Meanwhile, the next big step in creating and enforcing the new "New World Order" by the Americans is the trip now expanded to at least eleven Middle Eastern countries Vice-President Cheney will be taking in a few weeks. It's a trip designed to behind closed doors tell the leaders in these countries what to expect, what they need do, and what will happen to them if they resist the will of the Empire. The ever-compliant press is already very tamed and accomodating in the U.S. -- especially those who traditionally go along on such foreign visits to record the deceptive sound-bites and photograph the parties shaking hands -- but even so Washington rumor has it the VP is sending out trial balloons to see what the reaction will be to telling the media they aren't even going to be invited along this time...an attempt to keep things even more secret and closed door than usual.

[New York Post, 13 February 13 2002 - Jerusalem]: Yasser Arafat and his West Bank security chief got into such an angry argument yesterday about the Palestinian uprising that the PLO chairman drew his pistol, sources said.

In a scene out of a Wild West movie, bodyguards of both men also pulled out firearms before security chief Jibril Rajoub was dragged out of Arafat's headquarters, the Palestinian sources said.

The incident reflected the intense anxiety in Ramallah, where Arafat has been confined by Israeli tanks for more than two months under orders from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Sources said the confrontation began when Rajoub - who has described himself as Arafat's successor - urged Arafat to crack down on terrorism in order to win back some respect from the Bush administration.

The argument soon turned to shouts as Arafat accused Rajoub of insubordination.

Arafat accused Rajoub of letting a Palestinian mob free 60 suspected terrorists from a Hebron jail Monday and of spreading leaflets in the West Bank calling for the dismantling of the "Martyrs Brigade of Al-Aqsa," a terrorist group linked to Arafat's paramilitary that has claimed responsibility for suicide attacks on Israelis.

At one point Arafat shouted at Rajoub: "Israeli spy! CIA agent!"

Israeli state radio said Arafat also slapped Rajoub's face before the security chief was pulled from the room by Arafat's bodyguards.

In other developments:

* Israel's military occupied two Palestinian towns and a refugee camp in Gaza early today, and was preparing to take Palestinian-controlled land in the West Bank.

Troops were ordered into areas where Palestinians fired Qassam rockets on Israeli settlements. The rockets missed their targets when they were fired from Gaza on Sunday and from the West Bank yesterday.

* The chief of the Shin Bet security agency told Israeli legislators yesterday his men were on alert because of nine planned terrorist attacks, including suicide bombings.

Avi Dichter told a Knesset committee that two would-be suicide bombers who accidentally killed themselves Friday were about to carry out an attack with a bomb twice as explosive as the one used in last June's Tel Aviv disco attack, which killed more than 20 people.

[Ha'aretz - 13 Feb 2002]: Large forces of IDF troops and tanks took control of Palestinian towns in the north and central Gaza Strip early Wednesday, in an operation that Army Radio said created "buffer zones" aimed at curbing Palestinian mortar and Kassam rocket fire directed at neighboring areas of southern Israel.

The operation, which followed Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza and an Israeli warning of wider military operations in response, was directed in part at "centers for manufacture, transport, and launching" of Kassam-2 rockets, the radio said. Two of the rockets were fired at unpopulated areas of the Negev Sunday. They are beleived to have a range of more than eight kilometers.

Following an overnight mortar attack against the northern Gaza settlement of Elei Sinai, IDF forces entered Palestinian territory around 1 A.M. (2300 GMT) and surrounded Beit Lahiya, cutting the road to the nearby Jebalya refugee camp next to Gaza City, witnesses said. There were no injuries in the shelling of the settlemment.

Three Palestinian police were later killed in exchanges of fire with the IDF force, Palestinian security officials said Wednesday. There were no reports of Israeli casualties.

IDF tanks also entered the town of Beit Hanoun and took up positions around the partially destroyed house of Salah Shehadeh, a leading Hamas militant said to be high on the Israeli wanted list, Palestinians said. IDF troops knocked down part of the house in an earlier incursion.

Witnesses said bulldozers were in the convoys, indicating that the Israelis planned to tear down structures.

Palestinian security officials said IDF tanks entered the Gaza Strip town of Dir al Balah and opened fire Tuesday night. Palestinian sources also reported large concentrations of IDF troops Tuesday night in other parts of the Strip and in the area of the West Bank town of Nablus.

Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said Tuesday morning that the Israel Defense Forces would continue operations in what he referred to as a "security zone" in the Palestinian territories, until there was no danger of Kassam-2 rockets being fired at population centers inside Israel.

"As long as there is a danger of Kassam-2 rockets being fired, we will certainly do everything we need - whether that means operating within those territories or by any other means," Ben-Eliezer said during a tour of northern Israel. "Our presence there is not permanent," he added, "We are there in order to ensure the reduction of the dangers posed by the Kassam-2's long-range capabilities."

Also on Tuesday, Hamas said it reserved the right to fire new locally-made Kassam-2 rockets at Israeli cities, in order to counter Israel Air Force attacks on Palestinian areas in the West Bank and Gaza.

Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas leader, said that while the Kassam-2 missile was a "primitive weapon" that could not be compared to Israeli warplanes and helicopter gunships, it would achieve a balance with what he called "Israeli terror."

Zahar said the rockets, which are capable of hitting Israeli cities if fired from the West Bank, could be used against all Israeli targets, including cities in Israel and settlements in the territories.

