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They have been searching in Iraq for the past nine years, 10 months and 15 days. Today, the hard work finally paid off as soldiers found one of those elusive ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that Saddam Hussein was supposed to have been hiding. So is it all round to Tony Blair's house for celebratory drinks? Unfortunately the discovery came just a few days late for the former prime minister, who could have used the extraordinary find as proof he was right about Iraq all along during the Chilcot Inquiry. But from the looks of the rocket, it would appear unlikely...

OUJA, Iraq (AFP) – Dozens of Iraqis gathered at the grave of "Chemical Ali" in northern Iraq on Wednesday to praise the cousin and notorious henchman of Saddam Hussein who was executed for gassing thousands of Kurds in 1988. "He was one of Ouja's most remarkable men," said Abu Shehab, a 45-year-old man who insisted that Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known by his macabre nickname, had been hanged to appease Iran and the United States. "The execution of Majid was done to satisfy the American and Iranian governments, but he will always be one of the icons of Iraq," Shehab...

A well-known face of the former government of Saddam Hussein widely known as Chemical Ali was executed Monday for ordering a gas attack on a Kurdish village in northern Iraq and for his role in other attacks that became notorious symbols of Mr. Hussein’s tenure. An Iraqi court had sentenced the man, Ali Hassan al-Majid, to death by hanging last week. He is known here as Chemical Ali because of the attack on the village of Halabja, in which more than 5,000 Kurds died. “I congratulate the Iraqi people for this sentence,” said a lawmaker, Safia Suhail. It was Mr....

Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed -- also known as Chemical Ali -- was executed Monday, an Iraqi government spokesman said. He was hanged after having been convicted on 13 counts of killings and genocide, Ali al-Dabagh said.

BAGHDAD — Saddam Hussein's notorious cousin "Chemical Ali" was convicted Sunday of crimes against humanity and received a death sentence for his involvement in a poison gas attack on Halabja. Families of some victims in court cheered when the guilty verdict against Ali Hassan al-Majid was handed down in a trial over one of the worst poisonous gas attacks against civilians. He has already received previous death sentences for atrocities committed during Saddam's rule, particularly in the government's suppression of the Kurds in the late 1980s. Other officials in Saddam's regime received jail terms for their roles in the 1988...

Saddam Hussein's notorious cousin "Chemical Ali" has been sentenced to death by hanging for his involvement in a poison gas attack on the city of Halabja. Families of some of the 5,000 Kurds killed in the 1988 attack cheered when the guilty verdict against Ali Hassan al-Majid was handed down Sunday. Other officials in Saddam's regime, including former Defense Minister Sultan Hashim al-Taie, also received jail terms at the Iraqi High Tribunal. The brutal attack on Halabja close to the Iranian border 22 years ago killed mostly women and children through a series of mustard and nerve gas bombings by...

This building in Basrah, once used by Saddam Hussein as an interrogation facility, is being demolished to make way for a new Iraqi Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) facility. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. BASRAH — A building once used by Saddam Hussein as an interrogation facility is being demolished to make way for a new Iraqi Explosive Ordnance Disposal office. According to Ken Bright, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Gulf Region South project engineer, the community as a whole is happy about the demolition and new construction because the facility held bad memories. “To quote the...

The title of that article above, from the LA Times, is titled: WMD Not Point Of Iraq War. Of course it wasn't. It was One of MANY reasons for that war, one of which....and the most important in my opinion...was Saddam's support of terrorists. After 9/11 we could not allow this tyrant to continue to support our enemies while thumbing his nose at the entire world for the previous 13 years. As the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Phase II investigation report on pre-war Iraq Intelligence stated: Conclusion 10: Statements in the major speeches analyzed, as well additional statements, regarding...

It would have been right to remove Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein even without evidence he had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Tony Blair has said. The former prime minister said it was the "notion" of Saddam as a threat to the region which tilted him in favour of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But his words have attracted critics - among them Hans Blix, who was in charge of the UN team searching Iraq for WMD.

The rationale for pushing forward in Afghanistan is that it is the “right” war, the “war of necessity,” the true base of the terrorists that attacked us on 9/11 and would try to attack us again. Essentially, those opposing the war in Iraq while supporting the war in Afghanistan try to frame the latter conflict as justified in every way the former is not. As the war in Iraq ever so slowly comes to a close and the history books begin being written, new evidence has emerged to challenge the narrative that the war in Iraq was something different than...

