All key Iraqi institutions are being packed with civilian “advisors,” many of whom will be stationed across the Tigris in the gigantic U.S, embassy, whose 21 buildings are spread across 104 acres. Mr. Obama himself acknowledged that “our dedicated civilians — diplomats, aid workers, and advisers — are moving into the lead to support Iraq as it strengthens its government, resolves political disputes, resettles those displaced by war, and builds ties with the region and the world.” As the Americans gear up for post-war stabilisation and consolidation in Iraq, positioning a suitably pliable government in Baghdad remains the next major undertaking. Here again, they have a head start. The Iraqi constitution, drafted under U.S. tutelage, is a deeply flawed document. It has inbuilt provisions to prevent the emergence of a strong central executive capable of reinforcing Iraq's national sovereignty. The Iraqis now have a hard choice: either surrender to Washington's diktat and witness the emergence of their country as a full-blown American satellite state in the heart of West Asia, or revive at all levels a sophisticated anti-occupation resistance that steers clear of al-Qaeda terrorism and Iraq's sectarian fault lines.

September 6-For over a decade now, conditional cash transfers (CCT) have become an important part of the toolkit of economic policymakers to reduce poverty in the developing world. The core principle of this strategy, linking cash to verifiable behavioural attributes, has two advantages: short-term monetary benefits and long-term investments in human capital. That this policy intervention has started paying dividends is evident from Latin American experiences. In those countries, important socioeconomic indicators such as education, health, and nutrition showed improvements after the introduction of CCT schemes. For India, which has pursued the goal of redistributive justice through a mix of policies since Independence, the post-liberalisation period has seen a recalibration of its approach to equity. If the ‘Food for Work' programme evolved into the rights-based Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the National Maternity Benefit Scheme was modified and the Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) was put in place. Both are instances of cash transfers based on conditions to improve the lot of the needy. While work was the eligibility condition for benefits in the employment guarantee programme, maternal health check-ups and institutional deliveries were the conditions for the JSY.

Five years on, an evaluation of the JSY — one of the world's largest conditional cash transfer programmes in terms of the number of beneficiaries — has pointed to the beneficial effect as well as the lags in India's latest effort to provide for safer motherhood. A paper published in The Lancet in June reported a substantial increase in the number of beneficiaries between 2005-06 and 2008-09 (up from 0.74 million to 8.43 million) and other positive outcomes such as reduction in perinatal and antenatal deaths. Although these point to the advantage of linking cash to welfare, there are inter-State disparities to be corrected. In addition, better staffing and infrastructure for public sector health facilities is an imperative for cash transfer schemes to be truly beneficial. Another constraint identified by the paper which needs to be remedied urgently is improper targeting. The finding that “the poorest and the least educated women do not consistently have the highest odds” of becoming the beneficiaries is a critical pointer to the manner in which cash transfer schemes are implemented in India. The solution to such lags lies in proactive governance that reaches out to the needy, including through greater publicity and greater transparency, and filling the gaps in the provision of public health facilities.

Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's strong hatred for the United States since his defeat by American and allied forces during the Gulf War provides powerful motivation for Iraq's policy of attacking the United States through terrorism. Iraq is the most likely nation to have the motivation, stamina, military, and intelligence organization to order the kind of terrorist attack that occurred on September 11, 2001. President Saddam Hussein's main goals are to get revenge on America, to eliminate the United Nations' economic sanctions against Iraq, to end inspection by the UN of his weapons of mass destruction, and to stop the continuing American and United Kingdom air force missile attacks on Iraqi targets. Hussein wants to be recognized as the greatest leader in the Arab world by both the leaders of his allies as well as the “Arab street.” He dreams of restoring the power and glory of the ancient Babylonian empire and of becoming the strongest military power in the Gulf region.

Iraq's Threats to Exact Revenge against America

As soon as President George H. Bush declared his intention to confront Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein repeatedly threatened to destroy America for its opposition to his conquest as well as its support for his hated enemy, Israel. Iraqi's government radio service declared to the Iraqi people that they were determined to avenge this American attack. Iraq's first deputy prime minister, Taha Yasin Ramadan, announced on radio that the people of Iraq will “avenge the pure blood that has been shed no matter how long it takes.” 1

President George W. Bush recently appointed former CIA director James Woolsey to analyze the growing evidence from both secret intelligence sources as well as the criminal evidence that points to the government of Iraq as the source of the September 11 terror assault on America. Criminal evidence developed in the various trials of the numerous al Qaeda terrorists regarding their roles in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the simultaneous 1998 attacks on the two U.S. embassies in East Africa, and the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole destroyer in Yemen provides compelling evidence that Iraq may have planned and ordered these terrorist attacks. James Woolsey is now reviewing all the evidence regarding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to determine the true role that Iraq played in the September 11, 2001 attack. Woolsey declared to Wolf Blitzer Reports—CNN that the evidence thus far “looks to me as if it's not something that a fellow sitting out in the middle of Afghanistan is going to be orchestrating—able to orchestrate by himself—even if he has several hundred million dollars.”2

When and if the American government determines that overwhelming evidence confirms Iraq's involvement in this decade-long war of revenge against the United States, then President Bush will order his nation's powerful military and intelligence resources to destroy the Iraqi army and Saddam Hussein. The liberation of the oppressed people of Iraq, who have suffered for three decades from the incredibly repressive regime of Saddam Hussein, will be one of the greatest events in the recent history of the Middle East.

Tragically, this decade of devastating terrorist attacks against American citizens and soldiers might have been avoided if President George H. Bush had simply allowed the U.S. military to complete the military conquest of Iraq and Hussein's Republican Guard in the final days of the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq's population and thousands of Americans would have been spared from the terrorist attacks motivated by the vengeance of Saddam Hussein if the allied military forces assembled in Saudi Arabia to liberate Kuwait had only been ordered to liberate Iraq as well. Unfortunately, the president listened to the passive counsel of Russian President Gorbachev, the Arab-supporting diplomats in the U.S. State Department, and to the unenthusiastic advice of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell.

