Nuclear option in Iraq?

By WND Staff

Editor’s note: DEBKAfile’s electronic news publication is a news-cum-analysis live wire, online round the clock seven days a week. A weekly edition,DEBKA-Net-Weekly, is now available through WorldNetDaily.com. Drawing on DEBKAfile’s unique sources, analytical talents and forward-looking insights, it is presented as a compact, intelligence-angled weekly package. It is available as a direct e-mail feed or via the Internet.

The White House is considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons and planning the break-up of Iraq as an objective in a broad military campaign set now for April, according to the military and intelligence sources of DEBKA-Net-Weekly.

One of the initial priorities of the campaign will be to locate nuclear devices believed to be in the possession of Saddam Hussein or al-Qaida terrorists in Iraq, the intelligence service reports. There are strong concerns in Washington that those devices would be used against the United States, Israel or America’s allies in the Afghan campaign.

As a result of the serious threat of nuclear terrorism, the U.S., DEBKA reports, is weighing its own nuclear options.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources say European and Middle East governments believe the White House may be reverting to the “second strike” nuclear doctrine espoused by U.S. governments in the U.S.-Soviet Cold War.

Once the top echelons of Iraqi leadership are eliminated, the U.S. will demand the Iraqi high command’s surrender, starting with the armored divisions of the Republican Guard. DEBKA sources say the creation of an independent Kurdish republic is on the U.S. agenda – thereby splitting Iraq into at least two nations.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and intelligence sources, the nuclear issue loomed far larger than the Palestinian problem in Vice President Dick Cheney’s Middle East talks and consultations with European leaders. Surprisingly, the Europeans were more vehement in their objections to a nuclear strike in Iraq than the Arab leaders. British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned that the public outcry over America’s resort to nuclear warfare could drive him out of office, while other European leaders made it clear that this option must be thrown out of court – both in Iraq and Afghanistan – unless Washington wanted to see NATO’s demise.

In Saudi Arabia and Israel, Cheney received intelligence evaluations suggesting that in late February, Saddam Hussein attempted to head off a U.S. offensive by transferring to al-Qaida nuclear devices – possibly radiological “dirty bombs” – or explosives and containers packed with viruses, including smallpox. This deadly supply may have been cached in any of the following places – the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority, Rome or Berlin – together with crews standing by for a signal to unleash them, according to DEBKA sources.

The vice president’s private talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem this week, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources, focused heavily on the possibility of a nuclear or biological terror attack on a U.S. or Israeli target and means of prevention.

The two men reviewed highly sensitive data on the al-Qaida base newly established in south Lebanon and the activities of Iraqi military intelligence agents on the West Bank in collusion with Arafat’s senior officers.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military analysts report that the American planners of the offensive against Iraq have been directed to diversify their scenarios. Whereas their initial instructions were to prepare a contingency plan for an American nuclear attack on the Iraqi leadership’s underground towns, including the complexes occupied by Hussein and his military, political and economic teams, they have now been told to draft a second-strike nuclear blueprint.

This would be in response to the eventuality of America’s combined enemies delivering the first nuclear strike against the United States or its allies – in one or more places.

The creation of a Kurdish entity in northern Iraq would bring Iraq’s 5 million Kurds to America’s side in the campaign against Hussein. But it would threaten the support of the Turkish government, which warns that any extension of autonomy to the Kurds of Iraq will lead to the destabilization of its own 12-million-strong Kurdish community – a problem shared by Iran, Syria and Armenia, each of which has a Kurdish enclave.

The Kurdish problem also touches increasingly on Europe, which is bracing for a tidal wave of 50,000 starving Kurdish refugees mostly from Iraq, but also from Turkey, believed to be heading for Europe in the coming weeks to join the thousands already settled there.




Subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly.