oblivion.”
Aref said he was unsure if Saddam's third half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, who was sentenced to death along with the ousted leader, saw Saddam.

An official close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that Saddam would remain in a U.S. military prison until he is handed over to Iraqi authorities on the day of his execution. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to address the media.
A top govt official disputed the court’s ruling that Saddam must be hanged within 30 days, saying the execution should be held after that time period. The comment comes amid debate over other legal procedures such as whether the presidency is required to approve the execution.

Cardinal Renato Martino, Pope Benedict XVI’s top prelate for justice issues and a former Vatican envoy to the U.N., condemned the death sentence in a newspaper interview published Thursday, saying capital punishment goes against the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.
After his sentence was given, Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, urged Iraq to ensure a fair appeals process and to refrain from executing Saddam even if the sentence is upheld. Some international legal observers and human rights groups have also called Saddam’s trial unfair because of alleged interference by the Shiite-dominated govt.

Iraqi arms dossier seen as rehashing old data
Concerns grow that dossier is mostly previously discredited reports   12.12.02   Bob Drogin
L.A. Times

Wash.D.C.   The CIA delivered an initial assessment of Iraq's declaration of banned weapons programs to the White House on Wednesday amid growing concerns that the bulk of the 12,000 page dossier consists of previously discredited Iraqi reports.
In particular, officials said, Iraq's account of its nuclear weapons program, totaling 2,081 pages, incl 113-page executive summary, appears to largely duplicate Iraqi declarations delivered to U.N. inspectors in 1996 & 1997.

Thousands more pages that Iraq submitted over the weekend on its biological & chemical weapons programs also appear to be copies of reports that U.N. weapons inspectors repeatedly rejected as inadequate & incomplete between 1995 & 1998, officials said.
"The initial conclusion is there's nothing really new," said one official who is assisting in the review. "What I'm hearing is it's all recycled and [Iraqi claims that] it didn't do anything wrong."

U.S. analysts are esp. looking to see whether Iraq has adequately answered scores of questions left unresolved during the U.N. inspections that ended in 1998, and whether it can explain a body of intelligence since 1998 suggesting that Baghdad has rebuilt at least some of its proscribed weapons programs.
Several Arabic-language portions of the report, incl 300-page section that details Iraqi industrial & other facilities involved in nuclear research or development, have now been translated and are undergoing what the official called a "line-by-line review to see if [Iraq] inserted something that wasn't in previous reports. … Nothing has emerged yet."

White House softened its rhetoric on Iraq this week as the review got underway. But a determination that President Saddam Hussein's regime failed to provide an accurate & complete account of its proscribed weapons programs, as mandated by 11.8.02 resolution by U.N. Security Council, almost certainly would rekindle Bush administration efforts to disarm Baghdad by force
"All indications so far, Iraq has taken a hard line," said former nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq & Washington think tank Institute for Science & Intl Security David Albright. "Perhaps Saddam has decided war is inevitable, so why give up anything? Either that, or they want to give things up gradually and see what happens."

Pressure is growing on CIA to complete assessment. Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said Tuesday he planned to complete analysis by Friday and give censored version of raw document to full Security Council as early as Monday. Details are expected to quickly leak at that point.
The council's 5 permanent members, U.S., Britain, Russia, China and France, all of which already have nuclear weapons, are receiving unedited copies of the report. Blix said he would delete esp. sensitive material, incl any blueprints or other designs for nuclear weapons, as well as plans for converting short-range missiles to long-range rockets, before handing over the document. He said he is focusing on 3,000-page section that includes fresh details about Iraq's activities since U.N. inspectors withdrew 4 years ago.

CIA is still studying the trove of documents and CD-ROMs with teams of weapons specialists & other experts from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, State Dept's Intelligence & Research division, Energy Dept's Office of Intelligence, and a group of nuclear scientists & technicians from the Los Alamos National Laboratory NM, among others.
"It's an ongoing process," an intelligence official said of the CIA-led review. He said the agency is providing regular updates to the White House "as our work proceeds."

Gaps in Iraq's previous declarations of its biological & chemical weapons program are of special concern, officials said. And Iraq has a history of using fresh packaging for old reports. Summary of the previous U.N. inspection effort in Iraq issued Jan. 1999 notes Baghdad denied even having a biological weapons program until 1995, for example, and that it used "fraudulent statements, forged documents, misrepresentation of the roles of people and facilities and other specific acts" to perpetuate the deception.
After a senior Iraqi defector first revealed the clandestine effort July 1995, Baghdad issued 3 "full, final and complete" declarations of its germ warfare research and production efforts. The first was declared null & void by Iraq. The second, June 1996, was rejected by U.N. inspectors as incomplete. The third, issued Sept. 1997, "contained no new significant information from the previous one" and was "deficient in all areas," according to the U.N. report.

Iraq then appealed for a review and met a team of U.N. experts in Vienna in March 1998. "Iraq did not present any new information at that meeting and the experts therefore reviewed the same material for the third time," the report notes. The inspectors particularly cited conflicting or insufficient credible details on the production & location not only of such bulk biological warfare agents as anthrax, botulinum toxin, aflatoxin and wheat smut, but also of warheads designed to deliver them.
In many cases, Iraq claimed that it had destroyed the weapons but could produce no proof that it had done so. "They basically gave 'the dog ate my homework' excuse, that when they destroyed their biological & chemical weapons, they destroyed their documents as well," said former U.N. inspector Jonathan Tucker. "We know that's false."

Officials are also looking to see whether Iraq can explain its apparent attempts to procure & import uranium and specialized parts for nuclear weapons development since 1998. One official said Iraqi officials have privately acknowledged making 5 covert attempts since 1998 to obtain highly specialized aluminum tubes from overseas sources. The Iraqis said the tubes were intended for conventional artillery rockets.
White House officials this fall accused Iraq of trying to import the tubes to build a gas centrifuge to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs. Several U.S. scientists questioned the claim, however, asserting that the tubes were the wrong dimensions for centrifuges.

Iraq's nuclear weapons program was essentially destroyed or dismantled by the time weapons inspectors left in 1998, according to Intl Atomic Energy Agency. But U.S. & British intelligence reported in Oct. 2002 that Hussein's regime secretly continued and even accelerated its effort to build a nuclear bomb since then.
Sr Iraqi official in Baghdad last weekend admitted for the first time what U.S. & U.N. officials concluded years ago: that Iraq was only 6 months or so from assembling a workable nuclear device when Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. The attack led to the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and subsequent U.N. effort to disarm Iraq of any weapons of mass destruction.

Listings of production & other weapons sites in the Iraqi dossier are proving useful to U.N. inspectors. Newly reinforced teams of inspectors visited 6 suspect sites Wednesday, the most in a day since inspections began 2 weeks ago. One group visited the Karama factory in Baghdad for missile & tank parts. The factory was built in 1999 and is part of Iraq's Military Industrialization Commission, but Iraqi officials insisted that nothing illegal was being done there.
"We make precision parts for Al-Samoud missiles," dir. Brig. Kamel Saeed told reporters who toured the site after the U.N. team left. The 60 ft rocket has a maximum range of 95 miles, which is permitted under the Gulf War cease-fire terms.