Some diplomats claimed that the UN resolution that authorized the U.S.-led war in the Gulf against Iraqi forces only permitted the liberation of Kuwait but did not authorize the liberation of Iraq. However, this argument is ridiculous. If American forces had entered Baghdad, it would have allowed the United Nations to establish a peacekeeping force to oversee a temporary UN administration. This would have been followed eventually by an internationally supervised election of a true democratic regime for the first time in the history of Iraq. Hopefully, President George W. Bush will not repeat the mistake of his father. If Iraq is defeated militarily during the war against terror, there will be a genuine opportunity to liberate the long-suffering people of Iraq from a brutal and repressive dictatorship that are similar to the horrors of the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler.

Bush Assassination Attempt in April 1993

The Iraqi government warned that they would exact personal revenge upon President George H. Bush and his associates “even if they leave office and disappear into oblivion.” In April 1993, former President Bush visited Kuwait to be honored for liberating their nation from Iraqi aggression. Fortunately, Kuwaiti security forces detected a car bomb that Iraqi intelligence agents had intended to use to assassinate the former president. President Clinton addressed the U.S. Congress and declared: “This Thursday, Attorney General Reno and Director of Central Intelligence Woolsey gave me their findings. Based on their investigation there is compelling evidence that there was, in fact, a plot to assassinate former President Bush; and that this plot, which included the use of a powerful bomb made in Iraq, was directed and pursued by the Iraqi Intelligence Service.”3

Despite ample evidence of Iraq's involvement in a blatant terrorist attack on America's former president, President Clinton responded ineffectively by only sending cruise missiles into the Iraqi Intelligence Service's main command and control headquarters in Baghdad. Apparently, the president's attention was focused on domestic affairs at the time.

Al Qaeda's Threats to America In Defense of Iraq

In 1998, a statement was released by Osama bin Laden, the head of al Qaeda, and his second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of the terrorist group Egyptian Islamic Jihad, using the new joint organizational name, World Islamic Front. Significantly, both bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's key terrorist planner, were indicted for the simultaneous bombings of the two U.S. embassies in East Africa. Curiously, the al Qaeda statement dealt almost exclusively with Iraq's complaints against U.S. actions against that nation during the Gulf War and in the decade that followed. The statement included three major complaints against America. The first two complaints deal with the United States' army presence in Saudi Arabia threatening Iraq as well as the continuing UN economic sanctions. It concludes with a demand that Muslims everywhere attack and kill American soldiers as well as civilian men, women, and children anywhere in the world.

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people. . . . The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post. . . .

Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the Crusader-Zionist [Christian-Jewish] alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded one million . . . despite all this, the Americans are once again trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation. So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors. . . .

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it. . . . We—with God's help—call on every Muslim who believes in God . . . to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan's U.S. troops and the devil's supporters allying with them.4

This signed terrorist declaration of war by al Qaeda against all American citizens throughout the world states that the U.S.'s actions against Iraq in the Gulf War and subsequent actions to control Iraq's aggressive development of weapons of mass destruction are the greatest provocations to the Islamic terrorist groups. This strongly suggests that al Qaeda is working hand in glove with Iraq's leadership and intelligence agencies to further their diabolical terrorist campaign against America, Israel, and the West. The evidence that Iraq is behind Osama bin Laden's many well-planned terrorist attacks on American targets is compelling.

Iraq Has Used bin Laden's Terrorists to Attack America

Western intelligence agencies have marshaled substantial evidence that Iraq provided the motivation, planning, support, and training for the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and the numerous anthrax attacks that have followed. The prestigious defense journal Jane's Foreign Report states that Israel's military intelligence agency believes that Iraq is behind the massive terrorist attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Israeli intelligence sources reported that senior Iraqi intelligence officers were meeting with al Qaeda terrorists as they traveled repeatedly from Baghdad to Afghanistan to set up conferences with Osama bin Laden's number-one deputy and probable successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the deadly terror group Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Iraq's agents also met with the chief Hizbullah terrorist, Imad Mughniyeh, in Lebanon, a man who is considered to be the most dangerous terrorist alive today. Jane's Foreign Report quotes the Israeli national TV news source, Arutz 7, as follows, “We've only got scraps of information, not the full picture—but it was good enough for us to send a warning six weeks ago to our allies that an unprecedented massive terror attack was expected. . . . We believe that the operational brains behind the New York attack were Mughniyeh and Zawahiri, who were probably financed and got some logistical support from the Iraqi Intelligence Service.”5

A recent report by PBS's Frontline TV program on November 14, 2001, reported that the Iraqi ambassador to Turkey (the second highest official in Iraqi intelligence) offered Osama bin Laden a place of refuge in Iraq.

Iraqi Involvement in the 1993 “World Trade Center Bombing

Anniversaries are very important for Arabs. In planning revenge for some perceived insult, it is common for an Arab to patiently wait for several years to exact their vengeance on the precise anniversary of the original slight. A well-known Arab proverb is, “Revenge is a dish best eaten cold.” This is so well-known among counterterrorism experts that the U.S. State Department routinely issues special terrorism warnings to American bases and embassies on the anniversaries of particular historical dates. Therefore, it is very significant that the February 26, 1993, World Trade Center terrorist attack took place on the day of the second anniversary of the American army's liberation of Kuwait.

Author Laurie Mylroie has been a student of Iraq and its dictator President Saddam Hussein for many years. She claims that Iraq planned and financed al Qaeda's February 26, 1993, terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center. Mylroie suggests that the U.S. should examine the evidence that Iraqi-sponsored terrorism may be the instigator of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. She believes that the criminal evidence revealed during the 1994 trial of the extremist Islamic defendants convicted of the 1993 attack proved that Iraq sponsored those al Qaeda terrorists. Mylroie warned that the actions of one of the prime suspects, Ahmed Ramzi Yousef, suggested that we will experience more terrorist attacks in the future. Significantly, Yousef used an Iraqi passport to enter the United States. However, he immediately fled America after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing using his new false identity, that of a Kuwaiti-born Pakistani national named Abdul Basit Karim.