HALABJA, Iraq — Six families nervously awaited the DNA tests on the young man who returned from Iran. They wondered: Could this be their son who was just an infant in 1988 and somehow lived through a deadly chemical attack by Saddam Hussein's regime? There was absolute silence as the judge announced the lab results. The man, who called himself Ali, was deemed to be the sole surviving child of 58-year-old Fatima Mohammed Salih, who had lost her husband and all her other six children in the poison gas clouds that covered the mostly Kurdish city of Halabja.

BAGHDAD -- Turning on their TVs during the long holiday weekend, Iraqis have been greeted by a familiar if unexpected face from their brutal past: Saddam Hussein. The late Iraqi dictator is lauded on a mysterious satellite channel that began broadcasting on the Islamic calendar's anniversary of his 2006 execution. No one seems to know who is bankrolling the so-called Saddam Channel, although the Iraqi government suspects it's Baathists whose political party Saddam once led. The Associated Press tracked down a man in Damascus, Syria named Mohammed Jarboua, who claimed to be its chairman. The Saddam channel, he said, "didn't...

<p>PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime planned to use an anti-tank rocket to attack the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, the Czech Republic's counterintelligence service said Monday.</p> <p>Iraqi spies posing as diplomats were supposed to have carried out the attack, from a window of an apartment building near the radio's location in downtown Prague, The Czech Security Information Service, or BIS, said in a statement.</p>

Turning on their TVs during the long holiday weekend, Iraqis were greeted by a familiar if unexpected face from their brutal past: Saddam Hussein. The late Iraqi dictator is lauded on a mysterious satellite channel that began broadcasting on the Islamic calendar's anniversary of his 2006 execution. No one seems to know who is bankrolling the so-called Saddam Channel, although the Iraqi government suspects it's Baathists whose political party Saddam once led. The Associated Press tracked down a man in Damascus, Syria named Mohammed Jarboua, who claimed to be its chairman. The Saddam channel, he said, "didn't receive a penny...

Do Dumbocrats really think that Saddam Hussein would stand by and allow Akhmadinejad to get WMD and not want them for himself? Iran and Iraq were the bitterest of enemies, remember. They were constantly at war.

"Hear our cry, Obama." "Deliver us, Obama." Video at link.

PARIS (AFP) - Iran's exiled opposition movement said Thursday it had learned of two previously unknown sites in and near Tehran that are being used to build nuclear warheads. "Resistance sources have managed to uncover two centres that work directly on nuclear armaments and which were until now kept secret," Mehdi Abrihamtchi of the People's Mujahedeen told reporters in Paris, where his group is based. "They are places for research and production of detonation systems which is a major part of the mullah's atomic bomb project," he said, adding that his organisation had passed on the information to the UN...

Saddam Hussein killed more Arabs and Muslims than any other Middle Eastern leader in recent history. He committed genocide against the Kurds, launched wars of aggression against Iran and Kuwait, launched missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia, tortured innocents without compunction and imposed totalitarianism in Iraq. His regime brought unprecedented war, terror and misery to the region. Why, then, does the Butcher of Baghdad remain such a heroic figure to so many Arabs? Saddam Hussein, at the opening of his trial. Photo: AP [file] Two decades ago, famed historian Bernard Lewis wrote a prescient piece in The Wall Street Journal...

History-like hindsight-is supposed to be 20:20, but the deliberate partisan, political divide regarding the invasion of Iraq makes that hard. It's not a new phenomenon. Long ago it was said that the true story of a war can't be told until the last of its veterans has passed away, and only a few months ago did the last World War One veteran go to his great reward. For decades after the Civil War (and some would argue even today) the debate raged on, and the healing of Southern Reconstruction didn't really start culturally until the unity of the Spanish-American War...

History-like hindsight-is supposed to be 20:20, but the deliberate partisan, political divide regarding the invasion of Iraq makes that hard. It’s not a new phenomenon. Conspiracy theories-often fueled by politics-still rage over the 911 attacks and the invasion of Iraq. To that end, even if one believes the relationship between Iraq War and 911 attacks is a conspiracy theory, it’s worthwhile to examine if for no other reason than harvesting a better understanding.

Just as President Jacques Chirac was vehemently arguing against invading Iraq in late 2002, General Philippe Rondot wrote that he had been given the green light to "recover" top officials including Tariq Aziz, Saddam's foreign minister. Previously unseen extracts of Gen Rondot's private diaries were reprinted in the newspaper Libération. In a passage dated Dec 3, 2002, the general refers to an "agreement in principle to 'recover' if necessary Mr Aziz and Al-Rafai" – said to be a senior Ba'ath Party politician. The two men were believed to have been considered useful to the French while Gen Rondot knew Aziz...

