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Saddam has a plan for the invasion of Baghdad -- he is going to concentrate all his troops inside the capital among the civilian population. His troop redeployment into among the populated areas will hamper US efforts to take them out en masse, since Saddam has rightly concluded that the US is less willing to kill his people that Saddam is himself.

Saddam has also ordered the creation of secret cells made up of operatives with orders to shoot and kill anyone seen on the streets of the city as a counter-insurgency measure.

"In Baghdad, he has distributed weapons, and there are cells in Baghdad with instructions to impose basically a curfew and to fire upon anybody that is seen walking in the streets," Iraqi National Congress spokesman Sharif Al Hussein said.

The units have been trained in urban warfare and assigned the mission of preventing insurgents from attacking regime interests in major cities.

Saddam has another "mother of all battles" scenario planned for the coming US invasion, just like he did during the Gulf War.

His 1991 battle plans fell apart when the US failed to cooperate by invading until after Saddam's defensive positions had been destroyed and his forces pounded senseless by the air war that preceded the invasion.

An invasion that took about 100 hours from start to finish.

Saddam figures that if he puts all his forces inside his cities, mingling them with the citizens, US air power won't be able to destroy them in advance of a ground war -- without flattening Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities.

Saddam wants that ground war. He is convinced that in a face-to-face fight, his forces stand an even chance against the Americans.

On that score he is as wrong as he is in believing hiding in the cities will save him. Modern American ground forces, equipped with modern battlefield weapons, will rip through his ground forces as quickly as US airpower decimated his airforce in 1991.

That isn't braggadocio so much as plain military fact. US troops have protective gear that makes them as close in invulnerable as is possible in the 21st century.

A bullet that would have felled an American at Normandy bounces off today's trooper's protective armor. It takes a lucky shot to drop an American in full battle gear.

By contrast, US troops have weapons that can see at night, target according to GPS grid settings, infantry rifles that make virtually no sound and can penetrate four inches of concrete -- and the average Iraqi soldier's armor consists of his helmet.

Saddam also plans to attack Israel as part of his overall strategy.

This strategy is in two parts. In the first part, he hopes to draw Israel into the war, and thereby drawing in the remainder of the Arab world, including the Syrians and the Saudis.

His plan is to ignite the entire Middle East into a war of mass destruction. Saddam believes, accurately, we believe, that hiding his troops inside civilian cities will slow Washington down.

The second part of his plan remains unchanged from 1991. Saddam wants to be the first Arab leader since Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to defeat the Israelis in battle.

But if Saddam were to invoke part two and hit Israel with weapons of mass destruction, hiding his troops inside his cities won't save them.

Israel is already on the brink of war with the Arab world. It is a tiny, tiny country with a tiny population, despite the fact it possesses one of the most powerful military machines in the world.

In the event of a strike by Iraq against that tiny population using weapons of mass destruction -- or even the credible threat of such a strike -- would invite a nuclear counter-strike by Israel.

One button, no more Iraq, and Israel can turn her attention back to the enemies on and inside her borders.

The Bible says such a fate yet awaits the Chaldeans.

Isaiah writes, "Behold the land of the Chaldeans; this people was not, till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness: they set up the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces thereof; and he brought it to ruin." Isaiah 23:13

The Chaldeans at first were not a people, not formed into any commonwealth or kingdom until they were united under Nimrod. Nimrod founded the Assyrian monarchy and built the city of Babel, which he anointed as the seat of the Chaldean monarchy.

The Chaldeans became the Babylonians, and under Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, conquered the Jews, destroyed Jerusalem and carried the treasures of the Temple into captivity along with the majority of the Jewish population.

There remains a debt unpaid the Chaldeans by God on behalf of the Israelis. Jeremiah promised that "The violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon, shall the inhabitant of Zion say; and my blood upon the inhabitants of Chaldea, shall Jerusalem say."[Jeremiah 51:35]

The destruction of Babylon the city in part took place when Belshezzar's party was crashed by Darius the Mede. [Daniel 5]. The power of the Babylonian kings was broken. And Babylon, although continuously inhabited through the centuries, was never again anything like the great city of Daniel's day.

But note that Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans, was much more than the city of Babylon [which still exists as an inhabited city about an hour southwest of Baghdad].

Babylon was [and is] a literal city, it was a historical political empire, and it was [and is] a religious system that is used symbolically of the world religious system in the same sense that Egypt is used as a metaphor for the world political system.

"A sound of a cry comes from Babylon, and great ruin from the land of the Chaldeans," writes Jeremiah. This is not Babylon the system, or Babylon the symbol Jeremiah speaks of. It is Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans.

According to Jeremiah, the destruction of Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans, would be complete, utter and eternal. "And Babylon shall become heaps, a home for jackals, a horror and a hissing, without an inhabitant." [Jeremiah 51:37]

Since that has never happened, the fulfillment of the utter destruction of the land of the Chaldeans remains yet future.

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