thedrifter
03-07-04, 08:08 AM
03-05-2004
More Questions on Iraqi WMD Debate
Second in a series
By Roger Moore
Which side do you err on if you’re the president and you face a major international crisis involving a tyrannical regime your country has already fought that may or may not have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)? Especially when you know that your nation’s military and intelligence capabilities had suffered deep cuts for almost a decade?
Do you wait and repair your defense infrastructure and gather intel, and refrain from putting a plan into action until the enemy has attacked you multiple times?
Or do you presume the worst and take decisive action once and for all?
Those are the key questions that emerge in the wake of our failure – thus far – to discover major caches of chemical and biological – and nuclear – weapons in Iraq.
As I noted in an earlier article, there was broad agreement among weapons experts in the United States, Great Britain and other western countries that Iraq had covertly maintained WMD capabilities after 1991 in defiance of the United Nations (“Some Questions for Scott Ritter,” DefenseWatch, Feb. 23, 2004).
Failure to locate major weapons caches has prompted critics of Operation Iraqi Freedom to suggest either ineptness or even deliberate wrongdoing on the administration’s part, but this appears more grounded in partisan politics than by an honest reading of the international consensus on Iraq preceding the outbreak of war last March.
Consider this cross-section of evidence:
A 1991 Defense Intelligence Agency assessment (cited in The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of Conflict in the Gulf, by retired Marine Lt. Gen. Bernard Trainor and New York Times military correspondent Michael R. Gordon) concluded: “Had the Persian Gulf War not occurred, Iraq could have produced its first nuclear weapon in early 1993. Iraq began a nuclear program in the early 1970s …. ”
With 30-plus years of a nuclear weapons development program by a man who believed himself to be the modern day re-incarnation of Nebuchadnezzar, and we’re to believe that he was going to just walk away from his “vision” with no credible proof of it?
The DIA’s 1991 conclusion that if sanctions and intrusive U.N. inspections ceased, Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon within two to four years [emphasis added] must have been a major concern when the Bush administration took office in early 2001 – because the U.N. inspections had ceased two years earlier.
Wouldn’t it be realistic for the administration to worry that between late 1998 and 2002 would have been enough time under the DIA assessment for Iraq to “bring the pieces together” and re-constitute its nuclear weapons program?
In his report to the United Nations on Jan. 27, 2003, Hans Blix, the executive director of the U.N. weapons inspectors (UNMOVIC), noted that some 3,000 pages of Iraqi documents relating to “the laser enrichment of uranium” supported the inspectors’ concerns that extensive documents on Iraqi WMD programs were being hidden in private homes.
In regards to chemical weapons, Blix noted a record called the “Air Force document.” This document included the following information from the Iraqi Air Force: Of the 19,500 chemical bombs the Iraqi Air Force claimed to have dropped during the period 1983-1988. UNSCOM and UNMOVIC accounted for 13,000 bombs, leaving some 6,000 VX-laden bombs with about 1,000 metric tons of chemical agent unaccounted for. UNSCOM inspectors found the original "Air Force document" in an Iraqi Air Force headquarters safe in 1998 only to have it seized by Iraqi minders. Furthermore, the document noted in terms of biological weapons:
“Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 liters of this biological warfare agent, which it states it unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991. Iraq has provided little evidence for this production and no convincing evidence for its destruction.”
Blix continued in his report:
“There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared, and that at least some of this was retained after the declared destruction date. It might still exist. Either it should be found and be destroyed under UNMOVIC supervision or else convincing evidence should be produced to show that it was, indeed, destroyed in 1991.”
“As I reported to the Council on 19 December last year, Iraq did not declare a significant quantity, some 650 kg, of bacterial growth media, which was acknowledged as imported in Iraq's submission to the Amorim panel in February 1999. As part of its 7 December 2002 declaration, Iraq resubmitted the Amorim panel document, but the table showing this particular import of media was not included. The absence of this table would appear to be deliberate as the pages of the resubmitted document were renumbered.”
