We're on the road to Baghdad

There will now be war. Not just because the only reason to burn those intelligence sources is if you're planning on strolling in to those facilities openly within a few weeks. Yesterday's presentation was also for the benefit of posterity: When Saddam's skeletons come tumbling out of the post-liberation closet, it will not be possible to claim, "Quelle surprise! If only we'd known!" The French have intelligence services, too. When the Americans and British say "This is what we know," the subtext is: The French and the Russians know at least some of this stuff, too. They just don't think it matters.

It won't have changed minds, and it wasn't intended to. If you're the sort of person who thinks Colin Powell has a troupe of Arabic-speaking radio actors on staff to fake audio transcripts, or who genuinely believes there's a perfectly innocent explanation for all that chit-chat about deleting all references to "nerve agents," then nothing will change your mind. There's been an interesting ratchet effect in recent weeks: The left has increasingly given up on even pro forma denunciations of Saddam -- "Of course, I want to see him gone, but ..." As Tony Benn's Monica-style interviewing technique illustrated, the old butcher's becoming a turn-on to them, another Ho, another Fidel.

But, if you take the suppler position of M. Chirac -- which is, broadly, that we cynical Gallic charmers run rings around the UN, so why shouldn't Saddam? -- then the strength of General Powell's evidence is also irrelevant. So, at the end of his presentation, those who were in favour of war were still in favour, and those opposed still opposed. Whether Canada will have been persuaded to take either position is an interesting philosophical question but of no great importance to the world.

The surprise was Mr. Powell's confident assertion of Saddam's links to terrorism and the presence in Baghdad for eight months of key al-Qaeda personnel with links to the recently arrested ricin terrorists in Britain.

The Secretary was at pains to emphasize that these agents' recent schemes have been principally against European targets, and in listing the individual countries he chose to put France first, every time. In other words, if you wish to put your investment in interminable UN proceduralism over your own national security, you do so at your own peril. If you accept what he says, then it moves the debate beyond 1441: If al-Qaeda's in Baghdad, then that's not a UN discussion topic but a threat to U.S. security.

You can choose not to believe that, if you wish. The evidence is circumstantial, and as an unending torrent of alleged experts assure us nightly, the "fundamentalist" Islamists like al-Qaeda revile "secular" Baathists like Saddam. That's a lot of bunk. For one thing, Iraq has recently produced a collector's-item edition of the Koran written entirely in Saddam's donated blood. That makes him rather less "secular" a leader than, say, Hillary Clinton or Gerhard Schroeder. Anyone who regards Saddam's behaviour these past two decades as a reliable indicator of the scale of his ambition will understand that he would have no ideological objection to making common cause with al-Qaeda and several compelling reasons to keep them a going concern, if only as a distraction. You can argue against that, if you want to. But your argument depends on giving both Saddam and al-Qaeda the benefit of far more doubts than their prior behaviour warrants. Your argument is basically: We can't really be sure he'd sell suitcase nukes to terrorists until one goes off in Detroit. Then we'll say, oh, OK, maybe there's a link after all.

The U.S., Britain, Australia, Italy, Spain and their other allies -- a category that does not, alas, include Canada -- are past that stage of the debate. Resolution 1441, painstakingly negotiated syllable by syllable by Mr. Powell and his duplicitous opposite number in the Quai d'Orsay, was never about Saddam. It was about the UN. The choice is: Put Saddam out of business, or put yourselves out of business. To judge from their reactions yesterday, the Security Council members still don't quite get it. The Russians and French responded to Powell with some artful platitudes about the need to strengthen the inspections regime. Even allowing for the fact that these remarks had been prepared ahead of time, their complacency was insulting. Mr. Powell's point is a simple one: Saddam cannot be "inspected" into compliance.

This statement of the obvious was supported by no other Permanent Member of the Council apart from Britain. Jack Straw, the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, began by congratulating Germany and his friend Joschka Fischer on assuming the Presidency of the Council and then went on to write the UN's obituary, as just another bunch of international ditherers, all talk, no walk: "The League failed because it could not create action from its words ... At each stage good men said wait; the evil is not big enough to challenge: then before their eyes, the evil became too big to challenge."

Broadly, the French are still in the first stage. But there's some indication Herr Fischer and his government are already at the second: They've concluded that the informal coalition of Islamist terrorist groups and rogue states is too big to challenge directly. While the French are behaving according to type, the shrillness of the German government's anti-war rhetoric is at odds with half-a-century of the country's political tradition. When Schroeder campaigned for re-election on an explicitly anti-Texan ticket, the realpolitik types argued it was just hustings bluster; after election day, it would be business as usual. But it isn't. What are they so worked up about? With that question in mind, Mr. Powell's remarks about Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi are of particular relevance: today's Süddeutsche Zeitung reports Zarqawi's plans to target "Israeli installations" -- i.e., synagogues -- in Germany.

