Saddam secret service leading attacks

ATTACKS on coalition troops in Iraq are being led by Saddam Hussein’s secret service, which spent months before the fall of Baghdad planning to resist, it was reported today.

Members of the Saddam regime’s Special Operations and Anti-terrorism Branch, known as M-14, are motivating and leading groups opposed to coalition forces, according to a Pentagon report obtained by the New York Times.

The report contradicts claims by London and Washington that Iraqi fighters are little more than rag-tag groups of fanatics and extremists.

US President George W Bush has frequently referred to insurgents as “thugs and assassins” and British Prime Minister Tony Blair called them “terrorists and religious fanatics”.

The report states the more sophisticated attacks, such as those experienced by US troops in Fallujah, are the work of M-14.

One of the suicide bombings against US forces was carried out by a pregnant woman who was an M-14 colonel, the report said.

The insurgency plan was tagged The Challenge Project and swung into action once the invasion began, according to the report.

“They carefully laid plans to occupy the occupiers,” a US Government official told the New York Times, which obtained the report.

“They were prepared to try and hijack the country. The goal was to complicate the stabilisation mission, and democratisation.”