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Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, who was hanged Monday, ordered the infamous poison gas attack on the northern Iraqi Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988 that killed 5,000 people and earned him the chilling moniker "Chemical Ali." Mr. Majid was executed a week after he received his fourth death sentence on Jan. 17, the final one for the Halabja attack. He bore a striking resemblance to Mr. Hussein and was one of the most brutal members of the dictator's inner circle. The general led sweeping military campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s that claimed tens of thousands of lives–wiping...

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 executed Monday, said Iraq's government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information.

Iran has acquired surface-to-air missiles modified with chemical weapons. Western intelligence sources said Iran has acquired modified SA-2 air defense systems from North Korea. They said Pyongyang has converted the SA-2 from a surface-to-air to a surface-to-surface missile. "The North Koreans took an old clunky SAM system and turned it into a tactical non-conventional missile with excellent accuracy," an intelligence source said. The sources said Iran was believed to have acquired the converted SA-2 in 2008. The system has been deployed along the Iranian coast near Qatar in what has become escalated regional tension. The heritage SA-2, a 1950s-era Soviet...

US spy agencies evaluate that Iran has accelerated its research into creating a nuclear weapon but has yet to restart its program in full, Reuters quoted US officials as saying on Wednesday. The new estimate comes as the American intelligence community is putting the finishing touches on a revised National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was published near the end of the George W. Bush administration and that was out of line with European countries' estimates, as well as Israel's. Back in 2007, the NIE assessed that Iran had put its atomic bomb program on hold since 2003. Israel immediately rejected...

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...

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 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...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/president-obama-releases-national-strategy-countering-biological-threats The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release December 09, 2009 President Obama Releases National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats Today, President Obama released the National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats. This Strategy outlines the President’s vision for addressing the challenges from proliferation of biological weapons or their use by terrorists. It highlights the beneficial nature of advances in the life sciences and their importance in combating infectious diseases of natural, accidental, and deliberate origin. It also outlines how the risks associated with misuse and potential consequences of a...

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.

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.

Representatives from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia are scheduled to meet today in Brussels to discuss future steps to dissuade Iran from developing the capacity to build nuclear weapons. Our message to the world leaders: If you want peace, prepare for war.

Atomic Alarmism Sarah Carlsruh, November 10, 2009 Struggling to decide between confrontation and engagement, the Obama administration is engaging in diplomatic talks with Iran, but has not yet ruled out force as an option. If the Obama administration were to believe John Mueller’s book, Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al Qaeda, they could abandon diplomatic engagement completely and rest easy. Mueller, who spoke at the Cato Institute on October 29th and is the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies at Ohio State University, called his book a “cure for insomnia,” since it should ease late-night fears of...

Exclusive: Watchdog fears Tehran has key component to put bombs in missiles The UN's nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design, the Guardian has learned. The very existence of the technology, known as a "two-point implosion" device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the design. The development was today described by nuclear experts as "breathtaking" and has added urgency...

Seoul, Washington round out plans to handle N. Korean regime collapse: source SEOUL, Nov. 1 (Yonhap) -- South Korea and the U.S. have completed joint action plans to respond to a regime collapse and other internal emergency situations in North Korea, a ranking government source said Sunday. The so-called "Operational Plan (OPLAN) 5029," drawn after years of bilateral consultation, dictates respective military responses by Seoul and Washington to several types of emergency situation in the communist North -- a civil war, an outflow of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the kidnapping of South Korean citizens, a mass influx of refugees...

If you want to witness a massacre on television, take at look at this debate on MSNBC’s Morning Joe between Joe Scarborough and Lawrence O’Donnell over Dick Cheney, Iraq, and weapons of mass destruction. Scarborough uses an avalanche of facts to bury O’Donnell’s contention that Dick Cheney lied about WMD and based the case for war on a “wild guess.” In addition to all the sources Scarborough cited and who claimed Saddam Hussein possessed WMD — including leading Democrats like Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards, and more — you could add the intelligence agencies of...

Iran would not agree in multilateral talks this week to ship a portion of its low-enriched uranium stockpile to other countries for further refinement, but would instead seek to purchase more highly enriched material from abroad for use in a Tehran research reactor, state media quoted anonymous officials as saying (see GSN, Oct. 16). If Iran balks at the understanding, reached earlier this month in talks with the five permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany, the nation could eliminate the possibility of a compromise with Western powers aimed at creating additional time for negotiations over its disputed nuclear...

Security: After Iran admits building a second enrichment facility inside a mountain, the Pentagon shifts money from other programs to urgently fund the mother of all bunker-buster bombs. Why the need for speed? At the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh last month, President Obama announced, "The Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years." U.S. officials said they knew for some time that the facility existed. The announcement was made after U.S. officials learned Iran had told the International Atomic Energy Agency of Qom's existence. Our knowledge of the facility built in...