“In the letter of 24 January to the President of the [U.N. Security] Council, Iraq's Foreign Minister stated that ‘all imported quantities of growth media were declared.’ This is not evidence. I note that the quantity of media involved would suffice to produce, for example, about 5,000 liters of concentrated anthrax.”
How much evidence is enough when you’re dealing with these types of weapons?
U.N. Resolution 687 spelled out clearly the terms of the cessation of hostilities against Iraq in 1991. It was incumbent upon Iraq to fulfill the terms of the accord and ensuing U.N. resolutions – not the United States or the United Nations.
Furthermore, amid the fanfare of Iraq Survey Group director David Kay’s resignation in late January – drowned out by Bush critics’ chorus that the “evil United States” had struck again in our quest for empire – a small but critical story went all but unnoticed.
The London Telegraph article on Jan. 25 (“Saddam's WMD hidden in Syria, says Iraq survey chief”) cited Kay as revealing that his inspectors “had uncovered evidence that unspecified [WMD-related] materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year's war to overthrow Saddam.” Kay went on to say, “We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons.”
But how much anthrax or VX would you need if you were an al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas or Islamic Jihad terrorist, with known cells in the United States, Mexico and Central America and you wanted to inflict damage on the United States?
That brings us back to a central – and still-unresolved – question from our decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein: Did Iraq possess enough Weapons of Mass Destruction to harm the United States militarily?
As of now, the best evidence says, possibly, maybe even probably not.
But the key question, did Iraq possess enough Weapons of Mass Destruction for terrorists and/or Fourth Generation forces to inflict damage on our country?
The answer is, almost certainly. We know that Osama bin Laden and others have been actively seeking WMD materials and weapons to use against us. And there is no debate over the question of would they attempt to do so if they got their hands on Iraqi WMD.
Why is there a controversy at all over this?
Roger Moore is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at rmoore_dw@yahoo.com. Send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=397&rnd=685.8882967991607
Sempers,
Roger
:marine:
More Questions on Iraqi WMD Debate
Second in a series
By Roger Moore
Which side do you err on if you’re the president and you face a major international crisis involving a tyrannical regime your country has already fought that may or may not have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)? Especially when you know that your nation’s military and intelligence capabilities had suffered deep cuts for almost a decade?
Do you wait and repair your defense infrastructure and gather intel, and refrain from putting a plan into action until the enemy has attacked you multiple times?
Or do you presume the worst and take decisive action once and for all?
Those are the key questions that emerge in the wake of our failure – thus far – to discover major caches of chemical and biological – and nuclear – weapons in Iraq.
As I noted in an earlier article, there was broad agreement among weapons experts in the United States, Great Britain and other western countries that Iraq had covertly maintained WMD capabilities after 1991 in defiance of the United Nations (“Some Questions for Scott Ritter,” DefenseWatch, Feb. 23, 2004).
Failure to locate major weapons caches has prompted critics of Operation Iraqi Freedom to suggest either ineptness or even deliberate wrongdoing on the administration’s part, but this appears more grounded in partisan politics than by an honest reading of the international consensus on Iraq preceding the outbreak of war last March.
Consider this cross-section of evidence:
A 1991 Defense Intelligence Agency assessment (cited in The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of Conflict in the Gulf, by retired Marine Lt. Gen. Bernard Trainor and New York Times military correspondent Michael R. Gordon) concluded: “Had the Persian Gulf War not occurred, Iraq could have produced its first nuclear weapon in early 1993. Iraq began a nuclear program in the early 1970s …. ”
With 30-plus years of a nuclear weapons development program by a man who believed himself to be the modern day re-incarnation of Nebuchadnezzar, and we’re to believe that he was going to just walk away from his “vision” with no credible proof of it?
The DIA’s 1991 conclusion that if sanctions and intrusive U.N. inspections ceased, Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon within two to four years [emphasis added] must have been a major concern when the Bush administration took office in early 2001 – because the U.N. inspections had ceased two years earlier.
