October 16, 2004

THE TRUTH IS THAT SADDAM NEVER INTENDED TO GIVE UP HIS WMD

Sooner or later Saddam Hussein would have acquired chemical weapons, the ballistic missiles to deliver them to his enemies, and eventually even nuclear weapons. But it was the chemical weapons that he was determined to develop. They had worked against Iran and had even deterred the US in 1991 from invading Baghdad, he believed.

“Iraq Survey Group (ISG) judges that events in the 1980s and early 1990s shaped Saddam’s belief in the value of WMD. In Saddam’s view, WMD helped to save the Regime multiple times. He believed that during the Iran-Iraq war chemical weapons had halted Iranian ground offensives and that ballistic missile attacks on Tehran had broken its political will. Similarly, during Desert Storm, Saddam believed WMD had deterred Coalition Forces from pressing their attack beyond the goal of freeing Kuwait.” These are the judgments of the Duelfer Report (officially known as the Iraq Survey Group Report), recently provided to Congress.

There are some psychopaths who are incorrigible. They remain criminals their entire lives no matter what treatments are tried on them. Their thinking is so distorted and rationalized that nothing can change them. So it is with Saddam, if we are to believe Charles Duelfer’s report to Congress delivered on September 30, 2004. The report is based on multiple interviews with Saddam Hussein and all of the officers of his regime in custody.

The press and media have focused on one aspect of this 1000 page report—that no WMD were actually found in Iraq—to undermine the President’s candidacy for another term. WMD, the President’s critics assert correctly, was the casus belli for Operation Iraqi Freedom. And indeed, during the months leading up to the war, there were no responsible disbelievers of that view. And that the prudent thing to do, post 9/11, was to remove the possibility of having an unstable dictator or one of his unstable sons use or license his WMD to other terrorists.

Were these assumptions wrong? Yes and no. No historical problem can be understood in a simplex way except during election years. The closest that we have been able to come to the complex truth so far is Duelfer’s new report. It will have to suffice for the time being.

His most important finding—the finding that he puts above all others is:

“Saddam Husayn… wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted.

“Saddam’s primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the Regime. He sought to balance the need to cooperate with UN inspections—to gain support for lifting sanctions—with his intention to preserve Iraq’s intellectual capital for WMD with a minimum of foreign intrusiveness and loss of face. Indeed, this remained the goal to the end of the Regime….”

It is important to see that, like some incorrigible psychopaths, Saddam didn’t get it. Whatever the UN said to him, whatever the world thought about his weapons programs didn’t matter to him. The one overriding consideration was getting back his chemical weapons and the means to deliver them—ballistic missiles. It didn’t matter what agreement he made, or what understanding he had reached with the UN, he was, by hook or by crook, going to get what he wanted, sooner or later. And the means by which he would accomplish this goal was to play along with the monitors and temporarily get rid of the weapons—but not the people who could start to build them again when the western intruders were gone. He played along until 1998 and then he kicked the inspectors out of the country. Why?

“The introduction of the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad’s economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.”

He managed to wheedle out of a compassionate world and the UN the Oil for Food program in 1996 presumably to feed his starving people who, he proclaimed, had been suffering under the UN sanctions, and by 1998 he began a period of testing, starting with the expulsion of the inspectors to see how far he could go and not bring the wrath of the UN down. And sure enough, the Clinton administration, preoccupied with sex and impeachment, allowed it’s policy toward Saddam to lie dormant.

“By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999.”

The report makes unambiguously clear that Saddam’s goal, first, last, and always, was the reacquisition of WMD. So that the games he played with the world, temporarily getting rid of them, was a meaningless gesture. Sooner or later we would have to confront him and remove him. There was no other alternative. And to wait until he had already begun to reacquire them would have been the height of liberal-pacifist folly.

“Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991—after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.”

By 2000 the growth of Iraq’s illicit revenue had virtually succeeded in diminishing the power of the sanctions to near zero. By the time of the war in 2003 Iraq had amassed 11 billion dollars, most of which went into the procurements of conventional weaponry and materials for WMD.

“To implement its procurement efforts, Iraq under Saddam, created a network of Iraqi front companies, some with close relationships to high-ranking foreign government officials. These foreign government officials, in turn, worked through their respective ministries, state-run companies and ministry-sponsored front companies, to procure illicit goods, services, and technologies for Iraq’s WMD-related, conventional arms, and/or dual-use goods programs.

“The MFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) played a critical role in facilitating Iraq’s procurement of military goods, dual-use goods pertaining to WMD, transporting cash and other valuable goods earned by illicit oil revenue, and forming and implementing a diplomatic strategy to end UN sanctions and the subsequent UN OFF program by nefarious means.”

And because Saddam cared about the sanctions being lifted, he half-heartedly allowed his WMD programs to be physically dismantled, retaining the intellectual resources that would allow the programs to be restarted as soon as the sanctions were lifted. But Saddam made it a part of his policy to obfuscate the issue of WMD in order to make his enemies, especially Iran, believe that he continued to possess them. And this is exactly the message the world got.

The most disturbing set of findings in the Duelfer Report center around the fact that Saddam felt that the source of his greatest power was to be found in his chemical warfare capabilities and the missile systems to deliver them.

There is no doubt that he also valued nuclear weapons, but realized that such weaponry was beyond present Iraqi technology, and that such weapons would have to be developed slowly over time. But he had used chemical weapons effectively and successfully against his Kurdish, Shia, and Iranian enemies and the world did not object.

“Saddam never abandoned his intentions to resume a CW effort when sanctions were lifted and conditions were judged favorable:

“ISG [analysts believe] based on available chemicals, infrastructure, and scientist debriefings, that Iraq at [the beginning of the Iraq war] probably had a capability to produce large quantities of sulfur mustard within three to six months.
Chemical
“ISG uncovered information that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) maintained throughout 1991 to 2003 a set of undeclared covert laboratories to research and test various chemicals and poisons, primarily for intelligence operations. The network of laboratories could have provided an ideal, compartmented platform from which to continue CW agent R&D or small-scale production efforts….the existence, function, and purpose of the laboratories were never declared to the UN….The IIS program included the use of human subjects for testing purposes.”

Anyone who is seriously interested in defeating terrorism and understanding whether the war in Iraq was necessary must be informed of the facts in the Duelfer Report. It makes it crystal clear that there was no alternative to removing Saddam and his two sons from their regime. He was gaming the UN and had no other political aim than to become the dominant figure in the Middle East through the acquisition of chemical weapons and ballistic missiles. And no amount of UN blather and John Kerry diplomacy would have made any difference. Saddam would have compelled a war. Better that we fight it at a time of our choice than his.