The Manufactured Threat

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The Bush administration has floated several reasons for going to war with Saddam Hussein. The one that seems to have the most currency is that we need to stop Saddam before he strikes us or someone else.

Saddam has been so thoroughly demonized by American politicians, the media, and your local coffee vendor that nearly any claim about him is accepted by a large number of people without burdening themselves with issues of proof. Is there evidence that Saddam Hussein has and will use weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) against others anytime in the near future?

The CIA’s most recent assessment of Iraq, parts of which were declassified in October, is striking for its puny, yet highly indignant account of a slender arsenal (“Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs,” CIA: October 2002). But it does tell us two vitally important things. First, Iraq does not have a nuclear weapon and, unless it gets whopping big help from someone, won’t have one for years. Second, although we have no idea what chemical and biological stockpiles exist in Iraq, the CIA tells us there are no missiles that come even close to being able to deliver such weapons to the U.S. There is no imminent danger or grave risk to any American apartment or farmhouse, grocery store or baseball diamond from putative Iraqi weapons, and this according to the Administration’s main source of information about Iraq.

The Blair Dossier, issued to rally the world behind an immediate attack on Iraq, is interesting for its recounting of Iraq’s repeated failure to make significant progress in producing nuclear weapons. Iraq has been pursuing nuclear weapons since the 1950s, receiving considerable assistance from the Soviet Union beginning in 1959. In the 1980s Iraq commenced an electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS) program, but could never get the technology to work and abandoned it by 1991. In August 1990, Iraq initiated a crash program to build a single nuclear weapon within a year, contemplating rapid development of a small 50 machine gas centrifuge cascade to produce weapons-grade highly enriched uranium using fuel from their Soviet research reactor, but the program had evinced little success by the time of the Gulf War (“Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government”).

So we know that Iraq has repeatedly tried and failed to produce a nuclear weapon. We know that it had been at it for nearly four decades at the time the UN weapons inspectors went and dismantled it all. It’s true that a soufflé requires know-how as much as eggs and a hot oven. And the one thing the U.N. inspectors could not destroy was the human capital invested in Iraq’s nuclear program. But is that enough to make the nuclear threat credible? We are asked to believe that unsuccessful work conducted over 40 years and with help from the Soviet Union and others might now be successfully conducted in some 46 months when Iraq’s resources are monumentally constrained and every possible weapon component or tool—from test tube to centrifuge rotor—must be procured covertly with most developed nations refusing to offer the least assistance. What about chemical and biological weapons? What both the CIA Assessment and the Blair Dossier make clear is that no one knows what Iraq has. (What they don’t make clear is just how much of it, in the 1970s and 1980s, came from Anglo-American sources. This would be useful, as we could gauge a lot from it.)

These government briefs go to great lengths to list chemical and biological stocks that could possibly have remained after the UN inspections ended in 1998, yet remarkably the Blair Dossier, an unabashed manifesto for war, doesn’t hide how speculative a proposition this is. It quotes a report prepared by Richard Butler, the last head of the UN weapons inspectors and a man incapable of hiding his rabid anti-Iraq sentiments. Butler’s UN Security Council brief importantly, even surprisingly, acknowledges, “Iraq undertook extensive, unilateral and secret destruction of large quantities of proscribed weapons and items.” Then, the British government concluded, “Without U.N. weapons inspectors, it is very difficult therefore to be sure about the true nature of many of Iraq’s facilities.”

The problem when the UN inspectors were there, and the problem now, is that some people will forego any rules of honest proof: if we find the weapons, then they exist; and if we don’t find the weapons, they exist, too, but are hidden.

Sure, Iraq has some (and perhaps very few) chemical and biological weapons. But what Iraq lacks, and both the CIA Assessment and the Blair Dossier go into this in great detail, is the means of propelling these poisons any great distance outside of Iraq. The British government maintains that Saddam has the delivery mechanisms to threaten only “Cyprus, Eastern Turkey, Tehran, and Israel” and that this is not bound to change anytime soon as the “development of new longer-range missiles is likely to be a slow process” because various restrictions on Iraq have been very successful, including those on the use of foreign experts, the conduct of test flights in ranges greater than 150 km, and the acquisition of guidance and control technology.

Some people fear an attack not on the U.S., but on Israel. But whatever actual weapons Saddam has, if he can’t deliver them, they mean little. According to the Blair Dossier, he has no more than 20 al-Hussein (SCUD) missiles (probably far fewer), that are limited in range to 650 km. UN agreements limit Iraq to missiles that cannot reach beyond 150 km. Notably, there is no evidence in the Blair Dossier or the CIA assessment of any activity since 1998 on the part of the Iraqi government to test a missile that can travel farther than 150 km. This is hardly surprising. Such activity is easily monitored by American, British, and Israeli intelligence. This means that whatever chemical or biological weapons we may guess or insist he possesses can’t effectively be delivered very far. This also limits the cursedness of the mobile units purported to contain biological weapons, so often invoked as uninspectable. If Saddam can’t deliver his weapons, they are not much threat outside his own country or those contiguous to Iraq.