Inspectors' spokesman Hiro Ueki said in a statement that Iraq incl the site in a declaration it submitted 10.1.02 in Vienna. That declaration focused on factories & facilities that used so-called dual-use materials or parts that might have military applications.
Another weapons facility at the site was bombed by U.S. warplanes in late 1998, Saeed said. The U.N. experts checked machines previously tagged by arms teams at the destroyed facility. "They checked & found everything is OK. There were no provocations but questions, and we answered them," Saeed added. U.N. officials declined to characterize the visit.

    Iraq: 4 dead after no-fly zone attack
    2.4.02   CNN
Wash. D.C.   For the first time since Sept. 4, U.S. warplanes Monday bombed Iraq's integrated air defense system in a northern part of the country. Iraq said Monday that four people were killed when U.S. and British warplanes attacked a civilian area near Mosul in the northern no-fly zone. The U.S. European Command said its jets struck elements of the Iraqi integrated air defense system after its planes were fired on by anti-aircraft batteries. U.S. aircraft regularly patrol Iraq's northern no-fly zone and have been shot at by Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery and missiles. Often the precise source of such fire is not known. This time, however, pilots were able to pinpoint the location of the Iraqi launch site and responded by dropping precision munitions, European Command officials said. The Iraqi account, carried by the Iraqi News Agency, said its missile and anti-aircraft installations "confronted" the planes after they violated Iraqi air space flying from Turkey. The European Command said all its planes returned safely. U.S. warplanes have conducted a small number of strikes recently in Iraq's southern no-fly zone. Officials say Monday's ground fire does not represent any particular move by Iraq to increase its challenge the U.S. flights.
Iran rockets hit Baghdad, wreck houses, wound 1
9.17.00   Reuters

Iraq: 311 killed in US, UK raids since 1998
8.28.00   Reuters

Between the attack Dec.r 1998 & the present, total of 18,607 sorties by raiding US & British warplanes in south Iraq killed 311 citizens & wounded 927.

Turkey admits Iraqi air raid, probes casualty claims
Ankara said military operations started only after measures were taken to prevent any harm to civilians in the Kurdish-held enclave
8.18.18   AFP

ANKARA   Turkey admitted Friday that it launched an operation against Turkish Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq and said it was investigating claims by Iraqi factions in the area that civilians were killed in the strike. "Turkey carries out operations in northern Iraq from time to time as part of the combat against the terrorist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)," Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Huseyin Dirioz said. Dirioz said such military operations started only after measures were taken to prevent any harm to civilians in the Kurdish-held enclave. "In a similar operation Aug.15, necessary measures were taken once again to ensure civilian population would not be harmed," Dirioz said.

    Iraq, Russia win sanctions battle
    7.4.01   AP
UN   Russia & Iraq won latest battle on overhauling sanctions against the oil-rich Mideast nation as the U.N. Security Council extended the oil-for-food program. But U.S. & Britain are adamant that the sanctions war isn't over yet. At the end of a 6 week campaign, Americans & British got 14 of 15 council members to support key elements of their plan to lift most restrictions on civilian goods entering Iraq, tighten enforcement of 11-year-old arms embargo and block lucrative Iraqi smuggling routes. But Russia, Iraq's closest ally on the council, remained staunchly opposed and threatened to veto the plan. So Americans & British decided to indefinitely postpone a vote and simply extend the 4½ year-old program, which allows Iraq to sell unlimited quantities of oil on condition that the proceeds are spent on food, medicine & other essential goods.

After a day of wrangling over a reference to the U.S.-British plan in the resolution, which Russia opposed, the council voted unanimously Tuesday night on 5 month extension of the oil-for-food program. The vote came less than 6 hours before the current phase of the program was set to expire. To protest the proposed sanctions overhaul, Iraq halted its oil exports June 4. Even before the council vote Tuesday, the Iraqi military's Al-Qadissya newspaper called the extension "a victory for Iraq's rights.'' But Iraqi U.N. Amb. Mohammed al-Douri declined to say Tuesday night whether Baghdad will reopen its oil taps. He said the new resolution's mention of an earlier resolution that referred to the U.S.-British plan, "is not acceptable in principle.''
Nonetheless, Iraq appeared likely to resume oil exports soon. While Iraq sounded triumphant, Russia's U.N. Amb. Sergey Lavrov said, "I don't believe it was a victory for anybody except for the humanitarian program continuation.'' British & Americans would not concede defeat. "The real losers here are the Iraqi people,'' said acting U.S. Amb. James Cunningham. "Revisions we proposed facilitate trade & accelerate commerce and they would improve the lot of Iraq's people.''

He said London & Washington will use coming months to press ahead with their plan and try to sway Russia. "We have made considerable progress and come too close to agreement to concede the field to Baghdad,'' Cunningham said. "We've won a lot of the battles in this process. We haven't yet won the war. But we're going to continue to go forward.'' Russia isn't giving up, either. Lavrov said Moscow's rival resolution to hasten end to Iraqi sanctions remains on the council table. The Russian resolution would suspend sanctions on civilian goods once U.N. weapons inspectors certify that a long-term program to monitor Iraq's weapons programs is fully deployed.
"We expect council members to come back to it as soon as they are ready,'' he said, stressing Russia believes any new Iraq policy must include "very specific criteria on suspending and lifting sanctions'' in conjunction with resumption of U.N. weapons monitoring.

Under council resolutions, sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors certify Iraq dismantled weapons of mass destruction & long-range missiles. Weapons inspectors left Iraq ahead of U.S.-British airstrikes in Dec. 1998 and Baghdad has barred their return. Iraqi govt maintains it eliminated its weapons programs and has demanded immediate lifting of sanctions. Britain's U.N. Amb. Jeremy Greenstock said "there might be more credibility'' to Russia's approach if Moscow could persuade the Iraqi govt to accept U.N. inspectors. In the meantime, he said, it was "illogical'' to block humanitarian improvements for the Iraqi people.

