Iraq Watch - Accounting for Iraqi Weapons

This November, Iraqi security forces and the U.S. military found chemicals and bomb-making literature at two houses in Fallujah. One residence housed a chemical and bomb-making factory, while the other contained bomb-making and chemical-weapon material, including ammonium nitrate and military explosives used to make roadside and vehicle bombs. The chemical labs contained directions on how to make anthrax and the blood agent hydrogen cyanide.

Forces also discovered a large cache of weapons in and around a mosque in Fallujah. Small arms, artillery shells, heavy machine guns, antitank mines, mortar systems, rocket-propelled grenades, recoilless rifles and parts of surface-to-air weapons systems were among the items found.

These revelations came in the wake of a report by Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), released on October 6 on the status of Iraq's mass destruction weapon programs, and amid concerns about the looting of key material at unguarded weapon sites across Iraq.

Mr. Duelfer's report -- and his subsequent testimonies -- presented a mountain of detail about Saddam's weapon efforts. Among his key findings were:

* Iraq had no stockpiles of illicit weapons nor any active program to make such weapons.

* Iraq did, however, maintain a breakout potential, that is the capability and know-how to rebuild WMD after sanctions were lifted.

* Iraq did not live up to its U.N. obligations. U.N. violations included undeclared equipment, materials and laboratories, procurement, and work on long-range missiles and drones.

* Escaping sanctions was Saddam's foremost goal, after regime survival, and Iraq worked actively at this task -- with great success.

* Years of inspections and sanctions succeeded in causing Iraq to abandon its weapon programs and in causing the progressive decay of its infrastructure for making more weapons, especially nuclear weapons.

* Yet sanctions and inspections were untenable over time -- sanctions had eroded greatly and Iraq developed a vast procurement network with which to circumvent them.

* This network included many entities and tarnished the reputations of many countries -- among them Belarus, China, Lebanon, France, Jordan, Poland, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, not to mention U.S. firms not named due to the Privacy Act. These entities helped Iraq make $11 billion in clandestine profits, as well as find and procure banned items.

* The ISG cannot yet determine if any WMD-related items crossed the border in the traffic to Syria and others in early 2003, but Duelfer's judgment is that no "militarily significant stocks" existed or were transferred.

* Evidence was systematically destroyed before the ISG could get in, but actual WMD items may not have been destroyed at that time.

* The ISG's remaining tasks are: to examine a new stash of documents and investigate new leads on potential hide sites.

On Nuclear Weapons:

* There is no evidence Iraq sought uranium in Niger or elsewhere after 1991.

* Iraq did try to keep nuclear scientists together. Some of these had retained documents and technology, but this did not amount to an active program.

On Biological Weapons:

* No evidence of mobile labs was found.

* Iraq destroyed most of its stocks in the early 1990s and abandoned its program by 1995.

* There is no evidence of ongoing BW work, but there is more uncertainty in BW than any other weapon program.

* Iraq retained some limited seed stock.

* There was no evidence of smallpox stock.

On Chemical Weapons:

* Iraq retained no stockpile or production program, but much dual-use equipment remains in Iraq.

* Iraq had a real breakout capability, and the timeline was shortened by skimming from the oil-for-food program, which helped Iraq rebuild its dual-use infrastructure.

* Iraq could have produced significant stocks of mustard agent in three to six months, and nerve agent within two years.

On Missile/Delivery Systems:

* Iraq violated the U.N. limit on missile range (150 km) with the Al Samoud 2 missile, and it had "plans or designs for three long-range ballistic missiles with ranges from 400 to 1,000 kilometers, and for a 1,000 km cruise missle." None of these latter missiles was in production, and only one went beyond the design phase.

* Iraq also used SA-2 components, which was expressly forbidden by the United Nations.

* Iraq seemed to draw a line between this missile work and what it deemed WMD-relevant activity; it did not work on warheads. It did work on propulsion, fuel and guidance.

* Iraq probably did not retain any Scuds after 1991.

* Iraq was buying components and technology for its missile efforts in contravention of sanctions, especially after the 1998 departure of U.N. inspectors. In particular, Iraq received missile help from or negotiated with North Korea, Russia, Poland, and Serbia/Montenegro.

* Iraq had done work on UAVs that also violated the 150 km range limit, but there was no evidence these were for use with mass destruction weapons.