First article - lots of good stuff in this article - much of it mirrors my own thoughts.
While such leftovers are a "marginal" amount of material, says Rolf Ekeus, the Swedish former director of UNSCOM, "there is considerable risk they can produce chemical weapons.
"I have very serious concerns about missiles," says Mr. Ekeus, now head of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. "We don't know how much they smuggled in there. My theory is that they have built production lines."
Just hours before a three-day American bombing assault in late 1998, the UN withdrew its inspectors. Mr. Hussein has never allowed them to return.
Precisely.
Terry Taylor, a British senior UNSCOM inspector from 1993 to 1997, says the figure of 95 percent disarmament is "complete nonsense because inspectors never learned what 100 percent was. UNSCOM found a great deal and destroyed a great deal, but we knew [Iraq's] work was continuing while we were there, and I'm sure it continues," says Mr. Taylor, now head of the Washington office of the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies. In 1995, Iraq was caught importing missile parts via Jordan, for example, and hiding them on the bottom of the Tigris River.
Though the nuclear file is usually the first to be dismissed as virtually "closed," Taylor says dismantlement efforts were incomplete. Iraq was working to master simultaneous timing of explosions, "and even at its most intrusive, UNSCOM could never have found that." The nuclear program was Iraq's "most prized, and given the nature of the regime, I don't think they have given up on that objective ... I think they could have nuclear weapons very, very quickly, if they got hold of fissile material – it could be a matter of a few months." The Iraqis "are the greatest [people] in the world at hiding these things from inspectors," he adds. "My view is, we don't need any more evidence [before taking action]." |