Mylroie revealed that Iraqi intelligence agents altered Basit Karim's passport file in Kuwait during their 1990 military occupation of Kuwait. She points out that Iraqi intelligence agents could have doctored hundreds of Kuwaiti Interior Ministry passport files during their occupation, allowing their intelligence agents to provide numerous false identities to Saddam Hussein's terrorists. Another terrorist, Abdul Rahman Yasin, was charged with mixing the chemicals to make the huge WTC bomb. However, Abdul Rahman immediately fled to Baghdad, Iraq, to escape being arrested. He was observed in Baghdad in the spring of 1994 according to a June 1994 report by ABC News.6 It is inconceivable that Abdul Rahman could enter and live in Iraq without the permission of Iraq's intelligence service. Mylroie suggests the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon reveal that Saddam is still engaged in his decade-long war of revenge against the United States.7

Many readers are unaware of the fact that while only six Americans died during the 1993 WTC explosion, the huge bomb sent over 1,000 injured citizens to hospital, more victims than any other peacetime terrorist incident in the U.S. to that point in time. The Islamic terrorist who led the plot, Ramzi Yousef, admitted to FBI agents that he fully intended his bomb would topple the North Tower into the South Tower with the goal of killing up to 250,000 American citizens. The terrorists laced 1,200 pounds of explosive urea nitrate with sodium cyanide in the hopes of poisoning up to 50,000 additional office workers. Providentially, the enormous heat generated by the main explosive burned the cyanide before it could vaporize and poison thousands of additional innocent office workers.8 Most U.S. citizens did not appreciate the enormous power of the 1993 terrorist bomb because the towers did not fall as the huge explosion occurred below the ground level. The bomb pulverized 15,000 square feet of concrete and steel creating a massive crater that extended six stories deep leaving a pile of burning rubble over thirty feet deep.

Jim Fox, the former head of the New York City FBI office who was in charge of the investigation of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, declared in a March 5, 1993, interview with the Chicago Sun Times newspaper that overwhelming evidence points to the intelligence service of Iraq as the supporter, instigator, and planner of this terrible terrorist attack using a group of Islamic terrorists from bin Laden's al Qaeda group. This FBI conclusion regarding Iraqi responsibility was confirmed in a May 12, 1998, speech by FBI Director Louis Freeh, who declared that the Iraqi terrorist Abdul Rahman was now living in Iraq.9 Despite the overwhelming evidence from the FBI investigation, President Clinton refused to pursue the matter further.

The 1998 Bombings of Two U.S. Embassies “in East Africa

On August 7, 1998, Osama bin Laden's terrorists launched a devastating simultaneous terrorist bombing attack on two American embassies in East Africa. The first truck bomb was detonated at 10:30 a.m. at the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, which killed 213 people and injured approximately 4,500 civilians. Only ten minutes later, another terrorist truck bomb was detonated at the American embassy in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, which left 11 citizens dead and another 85 injured.

Only two days before the August 7, 1998, embassy bombings, Iraq's National Assembly issued a decree that totally rejected the continuing weapons inspection by the United Nations. Weapons inspectors had already destroyed massive amounts of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons facilities despite constant Iraqi cat-and-mouse techniques of hiding whatever weapons labs and armories they could from the UN teams. On August 5, the Iraqi government announced that they were renouncing their previous signed agreement with the United Nations following their defeat in the Gulf War that allowed the UN commission to completely inspect and destroy their weapons of mass destruction (UNSCR 687).

It is significant that this massive simultaneous terror attack on two American embassies came just two days after the Iraqi government's dismissal of the UN inspections. A few hours before the bombs exploded “claims of responsibility were sent by facsimile to London, England, in the name of the 'Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places' for further distribution by co-conspirators.”10 The subsequent investigation and trial of the terrorists who committed this outrageous 1998 attack on American embassies provided compelling evidence that they belonged to bin Laden's notorious al Qaeda terrorist group. However, President Clinton carefully avoided announcing the accumulated evidence that Iraq's intelligence agency was working hand-in-glove with bin Laden's Islamic terrorists.

On August 20, 1998, President Clinton authorized a militarily useless attack against several of bin Laden's al Qaeda deserted terrorist training camps in the mountains of Afghanistan by launching sixty-six Tomahawk cruise missiles (costing $1 million each) that accomplished virtually nothing. Unfortunately, intelligence sources have revealed that it is possible that, when the United States attacked bin Laden's Afghanistan bases in August 1998‚ al Qaeda acquired the unexploded missile warheads. In the raid, 70 missiles were fired, but reports from Debka, an Israeli intelligence source (http://www.debka.com/) on December 19, 2001 suggest that only 30 of the cruise missiles exploded on impact. If this report is correct, then bin Laden's al Qaeda may have acquired some very deadly additional weapons to use against the West.

Then, in an even more dubious military intelligence command decision, Clinton ordered another thirteen cruise missiles to be fired at the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan. Clinton claimed it was partly owned by Osama bin Laden and was a manufacturer of deadly VX nerve gas. However, the only evidence that U.S. intelligence could offer in support of Clinton's theory was their claim that a CIA investigator had discovered a chemical, EMPTA, in the soil outside the plant. EMPTA is a precursor chemical that was previously used by Iraq to manufacture VX nerve gas (according to UN weapons inspectors). Subsequent independent investigations revealed that there were no chemical traces of EMPTA in the soil around the plant or in the debris. In addition, a respected American investigation firm, Kroll Associates, completed their investigation that concluded that bin Laden was not an owner of the plant. Finally, the U.S. government relented quietly in 1999 and compensated the owners of the destroyed factory.11

Unfortunately, the Clinton administration refused to consider the implications of the evidence that Iraq was orchestrating and funding the continuing series of terrorist attacks on America by bin Laden's al Qaeda group throughout the 1990s. Apparently, the Clinton administration felt that if they publicly acknowledged the evidence of Iraq's involvement in this series of terrorist attacks against America, they would be forced by the U.S. Congress and an aroused American public to launch a decisive war against Iraq. It appears that the president decided to ignore the mounting evidence that Iraq had launched a war of revenge against America to avoid being distracted from his domestic political agenda.

