Hussein Declares Holy War on Foes : Reaction: The Iraqi leader orders his pilots and air defense units to fire on U.S. and allied planes in the future.

Declaring an Islamic holy war on America and its allies, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein early today ordered his pilots and air defense forces on the ground to fire on allied aircraft that fly over Iraq in the future.

He also vowed to give his people “a great victory” in what he called another phase in “the mother of all battles.”

Appearing in full military dress in an extraordinary, live, early morning appearance on state-run Iraqi Television just hours after the U.S.-led air strike, an angry Hussein evoked the name of God more than a dozen times as he read orders for an air force that he called “the vanguard and the pride of Iraq.”

“You, the men of our great armed forces,” he implored, “fight against them as you would fight against the enemies of God . . . so that the skies of Iraq will be a wall of fire against the aggressors from the north to the south and from east to west.”

Hussein, calling President Bush and the allied forces “criminals . . . carrying their hatred and their evil with them,” asserted that the purpose of the latest bombing attack was for Westerners “to impose their will of colonialism.”

The Iraqi leader, whose ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party had preached secularism and science over religious fanaticism until much of the Arab world turned against him during the Persian Gulf War, said Wednesday night’s air strike will be punished by Allah.

“God Almighty is capable to give the faithful the victory,” he declared, calling on Iraqis to launch a jihad, or holy war, against the West. “May God protect the people of Iraq and the army of Iraq.”

Iraq may have little more than a prayer for protection against the type of strike that the allies launched against Hussein on Wednesday night. Most analysts say its rebuilt military is largely defenseless against sophisticated laser- and radar-guided attack systems arrayed against it by the allied forces.

During six weeks of allied bombing in 1991, the Iraqis preserved most of their Soviet-supplied, radar-guided antiaircraft systems. They did so largely by not using them. Because they kept the equipment shut off, allied aircraft could not pinpoint its location.

But if Iraq’s air defense forces were to respond to Hussein’s call today and turn on the system’s radar, analysts said U.S. aircraft are equipped to target and destroy its missiles before they can strike.

Hussein still has more than 300 combat-ready fighter-jets and bombers. But defense analysts in London said last month’s encounter between a U.S. F-16 fighter-jet and a Soviet-made Iraqi MIG-25 was a telling illustration of Iraq’s air capability.

The MIG-25 is roughly as sophisticated a fighter as the F-16. But the U.S. plane easily shot it out of the sky after the Iraqi jet strayed into the U.S.-patrolled “no-fly zone” in southern Iraq.

As in 1991, Hussein retains important support from radical Islamic groups around the world. They have proven they can launch terrorist attacks.

Hussein, defense analysts suspect, also has hidden as many as 150 mid-range Scud missiles from U.N. weapons inspection teams, authorized to destroy all his nation’s weapons of mass destruction. Hussein fired 80 Scuds at Israeli and other targets in the Gulf War. Analysts said the speech offered a signal that he might pursue a similar course in coming days.