I posted this Saddam regime document translation on September 9 2006 but in light of the Associated Press despicable act to publish a picture of a dying Marine Hero, I think it is worth reposting again to show what the despicable AP is really about. Document ISGQ-2005-00026108.pdf dated July 25 2000 is a report from an Iraqi Intelligence officer to different Iraqi Intelligence Directorates talking about information provided to them from a trusted source that works in the Associated Press (AP). The information is about the formation a newly formed UN weapons inspectors team called UNMOVIC. Translation of page 4...

An Aids-awareness advert depicting Adolf Hitler having unprotected sex has been condemned by mainstream health charities for stigmatising people infected with the virus. The provocative commercial, which ends with the tag-line "AIDS is a mass murder", aims to scare young people into using condoms by associating the deadly disease with the German dictator. But what appears to be a typical, if steamy, advert for perfume or underwear takes a macabre twist when the camera pans to man's face at the moment of climax - revealing him to be Adolf Hitler. "Of course there are many HIV organisations that run their...

Aseel Kami, recently reported for Reuters that some officials in the current Iraqi government are making a push for the return of millions of Saddam Hussein-era Iraq documents (previously the subject of Congressional inquiries and public controversy) that were seized by the U.S. government and other non-government entities following the former regime's fall in 2003. Kami wrote: The files include intelligence papers on Iraqis kept by Saddam Hussein's feared secret police, information on weapons arsenals, detailed plans of massacres of the regime's enemies and even tapes of songs praising Saddam, officials said. Some of these files have been made public...

Assertions relating to the Saddam Hussein/al-Qaeda controversy have filled countless news articles and books and cannot be completely recapped and answered in a few articles. But despite all of the ink and bandwidth spent on the topic, there are additional questions yet to be fully explored in the eyes of many. When one attempts to dig on questions, such as what meetings actually took place between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda members — where they took place and when, and what was discussed — the CIA emerges as one of, if not the major, intelligence players involved in public discussion...

Assertions relating to the Saddam Hussein/al-Qaeda controversy have filled countless news articles and books and cannot be completely recapped and answered in a few articles. But despite all of the ink and bandwidth spent on the topic, there are additional questions yet to be fully explored in the eyes of many. When one attempts to dig on questions, such as what meetings actually took place between Saddam Hussein’s regime and al-Qaeda members — where they took place and when, and what was discussed — the CIA emerges as one of, if not the major, intelligence players involved in public discussion...

LONDON (Reuters) - Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be asked to testify to a panel investigating the Iraq war, the head of the inquiry said Thursday. Former civil servant John Chilcot said the inquiry, set up by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, would look at British involvement in the war, covering the period from the summer of 2001 to the end of July this year. "The people we invite to give evidence will be those we judge ... are best placed to supply the information we need to conduct our task thoroughly," the inquiry chairman told a news conference....

Saddam Hussein spent billions building dozens of vast, gaudy palaces all over Iraq, many of which are still occupied by US troops. But the Iraqi government is divided - as usual - on what to do with them once the soldiers have gone... [snip] ...‘For sale/rent: 80 presidential palaces, average unit living space half-a-million square feet. Attached gardens featuring disused swimming pools, personal zoos/nuclear bunkers etc. Rooms fitted with thrones and gold lavatories, en suite torture chamber optional. Some bomb damage. Suit megalomaniac or similar.’

Deposed Iraqi leader was armed with the pistol when Delta Force troops captured him in 2003 George Bush is not a man who does irony. It's not in his personal vocabulary. Take the exquisite irony behind the story of Saddam Hussein's gun. The weapon, a 9mm Glock 18C, was discovered by Delta Force special troops when they dug Hussein out of his fox hole outside Tikrit on 13 December 2003. The legendary beast of Baghdad emerged from the 8ft-deep hole bewildered and disorientated; with his shaggy beard and unkempt mop of hair he looked closer to a dishevelled elf than...

This is one of those articles that I really REALLY hope people will read before just commenting on the headline or the quoted sections. In fact, I think it's one of the best articles I've seen on this subject in half a decade. Yes, it's long, detailed, and forces many readers to question their previously held beliefs about regime ties to the Al Queda terrorist network, but it's not the typical anti-Bush/anti-war piece or a woohoo-Bush-was-right piece either. It is EXACTLY why: members of the 911 Commission, Sen Intel Com, as well as others (and why every investigation into the...

