Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Charles R Jones, 7/27/2004
Perhaps the most important and clearest example of "off-the-level" nonsense is the currently popular notion that somehow the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States and its coalition partners was not legitimate since weapons of mass destruction "were not found." Many polarized politicians and their supporters have argued both sides of this issue at some length. Thus, it seems that Technidigm-2000 types of analysis using the 12 elements would be useful in trying to sort some of this out.
Keep in mind that the many or the polarized opinions that we have heard for many months do not qualify for "on-the-level" opinions, what I refer to as Level One Opinions under the 12-element paradigm. It is apparent that at least three of the remaining elements are self evident, specifically Principles, Objectives, and Context. Any high school student could do a little research and come up with reasons WMD are bad and should be kept from the hands of irresponsible dictators, and certainly the context of the last thirty years of Iraq expending tremendous resources and demonstrating exhaustive tenacity in pursuing WMD is easily described with a little help from the Internet.
My own introduction to such matters was circa-1980 as a Navy Nuclear Propulsion officer in San Diego, when I got a call from someone vaguely describing himself as associated with Israel. He asked me what would be the best way to destroy a nuclear power plant. I told him that, assuming it was the usual type of concrete containment, a thousand pound bomb would be needed to open up the dome, followed by another one to go through the hole created by the first one. I based this on my significant knowledge and experience with nuclear technology, on having seen a cross-sectional cut out of a commercial nuclear containment structure, and on what I saw a thousand pound bomb do to the armored flight deck of the USS ENTERPRISE nuclear powered aircraft carrier in 1969. As I recall, I also noted that one could expect a lot of radioactivity to come back out if the reactor were operational (nuclear fuel loaded).
Having given those insights to the mysterious caller, the subject did not come up again until after I had heard the Israeli Air Force had destroyed an Iraqi reactor plant that would otherwise have been used for producing fissile materials for nuclear weapons. That was 1981, and the Iraq WMD program apparently did not go away until the 2003 invasion. Again, a simple Internet search provides more than enough information (Technidigm-2000 Level Two Facts, if you will) on this, mostly undisputed facts that include significant WMD-related assistance to Iraq from countries such as France, Germany, and Russia. So the Technidigm-2000 element of Context is easy to assemble based on historical Level Two Facts.
At the bottom of this page are related extracts from the Internet. The Technidigm-2000 element that I refer to as Level 3 Research seems a bit unnecessary, but the various reports from the inspection teams over the years lends credibility that makes further development of facts somewhat unnecessary. Nevertheless, since I have additional insights at least on the topic of nuclear weapons, it occurs to me that most nuclear weapons knowledgeable engineers would support the notion that about 99 percent of the work in designing and building a nuclear weapon can be done without having the fissile material in hand. While it is fortunate that actually making or enriching the fissile materials is costly, difficult, and time consuming, one never knows whether the fissile materials might have been ordered ahead of time from North Korea, Iran, Russia, Pakistan, or France and delivered just a few days before weapon use.
As for the Technidigm Level Four Solution element, the best solution turned out to be an invasion of Iraq. After about 30 years of trying to get WMD's, including nuclear weapons, Saddam Hussein finally positioned himself such that most on-the-level thinkers would have to agree that an invasion was justified. Continuing to drag out inspections to achieve additional worldwide consensus on the invasion would have risked failure since once a country has a nuclear weapon, it is a lot harder to reduce the risk that it will be used. This fact, for example, makes the North Korea issue more difficult. Ownership of a nuclear weapon may also make the Iran issue more difficult. Hoping for spontaneous regime change does not represent a solution equal to the problem.
Any high school student could also lay out the other Technidigm-2000 elements of Resources, Components, Time, and Feedback needed to close in on the Objective of ensuring Iraq does not use WMD. While any fair description the ongoing efforts in Iraq would easily fill these in, it is particularly important to notice the need for Feedback. The expectation that such an effort could be planned in advance and executed perfectly without the passage of Time and the necessary Feedback is not a realistic expectation. This is true for any complex undertaking, whether it be in warfare, engineering, research, medicine, teaching, or any other demanding discipline.
Was the "mission accomplished"? Certainly the WMD nuclear weapon related Objectives have been met, at least from the perspective of whether a nation called Iraq will make and use them. Chemical and biological agents are a lot easier to make and hide, so time will tell, but it still will not likely be those who are in charge of the new government that will make and use them.
Is the mission not accomplished because of the need to keep military forces on the ground in Iraq or because of the continued loss of life on all sides? I do not see how that erase the WMD successes, but certainly leaving the country prematurely would risk doing so. In view of how polarized politics can get things changed and even reversed, the greatest danger of failure seems to be doing anything that would change out the ongoing Solution currently in place simply to satisfy the demands of politics.