The idea that chemical or biological weapons might be indiscriminately scattered well outside of Iraq after having been transported in a suitcase or some other innocuous device by a terrorist verges on the preposterous. Iraqi borders are elaborately policed, as anyone who tries to bring shoes or foodstuffs into the country can attest. Even if the substances should find their way across the border, the technological difficulties of dispersing the agent effectively are immense. U.S. experimenters, who have far more weapons of mass destruction at their fingertips, as well as the resources to hone their lethal delivery and effects, have worked for decades to create a truly effective dispersal mechanism and failed.

Although the two governments most raucously calling for war have provided nothing in the way of proof of a grave and imminent threat from Saddam Hussein, let’s assume that things are worse than the U.S. and UK have outlined. Assume numerous nasty weapons poised for an attack. Is this a valid justification for going to war with Iraq? Bush maintains that a regime change in Iraq is necessary because Saddam might unleash his weapons. In a speech in Cincinnati, the president invoked the specter of an Iraqi-generated mushroom cloud and, demonstrating that he doesn’t understand the effective use of metaphor, described this as a smoking gun.

The CIA’s assessment is quite different. Recently, George Tenet declassified some material concerning Iraq after pressure from the Senate Intelligence Committee. In his letter of October 7, 2002 to Senator Bob Graham, Tenet wrote: “Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or C.B.W. (chemical and biological weapons) against the United States.

“Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions. Such terrorism might involve conventional means, as with Iraq’s unsuccessful attempt at a terrorist offensive in 1991, or C.B.W.

“Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a W.M.D. attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him” (Letter dated October 7, 2002 to Senator Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida and Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, by George J. Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence, about decisions to declassify material related to the debate about Iraq).

There was also a closed hearing and Tenet declassified a portion of testimony offered: “Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan: ...[If Saddam] did not feel threatened, is it likely that he would initiate an attack using a weapon of mass destruction?

“Senior Intelligence Witness: ...My judgment would be that the probability of him initiating an attack—let me put a time frame on it—in the foreseeable future, given the conditions we understand now, the likelihood I think would be low.

“Senator Levin: ...But what about his use of weapons of mass destruction? If we initiate an attack and he thought he was in extremis or otherwise, what’s the likelihood in response to our attack that he would use chemical or biological weapons?

“Senior Intelligence Witness: Pretty high, in my view” (Tenet letter, October 7, 2002).

The Blair Dossier doesn’t offer the discordance with government policy displayed in the differences between Bush and Tenet. But it also does not make a case that Saddam is itching to use his weapons. Nor does the Blair government so grandiosely assume that it might be in Saddam’s sights when the weapons are prepped for use (although there is one patriotic reference to UK Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus that are within Iraqi range). The British government’s psychologizing over Saddam maintains that he has a fetish for toxic weapons in order to strike fear in his neighbors: “... chemical and biological weapons play an important role in Iraqi military thinking: intelligence shows that Saddam attaches great importance to the possession of chemical and biological weapons which he regards as being the basis for Iraqi regional power. He believes that respect for Iraq rests on its possession of these weapons and the missiles capable of delivering them.”

There’s a lot that’s interesting in this assessment, including the fact that the British maintain that chemical and biological weapons are only in his quiver to make others in the region shiver. But even more interestingly, the British never show that he’s likely to use them. Their tacit conclusion is that Saddam sees the threat as more powerful than the execution. It’s a reasonable assessment, since Saddam hasn’t used any weapon outside of Iraq in over a decade, yet has managed to remain a source of concern and tension in the region.

Why hasn’t Saddam used his weapons? Why is he unlikely to? The same reason he didn’t use chemical or biological weapons against Americans in the Gulf War: he wants to stay in power. He may be a bully and a murderous tyrant, but he knows that America can crush him should it decide to. The frightening irony of the War to Stop Weapons of Mass Destruction is that if Bush prosecutes this war, then and only then do we put Saddam in a position where there is absolutely no reason for reason for him not to use everything he’s got. Regime change is a euphemism for a military campaign that doesn’t cease until Saddam is dead. He might decide that his place in history will be assured by hurling every last gram from the Iraqi weapons apothecary at the enemy. Ironically, Saddam can’t deploy these weapons (if they exist) to the U.S., but Bush’s proposed war would put Americans conveniently within his grasp. American ground troops seem more likely at risk than Israel—often cited as in danger from Saddam—since what missiles Iraq’s got are neither modern nor stealthy and Israel must surely be aware of the risks attendant on Bush’s proposed war and be planning appropriate, very likely disproportionate, measures. Saddam’s got nothing to lose in deploying his weapons if the United States wages an all-out attack against Iraq aimed at his destruction. He’s a dead man bombing.

