"There are many speeches that are recorded and used whenever the government wants," the spokesman said.

The broadcast - which went out on TV, radio and the internet - is being seen as an attempt to scotch rumours that the president recently suffered a stroke or heart attack. But there was little to indicate that the speech marking the 80th anniversary of Iraq's armed forces was delivered live.

The entire Iraqi political and military leadership - except Saddam - had earlier gathered in their olive green military uniforms for a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in central Baghdad to mark Iraq's Army Day.
Saddam made no reference in his broadcast to the rumours about his health. Instead, it was stuffed with rhetoric in which the president praised the Iraqi Army for being "brave, heroic, loyal, trustworthy and great" and praised Palestinians for their uprising against Israel.

He did not mention the election of George W Bush, whose father led the US during the Gulf War, or the continuing UN sanctions against Iraq.

Television footage of the president which was aired earlier this week - showing Saddam at a cabinet meeting and chatting to Egyptian actors - met with scepticism. Foreign Office Minister John Battle said: "The regime has a reputation for manipulating TV images, as we have seen before, and it's in the nature of this closed regime that the information to confirm otherwise is not available."

Dr Mowaffak Al'Rubaie, an Iraqi dissident based in the UK, told the BBC he had seen the cabinet meeting footage a fortnight earlier on Iraqi satellite TV and said Saddam was rumoured to have body doubles for making such appearances.

The report says: "If the US is to avoid a 'space Pearl Harbour,' it needs to take seriously the possibility of an attack on US space systems."

The 1941 Japanese attack on US naval forces in Hawaii outraged the US and drew it into World War II. The commission stops short of recommending a fifth armed service dedicated to space security.