Asked if Hamas would use the rockets against Israeli cities as well as settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he said: "Land occupied in 1948 [when the State of Israel was established] is a colony and land occupied in 1967 is another colony. No difference."

Aides say that although no military action is in the works, the President has decided the Iraqi leader poses too much of a threat.

[Philadelphia Inquirer - Washington Bureau - 13 February 2002]: President Bush has decided to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power and ordered the CIA, the Pentagon and other agencies to devise a combination of military, diplomatic and covert steps to achieve that goal, senior U.S. officials said yesterday.

No military strike is imminent, but Bush has concluded that Hussein and his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs are such a threat to U.S. security that the Iraqi dictator must be removed, even if U.S. allies do not help, said the officials, who all spoke on condition of anonymity. "This is not an argument about whether to get rid of Saddam Hussein. That debate is over. This is . . . how you do it," a senior administration official said in an interview with the Inquirer Washington Bureau.

The President's decision has launched the United States on a course that will have major ramifications for the U.S. military, the Middle East's future political alignment, international oil flows, and Bush's own war on terrorism. Russia and most of America's European allies have expressed alarm about the administration's escalating rhetoric on Iraq.

The course also is fraught with potential military difficulties, with most experts on Iraq warning that a campaign there would not be as swift or virtually free of American casualties as Afghanistan. There, rebels of the Northern Alliance, backed by U.S. commandos and massive U.S. airpower, quickly overthrew the Taliban regime.

Nevertheless, one foreign leader who met Bush recently came away "with the feeling that a decision has been made to strike Iraq, and the 'how' and 'when' are still fluid," added a diplomat who asked not to be further identified.

The CIA, senior officials said, recently presented Bush with a plan to destabilize Hussein's well-entrenched regime in Baghdad. The plan proposed a massive covert action campaign, sabotage, information warfare, and significantly more aggressive bombing of the "no fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq. U.S. and British forces patrol the zones to prevent Iraqi planes from bombing opposition forces.

Bush reportedly was enthusiastic, and although it could not be determined whether he gave final approval for the plan, the CIA has begun assigning officers to the task.

Bush also is dispatching Vice President Cheney next month on a tour of 11 Middle East nations, including many of Iraq's neighbors, whose leaders are leery of a U.S. attack on Baghdad.

While the mission's purpose has been portrayed publicly as sounding out Middle Eastern leaders on Iraq policy, Cheney in fact will tell them that the United States intends to get rid of Hussein and his regime, several top Bush aides said.

"He's not going to beg for support," one senior official said. "He's going to inform them that the President's decision has been made and will be carried out, and if they want some input into how and when it's carried out, now's the time for them to speak up."

In the lead-up to Cheney's trip, however, a sharp debate has erupted within the administration over what role Iraqi opposition groups should play, particularly the main group, the Iraqi National Congress.

Officials in the Near East Division of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, the clandestine service, warn that the INC, a coalition of Hussein opponents, is divided by internal feuds and almost certainly penetrated by both the Iraqi and Iranian intelligence services.

"Where the INC is concerned, no real covert operation is possible," said one U.S. intelligence official with experience in the area. "The INC isn't the Northern Alliance, and the [Iraqi] Republican Guards aren't the Taliban." In fact, one U.S. intelligence official said Iraqi opposition leaders already have been heard talking about the new campaign to oust Hussein.

Hawks in the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld are pushing for a major role for the INC. Their position was strengthened last month, when Bush called Iraq part of an "axis of evil." These officials believe the brunt of the fighting can be borne by Iraqi opposition forces - primarily ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq and Shiite Muslims in the south - with assistance from U.S. airpower and CIA and special forces advisers on the ground, following the Afghanistan model.

Uniformed military officials, however, are skeptical of the opposition groups, doubtful that Hussein's military will crumble the way the Taliban did and worried that large numbers of U.S. troops could be called on to rescue opposition forces if they get bogged down or trapped.

The Pentagon's existing contingency plans for an invasion of Iraq call for the use of 200,000 American ground troops, U.S. officials said. A decade after the Persian Gulf war, Iraq is believed to have around 400,000 active-duty troops, one quarter of them in elite units such as the Republican Guard, and some modern weaponry.

However, the United States may not have the extensive use of bases in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere that it enjoyed during the gulf war. While many of Washington's Arab allies may go along in the end, for now they oppose "regime change" in Iraq and worry about its effect on populations already angered by nearly 17 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

There are other major uncertainties about a U.S. attack on Iraq that, unlike the gulf war, would be intended to remove its leader. One is whether Hussein, with nothing to lose, would lash out at U.S. forces, Israel or Arab states backing the United States with Scud missiles tipped with chemical or biological weapons.

Another is the lack of U.S. intelligence assets on the ground to work with opposition forces, assess the strength of Hussein's regime and recruit defectors. The CIA this year began to reconstitute a small presence in northern Iraq, working with the INC, an official said.

Finally, an attack could endanger close U.S. allies such as Jordan, which imports all of its oil from Iraq. "Definitely, it's a nightmare scenario for us," an Arab diplomat said yesterday.

Bush should keep the focus on fighting international terrorism, where he has broad international backing, Egyptian Ambassador Nabil Fahmy said. "If you mix two issues together, you will lose this focus," he said in an interview last week.