The obvious policy worth pursuing with more vigor and honesty than either the U.S. or UK governments have attempted is to get the weapons inspectors back into Iraq. In a summary report to the Security Council, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (who conducted the nuclear weapons aspect of the UN inspections) wrote: “Document GOV/INF/827 reported that there were no indications that Iraq had achieved its programme objective of producing nuclear weapons nor were there indications that Iraq had produced more than a few grams of weapon-usable nuclear material or had otherwise acquired such material. It also reported that there were no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance and that all weapon-usable nuclear material (research reactor fuel) has been removed from Iraq.” Several other reports were similarly summarized, indicating how thoroughly the nuclear weapons program of Iraq was dismantled.

Why did the inspectors leave? Richard Butler, head of the UN inspectors in 1998, explained to the Security Council why he decided to remove all inspectors from Iraq: “On 16 December 1998, the Executive Chairman [sic] wrote to the President of the Council, confirming his previous evening’s conversation with the President, during which he told the President that he had decided to remove all the Commission’s personnel from Iraq. IAEA personnel also departed. This decision was taken in consultation with IAEA. The executive chair’s letter noted that the prime considerations in his decision were to ensure the safety and security of the Commission’s personnel and the need to act immediately” (Report of the Executive Chairman on the activities of the Special Commission established by the Secretary-General pursuant to paragraph 9 (b) (i) of resolution 687 (1991), United Nations Security Council document S/1999/401, 9 April 1999, paragraph 24).

Butler acknowledges that on the very day the inspectors withdrew, the U.S. and the UK proceeded to bomb Iraq, “On 16 December 1998, military action was initiated against Iraq by the United States and the United Kingdom (S/1998/1181 and S/1998/1182).”

Even though we pulled the inspectors out, can’t we send them back in? Of course we can, but the coverage of the wrangling over inspections has repeatedly failed to report one of the main reasons Baghdad prevaricates and is so distrustful of the process: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1284. Up to December 1999, Security Council Resolutions linked a successful weapons inspection and eradication program with the lifting of sanctions. But SCR 1284 made a significant change, deciding that full compliance with UN weapons inspections would lead only to a suspension, and not a lifting, of economic sanctions, and that sanctions could be re-imposed every 120 days on the wishes of any one permanent member of the Security Council (United Nations Security Council Resolution 1284,  December 17, 1999).

Saddam knows that Bush and Blair want him out and believes that either one of them could use his Security Council vote to keep sanctions in place indefinitely. The Iraqis, not unreasonably, wonder whether sanctions will ever be lifted as long as Saddam remains in power. Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri asked the Security Council this very question earlier this year and received no answer.

Additionally, to be successful, weapons inspectors can’t be allowed to conduct military spying. The existence of U.S. spies among the inspectors may not be universally acknowledged, but earlier this month the New York Times took it for granted, writing, “The reform followed the disclosure that a United States spy on the United Nations team had planted an electronic eavesdropping device in Baghdad that helped guide allied bombing in December 1998” (New York Times,  October 2, 2002). The head of UNMOVIC (the successor to UNSCOM) is reportedly aware that the integrity of the weapon inspections system has been damaged by this spying, especially since Iraq learned that the survival of the regime was put at risk when they cooperated.

What we need is a plan that puts teeth in the inspections, preferably one that doesn’t perpetuate the brutal sanctions that notably fail to punish Saddam Hussein, but that have caused enormous suffering and inexcusable deaths in the hundreds of thousands. What we don’t need is for the U.S. and UK to become increasingly belligerent, leaving Saddam convinced that he must react with deadly vengeance.

When an all-stick, no-carrot policy fails to work, it is dimwitted to propose as the only alternative a much bigger stick. This is a hysterical approach, utterly devoid of any sense of proportion or justice. It urges us to rain bombs down on innocent heads in order to stop a hypothetical future attack based on flimsy evidence. We need effective weapons eradication conducted under the auspices of the UN, not a cruel unilateral policy that leaves in its wake the tragedy of unnecessary death.

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M.L. Rantala is a freelance writer and editor of the Evergreen, the newspaper of the Hyde Park Cooperative Society (Chicago). She edited, with Arthur J. Milgram, Cloning: For and Against (Open Court, 1999).