    Iraq to resume oil sales but delays signing
    7.5.01   Reuters
… The oil-for-food program, an exception to the sanctions, allows Baghdad to export oil under U.N. supervision in order to buy humanitarian supplies to alleviate the suffering of ordinary Iraqis. But according to oil traders, in the past year Iraq has managed to sell considerable amounts of oil outside of the program as well as obtain kickbacks from some middlemen and oil firms. Iraq exports its crude under the oil-for-food program through two outlets -- the port of Ceyhan on the Turkish Mediterranean coast and the port of Mina-al-Bakr on Iraq's Gulf coast. Ships were ready to start loading crude at both outlets but had not done so by Thursday. A pipeline that brings Iraq's Kirkuk crude to Turkey and the Mediterranean market was shut down a month ago has not restarted, the officials said.
    Iraq pushes to break out of isolation
    9.23.00   Howard Schneider Dawn LATimes - Wash.Post NewsService
AMMAN, Jordan   Iraq has launched an aggressive new effort to weaken the crippling sanctions imposed on it after the Persian Gulf War, encouraged by record oil prices, improving trade with its neighbours and growing opposition to the embargo in the Arab world and beyond. Iraq has been directly pressuring Jordan to break the embargo and has stoked tensions with Kuwait & Saudi Arabia in what analysts see as a reminder that it still has the capacity to disrupt regional stability and push rising world oil prices even higher. These moves have been particularly noticeable against a backdrop of protests across Europe over high fuel costs, election-year concern in the U.S. over oil prices that have topped $37 a barrel and forecasts of high heating oil prices this winter.
    France, Russia want UN aid changes
    9.21.00   Nicole Winfield AP
UN   Iraq's Security Council allies stepped up their campaign against U.N. sanctions Thursday with proposals to cut the compensation fund for victims of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and delay a $16 billion payout to Kuwait's oil co. Maneuvering over the U.N. compensation fund for Gulf War reparations comes amid plans for more passenger flights by Russia & France into Baghdad. Flights are seen as new attempts by Iraq's friends to whittle away the decade-old embargo & tweak U.S. Challenge to sanctions expected to come to a head next week in Geneva. Beginning Sept. 26, committee of Security Council members decides whether to award $16 billion payout to Kuwait Petroleum Corp. from an account funded by proceeds from U.N. oil-for-food program that allows Iraq to sell unlimited amounts of oil provided that it uses the profits to buy humanitarian goods for its people suffering under sanctions. 30% diverted to compensate victims of Iraq's 1990 Kuwait invasion.

Several countries, incl Russia, France, China & Malaysia, believed to want to delay the payout Kuwait's oil company, which would represent largest award to a corporation since fund's inception. So far, the fund has paid out more than $8 billion. Iraq highly critical of compensation commission, accusing it of unfair practices and asserting that most claims, currently 2.6 million claims for a total of $320 billion, have no legal grounds. Some diplomats & analysts suggested Iraq's accusation last week that Kuwait was stealing its oil designed to put pressure on the commission to defer a decision on the Kuwait Petroleum Corp. claim.
French Amb.Jean-David Levitte Thursday told Security Council enormous payout to Kuwaiti company, at a time when oil companies are benefitting from record high oil prices, was unconscionable at a time when Iraqis are suffering from sanctions. He proposed the council consider reducing money diverted into the compensation account from 30¢ to 20¢ & proceeds used to buy more humanitarian goods, a proposal backed by Russia & Tunisia, Western diplomats said.

MOSCOW   In yet another apparent challenge to U.N. sanctions, a Russian airliner left for Iraq on Saturday with a soccer team, a musical group, businessmen and medical supplies. The flight, carrying 143 passengers and five tons of cargo, was the latest challenge to sanctions on Iraq, imposed after Saddam Hussein's army invaded Kuwait in 1990. A dispute over the controls has fractured the U.N. Security Council, some of whose members sharply disagree on the effectiveness of the sanctions. Russia did not ask permission for the flight from the U.N. sanctions committee, saying authorization was not required because the flight is humanitarian. A plane from France flew to Baghdad Friday without U.N. authority, and officials from Russia and France say more flights will follow. U.S. & Great Britain, meanwhile, insist that all humanitarian flights must get permission to fly to Iraq. They say passenger flights are an economic resource and a breach of the sanctions.
But Russia & France say the controls do not specifically ban passenger flights, and Russia's state-controlled airline Aeroflot is negotiating with Iraq on resuming flights to Baghdad. Russia & France are increasingly impatient with the sanctions regime. Russia is eager to resume lucrative oil contracts with Baghdad and wants Iraq to pay back some $8 billion in Soviet-era debt. U.N. resolutions require the sanctions to remain in place until Baghdad complies with demands to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction. For the past decade, travelers to Iraq have generally had to fly to Amman, Jordan, and then drive to Baghdad.
  more bear stories
UN to delay plan to revamp sanctions against Iraq
7.2.01   Reuters

UN   U.N. Security Council members reached broad agreement Monday to drop for 5 or 6 months revamp of sanctions against Iraq and extend current oil-for-food program without changes, diplomats said.. China's U.N. Amb. Wang Yingfan told reporters "extension was agreeable for every council member but whether it is 5 or 6 months, we will have to consult with other council members." China holds this month's Security Council's presidency. Russia objected to U.S.-British resolution that would ease sanctions on civilian goods but spell out "dual use" supplies that could be utilized for military & civilian purposes. It would also seek to stop smuggling of goods by Iraq, est. at $1 billion a year. Overhaul of sanctions procedures were to be put in the context of the U.N.-humanitarian oil-for-food program, which expires on Tuesday.

U.S. said it had to consult Washington before any final decision, which diplomats said concerned length of the delay. "The British have proposed it; I have to consult Washington about it. We have not made a decision," U.S. rep. James Cunningham told reporters.

      allegation
    "Eisenberg set up Soros to launder for bin Laden."   Also critical figure in PERMINDEX, JFK cover-up management firm   ¹ º
    "Iraqi diesel is practically stolen from the people of Iraq; Hussein gets almost nothing. U.S. buys it in the oil for food deal at $5-6 per barrel. Diesel & guns are exchanged for opium that comes through from China. Iran is also a part of this exchange. The original network was set up by Meyer Lansky & Aristotle Onasis.
Diplomats said Washington would have no choice but to drop putting the new plan to a vote immediately. The council has to vote on the U.N. oil-for-food program before it expires on Tuesday. Iraq cut off oil sales June 4 in protest of U.S.-British plan. British Amb. Jeremy Greenstock, who drafted the resolution on the new sanctions plan said discussions would continue but the current oil-for-food plan would be extended without any changes. Without mentioning Russia by name, he called the objections "unjustifiable, negative and national, but they are there. "
French Amb. Jean-David Levitte said: "The idea is to adopt a rollover, neutral and to go on quietly with discussions on the substance." He said Britain proposed rollover and Russian Amb. Sergei Lavrov agreed, without objections from other members.
click pic for Iraqi oil primer per 
MSNBC This week team of intl oil experts working on behalf of UN secretary general completed a survey of Iraq's oil industry suffering the effects of nine years of UN sanctions imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Deficiencies in the process that allows Iraq to import limited quantities of oilfield equipt & services, to sustain a creaking industry whose exports are needed to finance the multi-billion-dollar UN humanitarian aid programme, were high on their list of priorities. Oil ministry officials in Baghdad say the UN team was generally sympathetic to the plight of Iraq's oil industry, but there is deep scepticism about whether even a glowing report from the experts will ease the situation.