The October 12, 2000 Terrorist Attack “on the U.S.S. Cole

The extensive intelligence and the sophisticated terrorist resources required to successfully infiltrate the military security of the port of Aden strongly suggests that a state such as Iraq is behind this attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Saddam Hussein had both the motive and the intelligence resources as well as the technical means to achieve this devastating terrorist attack on the U.S. military presence in the Middle East. It would have required the advanced technical capabilities of a state such as Iraq to gather intelligence on the U.S.S. Cole's position and precise scheduled naval movements. Iraq has friendly relations with the government of Yemen, and both governments contain elements that are extremely hostile to U.S. interests. It is significant that Saddam Hussein has strong political and financial ties with President Ali Abdallah Salih, the leader of Yemen. It is also noteworthy that President Abdallah Salih insisted that the October 12, 2000, attack on the U.S.S. Cole was simply an accident for several weeks until the evidence was simply overwhelming that Islamic terrorists had attacked this U.S. naval vessel.

In 1996, Osama bin Laden, whose family comes from Yemen, released his now famous “Declaration of War,” (see appendix A) that emphasized the importance of south Yemen in the radical Islamic struggle of al Qaeda against both the West and Israel. Bin Laden declared, “The presence of a population of fighters in the south of Yemen, fighting in the cause of Allah, is a strategic threat to the Zionist-Crusaders alliance in the area.” A report in the New York Times in October 20, 2000, revealed that an intelligence warning was received in mid-September 2000 that referred to a possible terrorist attack against an American warship without any details about timing or location. The October 23, 2000, issue of Newsweek claimed that since 1998 U.S. intelligence has thwarted at least two additional terrorist plots aimed at U.S. ships that were visiting seaports in the Arabian Peninsula.

The former head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's counterterrorism operations, Vincent Cannistraro, is an expert on the Middle East and Islamic terrorism. Mr. Cannistraro declared that the location, the precise timing, and the chosen method of attack on the U.S.S. Cole strongly suggested that al Qaeda is the group responsible for this atrocity. Cannistraro pointed to the sophistication of the huge terrorist bomb, which consisted of six hundred pounds of high explosives and thereby caused enormous damage, including a thirty-eight-foot-wide hole in the side of the ship and the death of seventeen U.S. naval personnel. The terrorist bomb was specially shaped in a concave mold inside a strong metal container to direct the resulting blast to penetrate the heavily armored hull of the American destroyer. He suggested that the design certainly pointed toward a professional intelligence and military involvement by a state such as Iraq. Mr. Cannistraro declared, “The Iraqis have wanted to be able to carry out terrorism for some time now. . . . Their military people have had liaison with al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and could well have supplied the training.”12

Yemen is a vital refueling Persian Gulf port for both military and civilian ships. However, the well-known Islamic terrorist support for bin Laden in Yemen and the several intelligence warnings received by American intelligence agencies made this port an exceedingly dangerous place for the U.S. navy to refuel their ships. However, the navy had no choice but to refuel their ships in this dangerous port because of a disastrous decision by President Bill Clinton in the early 1990s. Until the end of the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. navy had a fleet of thirty-two huge refueling tanker ships to safely refuel their naval vessels in the deep oceans, far from any threat. Tragically, in his contempt for the military needs of the nation, the president ordered a massive 75 percent cutback in this vital refueling fleet. Today there are only eight remaining tankers. A report by FreeRepublic.com by Col. David Hackworth, an expert on the U.S. military, reported that this reduction in refueling capability forced the U.S.S. Cole to enter the dangerous waters of the Yemeni port where al Qaeda's terrorists were waiting to attack her with a small fishing vessel containing a huge suicide bomb.13

The Terror Planning Conference in Baghdad “in August 2001

President Saddam Hussein hosted a three-day terrorism planning conference in Baghdad, only three weeks before the September 11 bombing. Sponsored by the Iraqi intelligence service, bin Laden's al Qaeda, Egypt's Gamaa al Islamiya, Iraq's Jund al Islam, and numerous other Islamic terrorist groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad from Israel's West Bank, joined in a terrorism conference to plan attacks against western targets as reported in the October 28, 2001 issue of the British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph. In addition to President Hussein, two of Iraq's vice presidents, Taha Ramadan and Izzet Douri, together with senior Iraqi intelligence officers sat at the head table. More than six thousand terrorist volunteers were recently recruited around the world to join Iraq's war against America. In the weeks following this terrorism conference, more than 100 participants engaged in intense training courses with Iraqi intelligence officers. Following the conference, senior Iraqi intelligence officers were dispatched by Saddam Hussein to meet with Osama bin Laden's network.14

Mohammed Atta, the leader of the nineteen Islamic terrorist hijackers who destroyed the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, met secretly in Prague, the Czech Republic, with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim al Ani, a senior Iraqi intelligence officer who posed as an Iraqi diplomat until he was expelled from the republic for “engaging in activities beyond his diplomatic duties.” Since the September 11 attack, there have been numerous meetings between Iraqi intelligence agents and al Qaeda terrorists. On September 20, Mohammed Nouri, a colonel in Iraqi intelligence, traveled to Bangkok, Thailand, to meet with a terrorist associated with bin Laden's network. Four days later, Iraqi brigadier Abdul Khader Majid traveled to Bangladesh with several other senior Iraqi intelligence agents to meet al Qaeda representatives.15

Iraqi Terrorist Training Camps for Hijackers “in Baghdad

In mid-October 2001, a former Iraqi intelligence officer reported that there is a training facility in the suburbs of Baghdad that trains Islamic terrorists in the arts of hijacking and assassination.16 On November 14, 2001, the PBS show Frontline declared that its research confirmed that Iraqi intelligence trained forty Islamic terrorists between 1995 and 2000 in sophisticated hijacking techniques using a Boeing 747 passenger plane in a terrorist training institute in Baghdad.

