<font color=red>Iraq
wsj.com
The Wall Street Journal
The Saddam We Know
All of Washington is debating whether Saddam Hussein was behind the World Trade Center attack. But we keep going back to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's recent remark that, "We didn't need 11 September to tell us that he is a threat to our interests."
She's right. And to back her up, we thought readers might like to see Saddam's record all in one place, a convenient chronology of terror if you will.
It all begins in 1979, when Saddam Hussein, a leading power in the Baath Party for 10 years, becomes President of Iraq and commander of the armed forces. He immediately executes hundreds of other Baath leaders for "disloyalty." That same year the Shah of Iran falls, and after border tension and subversion on both sides, Iraq invades Iran in September 1980.
In 1981, Israel bombs the Osirak nuclear reactor. Saddam had called the deal with France to build the reactor "the first concrete step toward the production of the Arab atomic weapon."
As the Iraq-Iran war rolls on through the 1980s, perhaps 1.5 million people die on both sides. Saddam himself uses chemical weapons without provocation. The countries agree to a cease fire in 1988. But that same year Saddam uses nerve gas to attack Kurds in the northern Iraqi town of Halabja. Nearly 5,000 men, women and children are killed.
In 1990, laden with war debt, Saddam seizes the oil fields of Kuwait. Iraq confiscates billions of dollars worth of Kuwaiti property and kills or takes prisoner thousands of Kuwaitis. Several hundred are still missing. Before his army is expelled by Operation Desert Storm, his troops set fire to 500 Kuwaiti oil wells, causing an environmental debacle. He also fires 39 Scud missiles into Israel.
After surrendering before his Republican Guard could be destroyed, Saddam agrees to disarm but the U.S. makes a historic blunder and allows him to keep his helicopters. When Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north rise up against Saddam, he uses those helicopters to slaughter them.
In 1993, Saddam sends assassins to kill former President Bush during a visit to Kuwait. The plot fails. That same year a truck bomb explodes in the basement of the World Trade Center in New York. Prosecutors pin the blame on a band of Islamic fanatics. But in her book, "Study of Revenge," Laurie Mylroie makes a compelling case that convicted bomber Ramzi Yousef isn't who he says he is, but is an Iraqi agent given a new identity during the post-Gulf War confusion.
In 1996, the opposition Iraqi National Congress succeeds in unifying feuding Kurdish factions and controls much of northern Iraq. But Saddam sends in tanks to crush them, and the Clinton Administration responds by bombing empty buildings in the south.
Meanwhile, Saddam plays a cat-and-mouse games with U.N. weapons inspectors. He repeatedly bars them from certain sites, or delays them for hours as Iraqis empty buildings of their contents. The inspections farce comes to a head in October 1997, when Saddam calls a halt to the program. In early 1998, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan -- calling Saddam a "decisive" leader with whom he could "do business" -- secures promises for renewed cooperation, averting U.S. airstrikes. Later that year Saddam boots the inspectors out for good anyway.
Amid all of this, Iraq is forced to admit to a frightening stockpile of weapons of mass destruction after the defection of Saddam's son-in-law in 1995. Iraq confesses to having 8,500 liters of anthrax, 19,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 2,200 liters of aflatoxin, and to having loaded these biological agents onto 25 Scud missile warheads and 157 aerial bombs. Iraq also fesses up to having produced much larger quantities of VX nerve gas than it had previously admitted, and to conducting research into multiple means of delivery. Saddam's son-in-law returns to Iraq in early 1996, and is murdered.
All in all, this is a legacy worthy of Stalin or Idi Amin. And Saddam has managed all of this destruction without yet obtaining the most horrific weapon of all, a nuclear bomb. But that may not be all that far away.
His former chief nuclear scientist, Khidir Hamza, believes Saddam needs only fissile material to produce a bomb. And the New York Times reported yesterday that another recent Iraqi defector says he visited at least 20 different sites associated with all three classes of mass terror weapons -- nuclear, chemical and biological.
President Bush has said he'll take the war to any country that harbors terrorists. But Saddam Hussein doesn't merely harbor them. He is the terrorist. The question now is whether the Bush Administration allows his reign of terror to continue, or saves the world from it once and for all. |
