Ba'ath officials, $10,000 bribes and bombs

Iraqi television aired a confession last night from a Sunni man, Wissam Ali Khazim Ibrahim, who said he helped to organize Wednesday's horrific bombings in Baghdad. Ibrahim identified himself as a former police chief and member of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party. He said the attackers bribed Iraqi security forces in order to get the explosives-laden trucks into Baghdad.

The attackers paid $10,000 to a facilitator who knew the Iraqi security forces manning the checkpoints on the roads from Muqdadiyah to the Finance Ministry, Ibrahim said. That blast caused part of an overpass to collapse and killed nearly 30 people.

Ibrahim said the attack was ordered by a former Ba'ath official now living in Syria who wanted to "destabilize the regime." He was the only person to appear in the confession; it's not clear whether the Iraqi police arrested last week were the ones who received the bribe.