During the UN weapons inspections of Iraq in the summer of 1996, a team led by Scott Ritter found evidence of a vast terrorist training program under the direction of Directorate M-21 of Iraqi intelligence. “Document after document outlined an international program of terror.”17

The Anthrax Attacks Since September 11, 2001

In the months following the World Trade Center bombing a series of anthrax terrorist attacks have produced infection, death, and deep fear in many people, especially because the secret source of the mailed anthrax has been difficult to locate. Anthrax is an extremely deadly weapon. Just one gram of anthrax, a tiny amount that could fit in the bottom of a tiny spoon, theoretically contains enough anthrax spores to kill 100 million people if the weapon was efficiently distributed. The U.S. Defense Department stated in their Defense Department Fact Sheet that anthrax is “100,000 times deadlier than the deadliest chemical warfare agent.”18

It is important to recognize that anthrax is a very difficult biological agent to utilize as an effective weapon by a terrorist group. The Japanese terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo tried and failed almost a dozen times to utilize anthrax as a terrorist weapon and could not make anyone sick.19

Only a nation state like Iraq with sophisticated biological labs with expensive milling equipment, professional chemical experts, experience with anti-clumping chemicals, and an efficient distribution device could actually produce an effective anthrax weapon that would kill significant numbers of people. Most anthrax infections are cutaneous (through skin cuts or abrasions) and are treatable through penicillin or Cipro with a great expectation of recovery. However, airborne anthrax attacks are extremely deadly. By the time a victim of airborne anthrax begins to manifest symptoms, in most cases it is too late to begin effective antibiotic treatment because the anthrax spores have already produced their deadly toxins within the lungs of the victim. Less than 10 percent of the infected patients are expected to survive if they do not receive antibiotics prior to the appearance of flu-like symptoms that follow exposure to airborne anthrax.

Biological weapons experts such as Richard Spertzel, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, report that the anthrax used in these attacks since September 11, 2001 is not homegrown or produced in a basement lab by a domestic terrorist. Spertzel told the Sunday Telegraph on October 27, 2001, “It has to be someone with an existing biological program. These are Russia, Syria, Iran, and Libya. Top of my list, though, is Iraq. There are known associations with intelligence personnel and al Qaeda. Also they have the capability, and the know-how.” Normally, anthrax spores clump together, making them heavier than air and preventing them from becoming airborne. In order to make airborne anthrax, it is necessary to mill it with sophisticated milling equipment to separate the spores as well as the addition of an anti-clumping chemical to prevent spores from sticking together. Iraq has developed anthrax that is airborne or “weapons grade” according to the weapons inspectors of the United Nations. In 1973, President Hussein developed the Al Hassan Ibn Al Haithem Institute in Iraq that was responsible for the manufacturing of nuclear weapons, poison gases, and toxins such as anthrax. Since then, the Military Industrialization organization has taken over the development of weapons of mass destruction.

Compelling evidence of Iraq's part in supplying this airborne anthrax was discovered by American laboratories that tested the anthrax that was recently sent by letter to Senator Tom Daschle, the U.S. Senate Majority leader. The crime lab discovered the presence of microscopic amounts of the chemical betonite. Iraq is the only nation that has ever used betonite in the manufacture of its weapons-grade airborne anthrax. Timothy Trevan, a UN weapons inspector, said, “It means to me that Iraq becomes the prime suspect as the source of the anthrax used in these letters.” (ABC News.com, October 29, 2001)

New Evidence that Iraq Sponsors Bin Laden's Attacks

An article in the New York Times entitled “Iraqi defectors tell of saboteurs, sites” on December 21, 2001, reported that a defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, claimed Iraq recently renovated secret underground sites to store nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons after exiling the UN weapons inspectors from the country in 1998 to prevent their continued monitoring of their weapons of mass destruction.

An article in the January 9, 2002, issue of the magazine Vanity Fair included an interview with Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy, an Iraqi defector who was formerly a brigadier general in Hussein's dreaded Mukhabarat intelligence service. Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy was a close aide to Uday Hussein, President Saddam's son. He claimed that Uday was the head of a top secret 1200-strong terrorist force called The Strikers. Uday ordered him to hand-pick a team of 30 of these Iraqi terrorists and give them false identities provided by a corrupt official in the United Arab Emirates. Al-Qurairy warned that this elite terrorist group was trained in ”sabotage, urban warfare, hijacking, and murder.” However, they have now vanished and could be underground anywhere in the West. Al-Qurairy said that Iraq was definitely involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks using their undercover Iraqi teams in the West.

Iraq's Development of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Significantly, the Scriptures contain thirty specific prophetic warnings regarding plague and pestilence occurring during the terrible events of the last days Tribulation period that will usher in the return of Christ. The prophet John warned in Revelation that the fourth horseman of the apocalypse will ride forth during the seven years of tribulation and take the lives of a quarter of the world's population with plague. Jesus Christ also warned, “For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers [strange] places. All these are the beginning of sorrows” (Matthew 24:7–8).

A web site produced by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defense (http://special.fco.gov.uk/) reveals the latest news updates on Iraq and the United Nations (UNSCOM) weapons inspections. According to UNSCOM reports, prior to the Gulf War, Iraq produced enough chemical and biological weapons material to kill the world's population several times over. It is still trying to acquire deadly nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons technology. UNSCOM has destroyed more Iraqi weapons than were destroyed by American bombs during the whole of the Gulf War. Its work is vital to the security of the entire Middle East.