Baghdad claims U.S. & U.K. deliberately undermined provisions in the process. Non-oil contracts, covering such areas as power generation and water purification equipt, have also fallen victim to concerns, again mainly from the US and UK, over their potential "dual use". Rarely in the history of sanctions has the international community been faced with devising a system that sustains and improves strategic civilian industries while ensuring that a still extensive military machine does not become an unintended beneficiary.
Iraqi officials are especially critical of US and British representatives on the Security Council's so-called "661 Committee", which controls the flow to Iraq of foreign-made spare parts and equipt under the UN oil-for-food programme. "Out of 377 contracts put on hold by the 661 Committee, 343 are on hold because of objections from the US representative," according to a senior ministry official. A further 28 are on hold because of objections by both the US and UK, and four because of British objections only. Representatives from the other Security Council members have asked that only a total of two contracts be put on hold.
Houston   A unit of Houston-based oilfield services giant Halliburton Co. will organize the oil well firefighting & rehabilitation effort in Iraq just as it did after the 1991 Gulf War, officials said. The value of the contract was not disclosed. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Monday gave Kellogg Brown & Root the go-ahead to implement the Defense Dept's plan to extinguish oil well fires in Iraq and repair the damage.
Halliburton was led by now-VP Cheney before he resigned in 2000 to join GOP presidential ticket.

Halliburton subcontractors Boots & Coots Intl Well Control Inc. & Wild Well Control Inc., both also from Houston, will handle the firefighting chores. However, unease around the oil fields in the far southeastern corner of Iraq have delayed the beginning of work the last 2 days, officials said.
Halliburton oversaw the firefighting efforts on 320 wells in Kuwait after retreating Iraqi troops set fires in 1991. Firefighting companies extinguished 90% of the fires within a year, far ahead of the 18-month schedule. The contract was initially disclosed at the end of a Defense Dept statement on preparation for the possibility that Saddam Hussein's regime might destroy Iraq's oil fields in case of war with the U.S.-led coalition.

Analysts believe the wells may need significant work even if they aren't sabotaged. Daily production has slid from 3.5 million barrels per day in 1979 to about 2 million barrels per day, partly due to United Nations sanctions that banned import of equipt. Iraq's proven oil reserves are second only to those of Saudi Arabia.
In NYSE trading Tuesday, Halliburton shares rose 54¢, 2.7%, to $20.66.


Asylum Trail first step ¹
Back door entry lures Iraqis on a 2,500-mile voyage
2.1.03   Daniel McGrory Times

Sarajevo   At the entrance to a scruffy hotel across from Sarajevo's main bus station, a huddle of young men are careful to cover their faces with scarves as they congregate around a payphone, waiting their turn to make a call home.

This group, thought to be Iraqi asylum-seekers, checked in together at the Sinovi Drine hotel 3 days ago, saying they had come for the skiing. None had any sports equipt and the farthest they have moved is to a coffee shop in the old quarter of the city which is known to shelter immigrants in an upstairs dormitory.
The one receptionist on duty at the Sinovi Drine thumbs through the dog-eared notebook used to register guests. He points to the list of 5 names, all of them carrying Turkish passports. The receptionist shrugs and says he has no idea why supposed Turkish holidaymakers are conversing in Arabic and seldom stray far from their cramped, sparsely furnished rooms.
"They paid cash for 5 days and I haven't seen much of them, but we don't question our guests," he says, anxious to return to watching a televised English football match.

A search of the records of half a dozen rooming houses in the city shows how easy it is for this people- trafficking racket to operate. Young men aged 20 to early 30s turn up in groups of no more than 4 or 5, often carrying Turkish identity documents because Turks do not need a visa to enter Bosnia.
Some of these hotels do not even bother to keep a register and, even if they do, they are not required to pass on any information to the police. The men are clean-shaven, in Western casual dress and book their rooms for no more than 5 days, always paying cash in advance but often leaving sooner with no warning.

The frustration of Bosnia's fledgeling investigation force with the activities of the people-smugglers is obvious. Sarajevo's immigration police head Edin Vranj admits: "We urgently need new immigration laws as the traffickers are making fools of us with our stupid rules." At present, Bosnia does not recognise the idea of "illegal entry".

Mr Vranj points out a travel agency operating at one of the busiest crossroads in the old city. It has advertisements plastered across its front window offering accommodation in private homes where you pay cash only and no registration is required. Shopkeepers say that when smuggling gangs are at their busiest you can hardly find a flat or a house in this street that is not sheltering paying guests.

Detectives suspect that staff working for the local airline, travel agents and taxi firms are all involved in providing package tours for asylum-seekers. On a recent flight from Istanbul, aircrew were seen counting out fistfuls of cash. British police have helped in the crackdown at Sarajevo airport, which used to be described as "Europe's back door". Even a year ago, of the 24,000 holidaymakers who turned up, barely 1,000 ever went home.
As security makes it harder for the traffickers, so they charge more for their services. The cost can be as much as £12,000 for anyone wanting to reach Britain. Newly formed State Border Service Inspector Ismail Saric estimates more than 85% of illegal immigrants, 400,000 people, are smuggled through Kosovo by Mafia-style gangs under the indifferent gaze of intl peacekeepers there.

A legacy of allegiances formed during the ruinous civil wars in the former Yugoslavia are hindering efforts to curb illegal immigration. As a reward for Iraq's steadfast support for Slobodan Milosevic, its citizens do not need visas to enter Serbia. From there, traffickers use any number of meandering routes into Bosnia by river or road along the porous eastern border between Bijeljina & Visegrad.
After a recent operation near Visegrad, involving British police, to seal off a smuggling route, investigators found that within 24 hours traffickers had bulldozed another track through forest to reach the Drina River. To give an idea of the scale of this policing operation, Mr Saric runs his finger along a map of Bosnia's borders and says: "We have 392 border crossing points and 1,600km (1,000 miles) of border, so we can't seal it all."

He is aware that Iraqi asylum-seekers have been using Turkish identity documents because Turks do not need a visa to enter Bosnia. In recent months his force has uncovered 15,000 fake Turkish identity documents, incl passports, and says: "I don't doubt some of those will have been used again by immigrants to get into Europe some other way."
Nowadays, he says, traffickers are using "genuine" documents, stolen in Turkey, and faking the appearance of some of the asylum-seekers to pass a cursory border inspection. British undercover officers in the Balkans are still being told to concentrate their efforts on tracking Islamic extremists and have not got the manpower to investigate the possible Iraqi menace.

