Posted on 09/06/2002 6:52:30 PM PDT by HAL9000
N-bomb for Saddam in three years
SADDAM Hussein has the capability to make an atomic bomb within three years, and has stockpiled enough chemical and biological weapons to wipe out the world’s population, according to the file on Iraq due to be released by Downing Street.
The dictator is understood to control enough chemicals to make more than 200 tonnes of VX, a powerful nerve agent.
This is understood to be the most potent element in a full complement of weapons, which is missing only the enriched uranium needed to complete a nuclear bomb. Intelligence sources say the final piece in the jigsaw could be available by 2005.
The contents of the dossier implicating Saddam as a world criminal will be at the top of Tony Blair’s agenda when he meets George Bush at the US President’s Camp David retreat today.
The war summit takes place as tension mounts in advance of the anniversary of the 11 September attacks.
The head of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist squad, David Veness, warned lone terrorists could view the day as offering a "world stage" for their own cause.
Mr Bush and Mr Blair have so far failed in diplomatic attempts to bring Russia, China and France on board to support a strike against Iraq.
Significantly yesterday, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, refused yet again to be moved by diplomatic overtures from the White House.
Yet Mr Bush and Mr Blair are determined to agree the form of words of a damning catalogue of evidence they will say proves Saddam is a threat to the rest of the world.
The Scotsman has compiled an 11-page dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, drawing on intelligence sources in the US and testimonies by Iraqi defectors.
The main body of evidence is provided by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) which, when it left Iraq in December 1998, drew up a file of weapons it could not find.
This suggests that some 810 tonnes of chemicals needed to make VX was imported into Iraq, but that inspectors have only been able to account for 191 tonnes of it. An intelligence report says the remaining 619 tonnes of so-called precursor chemicals is enough to produce 200 tonnes of VX - which it says could "theoretically obliterate the entire global population."
The Scotsman dossier, published in full on the internet, shows the CIA now has evidence to suggest that Iraq is converting an L-29 trainer jet into an unmanned aircraft which could spread such weapons. There is also evidence suggesting that his chemical production has been stepped up as Saddam’s trade links with its former Arab enemies begin to strengthen.
Mr Blair’s dossier is not expected to have any evidence to prove categorically that Saddam has biological or chemical weapons. It will, instead, seek to provide enough circumstantial evidence to argue that a pre-emptive strike is now vital to secure world peace.
Yet opposition to a war continued to grow on both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain, a BBC poll of 100 Labour MPs found only four who thought there were sufficient grounds to declare war on Iraq, compared with 88 who did not.
And, in an interview, Robin Cook, the Leader of the Commons, said he believed it was imperative that Mr Blair recalled parliament to debate the issue.
In the US, former president Bill Clinton led fresh demands for any action to topple Saddam to be delayed until Osama bin Laden is caught. Mr Bush will outline his ideas on how to deal with Saddam when he addresses the UN General Assembly on 12 September.
Meanwhile, Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera said it has interviewed two wanted al-Qaeda members who disclose how the terrorist network planned and carried out the atrocities. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is said to be one of the most senior al-Qaeda leaders still at large, while Ramzi Binalshibh was a member of a Hamburg-based cell led by Mohammed Atta.
Dossier proves Saddam must be stopped
FRASER NELSON - WESTMINSTER EDITOR
THE dossier on Iraq which Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, has promised to print in the next few weeks will be his case for war. His task is to prove that Saddam poses such a grave threat to world peace that he must be stopped before he finds the last piece in his nuclear weapons puzzle.
There will be no smoking gun. No-one, in either London or Washington, is understood to have incontrovertible proof that Saddam is developing weapons. The dossier is compiled from defectors’ statements, satellite photographs and a list of what UN weapons inspectors believe still exists.
The Scotsman has devised its own dossier, drawing on UN reports, statements from defectors, the defence industry trade press, US military think-tanks, CIA statements to US Congress and evidence given to Capitol Hill committees.
The results certainly paint a picture of a dictator bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction, with a disturbing degree of success, and going to extraordinary lengths to conceal his plans. Worst of all, Mr Blair will argue, Saddam is now breaking free of the shackles which the UN sanctions are supposed to impose on him.
He has a proven appetite for building weapons, and with $2.2 billion earned from illicit trade last year, he has the money to pay for them. Whether there is enough to justify military action is the question Britain must now answer.
Iraq now has all the elements of a workable nuclear weapon, except the fissile material needed to fuel it, according to defectors. In July 2002, Khidir Hamza, a defecting Iraqi nuclear science director, told the US Congress that "with the workable design and most of the needed components for a nuclear weapon already tested, Iraq is in the final stages of its programme to enrich enough uranium for the final component needed in the nuclear core".
Before UN inspectors left Iraq, they had found out:
Iraq had developed a blueprint for a nuclear bomb. It is a sphere 32-35 inches in diameter, with 32 detonators. It would weigh less than a tonne and fit on a Scud missile.
Iraq has already tested a nuclear bomb dummy, with a non-nuclear core.
Iraq was running 30 nuclear research and production facilities. It had laboratory-scale plutonium separation programme and was also working on a radiological weapon; scattering nuclear material with no explosion.