Time magazine reported in April 1977 about the incredible dangers from the unlimited development of DNA genetic manipulation of biological weapons:

Appearing before a Senate subcommittee. . . . HEW Secretary Joseph Califano asked Congress to impose federal restrictions on recombinant DNA research, a new form of genetic inquiry involving E. coli . . . DNA with the DNA of plants, animals, and other bacteria. By this process, they may well be creating forms of life different from any that exist on earth. . . . What would happen, they ask, if by accident or design, one variety of re-engineered E. coli proved dangerous? By escaping from the lab and multiplying . . . it could find its way into human intestines and cause baffling diseases . . . Caltech's biology chairman, Robert Sinsheimer, concludes: 'Biologists have become, without wanting it, the custodians of great and terrible power. It is idle to pretend otherwise.'20

Overwhelming evidence in the hands of UNSCOM and western intelligence agencies suggests that Iraq is still engaged in the production of illegal and forbidden weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear bombs as well as biological and chemical programs to produce deadly anthrax and small pox infections. Jeff Stein, a special correspondent on terrorism for the San Francisco Chronicle, coauthored the book Saddam's Bombmaker with Khidhir Hamza, the father of Iraq's nuclear program who defected from Iraq. Stein reported that Iraq is the only Arab regime that has already repeatedly used chemical and biological weapons against its enemies, both civilian and military, on the battlefield during the eight-year war with Iran.

In 1984, Iraqi intelligence sent one hundred Muslim Shiite prisoners to a pesticide factory in the city of Samara. The prisoners were subjected to various chemical weapons, which killed all subjects. A year later, another fifty prisoners were subjected to lethal biological experiments at a weapons facility at Salmon Pak. Other prisoners were injected with biological weapons in a vaccine. In the months that followed, they became sick with flu-like symptoms and later died. Iraq aircraft tested the lethality of chemical weapons by dropping chemical canisters on Shiite prisoners in trenches. Saddam Hussein ordered the massive use of chemical weapons against the huge Iranian human-wave assaults in the final months of the Iran-Iraq war. Iraq used nerve gas to kill five thousand Kurdish civilians living in the village of Halabjah in northern Iraq in March 1988. Therefore, Iraq is the only nation on earth that has not only produced enormous quantities of biological and chemical weapons, but has proven willing and able to use these diabolical weapons of mass destruction against their enemies.21

A February 1998 article by the Near East Report revealed that the Washington Post and the New York Times confirmed that UNSCOM weapons inspectors had discovered a 1995 bilateral agreement between Russia and Iraq in which Russia promised to provide Saddam Hussein with sophisticated biological and chemical manufacturing facilities to allow Iraq to produce enormous quantities of biological and chemical weapons including anthrax and nerve gas. In addition, UN inspectors found documentary evidence that the required Russian machinery was delivered.22

The CIA recently reported that Iraq has developed an unmanned air vehicle that is capable of launching chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. intelligence agency said that Hussein had acquired and modified the unmanned air vehicle, the L-29, originally built as a jet trainer aircraft. “It is believed that Iraq has conducted flights of the L-29, possibly to test system improvements or to train new pilots. These refurbished trainer aircraft are believed to have been modified for delivery of chemical or, more likely, biological warfare agents.”23

Since the UN was forced by Iraq to suspend weapons inspections in 1998, Saddam Hussein has acquired dual-use [civilian-military] equipment from western companies. This has allowed him to restore his missile factories and secret underground installations manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, including work on developing an Iraqi nuclear bomb. The CIA report warned that Iraq is close to completing the manufacture of a liquid propellant–driven, short-range ballistic missile named Al Samoud to deliver its chemical or biological warheads.24 The UN weapons inspection teams discovered that Iraq had developed sophisticated aerial spray tanks that could be attached to either manned or pilotless planes that would disseminate deadly biological or chemical weapons over the territory of its enemies. The UN teams issued a report that declared this weapons system to be “the most efficient means for the delivery of biological warfare agents produced by Iraq.”25

Iraq's Quest for the Islamic Nuclear Bomb

Iraq conspired for the last twenty-five years with a large number of western and Russian high-tech companies to thwart western customs restrictions designed to prevent nuclear technology getting into the hands of Third World countries. Billions of dollars were spent in setting up advanced nuclear labs and research reactors. With an abundance of cheap oil, Iraq's only logical purpose in building a nuclear program was the creation of nuclear weapons. These weapons of mass destruction would transform it in one short moment into a superpower potentially capable of devastating Israel or any other enemy.

In August 1989, an enormous explosion occurred at a secret underground weapons lab at Al-Quaqua, Iraq. The Iraqis were developing high-melting-point explosives and rapid-detonation explosives. These particular explosives are used solely for the production of nuclear implosion devices. In the early 1980s, Iraq purchased three hundred tons of yellow cake, a basic raw material used only in the production of nuclear weapons. This yellow cake produces gaseous uranium hexafluoride, which can be utilized in a series of cascading gas centrifuges to separate out the essential three percent uranium 235 from the militarily useless 97 percent of uranium 238 to produce weapons-grade uranium. American satellite photos detected a new uranium mine in northern Iraq that will allow them to produce as much yellow cake as they need for the future. Iraq's attempt to import forty nuclear high-capacity bomb triggers in the spring of 1990, combined with the importation of gas centrifuges from Switzerland for refining the uranium 235, provides overwhelming evidence that Iraq is working constantly on their own “Manhattan Project.” We are moving closer to the moment when Iraq will have weapons of mass destruction in their arsenal to use against Israel and the West. Whether the world wants to admit it or not, we are now two minutes until midnight on the doomsday clock for Armageddon in the Middle East.