(Moderator note: comments for www.regimeofterror.com are now activated at the end of each post)During a series of email and telephone exchanges Matthew Degn relayed to www.regimeofterror.com his vast array of experiences working with intelligence issues relating to the current and former situation in Iraq. Among his responsibilities during his years in Iraq Degn worked as a civilian interrogator attached to the U.S. Army in Iraq before working as a Senior Policy/Intelligence Adviser to Deputy General Kamal and other top intelligence officials with the Iraq's Ministry of Interior. Degn, currently working on a book about his experiences in Iraq (personal website...

Many American presidents have kept prized possessions within reach during their White House years. Franklin D. Roosevelt cherished a 19th century ship model of the U.S.S. Constitution. One of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s favorite gifts was an engraved Steuben glass bowl from his cabinet. And sitting on John F. Kennedy’s desk in the Oval Office was a paperweight made from a coconut shell he had carved with a distress message after his PT-109 was sunk during World War II.

The most exciting and underreported news of the past few weeks in Iran has been that the emerging challenger to the increasingly frantic and isolated "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. And Rafsanjani has recently made a visit to the city of Najaf in Iraq to confer with Ayatollah Ali Husaini Sistani, a long-standing opponent of the Khamenei doctrines, as well as meeting in the city of Qum with Jawad al-Shahristani, who is Sistani's representative in Iran. It is this dialectic between Iraqi and Iranian Shiites that underlies the flabbergasting statement issued from Qum...

Not only is this old news, but it’s old news I’ve written about multiple times. Why cover it again? Because: It can’t be stressed enough that as bad as the current nuclear standoff with Iran is, it could have been that much worse if a certain nutjob wild card was still part of the international deck. Hussein’s fear of Iran, which he said he considered a greater threat than the United States, featured prominently in the discussion about weapons of mass destruction. Iran and Iraq had fought a grinding eight-year war in the 1980s, and Hussein said he was convinced...

The farm where Saddam Hussein hid from U.S. forces before he was captured in December 2003 was familiar ground for the Iraqi dictator: It was the same place, he told an FBI agent, where he sought refuge 44 years earlier after taking part in a failed attempt to kill Iraq's president. Saddam also told the U.S. official that he had used telephones only twice in the last 14 years, and moved his locations daily. With troops closing in on him, Saddam returned to the farm outside Tikrit where he hid in 1959 after joining in a failed bid to assassinate...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Saddam Hussein believed Iran was a significant threat to Iraq and left open the possibility that he had weapons of mass destruction rather than appear vulnerable, according to declassified FBI documents on interrogations of the former Iraqi leader. "Hussein believed that Iraq could not appear weak to its enemies, especially Iran," FBI special agent George Piro wrote on notes of a conversation with Saddam in June 2004 about weapons of mass destruction. He believed Iraq was being threatened by others in the region and must appear able to defend itself, the report said. The FBI reports, released...

It has been confirmed across the board that 18-wheelers were seen going into Syria before the war, crossing the border soon after Iraqi intelligence replaced the border guards and cleared nearby areas for their passage. There are also eyewitness reports of the trucks going into Syria, and eyewitness reports of their burial in Lebanon. The trucks with the weapons were tracked to three locations in Syria and Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, currently controlled by the Syrians, Iranians, and Hezbollah. Sources I've spoken with that have seen satellite photos of the movements confirm that the WMD in Syria are at military bases,...

Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he led the world to believe that his country had weapons of mass destruction because he did not want to appear weak to the Islamic Republic of Iran, according to declassified FBI documents released Wednesday. Hussein was quoted as saying that he was so concerned about radical Iranian leaders that he was ready to sign a security agreement with the United States guaranteeing protection from Iran.... Hussein also referred to Osama Bin Laden as a "zealot" and said that he did not deal with al-Qaida....

( The media and the democrats knew all along Saddam had WMD...we sent an engraved invite we were coming three months in advance, of course he moved his WMD to Syria----but the bloodthirsty "Bush Lied" chorus was allowed to perpetuate to destroy Bush) Secret U.S. mission hauls uranium from Iraq Last major stockpile from Saddam's nuclear efforts arrives in Canada updated 6:57 p.m. ET, Sat., July 5, 2008 The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a...

