The Iraqi Threat
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11- With no large easily distinguishable nuclear sites and little or no human intelligence it
is difficult to see how any measure short of a regime change will be effective. Saddam is
totally indifferent to the human suffering of his people, and with his threats of reprisals
against the families of WMD workers has managed to stop defections among its
personnel despite the fact that a large number of Iraqis from other walks of life managed
to escape. With a Soviet style economy that is basically geared toward war and its
requirements, Iraq is currently the only Arab state that all the Arab extremists look at as
the future challenger to Israel and US interests in the region. Thus if Saddam makes it in
the nuclear arena he will be the region’s undisputed leader in Arab eyes. It will then be
much harder to agree on the needed concessions for a peace process and a viable peace
will be impossible to achieve under any terms. Saddam has used and will continue to use
the Palestinian issue to rally the Arabs around him as he did when he used the Arab
leaders meeting in Baghdad to challenge the peace treaty of Egypt with Israel that
president Sadat agreed to.
12- Limiting Iraq’s access to technology is bound to fail in the end. The US cannot police
the transfer of technology in the age of the internet and the widening of the science base
all over the globe. Perversely, limiting sales of high technology equipment created
financial difficulties for many high tech companies and scientists and made them an easy
target for countries like Iraq. Lawyer Michael Rietz who represented three of the main
German exporters of technology and know-how to Iraq tell a sobering tale. One of his
clients, Karl Schaab sold the blue prints for the uranium enrichment centrifuge to Iraq for
a mere forty thousand dollars. He also provided more than a hundred classified reports in
the deal. He provided 36 high tech carbon fiber rotors for the centrifuges for a million
dollars. Iraq’s investment to buy technology this way was much cheaper than developing
it themselves. Dietrich Hinze provided flow forming machinery to make missile shells
and gave away half ownership of his company to Iraq all for less than 20 million dollars.
He also taught the Iraqis how to use the equipment. Locally he was so much admired for
bringing business to his small town in Germany that he was honored with a statue in a
main location in town. All those represented by Rietz were more or less sentenced for
time served and released though they all pleaded guilty. Actually according to Rietz, one
of the men working for the German Federal export Agency, Dr Welzien, opened a
consulting business charging very high rates to German companies for advising them on
how to use loopholes in the German export laws to expedite making some questionable
exports, and it is legal. With Europe no longer in accommodating mood Iraq shifted its
purchasing bases to India and Malaysia among others. Thus technology transfer
restrictions, which failed in the past to limit advances in the Soviet Union’s weapons
programs are failing again in limiting access to weapons technology as was demonstrated
by India, Pakistan and now Iraq and possibly Iran. Another failure for the policy of
containment.
13- Iraq and terrorism
Saddam Hussein has a long history of involvement in international terrorism. From
assassinations of Iraqis abroad in the seventies and eighties, to support for radical antiwestern
groups in the eighties and nineties, to links with Islamic fundamentalists today,
his track record speaks for itself.
Always the opportunist, he has used the biannual Islamic Conferences held in Baghdad
since the 1980s as a recruiting ground for Islamic radicals from around the Muslim
world. A former Iraqi intelligence officer now in Europe has described how he would
dress as a cleric and approach Islamists from key countries to put on the Iraqi payroll for
‘special operations’. He was tasked to recruit Pakistanis, Indonesians and Malaysians
while other officers concentrated on Palestinians and Arabs.
We know from credible sources that Osama Bin Laden was a frequent visitor to the Iraqi
embassy in Khartoum when Bin Laden was a resident of the Sudanese capital until 1996.
It is no coincidence that Khartoum is one of the Iraqi Intelligence Service’s largest
foreign stations.
It has also been confirmed that the Iraqi ambassador in Turkey, Farouk Hijazi, traveled to
Afghanistan and met Bin Laden in December 1998. It is revealing to note that prior to
being appointed ambassador in Ankara, Hijazi was head of foreign operations for the
Iraqi Intelligence Service. Incidentally, this same Hijazi, who was hurriedly pulled out of
Ankara on September 29, 2001, has recently resurfaced as Iraq’s ambassador in Tunisia.
There have been several confirmed sightings of Islamic fundamentalists from Egypt,
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states being trained in terror tactics at the Iraqi intelligence
camp at Salman Pak, 20 miles south of Baghdad on the Tigris River. Thee former
intelligence officers have reported that they were surprised to find non-Iraqi
fundamentalists undergoing training at the facility. The training involved assassination,
explosions, and hijacking. All three reported that there is a fuselage of an old Tupolev
154 airliner used for hijack training. This was later confirmed by satellite photographs.
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