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Saddam on Tape: Terrorists Will Attack D.C.
Five years before Osama bin Laden attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Saddam Hussein predicted that Washington, D.C. would be struck by terrorists, according to audiotapes set for broadcast tonight on ABC's "Nightline." In an ABC Radio report to promote the show, the network's lead investigative reporter, Brian Ross, revealed that the FBI translator who leaked the tapes said they contained "damning evidence that the world should know." In one 10-year-old recording, the Iraqi dictator is said to boast that Washington would be an easy target for a nuclear or biological weapons attack. Saddam added, however, that if such an attack should come, his regime would not be directly responsible. In fact, Saddam's 1996 warning of a terrorist attack on Washington was followed up in Iraq's state run press with even more prescient predictions. On July 21, 2001, less than two months before 9/11, the state-controlled Iraqi newspaper Al-Nasiriya carried a column headlined "America, An Obsession Called Osama Bin Ladin." In the piece, Baath Party writer Naeem Abd Muhalhal predicted that bin Laden would attack the U.S. "with the seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House."
Story Continues Below In 1992, Saddam's son Uday used an editorial in Babil, the newspaper he ran, to warn of Iraqi kamikaze attacks inside America, saying, "Does the United States realize the meaning of every Iraqi becoming a missile that can cross countries and cities?" In the late 1990s, according to UPI, "a cable to Saddam from the chief of Iraqi intelligence was transmitted by Baghdad Radio. The message read, 'We will chase [Americans] to every corner at all times. No high tower of steel will protect them against the fire of truth.'" After the 9/11 attacks, Saddam became the only world leader to offer praise for bin Laden, even as other terrorist leaders such as Yasser Arafat went out of their way to make a show of sympathy to the U.S. by donating blood for 9/11 victims. The day after the attacks, in quotes picked up by Agence France-Press, Saddam proclaimed that "America is reaping the thorns planted by its rulers in the world." "There is hardly a place [in the world] that does not have a memorial symbolizing the criminal actions committed by America against its natives," AFP quoted the Iraqi dictator complaining, based on reports in the Iraqi News agency. For his part, Uday flat-out praised the 9/11 attacks, saying, "These were courageous operations carried out by young Arabs and Muslims," according to quotes picked up by the Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat. "Nightline's" broadcast tonight will be based on 12 hours of tapes obtained by ABC News. But that's likely only the tip of the iceberg. In his April 2005 final report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer said he had uncovered "a large collection" of recordings of Saddam chairing his Revolutionary Command Council.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
9/11 Commission
Inside Cover Stories
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