EDITOR’S NOTE: Additional sources for the information in this column are available here.
Saddam Hussein was a WMD threat and a terror threat to the United States and its allies.
Too many of the post-9/11 critics have forgotten or were never aware of this fact. Even in last week’s NRO symposium, writers called the invasion of Iraq an “unjust war,” an “optional war,” and finally a “result of the flawed intelligence that skewed the perceived threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime to the United States.”
There is little doubt that the pre-war intelligence on Iraq was faulty, mostly because of Saddam’s continuing attempts to convince Iran that he still maintained a potent WMD capacity despite years of sanctions. Unfortunately, in the years of recriminations following the invasion of Iraq the actual truth was lost, until it became commonplace for even those who supported the invasion to admit that Saddam did not pose a WMD threat. Likewise, as he was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks, many believe he was not a terror threat either.
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Before the consensus is written in stone, it is worth going over the evidence collected since the removal of the Saddam regime. Leaving aside the fact that he slaughtered more than a million of his own people and was prone to launching unprovoked wars against his neighbors — both good reasons for his violent removal — what threat did Saddam actually pose? Let’s go through just a sliver of the evidence.
SADDAM AND WMDS
When American tanks smashed into Baghdad, Saddam had already completed construction of an anthrax production facility, which was a week away from going live. If it had been permitted to go into production, this one facility could have produced ten tons of weaponized anthrax a year. Experts estimate that anthrax spores that infect the skin will kill 50 percent of untreated victims. Inhaled anthrax will kill 100 percent of untreated victims and 50 percent of those receiving immediate treatment. That means that a mere 1 percent of Saddam’s annual production (200 pounds) sprayed by crop-duster over New York City would have killed upwards of three million people.
Anthrax, however, was far from the only WMD Saddam was actively researching and working assiduously to acquire. He also had teams working overtime to create a stockpile of some of the most deadly biological weapons possible. Several years ago, the press had a field day when two suspected mobile bio-labs, presented at the U.N. as evidence of Saddam’s continuing WMD development programs, actually turned out to be weather-balloon stations. That same press, however, then ignored the fact that postwar investigators found five actual mobile bio-labs in and around Baghdad. One of these labs was discovered in a mosque, which had been placed off-limits to prewar U.N. inspectors. Another was found in Baghdad’s Central Public Health Laboratory. One can imagine the anguished cries from the Left if we had bombed what the Iraqis claimed was a public-health facility. Saddam even had a huge bio-warfare production facility masquerading as the Samarra Drug Company. This facility would have been capable of producing up to 10,000 liters of deadly pathogens a year. It was less than a month from going into production when the invasion of Iraq began. If this plant had turned its attention to botulinum toxin, it could have produced enough in a few months to wipe out the world. Again, how would bombing a plant that Saddam would claim was producing life-saving drugs have played in the media?
Investigators also found two labs that appeared to be producing animal vaccines. However, according to investigators, all of the equipment was “dual use . . . and easily diverted to produce smallpox or other pathogenic viruses.” Another nearby lab was busily working on cowpox vaccines, with the exact same equipment necessary to create smallpox. One should note that even a thimbleful of smallpox germs would be enough to kill tens of millions. Smallpox, placed in the hands of a terrorist group and released at a sporting event, would devastate a large swath of the United States. It should be noted that each of these facilities was staffed or often visited by persons previously identified by the U.N. as being associated with Saddam’s pre–Desert Storm WMD programs. One facility, often visited by Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha al-Azawi, better known to Western intelligence as Dr. Germ, maintained, according to investigators, a “small” capacity for production of organic agents. When it comes to smallpox, a “small” capacity is all one needs to create global havoc.
Biological weapons were an important and dangerous thrust of Saddam’s WMD program, but far from all that his regime was working on. In 1991, Saddam moved all of his WMD specialists out of government labs and into universities, once again making them off-limits to inspectors and coalition bombers. According to documents discovered after the war, by 1997 the number of university “instructors” doing solely WMD work numbered 3,300, with another 700 to 800 dispatched to WMD-related facilities to help with technical problems. Between 1996 and 2002 — the eve of the invasion — spending on WMD projects increased 40-fold, and the number of specific projects increased from 40 to 3,200. Top officials captured after the collapse of the regime repeatedly told investigators that Saddam’s WMD projects were in overdrive and ready to go into production the moment sanctions were lifted.
I had thought we simply called the bluff of a madman. This sobering article is evidence that we stopped a dangerous developing terror threat. Our fight against Islamofacism was and is about more than just Al Qaeda.
A good freind of mine did a tour in Iraq during '04 & '05. He'd been in country about 2 months when a routine patrol literally stumbled over the tail of a MiG 29 fighter buried in the desert. Further excavation revealed another buried nearby. This particular area was patrolled rather heavily and only the shifting of sand revealed this fighter plane.
Imagine how easily it was for Saddam to hide small quantities of lethal poison.
