Outside the Beltway

MORE NUCULAR STUFF

James Joyner · Monday, July 21, 2003 · 5 comments

Kevin Drum has a quote from December 31, 2002 wherein President Bush says:

I think it’s important to remember that Saddam Hussein was close to having a nuclear weapon. We don’t know whether or not he has a nuclear weapon. We do expect him to disarm his weapons of mass destruction, that’s what we expect.

To which Kevin retorts:

Nobody–and I mean nobody–thought that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapon at that time. The most hawkish possible analysis from anybody at that time suggested that maybe Saddam could have a nuke by the middle of this decade — if he got his hands on fissile material. And President Bush knew it.

So why was he pretending otherwise?

I’m not sure how we can say this. Obviously, Saddam had the intent to get a nuclear weapons program, had one going at one point in time, and had a ton of money. Our intelligence was obviously highly suspect.

There are a few countries on the cusp that we are in the position of only being able to guess. I’m not sure that we know, definitively, that North Korea has nukes. They claim to have them and we’re taking them at their word, but have we verified it? And it’s even harder on the negative side. My guess is that Israel has nukes, but they’ve never admitted it and I don’t know that we’re sure. Ditto Japan. Ditto Iran.

On December 16, 1998, President Clinton thought Saddam had a dangerous nuclear program, using that as part of the justification for Operation Desert Fox:

Saddam (Hussein) must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons,” Clinton said.

Operation Desert Fox, a strong, sustained series of attacks, will be carried out over several days by U.S. and British forces, Clinton said.

“Earlier today I ordered America’s armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces,” Clinton said.

“Their mission is to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors,” said Clinton.

Clinton also stated that, while other countries also had weapons of mass destruction, Hussein is in a different category because he has used such weapons against his own people and against his neighbors.

Sound familiar?

Timing was important, said the president, because without a strong inspection system in place, Iraq could rebuild its chemical, biological and nuclear programs in a matter of months, not years.

By, say, December 31, 2002?

The Nuclear Control Institute, hardly a right wing mouthpiece, notes the following atop their link-filled page “Saddam and the bomb:”

All of Iraq’s nuclear scientists are still in place. None of the nuclear-bomb components they built before the Gulf War have been found. If Iraq could steal or buy plutonium or bomb-grade uranium, Saddam could have the Bomb in short order.

That page links a December 1, 2002 interview by George Stephanopolus of Dr. Mohamed el- Baradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency* who, while disputing some previous evidence on Iraqi nuclear weapons–and directly and by name challenging some NCI assertions–notes several times that it was too early to make any conclusions and that he wished for better cooperation from the Iraqis.

Steve Dolley, NCI’s research director, has a letter to the NYT dated November 29, 2002 with the following:

Unfortunately, key technologies like centrifuges to enrich uranium for bombs release little detectable radiation. Fabrication of nonnuclear components for bombs, like high-explosive lenses, emits no radioactivity.

Before 1998, inspectors dismantled much of Iraq’s bomb program. But significant issues remain unresolved:Iraq’s bomb designs and nuclear-weapon components, for example, are still missing.

The greatest risk is Saddam Hussein’s smuggling in bomb material stolen from civil or military programs, which the International Atomic Energy Agency concedes it has very little chance of detecting.

Finally, in a September 30, 2002 press release, they directly challenge IAEA:

Several Iraqi nuclear weapons facilities and much equipment were indeed dismantled or destroyed by U.N. inspectors between 1991 and 1998. However, substantial and significant issues about Iraq̢۪s ability to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program remained unresolved when the inspectors left the country.

Dolley, citing IAEA’s own inspection reports as documentation, said: “Iraq has never surrendered to inspectors its two completed designs for a nuclear bomb, nuclear-bomb components such as explosive lenses and neutron initiators that it is known to have possessed, or almost any documentation of its efforts to enrich uranium to bomb-grade using gas centrifuges, devices which are small and readily concealed from reconnaissance.â€

Moreover, IAEA has previously conceded that Iraq’s weaponization R&D—small-scale technical research devoted to the design of a nuclear bomb’s components—is not readily detected by means of inspections. IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei stated in 1998 that “no matter how comprehensive the inspection, any country-wide verification process, in Iraq or anywhere else, has a degree of uncertainty that aims to verify the absence of readily concealable objects such as small amounts of nuclear material or weapons components.†(Original has numerous footnotes to hyperlinked supporting docs.)

This past March, Ken Pollack of The Brookings Institution thought Saddam threatening:

In addition to the human rights considerations, of course, Pollack emphasized the strategic rationale for armed intervention — Saddam Hussein’s possession of biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and his ongoing, decades-long quest to develop or acquire nuclear weapons. Pollack considers Saddam Hussein uniquely dangerous among contemporary rulers for his view of nuclear weapons not as a defensive assurance against outside attack, but rather as an offensive enabling factor allowing him to pursue a foreign policy of aggression and conquest.

There are literally dozens of examples I could cite, but I’ve based this little essay on just sources I could find quickly by Googling and that weren’t from sources that had any taint of pro-Republican bias.

*The page is framed so I can’t provide the link to the links themselves, but they’re arranged in reverse chronological order on that page.