This piece was originally published on June 20, 2003. We are putting it up on this website on 5/12/04 because it seems to us that the continuing search for Saddam's weapons is behind the extraordinary interrogation procedures at Abu Ghraib. Although this article explicitly indicates in a few places that finding the weapons is not really important, the tone of the words seems to be that finding them is important. The administration and its supporters seem to be obsessed with proving that they were justified in leading us to war because Saddam had these terrible weapons. This obsession, this fixation, seems to be clouding their minds and narrowing their vision.
Please note the last sentence of this article.
Saddam's Bombs? We'll Find Them
By KENNETH M. POLLACK / WASHINGTON / June 20, 2003
Where are Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? It's a good question, and unfortunately
we don't yet have a good answer. There is hope that the capture of Abid Hamid
Mahmoud al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein's closest aide, will provide the first solid
clues. In any event, the mystery will be solved in good time; the search for
Iraq's nonconvential weapons program has only just begun.
In the meantime, accusations are mounting that the Bush administration
made up the whole Iraqi weapons threat to justify an invasion. That is just
not
the case — America
and its allies had plenty of evidence before the war, and before President
Bush took office, indicating that Iraq was retaining its illegal weapons
programs.
As for allegations that some in the administration may have used slanted intelligence
claims in making their case against Saddam Hussein, they seem to have merit
and demand further investigation. But if the truth was stretched, it seems
to have
been done primarily to justify the timing of an invasion, not the merits of
one.
The fact that the sites we suspected of containing hidden weapons
before the war turned out to have nothing in them is not very significant.
American
intelligence
agencies never claimed to know exactly where or how the Iraqis were hiding
what they had — not in 1995, not in 1999 and not six months ago. It is very
possible that the "missing" facilities, weaponized agents,
precursor materials and even stored munitions all could still be hidden
in places
we never would have thought to look. This is exactly why, before the
war, so
few former
weapons inspectors had confidence that a new round of United Nations
inspections would find the items they were convinced Iraq was hiding.
At the heart of the mystery lies the fact that the Iraqis do not seem to have
deployed any stocks of munitions filled with nonconventional weapons. Why did
Saddam Hussein not hit coalition troops with a barrage of chemical and biological
weapons rather than allow his regime to fall? Why did we not find them in ammunition
dumps, ready to be fired?
Actually, there are many possible explanations. Saddam Hussein may
have underestimated the likelihood of war and not filled any chemical
weapons
before the invasion.
He may have been killed or gravely wounded in the "decapitation" strike
on the eve of the invasion and unable to give the orders. Or he may
have just been surprised by the extremely rapid pace of the coalition's
ground
advance
and the sudden collapse of the Republican Guard divisions surrounding
Baghdad. It is also possible that Iraq did not have the capacity
to make the weapons,
but given the prewar evidence, this is still the least likely explanation.
The one potentially important discovery made so far by American troops — two
tractor-trailers found in April and May that fit the descriptions of mobile germ-warfare
labs given by Iraqi defectors over the years — might well
point to a likely explanation for at least part of the mystery:
Iraq may
have decided
to keep only
a chemical and biological warfare production capability rather
than large stockpiles
of the munitions themselves. This would square with the fact that
several dozen chemical warfare factories were rebuilt after the
first gulf
war to produce
civilian pharmaceuticals, but were widely believed to be dual-use
plants capable of quickly
being converted back to chemical warfare production.
In truth, this was always the most likely scenario. Chemical and
biological warfare munitions, especially the crude varieties
that Iraq developed
during the Iran-Iraq
War, are dangerous to store and handle and they deteriorate quickly.
But they can be manufactured and put in warheads relatively rapidly — meaning
that there is little reason to have thousands of filled rounds
sitting around where
they might be found by international inspectors. It would have
been logical for Iraq to retain only some means of production,
which could
be hidden
with relative
ease and then used to churn out the munitions whenever Saddam
Hussein gave the word.
Still, no matter what the trailers turn out to be, the failure
so far to find weapons of mass destruction in no way invalidates
the
prewar
intelligence
data
indicating that Iraq had the clandestine capacity to build
them. There has long been an extremely strong case — based on evidence that largely predates
the Bush administration — that Iraq maintained programs in weapons of mass
destruction. It was this evidence, along with reports showing the clear failure
of United Nations efforts to impede Iraq's progress, that led the Clinton administration
to declare a policy of "regime change" for Iraq in
1998.
In 1995, for example, United Nations inspectors found Russian-made ballistic-missile
gyroscopes at the bottom of the Tigris River; Jordanian officials intercepted
others being smuggled into Iraq that same year. In July 1998, international
inspectors discovered an Iraqi document that showed Baghdad had lied about
the number of
chemical bombs it had dropped during the Iran-Iraq War, leaving some 6,000
such weapons unaccounted for. Iraq simply refused to concede that the document
even
existed.