As a sovereign state, the Germans are entitled to their position. So are the French: The Daily Telegraph reports that Islamic extremists are already conducting a "low-level intifada" in France. In the event of war with Iraq, the "Arab street" in Lyons and Hamburg will be far more incendiary than that in Baghdad. M. Chirac, behind the scenes, seems to be showing some willingness to be helped out of the corner he flamboyantly painted himself into: There wasn't much talk about the French veto in either New York or Paris yesterday. But it's clear from the mood around the Security Council table that there also isn't much will for anything other than yet another last-chance resolution.

That won't do now. The trouble with the UN is simple: At its inception, it reflected the realities of the World War victory parade; from the Fifties to the Eighties, it reflected the realities of the Cold War stalemate; now it reflects not the new reality -- a unipolar world dominated by a hyperpower -- but the denial of that fact. For most of the participants in yesterday's meeting, the UN is not a reflection of geopolitical power but a substitute for it, a means by which the Lilliputians can tie down the Texan Gulliver. The fantastical, unreal character it adopted after the collapse of Communism sealed its fate. Yesterday was merely a confirmation.

Two or three dozen countries will join the war to liberate Iraq. If the Americans and British are wise, they'll play up the smaller fry, let their generals handle some of the press conferences, talk up their war heroics. All the late 20th century arrangements -- the EU, NATO and most definitely the UN -- are about to be re-made.

The reason I speculate that Iran will follow Iraq and not Syria, is that Iran is riper for the picking

I'm not sure, exactly. Despite the energetic and persistent protests against the mullahtocracy, I'm not convinced that Iran is as ripe for revolution as it might appear. The idea of revolution is seriously discredited in Iran. Revolution, after all, is what produced the present government. The populace, although they have pretty much given up on the "reformers," still seem to want evolution, however far reaching and fundamental, rather than revolution.

The situation in Iran may take some while yet to play out. Even though some elements among the protesters are secular and/or radically pro-Western, not all are, nor (I suspect) will that more radically pro-Western element be able to gain the trust or support of the population at large. Even if the reformers have been abandoned with disgust as ineffectual and unwilling to confront the mullahs, it appears the reformist line, which envisions a moderate, modernized and democratized islamic state, is still widely popular.

The trick will be to ensure that, if such an "evolved" Iranian state emerges, that the radical islamists are not allowed to remain influential in control of its intelligence apparatus and foreign policy. Of course this situation of a moderated and modernized Iran with a radical islamic element continuing to support terrorism is not stable in the long run, but it may be something we have to deal with for a certain space of time.

Where do you think Sarin and Tabun came from?

FYI.

A Short History of the Development of Nerve Gases

The Discovery of the First Nerve Agent

The history of nerve agents begins on 23 December 1936, when Dr. Gerhard Schrader of the I. G. Farbenindustrie laboratory in Leverkusen first prepared Tabun (ethyl dimethylphosphoramidocyanidate, GA). Schrader had been in charge of a program to develop new types of insecticides since 1934, working first with fluorine-containing compounds such as acyl fluorides, sulfonyl fluorides, fluoroethanol derivatives, and fluoroacetic acid derivatives. In 1935, he prepared dimethylphosphoramidofluoridic acid as a continuation of the previous line of research. He obtained patents for this compound in Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and the United States, and he began to investigate systematically the dimethylphosphoramides, eventually leading to the preparation of Tabun. Schrader found that Tabun was extremely potent against insects; 5 ppm of Tabun killed all the leaf lice he used in his initial experiment. In January 1937, Schrader was the first to observe the effects of nerve agents on human beings when he and a laboratory assistant began to experience meiosis (contraction of the pupils of the eyes) and shortness of breath because of their exposure to Tabun vapor in the laboratory. As Harris and Paxman noted, Schrader and his assistant "were luck to escape with their lives."1

In 1935, the Nazis had passed a decree which requiring all inventions of possible military significance to be reported to the Ministry of War. A sample of Tabun was sent to the chemical warfare (CW) section of the Army Weapons Office at Berlin-Spandau in May 1937, and Schrader was summoned to Berlin to give a demonstration. At that time Schrader's patent application was made secret. Colonel R½driger, head of the CW section, ordered the construction of new laboratories for the further investigation of Tabun and other organophosphate compounds. Schrader soon moved to a new laboratory at Wuppertal-Elberfeld in the Ruhr valley.

