Posted on 09/09/2002 6:27:38 AM PDT by robowombat
THE CONTENTS OF SADDAM HUSSEIN'S ARSENAL by Gordon Thomas
First the facts.
Saddam Hussein HAS rebuilt his arsenal of nuclear and chemical weapons. He has 4,000 tonnes of chemicals, designed to be fitted into missile warheads. He has sufficient biological germs to kill the combined populations of cities the size of London, New York and Berlin.
To these weapons of mass destruction he now has added a nuclear "capability" - fissionable material supplied by North Korea. That country is part of the "axis of evil" that has become part of the lexicon of President Bush's determination to go to war in the coming weeks. Bush has been told by his CIA director, George Tenet, that the material may originally have come from China. Already Beijing has supplied Iraq with a state-of-the-art fibre optic system that will boost its air defences. Until now the role of China has been deliberately down-played by the Bush Administration - just as it was in those weeks in 1991 when George Bush's father was moving into the final stages of war with Iraq.
Then, as now, the world waited as hopes of avoiding conflict rose and fell as predictably as the flags on Washington's government buildings. Then, as now, the last acts of diplomacy were being played out. Then, as now, Arab leaders came to the White House to be told of the high-tech war which awaited Iraq unless Saddam caved-in. He did not.
Then, as now, the role of China, was critical. A permanent member of the UN Security Council, its role in tacitly supporting America was essential. It reluctantly agreed to do so.
But now there is one difference. China has played a key role this past decade in supporting Iraq through its surrogate - North Korea.
So far the present Bush Administration has decided to keep Beijing out of its "axis of evil" rhetoric. But for how long? China was slow to condemn the September 11 attacks. It has been quick to protest against any attack now on Iraq.
No one knows how Beijing will respond. But there is a clue. In a briefing paper to President Bush, George Tenet, CIA director stated: "By 2015 China will have deployed tens to several tens of missiles with nuclear warheads targeted against us".
Those are the facts Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, will begin to unveil this Sunday when he meets with the prime ministers of Spain and Italy. In the coming weeks he will once more act as America's point-man - going from one European capital to another to reveal all he now knows about the extent of Saddam's arsenal.
This "win the minds if not the hearts campaign" began in Washington last Wednesday (September 5). On a sunny afternoon, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld led a carefully selected group of Congressmen and Senators into a briefing room inside the Pentagon.
They were the first outside the close circle of Bush and Blair to hear the details of why America and Britain are now determined to attack Iraq.
Rumsfeld told his audience that Saddam now had over 30,000 litres of botulism toxin, six tons of VX nerve agent and a staggering 6,000 litres of anthrax spores. The list of chemicals was headed by Sarin. Then came Soman and Tabun, and a whole variety of blister agents: nitrogen and mustard gases. Choking agents include chlorine and phosgene in sufficient quantities to stop any army advancing on Baghdad.
Delivery systems include truck-borne launchers and warheads attached to Chinese-manufactured missiles. There are also chemical mines already sewn close to the eastern and southern borders with Iraq.
An estimated half of Iraq's air force of some 200 aircraft is fitted with rockets capable of creating on ground impact of a widespread aerosol or an air burst produced by a proximity fuse in each rocket. Biological weapons will be fired from specially adapted missiles - designed so that on impact they do not destroy the deadly living organisms.
Iraqi aircraft have also been fitted with wing tanks to carry the lethal bugs. The tanks are designed to be dropped over advancing troops. The delivery systems are intended to hit two prime targets. The 8,000 US troops presently in Kuwait and Israel.
Just as America considers a pre-emptive attack, so does Saddam. And so does Israel. Its defence chiefs know that Saddam has stationed Scud missile launchers in Iraq's western desert - only minutes flying time from Tel Aviv. The rocks may well be fitted with biochemical weapons.
All the intelligence points to Saddam's nuclear scientists - recruited from the former Soviet Union and North Korea - being engaged upon a desperate race to have at least one Hiroshima-scale bomb in place within a year.
