Correct. After the Gulf War, Saddam set up a terror front based out of the Philippines, headed by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This wasn't a new idea: Saddam did the same thing in the run up to Desert Storm, again using agents with forged identities based out of South East Asia. The only difference is that he did a better job of it the second time out. You know what they say: practice makes perfect. This front has coordinated every major attack against the US since the end of the Gulf War, including the first and second attacks on the WTC. As to the real identities of Yousef and Mohammed, that is hard to say. Are they government agents, or are they hired guns, like the Palistinian-born Abu Nidal, Saddam's prime contractor for international terrorist activities in the early eighties? Are they Iraqis, or Baluchis? In the end, that's all rather academic, isn't it? What matters is who their boss is. In the economy of terror, Al Qaeda is strictly second-tier, a recruiting outfit and little more. Their native capacity to carry out terror attacks is extremely limited, as we have seen in the 18 months since 9/11. Bin Laden was just a sub-contractor to Mohammed. Why did we play up Bin Laden even though we always knew Mohammed was the big fish? Because too much scrutiny on Mohammed (and hence Yousef) would make it too easy to connect the dots to Saddam, something we cannot afford to happen so long as he is capable of deterring our military response with that anthrax.
Why, then, did they snatch him now? What changed in the equation?