NewsMax.com Staff
Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2002

According to an explosive expose in the New York Post officials fear that Saddam has a doomsday plan employing al-Qaeda cells to attack the U.S. homeland with biological weapons provided by Iraq.

White House officials told the Post that the danger of such a plan has been raised in secret intelligence assessments provided to top military officials and White House policymakers as they prepare for a war against Iraq.

Having concluded that once attacked by massive U.S. forces, Saddam will have few options other than terrorism available to him because the Iraqi military would be unable to resist and he’d face "serious internal challenges" from such sources as powerful Sunni Muslim tribal chiefs and a majority of his population. Among the threats intelligence officials envisioned was the concealed briefcase bio-bombs scenario.

"Faced with a war that would bring down his regime, the Butcher of Baghdad, they fear, will fire chemical or biological warheads on U.S. bases in the region, as well as at Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,” the Post revealed.

The grim possibility intelligence agencies foresee is that Saddam could equip al-Qaeda or other terror groups with easy-to-conceal biological agents that could be smuggled into U.S. and Israeli cities - once he sees a serious American military build-up, officials told the Post.

"This is what we are most concerned about and what we are working hardest on," one high-ranking official told the Post.

Biowarfare weapons used in a terrorist attack would be small, easy to conceal and extremely difficult for the border patrol or U.S. Customs to detect, officials said.

"You're talking vials, briefcase bombs or gallon jugs. You can even do it by sending an infected suicide terrorist here," said one defense official raising the specter of a smallpox victim being sent to the U.S. to spread the disease.

For now, officials believe Saddam is treading carefully, trying to beat back the Bush administration's "regime change" policy through the United Nations and trying to deny the United States a pretext to invade.

"He no doubt regards his biological-weapons arsenal as his ace in the hole," Peter Singer, a former Pentagon official told the Post.

Among the weapons in Saddam's arsenal, experts believe are such horrors as anthrax, botulism, carcinogenic aflatoxin and even smallpox agents produced in his secret labs. Some experts, the Post reports, also believe Saddam has developed a range of unconventional bombs, missile warheads and even unmanned drone aircraft to deliver these bioweapons.

According to the Post, the experts are basing their warnings on frightening intelligence developed after the 1991 Gulf War.

In the aftermath of that war, Iraqi officials admitted that they had dispersed missiles with chemical and biological warheads throughout the country and added that they were to be have been used for retaliatory attacks on U.S. troops if the regime were to collapse or find itself unable to control Iraqi military forces.

The Post reported that U.S. military officials also admitted that efforts to track the locations of these weapons were, for the most part, unsuccessful, and U.S. intelligence agencies fear that Iraq has gotten even better at hiding its weapons of mass destruction.

In an appearance last week on the David Letterman show former President Clinton said: "If he's got these stocks of chemical and biological weapons and he knows he's toast, don't you think he'll use what he can and give away what he can't to people who will be using them against us for years to come so he can have the last laugh?"

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Bioterrorism

Saddam Hussein/Iraq

War on Terrorism

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