These episodes, and others like them, explain why many former Clinton administration
officials, including myself (I was on the staff of the National Security Council
in the 90's), agreed with the Bush administration that a war would likely be
necessary to prevent Iraq from acquiring nuclear and other weapons. We may
not have agreed with the Bush team's timing or tactics, but none of us doubted
the
fundamental intelligence basis of its concerns about the Iraqi threat.
As for the estimates the Bush administration presented regarding Iraq's holdings
of weapons-related materials, they came from unchallenged evidence gathered
by United Nations inspectors (in many cases, from records of the companies
that
sold the materials to Iraq in the first place). For instance, Iraq admitted
importing 200 to 250 tons of precursor agents for VX nerve gas; it claimed
to have destroyed
these chemicals but never proved that it had done so. Even Hans Blix, the last
head weapons inspector and a leading skeptic of the need for an invasion, admitted
that the Iraqis refused to provide a credible accounting for these materials.
And it wasn't just the United States that was concerned
about Iraq's efforts. By 2002, British, Israeli and
German intelligence
services
had also concluded
that Iraq was probably far enough along in its nuclear
weapons program that it would be able to put together
one or more
bombs at some point
in the second
half
of this decade. The Germans were actually the most
fearful of all — in
2001 they leaked their estimate that Iraq might be
able to develop its first workable nuclear device in 2004.
Nor was it just government agencies that were alarmed. In the summer of 2002
I attended a meeting with more than a dozen former weapons inspectors from
half a dozen countries, along with another dozen experts on Iraq's weapons
programs.
Those present were asked whether they believed Iraq had a clandestine centrifuge
lab operating somewhere; everyone did. Several even said they believed the
Iraqis had a covert calutron program going as well. (Centrifuge and calutron
operations
allow a country to enrich uranium and produce the fissile material for a nuclear
bomb.)At no point before the war did the French, the Russians, the Chinese
or any other country with an intelligence operation capable of collecting information
in Iraq say it doubted that Baghdad was maintaining a clandestine weapons capability.
All that these countries ever disagreed with the United States on was what
to
do about it.
Which raises the real crux of the slanted-intelligence debate: the timing of
the war. Why was it necessary to put aside all of our other foreign policy
priorities to go to war with Iraq in the spring of 2003? It was always the
hardest part
of the Bush administration's argument to square with the evidence. And, distressingly,
there seems to be more than a little truth to claims that some members of the
administration skewed, exaggerated and even distorted raw intelligence to coax
the American people and reluctant allies into going to war against Iraq this
year.
Before the war, some administration officials clearly tended to emphasize in
public only the most dire aspects of the intelligence agencies' predictions.
For example, of greatest importance were the estimates of how close Iraq was
to obtaining a nuclear weapon. The major Western intelligence services essentially
agreed that Iraq could acquire one or more nuclear bombs within about four
to six years. However, all also indicated that it was possible Baghdad might
be
able to do so in as few as one or two years if, and only if, it were able to
acquire fissile material on the black market.
This latter prospect was not very likely. The Iraqis had been trying to buy
fissile material since the 1970's and had never been able to do so. Nevertheless,
some
Bush administration officials chose to stress the one-to-two-year possibility
rather than the more likely four-to-six year scenario. Needless to say, if
the public felt Iraq was still several years away from acquiring a nuclear
weapon
rather than just a matter of months, there probably would have been much less
support for war this spring.
Moreover, before the war I heard many complaints from friends still in government
that some Bush officials were mounting a ruthless campaign over intelligence
estimates. I was told that when government analysts wrote cautious assessments
of Iraq's capabilities, they were grilled and forced to go to unusual lengths
to defend their judgments, and some were chastized for failing to come to more
alarming conclusions. None of this is illegal, but it was perceived as an attempt
to browbeat analysts into either changing their estimates or shutting up and
ceding the field to their more hawkish colleagues.
More damning than the claims of my former colleagues has been some of the investigative
reporting done since the war. Particularly troubling are reports that the administration
knew its contention that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Niger was based
on forged documents. If true, it would be a serious indictment of the administration's
handling of the war.
As important as this debate is, what may
ultimately turn out to be the biggest concern
over the
Iraqi weapons program is
the question
of whose
hands it
is now in. If we do confirm that those
two trailers are
mobile biological
warfare
labs,
we are faced with a tremendous problem.
If the defectors' reports about the rates at
which such
mobile labs
were supposedly constructed
are
correct, there are
probably 22 more trailers still out there.
Where are they? Syria? Iran? Jordan?
Still somewhere in Iraq? Or have they found
their way into the hands of those most
covetous — Osama
bin Laden and his confederates?
Nor can we allow our consideration of weapons of mass destruction and politicized intelligence to be a distraction from the most important task at hand: rebuilding Iraq. History may forgive the United States if we don't find the arsenal we thought we would. No one will forgive us if we botch the reconstruction and leave Iraq a worse mess than we found it.
Kenneth M. Pollack is director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and the author of "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq."