Saddam Says 'Evil' U.S. Policy to Blame for Attacks

Wednesday September 12  

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said on Wednesday that
devastating attacks on the Pentagon in Washington and the World Trade Center in New
York were the harvest of the ``evil policy'' of the United States. 

``Regardless of...human feelings on what happened yesterday, America is reaping thorns
sown by its rulers in the world,'' the Iraqi News Agency (INA) quoted Saddam as saying in
his first directly reported comment on the attacks. 

``He who does not want to reap evil should not sow evil,'' Saddam said at a meeting with the
minister of military industrialization, Abdul Tawab Mullah Hwaish, and a group of
engineers. 

Thousands of people are feared dead after hijacked airliners demolished the twin towers of
the World Trade Center and caused carnage at the Pentagon, heart of U.S. military might. 

The United States is exporting evil, corruption and crime, not only through its armies
deployed in various parts of the world, but also through its movies, Saddam said. 

He also referred to ``current criminal acts, backed by criminal, racist Zionism, against our
Palestinian people.'' 

Saddam did not rule out that Tuesday's attacks were carried out by American nationals. 

``If what happened to America is an internal affair, the Americans are best placed to
diagnose the ailment,'' he said 

Iraqi state television on Tuesday hailed the attacks as the ''operation of the century'' which
the United States deserved for its ``crimes against humanity.'' 

President Bush  has pledged that the United States will hunt down the attackers and make no
distinction between terrorists and their hosts. 

U.S. and British warplanes conduct virtually daily flights over large swathes of northern and
southern Iraq to prevent Iraqi forces from conducting operations against anti-Baghdad
peoples in the regions. 
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