Manufacture of Tabun by Nazi Germany

In 1939, a pilot plant for Tabun production was set up at Munster-Lager, on Luneberg heath near the German Army proving grounds at Raubkammer. In January 1940, the Germans began construction of the full scale plant, code named Hochwerk, at Dyernfurth-am-Oder (now Brzeg Dolny in Poland), on the Oder River 40 km from Breslau (now Wroclaw) in Silesia. The plant covered an area 1.5 by 0.5 miles and was completely self-contained, synthesizing all intermediates as well as the final product, Tabun. The facility had an underground plant for filling munitions, which were then stored at Krappitz (now Krapowice) in Upper Silesia. An IG Farbenindustrie subsidiary, Anorgana GmbH, operated the Tabun plant, as well as all other CW agent production plants in Germany.

The plant took an extraordinarily long period, from January 1940 until June 1942, to become operational. This was due primarily to the difficult nature of the production process. Certain intermediates were so corrosive that the Germans were forced to run all reactions in quartz- or silver-lined vessels. The extreme toxicity of Tabun required that the final production units be enclosed in double glass-lined walls, with a stream of pressurized air circulating between the walls. All units were periodically decontaminated with steam and ammonia.

The Dyernfurth workforce numbered 3,000, all German nationals. Workers were equipped with respirators and clothing made from a rubber/cloth/rubber sandwich; the clothing was discarded after the tenth wearing. Despite these precautions, over 300 accidents occurred before production began, and at least 10 workers were killed during the 2.5 years of operation. Harris and Paxman give some examples of incidents in reference 1:

Four pipe fitters had liquid Tabun drain onto them and die before their rubber suits could be removed.
A worker had 2 liters of Tabun pour down the neck of his rubber suit and died within 2 minutes.
Seven workers were hit in the face with a stream of Tabun of such force that the liquid was forced behind their respirators; only two survived despite heroic resuscitation measures.

Sarin: the Second Nerve Agent
In 1938, a second potent organophosphate nerve agent was discovered. This agent, Sarin (1-methylethyl methylphosphonofluoridate, GB) was named for its four discoverers: Schrader, Ambros, R½driger, and van der Linde. In June 1939, the formula for Sarin was passed to the to CW section of the Army Weapons Office at Berlin-Spandau along with a sample of the compound.

All the synthetic routes for Sarin investigated at that time required the use of hydrogen fluoride, which caused severe corrosion problems. This necessitated the use of quartz- and silver-lined components. Pilot plants were constructed at Spandau, M½nster Lager, on Luneberg heath, and pilot production of Sarin was conducted in Building 144 in Dyernfurth. The Dyernfurth Sarin plant is variously listed as having a capacity of 40 or 100 tons per month A 500-ton per month production plant was under construction at Falkenhagen, southeast of Berlin, at the end of World War II. Estimates vary for the total Sarin production from 500 kg to 10 tons.

The United States began producing Sarin in the early 1950s and ended regular production in 1956.

The Secret of Tabun Gets Out

On 11 May 1943, the British captured a German chemist who had worked at the main Army CW research laboratory in Spandau. The prisoner told the British the code name for Tabun (Trilon 83), the chemical reactions by which it was produced, its effects, and methods of use of and defense against Tabun. This was compiled into an MI9 intelligence report of 3 July 1943. Following the war, the Allies contended that they first became aware of Tabun in April 1945, when a German ammunition dump was captured and a shell containing Tabun was shipped to the United Kingdom for analysis. However, the record appears to show that the responsible officials ignored the 1943 report.

The End of the War

At the end of 1944, Germany had produced 12,000 tons of Tabun: 2,000 tons loaded into projectiles and 10,000 tons loaded into aircraft bombs. These munitions were stored at Krappitz (Krapowice) in Upper Silesia as well as in abandoned mine shafts in Lausitz and Saxony. Some stocks were also transported to Baveria in anticipation of a last ditch defensive stand by the Nazis.

In August 1944, as the Red Army approached Silesia and the Western Allies began the race for the German border, the Nazis began systematically destroying documentation of the research on and the manufacture of Tabun and Sarin. In early 1945, Dyernfurth was to be abandoned and tons of liquid nerve agents were simply poured into the Oder. The plant was rigged for demolition, but the Russians surrounded the plant before it could be destroyed. The Luftwaffe was then ordered to bomb the plant, but they also failed to destroy it. It is believed that the Soviets captured both the full-scale Tabun plant and the pilot Sarin plant intact. The Soviets later captured the near complete full-scale Sarin plant at Falkenhagen. It has been reported that production at Dyernfurth resumed in 1946 under Russian auspices.

Soman

Richard Kuhn discovered Soman (1,2,2-trimethylpropyl methylphosphonofluoridate, GD) in the spring of 1944, while working for the German Army on the pharmacology of Tabun and Sarin. The documents detailing the discovery were buried in a mineshaft 10 miles east of Berlin, where they were discovered by the Soviets and removed. The Soviets produced and stockpiled Soman during the Cold War.

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