Mr Saric says that if there is a mass exodus of Iraqis after the outbreak of a war, then his officers will not be able to cope. He gives warning that the UN & overseas countries must be ready to step in to deal with the approaching problem. During the 1991 Gulf War, more than 2.7 million people fled Iraq's borders. Greek authorities are watching a group of 100,000 already massing near Turkish ports.
3.28.01 UNIKOM SecGen rpt
DMZ developments. Also reports on organizational matters & financial aspects of UN Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission (UNIKOM). Incl observations &. 3.01 UNIKOM deployment map
    U.N. arms inspectors will not return to Iraq"
    9.24.00   Colum Lynch Wash.Post pA22
U.S. & British diplomats conceded today that they had failed in a week-long, high-level effort to gain support in the U.N. Security Council for a proposal to send international weapons inspectors back into Iraq. The impasse spells the indefinite continuation of economic sanctions on Baghdad, along with a low-intensity U.S. bombing campaign and an Iraqi ban on international inspectors. … In an attempt to restart the inspections, Britain and the Netherlands circulated a resolution to create a new arms control agency to replace the United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM. U.S. officials said Russia & China refused to support that proposal without assurances that economic sanctions would be lifted.

designer destabilization by the West
9.14.00 U.N. favored status of Oil for Food proceeds to autonomous Kurds Chicago Tribune

Child malnutrition in iraq 'unacceptably high' as drought, lack of Investment aggravate food and nutrition situation
9.13.00
UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Pgm
The report points out that malnutrition is often due to factors other than insufficient food, poor water (both in quality & quantity) and poor sanitation are key causes of repeated infections resulting in infant & child malnutrition. Infections in infants are associated with the decline in breast-feeding, early introduction of infant formula and an increase in bottle-feeding. The report calls for the maintenance & rehabilitation of the water & sanitation system as a priority for meeting basic needs as well as nutrition and health education to promote best practices in health, food and nutrition incl support for breast- feeding.

While highlighting the UN's latest efforts to improve the effectiveness of the Oil-for-Food pgm, the report recommends speeding up the process for approving Oil-for-Food contracts and ensuring the timely delivery of humanitarian imports, incl food & medicine. The report also recommends more inputs for the rehabilitation of agriculture, particularly seeds and materials for water conservation & irrigation management.

9.8.00   U.N. Office of the Iraq Pgm Oil for Food
"The Special Rapporteur criticized the Govt for " letting innocent people suffer while [it] maneuvered to get sanctions lifted." Had the Govt not waited 5 years to adopt the oil-for-food program in 1996, he stated in October, " millions of innocent people would have avoided serious & prolonged suffering."
US State Dept. 1999 Human Rights Report re Iraq
  [ U.S./U.N. sanctions used food to extort resource expropriation giving reparations preference over aid beyond half billion dollar limit + 30% off the top then blames resulting million dead children on their extortion victim. What a racket. ]

2.8.00   BBC Online   "How long the civilian population, which is totally innocent on all this, should be exposed to such punishment for something that they have never done?" Hans von Sponeck
before resigning as second UN AsstSecGeneral & Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq 10.15.98   The Independent   "We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal & immoral." Denis Halliday
after resigning as first UN AsstSecGeneral & Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq

U.N. Security Council Resolution 986 authorizes sale of $5.2 billion (U.S.) worth of Iraq oil for each 6 month period. Every oil contract must be approved by the sanctions committee.

"Cuban & Iraqi instances make it abundantly clear that economic sanctions are, at their core, a war against public health. Our professional ethic demands the defense of public health. Thus, as physicians, we have a moral imperative to call for the end of sanctions. Having found the cause, we must act to remove it. Continuing to allow our reason to sleep will produce more monsters."
4.24.97   New England Journal of Medicine editorial

White House: "Saddam has missed 'last chance'"
Officials say
declaration falls short, but war not imminent   12.18.02   CNN

… The president's national security team recommended U.S. declare Iraq violated U.N. Security Council resolution 1441 by failing to fully account for its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. "They [the Iraqis] have failed the test, and we will make it plain that they have done so," said a senior official familiar with the process.
Sr officials say there is no recommendation to the president that he use the term "material breach", the language in the U.N. resolution that is the trigger for possible "serious consequences," incl military action, at this time. "That doesn't mean there are not strong views that they are in 'material breach,' but that is not the pressing issue at the moment," one official said.

U.S. will deliver its verdict on the declaration after U.N. weapons inspectors present their analysis to the U.N. Security Council Thursday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said. "We will make statements after they have presented to the Security Council, and then work with our partners on the Security Council to determine the way to move forward," Powell said. U.S. will continue to work "within the U.N. process," he said.
Powell met Wednesday with European Union leaders in London. A senior EU diplomat told CNN that during the talks Powell explained the U.S. dissatisfaction with the Iraqi declaration.

Powell said a case could be made that Iraq is in "material breach" of the resolution. "Our analysis of the Iraqi declaration to this point, almost 2 weeks into the process this weekend, shows problems with the declaration, gaps, omissions. And all of this is troublesome," Powell said after the talks. "In my conversations with other permanent members of the Security Council, I sense they also see deficiencies in the declaration."
… Bush was scheduled to meet Thursday with Spanish PM Jose Maria Aznar, key U.S. ally, and officials said Bush was already planning to outline some of his view on Iraq during a Friday White House meeting with the
Quartet, a diplomatic group trying to find a path toward a renewed Middle East peace process. U.S., Russia, EU and UN are the members of the Quartet.

U.S. officials said they believe Iraq has failed to account for mustard gas shells and other chemical & biological weapons known to be in its stockpile, and has provided little or no information about developments the U.S. says have occurred in its nuclear weapons program over the past decade.
U.N. resolution 1441, calling for Iraq to give a "currently accurate, full, and complete declaration" of its weapons programs, was unanimously passed by the Security Council on 11.8.02. Officials said the measured response from the Bush administration is part of an effort to make a strong presentation to UN on what the administration views as deficiencies in Iraq's declaration.

Officials said administration's strategy was also designed to give weapons inspectors more time, and U.S. will argue that deficiencies in Iraq's declaration should result in more aggressive inspections incl use of a provision allowing inspectors to take Iraqi scientists out of the country for interviews.
U.S. response also is a reflection of the political realities in the Security Council. Other key members have said there is no justification for military action at this early stage in the inspections process and have argued it is the inspectors, not U.S. or any other Security Council member, who carry the burden of deciding whether Iraq is in "material breach" of its obligations.
1.27.03 Blix to present report on inspections to Security Council, 60 days after inspections began.

US will lose war, says former UN inspector
3.26.03   Sapa-AFP

Lisbon   U.S. does not have the military means to take over Baghdad and will lose the war against Iraq, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said. "U.S. is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win," he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast here Tuesday evening. "We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of U.S. in this war is inevitable," he said. "Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for 10 years in Vietnam but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost," Ritter added. Stiffening Iraqi resistance as US-led forces close in on Baghdad have prompted questions about the strategy to use precision air power and a smaller, fast moving ground force to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Some military analysts have said there are not enough allied troops in Iraq to take control of Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein's elite troops are said to be concentrated, and that the planning of the war was overly optimistic.

10.13.02 Time mag. Click graphic for regional diagram British PM Blair told parliament Wednesday U.S. & Britain believe they have "sufficient forces" in Iraq & London was not planning to send reinforcements to the country at this stage. A combination of bad weather & heavy fighting in central Iraq has slowed the advance of coalition troops marching on Baghdad.