Wouldn’t it be realistic for the administration to worry that between late 1998 and 2002 would have been enough time under the DIA assessment for Iraq to “bring the pieces together” and re-constitute its nuclear weapons program?
In his report to the United Nations on Jan. 27, 2003, Hans Blix, the executive director of the U.N. weapons inspectors (UNMOVIC), noted that some 3,000 pages of Iraqi documents relating to “the laser enrichment of uranium” supported the inspectors’ concerns that extensive documents on Iraqi WMD programs were being hidden in private homes.
In regards to chemical weapons, Blix noted a record called the “Air Force document.” This document included the following information from the Iraqi Air Force: Of the 19,500 chemical bombs the Iraqi Air Force claimed to have dropped during the period 1983-1988. UNSCOM and UNMOVIC accounted for 13,000 bombs, leaving some 6,000 VX-laden bombs with about 1,000 metric tons of chemical agent unaccounted for. UNSCOM inspectors found the original "Air Force document" in an Iraqi Air Force headquarters safe in 1998 only to have it seized by Iraqi minders. Furthermore, the document noted in terms of biological weapons:
“Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 liters of this biological warfare agent, which it states it unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991. Iraq has provided little evidence for this production and no convincing evidence for its destruction.”
Blix continued in his report:
“There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared, and that at least some of this was retained after the declared destruction date. It might still exist. Either it should be found and be destroyed under UNMOVIC supervision or else convincing evidence should be produced to show that it was, indeed, destroyed in 1991.”
“As I reported to the Council on 19 December last year, Iraq did not declare a significant quantity, some 650 kg, of bacterial growth media, which was acknowledged as imported in Iraq's submission to the Amorim panel in February 1999. As part of its 7 December 2002 declaration, Iraq resubmitted the Amorim panel document, but the table showing this particular import of media was not included. The absence of this table would appear to be deliberate as the pages of the resubmitted document were renumbered.”
“In the letter of 24 January to the President of the [U.N. Security] Council, Iraq's Foreign Minister stated that ‘all imported quantities of growth media were declared.’ This is not evidence. I note that the quantity of media involved would suffice to produce, for example, about 5,000 liters of concentrated anthrax.”
How much evidence is enough when you’re dealing with these types of weapons?
U.N. Resolution 687 spelled out clearly the terms of the cessation of hostilities against Iraq in 1991. It was incumbent upon Iraq to fulfill the terms of the accord and ensuing U.N. resolutions – not the United States or the United Nations.
Furthermore, amid the fanfare of Iraq Survey Group director David Kay’s resignation in late January – drowned out by Bush critics’ chorus that the “evil United States” had struck again in our quest for empire – a small but critical story went all but unnoticed.
The London Telegraph article on Jan. 25 (“Saddam's WMD hidden in Syria, says Iraq survey chief”) cited Kay as revealing that his inspectors “had uncovered evidence that unspecified [WMD-related] materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year's war to overthrow Saddam.” Kay went on to say, “We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons.”
But how much anthrax or VX would you need if you were an al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas or Islamic Jihad terrorist, with known cells in the United States, Mexico and Central America and you wanted to inflict damage on the United States?
That brings us back to a central – and still-unresolved – question from our decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein: Did Iraq possess enough Weapons of Mass Destruction to harm the United States militarily?
As of now, the best evidence says, possibly, maybe even probably not.
But the key question, did Iraq possess enough Weapons of Mass Destruction for terrorists and/or Fourth Generation forces to inflict damage on our country?
The answer is, almost certainly. We know that Osama bin Laden and others have been actively seeking WMD materials and weapons to use against us. And there is no debate over the question of would they attempt to do so if they got their hands on Iraqi WMD.
Why is there a controversy at all over this?
Roger Moore is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at rmoore_dw@yahoo.com. Send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=DefenseWatch.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=397&rnd=685.8882967991607
Sempers,
Roger
:marine: