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JULY 21, 2001 : (IRAQ, FOREWARNING IN NEWSPAPERS) On July 21, approximately six weeks before the September 11 th attacks, Iraqi columnist Mulhalhal reported that bin Laden was making plans to “demolish the Pentagon after he destroys the White House.” Mulhalhal’s July 21 article further informed that bin Laden would strike America “on the arm that is already hurting.” Upon information and belief, this references a second Iraqi sponsored attack on the World Trade Center. This interpretation is further bolstered by another reference to New York as “[bin Laden] will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra everytime he hears his songs.” (e.g., “New York, New York”) identifying New York, New York as a target. Mulhalhal further indicated, “The wings of a dove and the bullet are all but one and the same in the heart of a believer.” (Emphasis supplied) This appears to be a reference to the use of commercial aircraft as a weapon. The information was reported in an Iraqi newspaper who’s editor-in-chief serves as secretary to Uday Hussein’s Iraqi Syndicate of Journalists. The article expressed Iraqi admiration and support for bin Laden’s plans and its appearance in the newspaper would clearly have to be endorsed by Saddam Hussein himself. All Iraqi news media is strictly controlled and censored by the government of Saddam Hussein and is under the direct oversight of Uday Hussein. Various members of Iraqi intelligence work at and control the content of each and every newspaper published inside Iraq. The information contained in Mulhalhal’s published statements were known prior to the events of September 11 th , and that Mulhalhal has ties to Iraqi intelligence, demonstrates foreknowledge of the planned attacks by bin Laden and indicates support by Iraqi co-conspirators. - Findlaw, Ashton, et al. v. al Qaeda ... see also http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110003069 from the WSJ

JULY 21, 2001 : (IRAQI PAPER AL-NASIRIYA PRAISES BIN LADEN) More recently, and eerily, a July 21, 2001, commentary in the Iraqi publication Al-Nasiriya praised bin Laden: "In this man's heart you'll find an insistence, a strange determination that he will reach one day the tunnels of the White House and will bomb it with everything that is in it."
The article recounts bin Laden's attacks on U.S. targets and U.S. efforts "to pressure the Taliban movement so that it would hand them bin Laden, while he continues to smile and still thinks seriously, 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."
The commentary is ominously prescient, especially since it could never have appeared without official sanction. "Bin Laden is a healthy phenomenon in the Arab spirit," it continues, speaking about his goal to "drive off the Marines" from Arabia. Most eerily of all, the writer adds that those Marines "will be going away because the revolutionary bin Laden is insisting very convincingly that he will strike America on the arm that is already hurting. That the man . . . will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs." Is that a reference to Sinatra's "New York, New York"? Did Saddam know what would happen two months later? - "Saddam and the Next 9/11 : The Iraqi dictator and his son talk about the uses of biological weapons," REVIEW & OUTLOOK, OpinionJournal, WSJ.com, Friday, February 14, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST

DECEMBER 21, 1998 : (HIJAZI & BIN LADEN TARGET LIST MADE) "Terrorist cells belonging to the network organized by Osama bin Laden...are ready go into action in the countries of the Persian Gulf and Europe...The list of targets is ready. It was agreed in Kandahar 21 December by Osama himself and Farouk Hijazi... The new recruits, together with the veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Bosnia, form the secret army that is expected to use its weapons against all those who oppose the rais of Baghdad. In order to make them even more dangerous, traditional training has been supplemented with training in the use of chemical weapons, toxins and viruses." [Corriere della Sera, February 1, 1999 (Italia)] see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/743697/posts?page=51#51

2000 summer : (FORMER IRAQI GENERAL AL-QURAIRI SAW ARAB STUDENTS BEING TAUGHT TO HIJACK AIRCRAFT AT SALMAN PAK IN AN OLD TUPOLEV PASSENGER JET) On a satellite photo, he (al-Qurairi) picks out Sal- man Pak's main features. In the southern part of the camp, at a bend in the Tigris River, is the barracks used for non-lraqi Arabs, Islamic fundamentalists who first came to Salman Pak in 1995 to be trained in classes of 24 by al-Qurairy's closest friend, Brigadier General Jassim Rashid al-Dulaimi. He is a man who practices what he preaches: he is wanted by Lebanese authorities for the 1994 murder of an opposition leader in Beirut. As recently as the summer of 2000, al-Qurairy saw the Arab students being taught to hijack aircraft on Salman Pak's own passenger jet, an Old Russian Tupolev. They all took a special course, al Qurairi said in late 2001 -"how to gain control of the cockpit and passengers without using fire- arms." Professional pride meant the Iraqis ensured the Islamists reached a high standard: "When we train non-lraqis, we're not training them to preach in a mosque. We don't expect them to preach in a mosque, but to carry out offensive duties." But Brigadier General Jassim Rashid al-Dulaimi and his fellow instructors, all members of Saddam's secular Baath Party, regarded their Islamist students with contempt. "When Jassim and I go for a drink after work, Jassim says they are sons of bitches. They have all this work to do, but they spend half their time praying." AI-Qurairy was responsible for running the north part of Salman Pak, and for al-Qare'a. He served as the unit's staff general and supervised its formation, at Uday's behest, from the best and most politically reliable fighters from an earlier and larger special-forces group-the Fedayeen Saddam, 'Saddam's Martyrs." (He remained in charge of. the Fedayeen as well.) From the time of its conception in 1995, al- Qurairy says, al-Qare'a was seen as a super-elite, as a force inured to violent death. Faced with the aftermath\ of defeat in the Gulf War, Saddam believed that "to defend the country, sometimes you have to go on the attack." That could mean several things, including assassination, hijacking, and suicide missions. "Trainees who fail are used as targets in live ammunition exercises," al-Qurairy explains. "So they die. ... The training is purely offensive and not only offensive but suicidal. They are made to sign a document when they join that specifically says that orders will ask individual members to commit suicide on missions." The suicide-attacker principle was not original. Al-Qurairy says, "They got that idea from the Islamists." In one training procedure, regularly repeated, students had to land three helicopters on the roof of a speeding train on Salman Pak's own railroad, and then hijack it. With sudden animation, al-Qurairy gets up from his chair and performs a series of jumps and pirouettes, demonstrating the difficulty of the necessary maneuvers. "Fifty took part; 38 passed," he says. "Twelve failed. They were used as 'passengers' in sub- sequent exercises." Part of the role envisaged for al-Qare'a is to crush future internal rebellion. But the unit's primary ethos remains aggression against enemies abroad. "That's the very nature of our training," al-Qurairy says. "We have to go outside lraq-why would we train to blow up a building in Baghdad?" - "INSIDE SADDAM'S TERROR REGIME," 00000101.htm http://www.iraq.net/erica/news-e/archives/00000101.htm , (2002/01/21)