For over an hour Rumsfeld spelled out the details in that Pentagon conference room. The room is known as a SCIF - a Special Classified Intelligence Facility. It is on the second floor of the Pentagon. A year ago this week the nerve centre of America's military might was partly demolished by Osama bin-Laden's terrorists.
For an hour Rumsfeld's audience sat on plastic moulded chairs to hear of a far greater threat. Their surroundings could only have heightened their sense of shock as the details emerged. The SCIF is suspended inside another room - securing it from eavesdroppers. Low ceilings and fluorescent lights cast an unearthly green hue over the faces over those sat around a conference table.
Using a pointer to identify the latest satellite imagery from America's "spy in the sky", the National Security Agency, Rumsfeld revealed that "almost all" of the biological and chemical weapons plants were either in the outer suburbs of Baghdad - or no more than 30 kilometers outside the city limits.
Nuclear facilities are also close to the capital, or along the banks of the River Euphrates, all the way north to the al-Jizira plant at Mosul. The key plant is at Tuwaitha, south of Baghdad. While the regime has openly conceded that it has 18 tonnes of low-enriched uranium and depleted natural uranium stored at the plant for "medical research purposes". Rumsfeld told his audience that the "reality" is that Iraqi claims about the nuclear material sealed in heavy steel barrels is "only a cover".
High-level Iraqi defectors, like former intelligence Wafic Samarai, have told the CIA that scientists at Tuwaitha have used other medical equipment to help Iraq come close to developing a nuclear bomb.
Key to this are the dozen "lithotripters" - machines that are used in hospitals to break-up kidney stones - have been adapted to use as a trigger for an atomic bomb. So far, tests conducted at Tuwaitha and Mosul have successfully created the implosive shock wave to produce a chain reaction inside the bomb at the moment of detonation.
In the run-up to the last Gulf War, China sold Iraq large quantities of lithium-t-carbide, a key component in the manufacture of a nuclear bomb. The material subsequently disappeared before the UN inspectors entered the country after the war ended.
At the same time the Chinese nuclear scientists who had been in Iraq during the war returned to Beijing. But Iraqi defectors say they have returned to Baghdad. Details of how to do this have been provided by some of the Chinese and North Korean nuclear scientists working at the country's six nuclear facilities.
After the Gulf War President Bush's father said that "America has bombed Iraq back to the stone age in terms of its nuclear capability".
His son has known the truth is different. At both the Tarmiya and al-Jizira nuclear facilities, frantic work has been going on for the past three years to use "flow forming" machines - again from North Korea - to try and produce the components needed to create enriched uranium. At the al-Furat complex south of Baghdad, other nuclear scientists are building centrifuges to create another way to obtain weapons-grade uranium by gas-centrifuge separation.
It is these details that Donald Rumsfeld unveiled to his audience in the Pentagon conference room. When they walked out into the evening sunshine last Wednesday, they could only have felt that the world had suddenly become a darker place. There was, one senator said to a congressman, no escaping the facts. They were there in the details.
the time for military action in iraq is approaching and I believe this is justified, but once done we will not be able to turn back, or have the american media pretend it never happened, so what if china decides to throw her muscle into this and promise to retaliate if G2 attacks iraq, or even after G2 attacks iraq?
if before the fact, which it's unlikely that china will state outright that she'll retaliate, IMHO G2 would then back off and pursue more diplomatic means instead of a military attack...
Yes/No?
IMO kicking butt on afghan and iraq has been easy but what if china and russia and God knows who else decides to flex some muscle...
is it even possible that china and an axis of countries would turn on us like that?
please enlighten me...
thanks in advance...
A curious visual. Think of all the innocent weekend shoppers whose lives would be lost when we unload our rain of terror on the Euphrates Valley Towne Center Shopping Mall. And just think, No more Saturday morning yard sales, triple couponing at Kroger's, and what about the planned trips to the mountains to see the fall colors?, Heck, the Tigris County Transportation Department just ok'd the proposed outer loop, this is not good timing...
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