GUESS WHAT? SADDAM IS STILL LYING, PRESERVING A BIOLOGICAL WARFARE CAPABILITY THAT IS A RISK TO THE U.S.

(Washington, D.C.): For the third time since April, the Iraqi
biological warfare (BW) onion has been peeled back, establishing
indisputably that Saddam Hussein amassed an immense arsenal of
deadly viruses and toxins for use as weapons of mass destruction.
On 10 April, the United Nations reported that at least 17 tons of
material used to breed bacteria and believed to be associated
with an Iraqi BW program could not be accounted for. The official
line in Baghdad, however, was that Iraq had no biological
weapons and never had a program for acquiring them.

Then, in early July, Iraq informed Rolf Ekeus — the chairman
of the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) — that it did
have a secret facility involved in biological warfare activities,
after all. It was located in the desert at Al Hakam and utilized
technical know-how obtained from German companies in the
mid-1980s. According to Iraqi scientists, this facility was used
to produce some 5,500 gallons of the most deadly viruses ever
contemplated for biological warfare purposes: botulism and
anthrax. Iraq told the UN, though, that all such materials had
been destroyed prior to Operation Desert Storm.

Now, in the wake of the defection to Jordan of General
Hussein Kamel Hassan Majid — a former deputy to Saddam Hussein
who was intimately involved in the Iraqi military build-up —
Iraq has served up enormous quantities (147 boxes and two large
containers-worth) of BW-related information to UNSCOM. This
information once again gives lie to the regime’s previous
disclosures and paints a frightening picture of the Iraqi
biological warfare program.⁽¹⁾
According to today’s Washington Post:

• Iraq actually had a large biological warfare
  capability available for use against allied forces in the
  Gulf War, including germ- or toxin-filled artillery
  shells, aircraft-delivered bombs and ballistic missile
  warheads. This means, at a minimum, that Saddam can
  rein deadly viruses on Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,
  targets of past Iraqi aggression.
• Five sites — not the single facility Iraq had
  earlier acknowledged — were involved in producing a
  larger quantity of anthrax virus than had been previously
  admitted.
• In addition to anthrax and botulism, Iraq had
  manufactured a third, as yet unannounced, toxin (a
  chemical agent produced through biological techniques).
  The Post notes that “only some of the U.S.
  soldiers to the region were given innoculations — and
  the shots covered only two of the three highly lethal
  biological and toxin weapons that Iraq has now admitted
  it produced.”

Although Iraq now acknowledges that it did not destroy all
its biological warfare stocks before Desert Storm, it maintains
that it did so afterwards, in 1991. What is more,
according to Mr. Ekeus, “the Iraqi leadership declared to me
that its policy from now on is 100 percent implementation”
of the 1991 and 1992 UN resolutions authorizing the destruction
of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program. While he has
hastened to add that this and accompanying Iraqi “statements
must be verified” and “cannot be taken at face
value,” Mr. Ekeus has indicated that, if judged correct —
presumably on the basis of a lengthy and detailed analysis of the
latest Iraqi documents (which are in Arabic) — the UN Security
Council “without exception” would have to agree to lift
sanctions against Iraq.

Hold Everything

That had better not be the case. After all, Saddam’s track
record gives no basis for believing that he is not lying now. In
particular, there is no reason for accepting as fact his
regime’s contention that it no longer has any capacity to conduct
biological warfare.

To the contrary, recent threats by senior Iraqi officials
and/or official outlets strongly suggest that biological warfare
against the West and its allies in the Middle East remains a very
real option for Saddam Hussein. As Dr. Laurie Mylroie — a
renowned Middle East expert, best-selling author and
distinguished member of the Center’s Board of Advisors – – noted
in a 28 March 1995 op.ed. article in the Boston Globe,
these threats included the following: “When people reach the
verge of collective death, they will be able to spread death to
all….When one realizes that death is one’s inexorable fate,
there remains nothing to deter one from taking the most risky
steps to influence the course of events.”

Dr. Mylroie observed that:

“Such threats appeared daily in Iraq’s
government-controlled press from 27 September through 12
October 1994. The last such threat spoke explicitly of the
use of biological and chemical agents, ‘if the Iraqi regime
realizes that the United States is after its head.’ That
threat appeared in an Arabic paper in London, affording
plausible deniability. But it is unlikely that the paper, al
Quds al-Arabi — funded by and close to the Iraqis —
would have raised such a possibility without official
direction.”

Then on 15 June 1995, the same paper published an editorial
entitled “Iraq and Sampson’s Only Option.” It said, in
part:

“Iraq, to put it very concisely, still has options
— destructive options. Continuing to press it into a corner,
a corner of hunger, disease, humiliation and internal
subversion…could lead them to resort to the option of
bringing down the temple on everyone.”

Sanctions Must Stay On Until Saddam & Co. Are Removed

Even in the unlikely event that Saddam actually did get rid
of his biological warfare arsenal in 1991, does anyone really
believe that the end of sanctions — and the infusion of funds it
would precipitate as a result of resumed large-scale oil sales —
will not put this and every other Iraqi covert weapons of mass
destruction program back on track? The same people whose
technical expertise made it possible for Iraq to amass vast
chemical and biological weapons stockpiles, operationalize a
large ballistic missile force and nearly acquire a nuclear weapon
remain in-country. Given the necessary resources and direction,
it is predictable that such threats will not be empty ones in the
future.

The Bottom Line

Consequently, the Center for Security Policy continues to
believe that — even if the Iraqi regime actually has
stopped lying — there can be no end of the present economic
sanctions until Saddam and his clique are removed from power.
And, as Gen. Hussein Kamel’s defection clearly reminds us, there
is no question of allowing one of the Butcher of Baghdad’s
henchmen to supplant him.

The Center believes the latest revelations about Iraq’s once
— and future, if not present — biological warfare capabilities
underscores a point it has made repeatedly in the past: The
Clinton Administration must accord vastly greater priority to
defending the American people against biological warfare.
This will entail giving more resources and attention to such
activities as BW-related intelligence collection, reconnaissance
and detection, individual and collective protection, inoculation
and treatment, etc. It will also demand an end to foolish utopian
delusions about verifiably banning biological or chemical weapons
from the face of the earth.

With regard to the latter point, as the Center concluded on 7
July 1995 ⁽²⁾:

“…It should be obvious that Saddam’s success to
date in concealing thousands of gallons of BW viruses is
evidence of the utter impossibility of securing
effective, verifiable and global bans of easily manufactured
and concealed substances like those used in biological and
chemical warfare. It is a snare and delusion to promise
such a result. If, moreover, in the interest of promoting
such a canard, the United States compounds its present
vulnerability — whether by failing to provide adequate
defenses or by unilaterally denying itself in-kind deterrents
— it may actually invite the use of such heinous
weapons against America and its citizens and interests.”

(1) Unfortunately, Western estimates of
the maturity and status of Iraq’s other weapons of mass
destruction programs also have to be revised upwards. New, but as
yet unspecified admissions have also been received about the
status of Iraq’s ballistic missile program. On the basis of
recent disclosures, it is believed that Saddam Hussein was far
closer to acquiring nuclear weapons than had been estimated
heretofore.

(2) See the Center’s Decision Brief
entitled What Iraq’s Biological Warfare Revelations Really
Mean: There Can Be No Accommodation With Saddam ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_44″>No. 95-D 44, 7 July 1995).