Ritter resigned Aug. 1998 after accusing both Wash.D.C. & the UN of not doing enough to support the weapons inspectors. Since leaving the UN weapons inspectors team he has become an outspoken critic of US policies towards Iraq.

Bush to sign congressional resolution on Iraq
10.15.02  
Reuters

Wash.D.C.   President Bush on Wednesday will hold an event to formally sign the congressional resolution authorizing U.S. use of force against Iraq if needed. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate last week voted overwhelmingly to give Bush the authorization he sought to wage war if necessary to disarm Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of his suspected weapons of mass destruction.
Bush is due to formally sign the joint resolution on Wednesday in a White House East Room ceremony. "Tomorrow the president will sign a resolution showing that America speaks with one voice. He hopes that it will send a signal to the world and to Saddam Hussein that it's time for Saddam Hussein to disarm," said Wh.House spokesman Fleischer.
4.24.00   Rep Tony Hall Iraq trip

March 2000   Cong. Staffers Delegation trip Report

2.1.00   Conyers/Cambell letter, letter signed by 70 US Representatives asking Pres.Clinton to lift Iraq economic sanctions on Iraq. AIPAC-sponsored "keep the sanctions" letter in response & its signatories "AIPAC letter contains number of factual errors therefore not a reliable source."

10.20.97   Economic Sanctions to Achieve U.S. Foreign Policy Goals discussion & guide to current law Congressional Research Service

Madeleine Albright: 8/4/00 on Iraq
When asked in a 5/96 CBS interview in May 1996 about the estimated million deaths of Iraqi children, stated: "I think this is a very hard choice but the price - we think the price is worth it."
3/26/97 first major foreign policy address as Secretary of State: "We do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted. Our view, which is unshakable, is that Iraq must prove its peaceful intentions … And the evidence is overwhelming that Saddam Hussein's intentions will never be peaceful."

3.24.00   US Ambassador Jas.Cunningham defence of U.S. policy in Security Council. Cunningham is U.N. DeputyRep. Rep. R.Holbrooke has avoided statements on Iraq.

Sanctions per State Dept Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs
pdf Iraqi Sanctions per Treasury Dept Office of Foreign Assets Control
1999 Human Rights ¹ & Terrorism reports re Iraq   profile

¹   "For the sixth year, the Govt held 3-week training courses in weapons use, hand-to-hand fighting, rappelling from helicopters, and infantry tactics for children from 10 to 15 years of age. Camps for these " Saddam Cubs" operated throughout the country. Senior military officers who supervised the course noted that the children held up under the " physical and psychological strain" of tough training for as long as 14 hours each day. Sources in the Iraqi opposition report that the army found it difficult to recruit enough children to fill all of the slots in the program. Families reportedly were threatened with the loss of their food ration cards if they refused to enroll their children in the grueling course. The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq reported in October that authorities were denying food ration cards to families that failed to send their young sons to Saddam Cubs compulsory weapons-training camps. Similarly, authorities reportedly withheld school examination results to students unless they registered in the Feddayin Saddam organization."


Wash.D.C.   President GWBush's attempt to maintain public support for military action against Iraq has taken a fresh blow from an unexpected quarter, with the publication of a letter from the CIA stating that while Saddam Hussein poses little threat to America now, a US invasion could push him into retaliating with chemical or biological weapons. The unusually detailed public statement, in the form of a letter from CIA dir. Geo. Tenet, to Congress, comes at a highly sensitive moment, potentially damaging Mr Bush's attempt to rally an overwhelming congressional mandate for the use of force against Iraq.
In a chilling excerpt, Mr Tenet warned that if Saddam was personally threatened he might seize "his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him". The risk of such an attack, possibly involving weapons of mass destruction, would rise from "low" to "pretty high" were Saddam to feel cornered by US military might.

Such a stark judgment seems likely to increase public anxiety about the prospect of a new war. There is still majority backing for military action, but that support appears to be fading despite a concerted public relations campaign by the administration to put its case. Approval for military action has fallen from 57% last month to 53% this week, according to a US Gallup poll. The CIA letter was seized on by Democrat opponents of military action, at the height of the congressional debate on a resolution authorising an invasion if & when the president deems it necessary.

House Democrat Donald Payne said that Mr Tenet's letter showed that the Bush administration's aggressive strategy "could trigger the very things that our president has said that he is trying to prevent: the use of chemical or biological weapons. In view of this report, the policy of a pre-emptive strike is troublesome."
Mr Tenet's letter came in response to a congressional request to declassify segments of CIA briefings on Iraq over the past few days. He said: "Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW [chemical and biological weapons] against the U.S."

This assessment is reinforced by testimony given to Congress last week by an unnamed senior intelligence officer, which Mr Tenet allowed to be declassified. The officer said: "My judgment would be that the probability of [Saddam] initiating an attack . . . in the foreseeable future, given the conditions we understand now, the likelihood I think would be low." Asked about the likelihood of an Iraqi chemical or biological attack on the US in response to an invasion, the intelligence officer said: "Pretty high, in my view."

Mr Tenet emphasised the same point in his own words. "Should Saddam conclude that a US-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions," he wrote. He added that Saddam might work with Islamist terrorists to carry out an attack.
It is unusual for the CIA to put such details of its intelligence assessments into a public document. The letter was produced after intense pressure from senators. The letter also comes at a time when the CIA is competing with the more hawkish Pentagon, which is also supplying the White House with intelligence on the Iraqi threat.

"You have to ask yourself the question, since Tenet is part of the team, why now?" said Fred Hitz, a former CIA inspector general. "You have to go back to the Vietnam era to find a time when the judgment of the intelligence community was in the public eye on such a current affairs basis."
The White House last night denied that the CIA analysis undermined Mr Bush's message on the urgency of confronting Baghdad. Mr Tenet "did not say we're OK," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "If Saddam Hussein holds a gun to someone's head, while he denies he even owns a gun, do you really want to take a chance that he'll never use it."

In a bid to dampen the controversy, Mr Tenet later put out a statement insisting: "There is no inconsistency between our view of Saddam's growing threat and the view as expressed in [Bush's] speech. Although we think the chances of Saddam initiating a WMD [weapons of mass destruction] attack at this moment are low, in part because it would constitute an admission that he possesses WMD, there is no question that the likelihood of Saddam using WMD against the US or our allies in the region for blackmail, deterrence or otherwise grows as his arsenal continues to build."

Bush clings to dubious accusations ¹
U.S. claims about Saddam's arsenal hotly disputed
3.18.03   Walter Pincus & Dana Milbank Wash.Post

As the Bush administration prepares to attack Iraq this week, it is doing so on the basis of a number of allegations against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that have been challenged and in some cases disproved by the UN, European govts and even U.S. intelligence reports. For months, Pres.GWBush and top lieutenants produced a long list of Iraqi offenses, culminating Sunday with VP Cheney's assertion that Iraq has "reconstituted nuclear weapons." Previously, administration officials have tied Hussein to al Qaeda, to 9.11.01, and to an aggressive production of biological & chemical weapons. Bush reiterated many of these charges in his address to the nation last night.

