The former deputy of the Iraqi air force, General Georges Sada, revealed on Saturday that that former dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, ordered him during the first Gulf War to bomb Israeli population centers with chemical weapons.
Saddam Hussein, while still in power in Iraq.
Photo: AP [file]
The ousted dictator, said Sada in recently published book, Saddam's secret's, ordered 96 Russian fighter jets to be armed with chemical weapons and sent to bomb Israel.
According to Sada, who recently served as a national security advisor to the temporary prime minister and was in the midst of a book tour in the US, said he succeeded in convincing Hussein to reconsider his order.
Sada said he convinced Saddam to abort the mission by telling him that the Iraqi pilots could not complete the mission with the equipment at their disposal, and that the Israelis had radar that could detect them before they reached their target.
In his book, which was written four years ago, Sada also claims that Iraq's chemical weapons were taken to Syria aboard civilian Iraqi "Boeing" airplanes just prior to the US invasion.
The 65-year-old Sada said that 56 flights of this type took place, but went largely unnoticed because they were flying under the guise of humanitarian aid.
Prior to the second Iraq war Israel warned that Iraq was moving chemical weapons from its territory into Syria.
Chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction were never found in Iraq by US-led allied forces.
