People who say Saddam was in a box also say he had no WMD and if we'd just let inspectors work long enough they'd have found that out. Of course, once that happened Saddam would be out of the box and completely free to gear up his nascent WMD programs in preparation for the next war.
Which the Duelfer report said was his intention:
On chemical weapons, "Saddam sought to sustain the requisite knowledge base to restart the program eventually and, to the extent it did not threaten the Iraqi efforts to get out from under sanctions, to sustain the inherent capability to produce such weapons as circumstances permitted in the future."
On nuclear weapons, "Saddam did not abandon his nuclear ambitions. . . . Those around Saddam seemed quite convinced that once sanctions were ended, and all other things being equal, Saddam would renew his efforts in this field."
.....
Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability-which was essentially destroyed in 1991-after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability-in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks-but he intended to focus on ballistic
missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.
[Regime Strategic Intent, Key Findings, p. 1] |