These assertions are disputed. Some administration evidence such as Bush's assertion that Iraq sought to purchase uranium has been refuted by subsequent discoveries. Other claims have been questioned, though their validity can be known only after U.S. forces occupy Iraq. In outlining his case for war on Sunday, Cheney focused on how much more damage al Qaeda could have done on 9.11.01 "if they'd had a nuclear weapon and detonated it in the middle of one of our cities, or if they had unleashed … biological weapons of some kind, smallpox or anthrax." He then tied that to evidence found in Afghanistan of how al Qaeda leaders "have done everything they could to acquire those capabilities over the years." Oct. 2002 CIA dir. George J. Tenet told Congress Hussein would not give such weapons to terrorists unless he decided helping "terrorists in conducting a WMD [weapons of mass destruction] attack against U.S. would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."

In his appearance Sunday, on NBC's "Meet the Press," the vice president argued "we believe [Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." But Cheney contradicted that assertion moments later, saying it was "only a matter of time before he acquires nuclear weapons."
Both assertions were contradicted earlier by Intl Atomic Energy Agency dir. general Mohamed el Baradei, who reported that "there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities." el Baradei also contradicted Bush & other officials who argued Iraq had tried to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes to use in centrifuges for uranium enrichment. The IAEA determined that Iraq did not plan to use imported aluminum tubes for enriching uranium and generating nuclear weapons. ElBaradei argued that the tubes were for conventional weapons and "it was highly unlikely" that the tubes could have been used to produce nuclear material.

Cheney on Sunday said el Baradei was "wrong" about Iraq's nuclear program and questioned the IAEA's credibility. Earlier this month, el Baradei said information about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium were based on fabricated documents. Further investigation has found that top CIA officials had significant doubts about the veracity of the evidence, linking Iraq to efforts to purchase uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger, but the information ended up as fact in Bush's State of the Union address.
In another embarrassing episode for the administration, Sec.State Powell cited evidence about Iraq's weapons efforts that originally appeared in a British intelligence document. It later emerged the British report's evidence was based in part on academic papers & trade publications.

Sometimes information offered by Bush & his top officials is questioned by administration aides. In his 3.6.03 news conference, Bush dismissed Iraq's destruction of its al Samoud-2 missiles, saying they were being dismantled "even as [Hussein] has ordered the continued production of the very same type of missiles." But the only intelligence was electronic intercepts that had individuals talking about being able to build missiles in the future, according to a senior intelligence analyst.
Last month, Bush spoke about a liberated Iraq showing "the power of freedom to transform that vital region" and said "a new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic & inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region." But a classified State Dept report put together by the Dept's intelligence & research staff and delivered to Powell the same day as Bush's speech questioned that theory, arguing that history runs counter to it.

In his first major speech solely on the Iraqi threat last October, Bush said, "Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles, far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other nations, in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians & service members live & work."
Inspectors have found that the al Samoud-2 missiles can travel less than 200 miles, not far enough to hit the targets Bush named. Iraq has not accounted for 14 medium-range Scud missiles from the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but the administration has not presented any evidence that they still exist.

    U.S. attacked American human shields
    4.1.03   CNN
Baghdad   Iraq's information minister accused U.S. forces Tuesday of "indiscriminately" killing their own citizens in a bus attack and killing 9 Iraqi children in a central neighborhood of Babylon. "Yesterday, an American warplane attacked 2 buses on the highway between Baghdad & Ahman," Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf told reporters. "Those people on those 2 buses are human shields coming to participate in defending civilian installations like water sanitation stations, electricity generation stations, and so on." Sahaf said: "The 'brave' Americans start shooting the Americans [in the buses]. They are indiscriminately killing people."

He said Iraqis are awaiting more details on the incident., and the U.S. Central Command said it is investigating the claim. Describing what Sahaf said was the attack in southern Babylon, 60 miles south of Baghdad, he said, "This morning, the villains bombarded a civilian quarter." He said the children who died lived in adjacent houses. He described "fierce battles" in Basra & Nasiriya, and said coalition troops had targeted telephone exchanges & farms throughout the country, and hit TV & radio transmitters in more than 3 cities.
Coalition bombing of Baghdad on Tuesday morning killed 5 Iraqi civilians and wounded 25 others, he said. He said the 5 are among 24 civilians killed since late Monday. Iraqi troops, however, are prevailing, the minister said. "Iraqi troops & Iraqi fighters are in control of all the places, as we have witnessed," Sahaf said. "No big change in that. We are fighting against them."

Iraqi fighters destroyed 7 tanks and Fedayeen forces loyal to pres. Hussein, destroyed 7 coalition personnel carriers near Najaf, he said. Iraqis also shot down an Apache helicopter, he added. "They are achieving nothing, they are suffering from casualties. Those casualties are increasing, not decreasing," said Sahaf, who referred to Pres. GWBush and other Americans as "bastards."
Referring to Monday's fatal shootings by U.S. soldiers of at least 7 women & children at a checkpoint in southern Iraq, Sahaf said "all those who do such acts are definitely racist." The soldiers fired on the van carrying the Iraqis when it failed to stop after repeated warnings, the coalition's Central Command said Monday.

Wash.D.C.   The Pentagon has approved a list of 400 to 500 members of Iraqi opposition groups who will be invited to undergo U.S. military training early next year, officials said. DefSec Rumsfeld is expected to approve final details of the training effort shortly. The plan calls for the exiles to be trained mainly in noncombat skills so they can serve as translators, guides and in other support functions to U.S. troops.
Basic firearms training also will be part of the effort, which is expected to take place at a military base at Taszar, Hungary. Iraqi opposition groups originally provided a list of about 5,000 names, but only a fraction have been approved so far. Defense Intelligence Agency is vetting them for security concerns, and additional names may be approved in the coming weeks.

Senior Pentagon & military officials have been meeting with opposition groups privately in recent days in London to work out details. The proposed trainees are expected to gather somewhere in the Persian Gulf region, perhaps Jordan, and then move to Hungary. One Pentagon source noted that U.S. isn't sure how many of those invited will show up.
About 1,000 U.S. Army trainers are on standby at Ft Jackson SC to conduct the training once the plan is approved. The program will be funded under the Iraqi Liberation Act, enacted in 1998 to promote democracy and a change of power in Iraq. Some $96 million remains available under that legislation.