Israel's June 7, 1981, attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor facility at Osirak set back Saddam Hussein's nuclear warhead project for several years. Many nations publicly condemned Israel at the time for its preemptive action. However, many of the West's leaders were secretly grateful for Israel's action in significantly delaying Hussein's development of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, his French-built reactor had already produced enough plutonium to create one or two very primitive weapons. If Israel had not bombed the Osirak reactor, the U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia would have been vulnerable to an Iraqi nuclear attack during the War in the Gulf.

In March 1990, British and American authorities announced that they had seized forty nuclear triggers known as high-speed capacitors that were on the way to Iraq. Two months later, a smiling Saddam Hussein held one of these sophisticated nuclear trigger devices and displayed it to TV cameras. He revealed that Iraq had already imported a number of these highly secret devices that are needed to control the sophisticated electronic triggering sequence to detonate a nuclear bomb. Iraqi scientists have developed the Tammuz I and II missiles, which have a current range of 1,200 miles. If such a missile were fired from Iraq's missile test range in Mauritania in North Africa it could deliver a warhead on Paris or London. Iraq will soon have intercontinental-range missiles. Unfortunately, western intelligence agencies have consistently underestimated by many years the length of time it would take nations such as Iraq to develop advanced weapons technology.

Another very unpleasant scenario involves the Iraqi creation of a primitive radiological weapon, a conventional warhead that can be filled with radioactive waste products (such as strontium 90 and thorium) from their nuclear reactor program. Such a “dirty atomic weapon“ could be fired at an enemy target with a modified Scud-B missile. When such a warhead explodes in the air, a huge amount of deadly radiation will float down on the target city or oil field, making the area uninhabitable for up to a hundred years until the radioactivity finally decays. During World War II, U.S. and British nuclear scientists in the Manhattan Project suggested that bombs composed of radioactive material might be dropped on Germany and Japan, poisoning their cities for decades. The idea was rejected in favor of the more selective targeting of cities and bases with the powerful nuclear fission bombs.

When we consider the devastating destructive power that our western technology has placed in the hands of Third World nations, we should realize that we are approaching the last days described in the Bible as the time leading to the battle of Armageddon. The Lord declared in the book of Revelation He would, “destroy them which destroy the earth” (Revelation 11:18). The world is quickly approaching the time when only the coming of the Messiah, the Prince of Peace, will save mankind from destruction.

America's War against Terror Must Deal with Iraq

Although the publicly available evidence is overwhelming, the secret intelligence available to the American government provides additional powerful confirmation that Iraq is using Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda group to launch a series of deadly terrorist attacks on American targets. President George W. Bush appointed James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA, to review all of the available intelligence to determine if Iraq or some other terrorist-supporting state is behind al Qaeda's September 11 attack on the United States of America. The evidence is compelling that Iraq has supported and been intimately involved with a whole series of terrorist attacks on American interests throughout the last decade. James Woolsey warned in late October 2001: “This war began with the direct and immediate murder of thousands of Americans, and, if we find that we have a reasonable target along with Osama bin Laden in the government of Iraq, we must wage this war quickly. We must wage it powerfully. . . . We must wage it cleverly. And we must wage it ruthlessly.”26

Iraq is a very real threat to the West because of President Saddam Hussein's implacable hatred of America, the United Kingdom, and Israel. Saddam Hussein has devoted an enormous amount of effort and money toward the development of weapons of mass destruction. His previous thirty-nine SCUD missile attacks on Israel and Saudi Arabia in 1991, his numerous chemical and biological attacks on civilians as well as Iranian soldiers, and his support of terrorist attacks on America provide powerful evidence that he is willing to use any of his weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, biological, or chemical. While the coalition against terror has wisely chosen to first deal with the Taliban government of Afghanistan that hid and supported bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorists, it will soon arrive at the point where the West must deal with Saddam Hussein and his army.

A war to destroy President Hussein and his elite Republican Guard to the point where American and allied military units can travel throughout Iraq and destroy his weapons programs will not be easy. Such a war against Iraq will potentially cost the lives of many American and allied soldiers. But we have no choice. If we wait, Iraq will eventually develop weapons of mass destruction, and Hussein will use them against Israel and the West. We can deal with Iraq either now or later. But if we delay our military response until Iraq first launches devastating weapons of mass destruction, the massive casualties that occurred on September 11, 2001, will be only a footnote to the coming Third World War, a devastating war of global proportions.

Endnotes

1. Taha Yasin Ramadan, Baghdad Domestic Service, 15 February 15. 1991.

2. CNN, Wolf Blitzer Reports, 21 Sept. 2001. http://www.dgss.com/aoa/cnn/met_with_Iraq.html.

3. Presidential Address to Congress, 26 June 1993, web site: http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1993/930626i.htm.

4. Declaration of War: See Appendix.

5. Arutz 7, 20 Sept. 2001.

6. Laurie Mylroie, Study of Revenge, Washington: The AEI Press, 2000.

7. http://www.rferl.org/welcome/english/releases/2001/09/55-280901.html.

8. The New York Times, 23 Oct. 1997.

9. Laurie Mylroie, Study of Revenge, Washington: The AEI Press, 2000, p. 112.

10. Indictment of Usama bin Ladin et al., S 6 98 CR. 1023 LBS, p. 37.

11. Washington Post, 7 May 1999.

12. Julian Borger, The Guardian, 19 Oct. 2000.

13. http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39e8d3cd31bb.htm.

14. Sunday Telegraph, 28 Oct. 2001.

15. Sunday Telegraph, 28 Oct. 2001.

16. Sunday Telegraph, 28 Oct. 2001.

17. Scott Ritter. Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem—Once and for All. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999, p. 121.

18. “Anthrax Is Preferred Biological Warfare Agent,” United States Information Service, 20 Feb. 1998.