In August 1995, Saddam’s son-in-law, Lt General Hussein Kamil, defected to the US and provided substantial evidence which forced Iraq to admit that it started a fast-track nuclear programme in 1990, and hoped to complete a bomb within a year. This involved diverting nuclear fuel from power stations to the weapons laboratories.
Its nuclear programme continued. In May 1998, it ordered six "lithotripter" machines, saying they would be used to treat kidney stones. Each machine contains a high-precision electronic switch which triggers atomic bombs. It ordered six extra switches.
In May 2000, inspectors discovered an Iraqi nuclear centrifuge which had been stored in Jordan. The rhetoric from Saddam showed he had not dampened his ambition - in September 2000, he publicly called for his "nuclear mujahideen" to "defeat the enemy".
In December 2001, A former Iraqi nuclear scientist, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, said Iraq has reactivated 300 secret weapons laboratories since the withdrawal of UN weapons inspectors.
Nuclear production and storage facilities are being hidden to the rear of government companies and private villas in residential areas. Weapons are being stored underground in water wells, lined with lead-filled concrete. Several facilities have been prepared, so projects can be on the move and withstand the bombing of one facility.
In March 2002 , August Hanning, the head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Services (FIS), told the New Yorker magazine: "It is our estimate that Iraq will have an atomic bomb within three years."
Iraq’s skill at hiding its weapons factories is demonstrated by the fact that the UN took four years of inspections to find out about its biological programme. Its scope is immense; UNSCOM (the United Nations Special Commission) found evidence of 38,500 chemical and biological munitions and 690 tonnes of chemical agents.
Iraq’s chemical and biological arsenal includes:
Botulinum: one of the most poisonous substances known. A fatal dose can be 70 billionths of a gram. It is estimated that 80 per cent of those who inhale it will die within three days.
Clostridium: A bacteria which can cause gas gangrene. It can result in acute lung distress, leaking blood vessels, breakdown of red blood cells and liver damage.
VX: A nerve agent, so advanced that the smallest concentration against the skin can kill. Iraq initially told the UN that it had not attempted to produce VX. It later admitted to owning 3.9 tonnes of it. None of it was ever accounted for.
Mustard Gas: Iraq is understood to have stockpiled 550 mustard-gas bombs. It told UNSCOM it destroyed them, but provided no evidence. In February 1998, UNSCOM tests on shells taken from Iraq produced in 1996 found 96 per cent pure mustard gas.
Iraq’s story on its development of chemical and biological weapons has changed repeatedy. In April 1991, it told the UN it has never had any biological materials, weapons, research or facilities. In August of the same year, it admitted to a biological weapons research programme.
In July 1995, Iraq admitted having made substantial progress in its biological weapons programme, making just under 30,000 litres of biological agents and filled munitions. This included 19,000 litres of botulinium, 8,400 litres of anthrax and 2,000 litres of clostridium The following month, it conceded it had produced 191 biological bombs.
In July 1998, Iraq confiscated documents from UNSCOM weapons inspectors documents, suggesting that it overstated by 6,000 the number of bombs it had used in its war with Iran. It allowed inspectors to make notes, but kept the original document, infuriating the UN and the US. This event triggered what was to become Operation Desert Fox.
In August 2000, the CIA reported that Iraq was converting an L-29 trainer jet into an unmanned aircraft which could spread chemical and biological weapons.
In May 2001, Iraq took over several crop-dusting helicopters from the UN.
At the same time, the head of Germany’s FIS said in a newspaper interview: "New chemical weapons are being developed in Iraq. German companies apparently tried to deliver important components for the production of poison gas to Iraq’s Samara plant."
In December last year, a raft of evidence was delivered by Mr al-Haideri. He said bio-weapons were being developed at the back of the Saddam Hussein hospital in Baghdad, and biological and chemical weapons were tested on Kurdish and Shiite prisoners in 1989 and 1992.
In July 2002, the Washington Post ran a detailed report suggesting that the CIA has found a laboratory on the west bank of the Tigris river, where 85 scientists were working on a viral strain code-named Blue Nile.
In the Iran-Iraq war, in 1980, Iraq deployed chemical weapons against Iranian troops. In 1988, they used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurdish rebels in Halabja, killing an estimated 5,000 and causing numerous birth defects.
SPECIAL REPORT ON IRAQ - The full Scotsman dossier on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction
There's that phony "Arab street" nonsense again. The only thing the "Arab street" understands is cowardice or violence. We're going to take down Hussein and scare the hell out of Assad, and Sultan, and Mubarak, and the Mullahs of Iran. They'll KNOW they could be next. /snip/
You need to read the news more closely. The Mullahs' power is crumbling internally. The moderate Khatami will, within five years, consolidate power in Iran, and bring the country back into the 20th century. There are too many Western-educated Iranian young people who are sick and tired of wearing burquas and having their satellite dishes confiscated. Nobody gives a damn about Iraq, and the Arab states will bid good riddance to Hussein when he's carried out horizontally.
Well said, Spurmeister. WELL SAID!!
PS: I'm finding our co-correspondent, RW2, a bit of a BOUNDER. Aren't you??
For all that, Good Shot, Old Boy. GOOD SHOT!!
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