Yes, we know he had chemical WMDs. We know that he used them. Evidence points to his trying to obtain some nuclear capability, possibly building some sort of dirty bomb. He was certainly a threat to his neighbors Iran and Syria and to his own people. Was he a risk to the US itself? As these things are assessed, probably a non-zero but small risk. The real question is was our response in light of the expenditure of blood and treasure proportionate with that risk? I don’t think so. If were to flatten every part of the world which represents a potential risk to us, no matter how small, a lot of places would now be glass paved parking lots as the only possible way would be to use nukes. Think of Randy Newman’s song Political Science.
So, I guess we should have deliberately waited for him to restock his bio/chem arsenal, and exterminate the population of Kuwait, with the Chinese and Russians backing him fully with offers of military protection. What would we do then? Nuke Baghdad? I doubt it. Send our troops into Iraq wearing biohazard suits? Not realistic. Most likely we would have abandonned the Arabian peninsula to him. Let's face it: it was his WMD during the 1990's that forced us to tolerate him that whole decade (the UN legalistic nonsense being just a cover story) and we took him out during a tiny period when he had no ready-to-use WMD, having exhausted his pre-sanctions stock, and just before he restocked.
I am fully humiliated after you have cogently refuted me point by point. You will note that I agreed that Saddam was a bad guy who represented a potential danger to us. We should have taken him out in the 1st Gulf war. Failing that, a case can be made for getting rid of him rather than having all the embargos and no-fly zones. The point is that having gotten rid of him, we have lost thousands of brave service people and disrupted the lives of thousands more to no apparent purpose without making us any safer.
Thanks for this great summary! Can you please provide some links or references for readers who would like to go in depth on the various points you raised? Thanks.
I suspect the 9/11 commission provided most of the "Documents" he mentions but I really wish that Mr. Lacey had cited references for this piece. He's obviously done some pretty extensive research but without references to the original sources his claims are weakened.
This article is all well and good but it is eight years too late. The perception -- now encased in cement -- is that no WMD were found in Iraq after the second Gulf War. The public was expecting nuclear bombs on top of ballistic missiles and when they were not found, and the war went bad, and the Democrats kept chanting "no WMDs, no WMDs", and the Bush administration was virtually silent, well, here we are.
Saddam was paying a $25,000 bonus for the heads of Americans in Indonesia. It was in the NYT. Look it up. If that wasn't an act of war then tell me what is.
When I looked it up, it seems Saddam was paying $$$ to Palestinians for bombings in Israel. Apparently, it was not an act of war with respect to the US.
Good summary. As you indicate,the potential threats in 1990 were musch more immediate than the threats in 2002. As you note, most of the WMD "programs" touted as threats were in development stages, to be ready "within 5 years", or "ready to reconstitute".
In other words, not present threats and not -in reality -what was used by our leaders to portray a clear and present danger justifying a preemptive invasion of Iraq. I believe that Colin Powell has publicly distanced himself from his UN speech in which he used bogus intel to explain why we were going to invade Iraq again. And I note David Kay and the Iraq Survey Group reports after their exhaustive search for WMD after the invasion. The WMD weren't there. To say that they COULD HAVE BEEN WITH A LITTLE LUCK AND A SUDDEN DEVELOPMENT PUSH does not approach the level of alarm that was used to stoke up the war fever in late 2002.
The stated possibility that a few mobile labs could go into production and produce enough botulism to "destroy the world" is laughable,as is the stated potential for anthrax production. Maybe in novels and movies, but using the former US bio and chemical weapons programs as an example, not in real life. As we saw in the great US Mail Anthrax Panic, an anthrax scare is mostly a "scare". The delivery systems necessary to create a tactical threat from biological weapons did not exist in Saddam's 2002 arsenal, nor was there ever found a plan to create reliable delivery systems for bio weapons. The US experience showed that anthrax alerts were more of a nuisance than a threat.
I just do not find the lists of small arms weapons compelling. The numbers shown are meager stockpiles at best. How can the puny stockpile numbers show a compelling danger to nation states with effective arsenals. The lists wouldn't impress your average state chapter of the NRA. Your average weekend gun and knife show in any urban area can probably muster more firepower. It is not convincing that there was a threat to the US here that justified what has turned out to be an invasion and 8 year occupation.
As to the posts on this thread indicating that Russian jets buried in the sand were somehow an insidious threat to anyone, does anyone really assert that there was an effective Iraqui air power that could inhibit for one second anything the USAF wanted to do in Iraqi air space from 1990 on? And, obviously, a fighter jet buried completely in sand probably presents more evidence of an attempt to destroy an air squadron's capability rather than enhance its lethality.
I'm wondering if you actually read the article. Did you miss the many mentions of facilities that would have been producing in one to six months?
Regardless, it would have been imposible for the US to wait 5 years and then attack. The coalition that was formed after GulfWarI was breaking up, and the Saudis were getting ready to ask us to leave. In 5 years, it would have been impossible to do anything about the threat. The attack had to occur when it did, or it would have had to wait until after millions had died.
You help make my point. The article only points out might have beens and future plans of Saddam Hussein.
In 2002 we were hyped to consider a clear and present danger that Iraq was ready willing and able to blow and go with WMD. It wasn't so. The USA "homeland" was not a viable target of Iraq's military, no matter what kind of fantasy weapons are presumed.