After repeated questioning about links to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden Saddam Hussein admitted meetings between the two (after initial denials) but said his regime denied al Qaeda's requests for support reportedly due to such vastly differing ideologies. Below is a summary of one of FBI agent George Piro's question and answer sessions. In this June 28, 2004 document Hussein said his country did not support the group because the U.S. was not his enemy. He previously indicated the exact opposite, that the U.S. was his enemy as mentioned in Saddam Hussein's FBI interview and in other private and...

James Gordon Meek of the New York Daily News has posted two recent stories based on documents he obtained through FOIA on the FBI's interview of Saddam Hussein. Meek says that, according to the documents, Saddam denied links to al Qaeda just as he did prior to the invasion and the Baath party recently denied again on their website. In one of the documented interviews Hussein referred to America as his enemy and in another interview discussed Iraq's relationship with, and level of support for anti-Israel groups linked with Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas, who he referred to as "guests."

NEW YORK — An FBI official says a notorious terrorist suspected of aiding the insurgency in Iraq will be added to the agency's list of its most wanted terrorists. The official said Monday that an FBI committee recommended this month that 73-year-old Palestinian Abu Ibrahim be placed on the list. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision wasn't official. An investigation by The Associated Press had revealed the terrorist was still alive and had fled to Syria. Ibrahim has been indicted in the 1982 bombing of Pam Am Flight 830. The explosion killed a 16-year-old boy and...

Some sick designer went and equated GW to some of the greatest tyrants of the past 100 years. click here to read more

I redid my video due to the sound being pulled off my original Youtube video. This video contains info on Salman Pak. This Saddam/Iraq-Al Qaeda connection was not made easily available by the Mainstream Press, Democrats or 911 Commission. Please share it

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says there was “never any evidence” that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq played any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. “On the question of whether or not Iraq was involved in 9/11, there was never any evidence to prove that,” Cheney said during an interview Monday night with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “There was some reporting early on, for example, that Mohammed Atta had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official,” Cheney said. “But that was never borne out.” In a 2003 interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Cheney...

Over the past many months a number of interviews, documents, admissions and other revelations have come to light that continue to undermine the notion that al Qaeda and al Qaeda linked groups were not able to operate inside Iraq during the rule of Saddam Hussein. These findings match up with some of the older and overlooked reports on the hotly contested that may now deserve re-examination. A study by The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point of al Qaeda documents deemed the "Sinjar Records" indicates that al Qaeda was, in fact, able to operate inside the country during the rule...

Note: The following blog entry is a quote: Kurdish Mass Grave Discovered in Iraq The Iraqi Human Rights Ministry announced that a mass grave has been discovered in southern Najaf, containing the bodies of 3,000 Kurds murdered by the Saddam Hussein regime. It should be noted that about 100,000 Kurds were murdered by this regime, and that, even six years after its fall, the bodies of thousands of murdered civilians remain undiscovered. In Najaf alone, 48 mass graves have been found. Source: Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), May 17, 2009. Posted at: 2009-05-17

Maybe now that President Obama’s in charge of the war in Iraq, and there’s no need to lie, distort, or half quote truths to oppose the war (can’t oppose it if it’s run by a Democrat)…maybe now people will realize: 1) the matter was never closed by any investigation 2) there’s hundreds of times more information demonstrating ties than there is dismissing them BAGHDAD — The government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki said Al Qaida worked closely with former operatives in Saddam Hussein regime. Officials said leading members of the Al Qaida network have coordinated operations with Saddam...

Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki had to flee from Iraq in 1979 to escape Saddam's henchmen Thursday, 30 April 2009 Nouri al-Maliki fled Iraq in 1979 to escape Saddam's henchmen, who he believed had orders to execute him. For the next 24 years, Maliki remained an exiled dissident, travelling between Jordan, Syria, Iran and Damascus - all the time raising political opposition to the immovable dictator he despised. Maliki was an establishment child in pre-Saddam Iraq. His grandfather was a poet and Shia Islamic cleric as well as education minister for a short time under the nation's last deposed monarch....

The war in Iraq is no longer a good political football for Democrats (they opposed it in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and in 2009 got power/responsibility so they support it now). Apparently that makes it ok for even the New York Times to admit that YES, Saddam's regime (albeit in exile) is working directly, cooperationally, operationally with Al Queda groups-groups that even Democrats admit were in Iraq before the invasion. "In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation on Monday, Mr. Maliki said all of the recent attacks had resulted from coordination between Qaeda militants and elements...