Cape Canaveral   As urgency mounts for better intelligence on Iraq to guide U.S. diplomatic & military policy, 6 secret National Reconnaissance Office high-resolution imaging satellites, each costing $1 billion, are maintaining an almost hourly watch on specific Iraqi facilities. 3 Advanced KH-11s with optical & infrared sensors are teamed with 3 Lacrosse imaging radar spacecraft with night/all-weather capabilities to search for evidence of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons development, along with missile production.
But some of these spacecraft are growing old, and a critical new KH-11 replacement satellite that was to have been launched from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., in Dec. 2001 has now been delayed nearly 1.5 years by problems. It is now not planned to launch any earlier than May 2003. An unrelated large NRO eavesdropping spacecraft has also been delayed (AW&ST Sept. 2, p. 34).

Rarely 2-3 hours go by without at least one of the current 15-ton spacecraft obtaining imagery somewhere over Iraq, although 12 specific overflights per day have viewing angles that provide the highest resolution pictures. The slant-range capability of the advanced KH-11 is also impressive, allowing it to take quality imagery 100 mi. to the left or right of its ground track on several other, less ideal Iraqi passes per day. Each of the school bus-size spacecraft currently aloft have been spaced in polar orbit to provide the National Imagery & Mapping Agency (NIMA) with coordinated, repetitive image resolutions as good as 4-6 in. during the day and 2-3 ft. or so at night using infrared & radar sensors.

High-resolution satellites cannot see through buildings, but their imagery is critical to characterizing Iraqi activity and in providing 3D imagery to plan attack strategy. They are also critical in supporting covert U.S. Special Forces ground reconnaissance activity. The spacecraft are helping to characterize the function of Iraqi sites possibly developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as well as helping NIMA, the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency assess the pace & concealment of such work.

The imagery is also an important element in "all source" analysis, especially in tying signal intercept data with imaging reconnaissance. The same 6 spacecraft are also being heavily tasked with "force protection" imaging duties to monitor the flanks of U.S. troops deployed around the world and to watch for potential threats from the shores adjoining sea lanes that could be choked, if Al Qaeda terrorists attack oil tankers or other ships at critical locations.
Each of the 6 spacecraft fly ground tracks timed for the best viewing angles and to work in connection with the other 5, all launched from Vandenberg between March 1991 & Oct. 2001. The satellites are:

  •   Advanced KH-11 launched Oct. 2001. This spacecraft uses infrared & low-light optical capabilities on passes flying north over Baghdad area at roughly 2 am local time daily.

    At about 3 pm Baghdad time, the satellite again passes over the Iraqi capital area on a southward pass using full daylight optical capabilities to image targets. Like most Advanced KH-11s, it is flying a 256 X 530-mi. orbit inclined 98 deg.

  •   Advanced KH-11 launched in Dec. 1996. It maneuvered last week in an orbital plane west of the 2001 satellite, said Toronto-based analyst Ted Molczan. It makes its first pass overhead Baghdad during the late morning on a southern trajectory. Then, using its infrared capabilities, it overflies central Iraq before midnight on a northern trajectory. It is in an orbit nearly identical to the 2001 spacecraft.
  •   Advanced KH-11, launched Dec. 1995. This oldest of the KH-11s was replaced by the 2001 satellite but is still flying on a ground track that follows the newer satellite closely, Molczan said.
  •   Lacrosse radar, launched March 1991. NRO's oldest recce satellite currently passes over central Iraq at about 11 a.m. each day on a northern trajectory, then again at about 8:30 p.m. on a southern flight path.
  •   Lacrosse radar, launched in Oct. 1997. This spacecraft currently overflies central Iraq at about 10 p.m. on a southern trajectory, then comes back on a northern trajectory at about 3 p.m. local time.
  •   Lacrosse radar, launched Aug. 2000. This spacecraft comes over the Baghdad area, first flying south at about 3 a.m. daily, then on a northern trajectory at about 5:30 p.m.

    Times here for both types refer to only the best overhead passes per day. The spacecraft also overfly Iraq almost daily on passes that are less advantageous to imagery. The Advanced KH-11s are in Sun-synchronous orbits where their overflight times will not change much day-to-day, although some days they have more passes than others. The Lacrosse radar overflight times are for current operations and will vary more with time.
    Although all current reconnaissance satellite operations are highly secret, NIMA will this week declassify & release some of the low-resolution mapping imagery taken by Lockheed Martin Keyhole KH-9 film return spacecraft during 1973-80 and imagery from the KH-7 spacecraft that operated during 1963-67.

    The release marks only the second time in the history of space reconnaissance that imagery has been declassified, the first being the declassification of original Corona KH-1 imagery in 1995 (AW&ST 6.12.95 p167). The KH-9 situation is the most intriguing. Some analysts are disappointed that only 9-24-in. "low-resolution mapping camera" imagery from the KH-9s is being released. None of the satellites' high-resolution imagery taken during 1971-85 is being freed, said Charles P. Vick, who analyzed reconnaissance operations for the Federation of American Scientists.

    The first of about 20 KH-9 "Project Octagon" satellites was launched in 1971, and the last was destroyed in a Titan 34D accident at Vandenberg in 1986. The KH-9s, often referred to as "Big Birds," normally carried 4 film-pod return canisters. The primary KH-9 high-resolution imaging system used 2 60-in.-dia. lens cameras that could return stereo pictures with up to 6-in. resolution. But 5 of the missions were modified to also carry a mapping camera with a 12-in. lens to provide about 9-24-in. resolution. This imagery was critical in providing maps used by the Tomahawk cruise missile navigation system.

    Older KH-7 imagery also being released has about 18-20-in. resolution. Official release of the KH-9 low-resolution mapping imagery and KH-7 pictures will take place Sept. 20 at a NIMA ceremony at the Univ. of Maryland. NIMA will not release imagery from the different KH-8 Gambit spacecraft that flew 50 missions from 1966-84. The KH-8s were remarkable satellites that would dip as low as 80 mi. over the Soviet Union to obtain imagery with about 3 to 4 in. resolution later returned by a single film pod. DoD photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Wm G. Lewis USN The KH-10 was to have been the Manned Orbiting Lab program, but was canceled before it ever became operational. The KH-11 digital imaging spacecraft, now more advanced with 4-6-in. resolution, were first launched in late 1976. They heralded the transition away from film favored by the Air Force, to digital imaging preferred by the CIA.



      FBI probes fake papers on Iraq
      Investigation eyes possible role of foreign intelligence service
      3.13.03   Dana Priest & Susan Schmidt NBC
    Wash.D.C.   The FBI is looking into the forgery of a key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program, incl possibility that a foreign govt is using a deception campaign to foster support for military action against Iraq. "It's something we're just beginning to look at," a sr law enforcement official said yesterday. Officials are trying to determine whether the documents were forged to try to influence U.S. policy, or whether they may have been created as part of a disinformation campaign directed by a foreign intelligence service.
    "We're looking at it from a preliminary stage as to what it's all about," he said. The FBI has not yet opened a formal investigation because it is unclear whether the bureau has jurisdiction over the matter.

    The phony documents, a series of letters between Iraqi & Niger officials showing Iraq's interest in equipt that could be used to make nuclear weapons, came to British & U.S. intelligence officials from a third country. The ident