19. W. Seth Carus. “Biohazard: Assessing the Bioterrorism Threat.” New Republic, 2 Aug. 1999.

20. Time, 1 April 1977.

21. Jeff Stein. 'The Iraq Factor.” http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/. 26 Sept. 2001.

22. Near East Report, 4 Feb. 1998.

23. Middle East News Line. www.bridgesforpeace.com. 11 Sept. 2001.

24. Middle East News Line, www.bridgesforpeace.com. 11 Sept. 2001.

25. UNSCOM Report to the UN Security Council, 3 June 1998.

thanks for Grant and Kaye Jeffrey

 

 

Punjab star news  report that out of 880 starred questions (440 in each House of Parliament), only 42 and 76 query could be answered in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha in that order in the monsoon session of Parliament that ended on Tuesday is disturbing. This speaks poorly of our MPs’ obligation to parliamentary democracy as valuable time of Parliament was lost in petty quarrel and procedural wrangles. The Question Hour is an important tool in the members’ hands to keep the government on its toes. But most are not interested in making the best use of it. The entire first week of the monsoon session was wasted on the Opposition’s demand for an adjournment motion on the price rise that entails voting. MPs disrupted the proceedings demanding more pay. Even on Tuesday, there was uproar in the Lok Sabha during discussion on the Supreme Court’s directive on distribution of food grains among the poor. The MPs are expected to be role models for the citizens. But their behavior suggests that they are an unruly lot with no sense of discipline and responsibility. 

Everyday disruption and forced adjournment do not serve our democracy better than reasoned debates and the articulation of the people’s problems in Parliament. If this noble institution is really an picture of the people’s aims and aspirations, the members, cutting across party lines, must avail themselves of the opportunity to raise issues of concern on the floor of the House and seek their expeditious resolution. It is on this institution that the responsibility of sustaining people’s faith in democracy as the most sensitive system to the people’s problems rests. 

It is time we learnt lessons from other countries and strengthen our parliamentary institutions. There is need for effective time management so that Parliament transacts maximum business during the sessions. The New Zealand Speaker takes up as many as 72 questions during the Question Hour. We need to replicate such successful models. Devices like “stopwatch” and “reverse clock” (recommended by Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari) will ensure that members and parties stick to their timings to transact maximum business in the minimum time possible.

 

 

A U.S. panel on religious freedoms has placed India on its watch list of countries where such freedoms are at risk, noting that there has been a "disturbing increase" in violence against minorities in the South Asian country. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent congressionally mandated panel that provides recommendations to the government, said in a statement Wednesday that India's response to attacks on Christians in the eastern state of Orissa in 2008 and against Muslims in western Gujarat state in 2002 was "largely inadequate."The panel had recommended that India be placed on the more serious "countries of particular concern" list after the 2002 riots, but it was removed in 2005.In Orissa's Kandhamal district, widespread trouble began in late August last year after the killing of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, a hard-line Hindu leader who advocated that Christian converts return to Hinduism.Police blamed local Maoist guerrillas for the killing, but Hindu militants quickly turned on local Christians and the rampages left at least 40 people dead, thousands homeless and dozen of churches destroyed.In Gujarat about 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed when Hindu mobs rampaged through Muslim neighborhoods, towns and villages in the state from February to April 2002.The riots were triggered by a fire that killed 60 passengers on a train packed with Hindu pilgrims.The religious violence was among India's worst since its independence from Britain in 1947.The Gujarat state government is controlled by Hindu nationalists of the Bharatiya Janata Party who have been accused of not doing enough to stop the violence and at times stoking it. Officials there, however, said they did everything they could to quell the rioting."In both Orissa and Gujarat, court convictions have been infrequent, perpetrators rarely brought to justice and thousands of people remain displaced," the statement said.There was no immediate response from the Indian government.Countries are placed on the watch list or the more serious "countries of particular concern" list because their governments either discriminate against people for religious reasons or are unwilling or unable to stop religious violence by their citizens.The other countries currently on the list are Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Laos, the Russian Federation, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Venezuela.The statement added that the panel issues its annual report on religious freedom in May and this year's India chapter was delayed because the Indian government refused to give visas to panel members.seems like there are a lot of countries have this problem, india has many ethnic groups believing in different religions,how does the central governmet do to make them live together peacefully,must be a tough job,since 93% of chinese people are han chinese,only 6—7% of the population belong to 55 chinese ethnic minority groups,but we still have this trouble occasionally. 

    

New Delhi. Raksha Bandhan MPs salary hike before Cabinet has been present. But even if the masses are suffering from dearness MPs to make safe the killing of three times to increase their pay has been cleared. Asasadoan cabinet at a meeting on Friday approved the pay raise Bill. The bill will be introduced in Parliament soon. 

MPs salary bill in increments of 34 thousand rupees has been proposed to increase. After the bill to Parliament and MPs' salaries increased from 16 thousand will be 50 thousand. In addition to salary and pension allowances to meet MPs also approved the increase has been. MPs' pension also increased from 8 thousand to 20 thousand has been approved proposal. Not only that MPs have a five-year term of more than five years after the additional term as the pension each year will be over Rs 1500.

MPs to meet the huge increase in allowances have been approved to offer. MPs daily allowance of rupees one thousand rupees has been increased from 2. There, the office also increased allowance may be 40 rupees. MPs switch does not feel the effect of dearness allowance for that trip a million rupees has been increased from 4 lakh per annum. Road mileage increased from 16 rupees per kilometer Allowance the 13 rupees per kilometer have been. There, including the railway first class AC MP now wife can travel for free unlimited. Simultaneously with his wife of 34 free business class air travel benefits to be given to MPs on the Cabinet has given the stamp.

 

Significantly, the issue of MPs pay increase in the monsoon session of Parliament was fiercely threw. Samaj wadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal MPs on the pay raise was plenty of commotion. MPs had demanded that his salary of Cabinet Secretary Salary (80 rupees) should be over. MPs had demanded that they pay more money than a Cabinet secretary's salary be increased.