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A chemical agent missile nose cone being inspected by an Iraqi worker |
A very tense Middle East gets tenser as the United States continues to rally support for an imminent attack on Iraq. Iraq’s supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is the center-point of the United States’ argument towards the “necessity” of toppling Saddam Hussein.
According to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) intelligence resource program, 34 countries possess weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of mass destruction may be nuclear, chemical, or biological. They are distinguished from conventional weapons by their enormous potential lethality and by their relative lack of discrimination as to whom they kill. When deployed to ballistic missiles, these weapons can be fired from the home territory of one state and wreak great destruction to the home territory of another.
Iraq is considered by the United States to be one of those 34 countries that possess non-conventional weapons; the actual list includes Israel and the United States itself. Yet Iraq in particular has been severely punished with staunch economic sanctions that have been imposed on the poor nation for 11 successive years.
Non-humanitarian sanctions have been imposed on Iraq to deprive it from the economic power to develop a nuclear, chemical, or biological program. The United States and its close ally Britain have bombarded Iraq repeatedly as an attempt to preserve regional security, threatened, in their view, solely by Iraqi military potential. Moreover, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 (1991) stated that “Iraq shall unconditionally accept, under international supervision, the destruction, removal or rendering harmless of its weapons of mass destruction.”
The United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) was established by the Security Council and accepted by Iraq following the second Gulf War to verify the destruction of Iraqi WMD. There have been many clashes between UNSCOM and the Iraqi government, the most famous of which took place in 1998 and led to the air strikes launched by the US and the UK against Iraq. Iraq accused the head of UNSCOM then, Richard Butler, of being a US spy. (Recently, the United Nations itself declared the fact that Butler might have been spying on Iraq for the US favor, and this was one of the reasons why Scott Ritter – another former inspector – resigned from his job in UNSCOM). Although Iraq was supported by China and Russia in its request for changing the head of the committee, the United States and Britain insisted that Butler should head the UN special committee. In fact, Richard Butler’s reports said exactly what the United States wanted to hear. In his report to the Security Council in September 1998, Butler accused Iraq of possessing the capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction; this very report led to the Anglo/American air strikes on Iraq in 1998. Butler believes that if Iraq acquires enough highly enriched uranium, it could fabricate an atomic bomb.
Does Iraq possess militarily viable WMD?
On the other hand, former UN inspector in Iraq Scott Ritter was very clear when he said, “When you ask the question ‘does Iraq possess militarily viable [nuclear], biological or chemical weapons?’ the answer is a resounding ‘NO’… Iraq has been disarmed.” In an interview with Al-Jazeera satellite channel, Ritter stated that Iraq does not possess the WMD that can pose threats to its neighbors. He also stated that the American strategic goals were different from the UN goals: the United Nations aimed at disarming Iraq 100% while the US did not ease the job of UNSCOM and it wanted to use any lack of cooperation from the Iraqi side as a means to keep the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq. Scott Ritter believes that the United States abused the UN inspectors to the point of using them to serve the Americans own interests.
The UNSCOM Mission in Iraq
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| Scott Ritter |
UNSCOM points out that it destroyed the Iraqi productive foundations related to the different Iraqi nuclear programs. It destroyed the Scud-type missiles and 19 mobile launchers. In addition, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) removed the plutonium, the highly prolific uranium, and the radioactive uranium previously possessed by Iraq. Iraq lost the capacity to convert uranium into nuclear fuel -- building a cascade facility for enriching uranium requires large amounts of highly specialized metals and machinery.
As for Iraqi chemical weapons, UN inspectors destroyed hundreds of chemically armed warheads and artillery shells. UNSCOM’s incinerator burned tons of mustard gas and nerve agents as well as the precursor compounds used to make them. The committee announced that it had supervised the destruction of 76 chemical Scud missiles, 113 warheads, over 60 fixed launching bases, 40,000 munitions, 480,000 liters of chemical munitions, 1,800,000 liters of chemical precursors, and 8 types of delivery systems including missile warheads. Yet US analysts still argue that a vast amount of Saddam’s chemical stockpile was never found and remains unaccounted for. Iraqi opposition leaders contend that Hussein is hiding a VX stockpile, but their accounts, nonetheless, could not be confirmed.
Regarding Iraq’s biological weapons program, the committee revealed that it destroyed the Iraqi seeds stockpile and the biological weapons factory in Alhakam. The UN special commission had destroyed all of Iraq’s known biological munitions, and much of the equipment needed to make new ones. The United States believes that Iraq still possesses secret bioweapons. It claims that Iraq is making three types of biological weapons using anthrax bacteria and two kinds of biological toxins: botulinum toxin and aflatoxin. It also claims that Baghdad is currently undergoing extensive research on at least three other pathogens that attack humans and/or crops.
Richard Spertzel, a retired biological warfare expert who oversaw the dismantling of Iraq’s bioweapons program, said he observed industrial fermenters, spray dryers and other equipment that could be used to mass-produce viruses and bacteria -- equipment that UNSCOM could not legally destroy because it had no proof the machines were being used to make weapons. Iraq is also believed to have in its possession actual biowarfare bombs. There have been reports that the country has continued biological weapons research using small labs built underground. However, under UNSCOM, inspectors investigated several reports of underground weapons facilities and found none.
In spite of the American claims, the White House has not publicly offered evidence of a single factory or lab known to be actively producing WMD. It is definite that, under the current circumstances, Baghdad has neither the economic nor the political potential to develop a military program that might threaten the United States or even its Middle Eastern neighbors.
Eye on Iraq!
The United States owns the most advanced and powerful weapons of mass destruction in the world, and has programmed the minds of the world that it has the ultimate right to own those weapons and to punish Iraq for trying to acquire them. Surprisingly, the US never blames Israel for possessing those very weapons of mass destruction. Israel is a major nuclear power and is non-signatory to the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). It also has comprehensive chemical and biological weapons programs. With between 200 and 500 thermonuclear weapons and a sophisticated delivery system, Israel has quietly supplanted Britain as the world’s fifth largest nuclear power, and may currently rival France and China in the size and sophistication of its nuclear arsenal. There is little doubt that the Israeli arsenal of mass destruction is the most powerful in the Middle East. It clearly dwarfs the actual or potential arsenal of Iraq and of all other Middle Eastern states combined. At the same time, the US and UN worries about an Iraqi mass destructive military program are based on doubts and uncertainties that have never been proved.
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