Fortunately, as for the current elections, both candidates for president are vying for the position of continuing and strengthening the Level Four Solution already in place. Until the United States is in a position to withdraw its military forces from Iraq, an election in the United States that appeared to chastise those responsible for implementing this Level Four Solution would be counterproductive, even if superficially satisfying to some. Again, the mandate to take timely action was created by the Level Two Facts and the Context presented by Saddam himself as he continued to frustrate international inspections year after year. Indeed, even in face of the frustrations, there was enough evidence to convict many times over.
A sample of readily available Internet sources:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=13682
FP: What
exactly was the relationship between French President Jacques Chirac and Saddam
Hussein?
Claire: Their relationship reached
back 30 years, when Chirac was French Prime Minister. He first visited Baghdad in 1974, when he and the Iraqi leader worked out a
far-reaching trade agreement which made France Iraq's number one trading
partner, along with the Soviet Union,
later Russia.
The initial deal called for France to sell Iraq a state-of-the-art nuclear
reactor that produced enriched uranium as a by-product and which could easily
be converted to weapons-grade plutonium. Iraq agreed to pay twice the "list price" for the
Osiris reactor, or $300 million. In return, Iraq would sell France 70 million
barrels of oil a year at fixed market price, buy 100,000 Peugots and Citroens,
in lots of 50,000, hundreds of Mirage fighter planes, sophisticated French
radar and anti-aircraft systems. A side agreement also contracted French
developers to build a billion dollar resort on the lake at Habbaniya. The deal
was sealed when Hussein visited France in 1975, feted as an esteemed international leader by the French Republic.
The military sales to Iraq would continue up until the Coalition
invaded Iraq in March 2003.
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/0303/msg00035.html
There is a book [First Strike by Shlomo Nadimon, 353 pages] published in 1987 which tells the inside story of why and how Israel took the actions it did in 1981 to destroy the Osirak nuclear reactor being built by Iraq. The Osirak research reactor was being built by the Iraqi's [ironically given today's realpolitik on action against Iraq, with the reactor supplied by the French, and with Hot cells supplied to Iraq by the Germans for reprocessing its HEU nuclear weapons to destroy Israel and make Iraq the main power in the Mideast & Arab world. http://www.afa.org/magazine/Aug2002/0802osirak.html
Osirak and Beyond
By Rebecca Grant
Preventing Iraq from building Weapons of Mass Destruction has been a US objective for more than two decades. Airpower has played a key role in that struggle, which is far from over.
Defense analyst Anthony H. Cordesman noted in a recent analysis, "Iraq is the only major recent user of Weapons of Mass Destruction." Iraq's Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, and missile programs have emerged as Saddam Hussein's personal projects and they have survived many efforts to kill them off. From Israel's raid on the Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 to Desert Storm in 1991 and another seven years of UN monitoring, keeping Iraq's arsenal in check has generated sanctions, inspections, and air strikes.
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From the beginning, international concern has focused on a specific problem: the danger Iraq would use its Osirak reactor to produce weapons-grade material for a bomb program. Iraq purchased the reactor from France in 1975. It was designed as a civilian power plant that could also produce highly enriched uranium.
Iraq's attempts to develop its own nuclear power sources dated to the 1960s. However, Saddam Hussein himself began the Iraqi nuclear bomb program in the 1970s while he was still vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, prior to assuming total control of the nation.
The Osirak facility has been attacked several times. Iran actually was the first to bomb the reactor area. On Sept. 30, 1980, in the opening days of the Iran-Iraq War, an Iranian aircraft lightly damaged the Osirak facility. In response, the official Iraqi news agency issued the following statement: "The Iranian people should not fear the Iraqi nuclear reactor, which is not intended to be used against Iran, but against the Zionist entity." In other words, the target was Israel.
Israel's Shocker
Israel took note and on June 7, 1981, shocked the world with a daring and completely successful surprise attack on Osirak.
Long before they actually pulled the trigger, Israel's leaders had been debating such a move. Maj. Gen. David Ivry, who was then chief of the Israeli Air Force, recalled that one of the conditions for the attack was "we have to attack before uranium was going to get to the facility, because otherwise, after attacking with uranium inside, it can cause radiation damage to the environment and so on."
Even when faced with the looming threat of a functioning nuclear reactor, Prime Minister Menachem Begin struggled with the decision to attack. It took "about one year" to get a consensus, recalled Ivry, "because there were a lot of people who hesitated." Ivry remembered going "every two or three weeks in the Cabinet to talk about it again."
