Thursday, August 24, 2006

Saddam Hussein and WMD

Iraq War Justification
Part of the rationale for a military invasion of Iraq was to end Saddam's WMD ambitions, programs, and stockpiles.
Current Progress
While no massive stockpiles have yet been found in Iraq, the following WMD have been discovered:
1500 gallons of chemical agents
1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium
1000+ radioactive materials in powdered form
17 warheads containing cyclosarin (5x more powerful than sarin nerve gas)
mustard gas roadside bombs
sarin gas roadside bombs
mortal shells containing a deadly blister agent
mustard gas and cyanide dumped in the Euphrates River near Nasiriyah
tabun and sarin at Albu Muhawish
strain SV 141 of the West Nile virus
20 medium-range BM-21 missiles equipped with sarin and mustard gas
weapons-grade plutonium and uranium
deadly botulinum bacteria
a chemical bomb in an Al Qaeda car that could have killed 20,000 people
War critics complain that the weapons found were degraded and nonlethal. This is not the case with sarin. Also, mustard gas causes horrible burns. The soldiers who found chemical weapons were treated for low-level exposure, indicating that these weapons were viable.
Saddam's Level of Cooperation
Saddam's obstruction of United Nations weapons inspection efforts for over a decade is public knowledge. From 1998 through 2001, Saddam completely expelled UNSCOM inspectors. In 2002, when they were allowed back in, Saddam continued his obstruction and lack of sincere cooperation. Hussein delayed inspectors for days, and WMD were transferred between sites when the dates of arrival of UN inspectors to given sites was leaked. According to the final report of the ISG, headed by Charles A. Duelfer:
  • In 2002 and 2003, SSO minders accompanied many inspection teams because of the requirement laid down by UNSCR 1441 to provide immediate access to all facilities, including presidential sites. They also served to warn Saddam Husayn’s security personnel that inspectors were approaching presidential locations....

  • Between August 2002 and early January 2003, the Iraqi military had taken measures to prepare for an anticipated US military attack on Iraq, according to a former IIS official. These measures included the movement and hiding of military equipment and weapons. Army leaders at bases throughout Iraq were ordered to identify alternate locations and to transfer equipment and heavy machinery to off-base locations, taking advantage of farms and homes to hide items.

  • "That Hussein obstructed and impeded inspections and hid materials from inspectors;

    • Baghdad reluctantly submitted to inspections, declaring only part of its ballistic missile and chemical warfare programs to the UN, but not its nuclear weapon and biological warfare programs, which it attempted to hide from inspectors....




Saddam's Ambitions and Capability
Did Saddam want to continue his WMD programs? Yes. Was he able to? Yes. From the Duelfer report:

The Regime made a token effort to comply with the disarmament process, but the Iraqis never intended to meet the spirit of the UNSC’s resolutions. Outward acts of compliance belied a covert desire to resume WMD activities. Several senior officials also either inferred or heard Saddam say that he reserved the right to resume WMD research after sanctions....

The suspension of cooperation with UN inspectors ushered in a period of mixed fortunes for the Regime.This transitional phase was characterized by economic growth on the one hand, which emboldened and accelerated illicit procurement and programs....

Saddam invested his growing reserves of hard currency in rebuilding his military-industrial complex, increasing its access to dual-use items and materials, and creating numerous military research and development projects. He also emphasized restoring the viability of the IAEC and Iraq’s former nuclear scientists....

There is an extensive, yet fragmentary and circumstantial, body of evidence suggesting that Saddam pursued a strategy to maintain a capability to return to WMD after sanctions were lifted by preserving assets and expertise.

Was the threat from Saddam Hussein contained prior to the war? No. Saddam, right up to the invasion, was providing $25,000 to families of Palestinian homicide bombers. Some examples: Raghib Ahmad Izat Jarradat, Ahmjad Hassinah, Imad Al-Dib Badir Al-Dayah, Usama Muhammad Id Bahr and Nabil Mahmud Jamil Halbiyyah, and Fadi Bhabayah. Saddam's regime sponsored an Abu Sayyaf attack in Zomboanga City in the Philippines. Zarqawi, who had a good relationship with the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) according to Al Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubaydah, was the mastermind of the assassination of Lawrence Foley, and trained terrorists in the use of ricin for possible attacks in Europe.

Coming back to the "threat could easily become imminent" theme: Saddam Hussein, the King of Terror with a vehement hatred of the United States of America, demonstrated his intent to use chemical WMD in several instances, attacking Iranians and Kurds. It seems to follow that when his WMD programs reached completion (Wikipedia: Iraq had intended to restart all banned weapons programs as soon as multilateral sanctions against it had been dropped, a prospect that the Iraqi government saw coming soon) it would be hard to deter him, and if Saddam had nuclear capability he would terrorize his neighbors. According to Charles A. Duelfer, "Saddam sought to sustain the requisite knowledge base to restart the program eventually and, to the extent it did not threaten the Iraqi efforts to get out from under sanctions, to sustain the inherent capability to produce such weapons as circumstances permitted in the future." "Saddam did not abandon his nuclear ambitions. . . . Those around Saddam seemed quite convinced that once sanctions were ended, and all other things being equal, Saddam would renew his efforts in this field." "Over time, and with the infusion of funding and resources following acceptance of the oil-for-food program, Iraq effectively shortened the time that would be required to re-establish the chemical weapons production capacity." "By 2003, Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agent in a period of months and nerve agent in a less than a year or two." "While no facilities were found producing chemical or biological agents on a large scale, many clandestine laboratories operating under the Iraqi Intelligence Services were found to be engaged in small-scale production of chemical nerve agents, sulfur mustard, nitrogen mustard, ricin, alfatoxin, and other unspecified biological agents." This was a sophisticated trick to provide plausible deniability for Hussein's regime. Other official reports concluded with "high confidence" that "Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions." Saddam's massive oil fortunes could help him achieve his goals.

Delaying the invasion was wrong considering that once the sanctions collapsed and Iraq was viewed in a much more positive light and had a better reputation, finding international support for regime change would be tough. The rogue state of Iraq's supply of chemical and biological experts and requisite industrial base was a significant threat. Also threatening was Saddam's ability to share WMD supplies and knowledge with terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. We needed to end Iraq's opportunity to distribute WMD to and collaborate with countries like Syria and Libya, in the event that the WMD would become more difficult to discover and target for destruction because they would be spread out. Disarmament requires a cooperative regime which allows unfettered access to its weapons facilities and works wholeheartedly to build confidence, and this cooperation clearly was not going to occur. In practical terms, for various reasons mentioned previously, we could not afford to treat differently WMD stockpiles (many of which were later moved to Syria) vs. Saddam's crash CBRN programs to quickly mobilize them with little risk of detection.

An Alternate Future
With UN inspections and sanctions going the way they had been from 1991-2003, and without intervention, Saddam would have had the opportunity to continue to hide WMDs, move them to Syria, let terrorists get a hold of them, and use them on his own people and neighbors.

Why Didn't Saddam Use WMD
Saddam Hussein may have chosen not to deploy chemical weapons that were readily available and not yet transferred to Syriafor several possible reasons:
  • fear of nuclear retaliation
  • weather (wind, etc.) patterns that were not favorable
  • belief that coalition forces would not be able to topple him due to erroneous reporting by military officers
[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]

posted by A Sinner at 8/24/2006 02:09:00 PM

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