Saddam sets booby traps

As the United States and France jockey for United Nations Security Council votes for and against war with Iraq, published reports reveal Saddam Hussein's game plan for dealing with an invasion includes a chemical attack and Iraqis have reportedly already begun setting booby traps at oil fields, something WorldNetDaily first reported in December.

An Iraqi defector says it is "100 percent guaranteed" that Saddam Hussein will use chemical weapons if the country is invaded.

The 26-year-old officer with Saddam's elite Republican Guard defected 10 days ago near the city of Sulaymaniyah in Northern Iraq.

"We have been fully provided with complete protection gear, gas masks, first aid kit, injections," the soldier, whose identity is being protected, told Britain's Sky News.

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He said such an attack would come as a "last resort."

In WND's Dec. 30, 2002, story, Editor Joseph Farah reported: "Saddam Hussein is expected to blow up many of his oil wells. Already, sources say, he has begun mining them in ways that will make it most difficult to extinguish the fires and cap the wells."

The defector's new assertions of a chemical attack come amid the revelation that U.N. inspectors recently discovered an undeclared Iraqi drone that could threaten Iraq's neighbors with chemical and biological weapons

WorldNetDaily has reported U.S. officials were outraged that chief weapons inspector Hans Blix did not inform the Security Council about the drone in his oral presentation Friday and tried to bury the discovery in a 173-page single-spaced report distributed later in the day.

U.N. inspectors warn in the declassified report that Iraq still has spraying devices and drop tanks that could be used in dispersing chemical and biological agents from aircraft, and suggests that Iraq has huge stockpiles of anthrax and could possess chemical and biological R400 aerial bombs and even smallpox.

U.N. inspectors have also uncovered a new variety of Iraqi rocket that was apparently configured to strew bomblets filled with chemical and biological agents, reports The New York Times.

The so-called "cluster bombs" appeared to be cobbled together from Iraq's stockpiles of imported or home-built weapons used with both conventional and chemical warheads.

"Both pieces of information only became available to us in the final version of the cluster document. The UAV was in the appendix. This is late-breaking news from very late last week," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said today. "They are undeclared. We look forward to learning more and hearing more from the United Nations."

Fierce fighting or surrender?

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The defector also told Sky News Republican Guard soldiers will put up a fierce fight on the ground because they face execution if they don't. He also described Baghdad as being full of loyal troops and special forces.

"In Baghdad there will be a lot of killing," he added.

The defector's portrayal of Iraqi troops contrasts with the reported willingness on the part of Iraqi soldiers to surrender. WorldNetDaily cited a London Sunday Mirror report yesterday that terrified Iraqi soldiers who thought the war had already started, crossed the Kuwait border and tried to surrender to British forces.

A dozen troops waved the white flag as British paratroopers tested mortars and artillery weapons to make sure they were working. The Iraqis found a way across the fortified border, which is sealed off with barbed-wire fencing, watchtowers and huge trenches.

The stunned troops were forced to tell the Iraqis they weren't firing at them, and ordered them back to their home country, telling them it was too early to surrender.

Oil field booby traps

Despite the Iraqi president's recent pledge to CBS News anchor Dan Rather that he would not ignite his oil fields in a counter-attack, U.S. intelligence reports the Iraqis have placed explosives at the Kirkuk oil fields in northern Iraq and were also recently spotted moving explosives toward oil fields in the south.

"There are indications that has taken place," a U.S. official told the Reuters News Agency.

"We certainly have very serious concerns about Saddam Hussein setting fire to the oil fields," another senior U.S. official said.

In addition to WND's Dec. 30 report, the newssite published a Jan. 30 story about Pentagon preparations for the possibility that Saddam would use oil wells as a doomsday weapon. U.S. military planners have been studying ways to prevent what some fear could become an environmental Armageddon once conflict with Iraq begins.

Kuwait's Bergan oilfield ablaze during 1991 Gulf War

During the Gulf War in 1991, Saddam Hussein employed a scorched-Earth tactic, igniting close to 700 oil wells in Kuwait as his forces retreated. Midday skies in Kuwait City were said to look like midnight. It took some nine months to extinguish those blazes, utilizing virtually every piece of specialist equipment available from North America.

The situation is more difficult in Iraq, as many wells are located in mountainous regions far from the sea. They also have stronger flow rates of oil, thus making fires bigger.

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