World reaction was intense. Condemnations of Israel far outpaced congratulations. In the US, feelings were mixed, and yet there was a strong undercurrent of relief. Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) spoke for many when he wrote in the New York Times: "The bold Israeli move eliminates the immediate threat."
The destruction of Osirak took Iraq off the fast track to nuclear weapons. Iraq responded with a double approach. Baghdad put at least 20,000 people to work on the nuclear program, pressing ahead with development of gas centrifuges to produce bomb-grade material. The Iraqis also pursued a second, outdated method based on the use of calutrons for electromagnetic separation to produce highly enriched uranium.
Flush with oil money in the 1980s, Iraq spent at least $10 billion to buy illicit components. Manufacturing and testing facilities were concealed at many sites in Iraq. The strategy worked: Former chief UN nuclear weapons inspector David A. Kay described how Iraq's nuclear efforts were dismissed by experts as a "shop 'til you drop" program. The fact is that Iraq, had it been left undisturbed, could have acquired a nuclear bomb by 1992.
On Jan. 16, 1991, the target list contained just two nuclear facility targets--though more than 20 facilities later would be identified. Planners kept up the search for nuclear and other sites even after the start of the air campaign, but the task was daunting. As Kay later remarked, "There was little hard analysis that existed anywhere" on Iraq's nuclear capabilities.
The deployment of coalition forces spurred Iraq to accelerate its nuclear efforts. According to Cordesman's report, the goal was to produce a working bomb by April 1991. The crash program centered on recovering enriched fuel from Iraq's French and Russian-built reactors, in defiance of International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards supposedly in place.
Iraq also explored building a radiological "dirty" bomb that would spew radioactive material. It would furnish Iraq with a "nuclear" weapon without Baghdad's having to create a traditional nuclear explosion.
Back to Osirak
Coalition aircraft flew 970 strikes against NBC targets, using precision weapons for about 40 percent of those strikes. The air attackers struck both of the nuclear reactors built to replace Osirak. The Isis light-water reactor was destroyed, and a larger reactor was damaged, but the Iraqis hid whatever they could.
Air strikes hit hard against known biological warfare facilities like those at Salman Pak, but by then, the Iraqis "had relocated virtually all of their agent production equipment to Al-Hakam and other facilities and had buried all biological agent-filled munitions and agent stockpiles in areas likely to escape bombing," according to a Defense Department report.
Unfortunately, the lack of focused intelligence meant that other targets appeared late in the game. One was the Al-Athir complex 40 miles south of Baghdad, which turned out to be the heart of the nuclear program. The official Pentagon report on the Gulf War recorded that Al-Athir "was not confirmed until late in the war." The very last bomb dropped by an F-117 during the war targeted Al-Athir, inflicting only light damage. In fact, subsequent inspections found that Al-Athir was where Iraq worked with design of charges for nuclear bombs.
The Gulf War Air Power Survey, sponsored by the Air Force, concluded: "Overall, the United States did not fully understand the target arrays comprising Iraqi Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, and ballistic missile capabilities before the Gulf War. The Iraqis had, in fact, made these target systems as elusive and resistant to accurate air attack as possible, with some success."
All along, Iraq insisted on keeping together the teams of scientists and experts from the weapons programs. Most of these key personnel remained in Iraq. In August 2000, the CIA told Congress that, after Desert Fox, "Baghdad again instituted a reconstruction effort on those facilities destroyed by the US bombing, to include several critical missile production complexes and former dual-use [Chemical Weapon] production facilities." The CIA demurred, saying that it had no "direct evidence" of renewed Iraqi WMD programs but said that "given its past behavior, this type of activity must be regarded as likely." The CIA then went on to describe Iraq's efforts to build short-range missiles and convert Czech L-29 jet trainers into unmanned aeriel vehicles.
"The United Nations assesses that Baghdad has the capability to reinitiate both its CW and BW programs within a few weeks to months, but without an inspection monitoring program, it is difficult to determine if Iraq had done so," the CIA reported to Congress. Since Iraq retained a large pool of experts and some nonweapons-grade uranium, restarting a nuclear bomb program is also a possibility, especially if Iraq could import fissile material clandestinely. Clinton said at the time of Desert Fox in 1998, "left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again."
Iraq is probably not in position to produce its own fissile material for as much as five years. Still, experts believe Iraq could buy black-market weapons material with relative ease. "I think everyone that I know of in the community agrees that if the Iraqis had the nuclear material, high-enriched uranium or plutonium, they would have a weapon in less than a year," said Kay. "The explosive manufacturing and missile program has gone ahead."
Charles R. Jones
