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Muttling -> RE: Defining Victory in Iraq (1/5/2008 8:19:47 PM)
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umm.....All of you are off the mark on the details of his WMD programs. As one who was involved for the hunt for Saddam's weapons I know a great deal about the subject. Here's a few of the details from memory (it might be a little off, but should be pretty danged accurate)....
PLEASE NOTE: This is a major history lesson and the story took a dramatic change in the late 1990's. Try to keep the time line in context as you read.
Missile: He had one missile (the Al Abbas I think, but don't quote me on that) which had a minor potential to be a violation of U.N. sanctions. IF you turned the missile into a rocket by replacing the guidance package with additional fuel, it could achieve a range that was about 10 miles longer than allowed by U.N. sanctions. We never found any of them with the guidance packeges removed (much less replaced), but the Iraqi's ultimately admitted that it was theoretically possible to violate sanctions with them and destroyed all of these missiles long before the invasion. This destruction was verified by the U.N. The majority of his missile technology was Russian, Chinesse, or North Korean. HOWEVER, he did have a fair amount of French technology and it was French made Exocets that he used to attack the U.S.S. Stark in the min-1980's. He continued to purchase French missiles throughout the 1990's. (Bastards)
Nuclear: He abandonned centrifuge enrichment following the Israeli bomb strike in 1986(?) and pursued magnetic enrichment. He tried to hide it after GW1, but we found a few Calutrons in 1994. The UN's team pretty soundly verified the dismantlement of the program through the late 1990's. The ONLY evidence of anything nuclear was parts of a centrifuge we found buried in a scientists' back yard in 2004. The dreaded aluminum tubes he purchased in 2001 actually did go for the construction of convention rockets and not centrifuges as we claimed extensively (including to the U.N.) ALL of his nuclear technology came from the French!!!!!! (Bastards)
Biological: He did extensive research on a number of biological agents and toxins. The research started in the late stages of the Iran-Iraq war. His know how came from training of PhD biochemists at western schools including Brittain and America. He obtained his equipment as well as seed stocks under the auspices of disease control research (at the time, such stocks were virtually uncontrolled and widely shared among Universities). Anthrax was from America, Camel Pox was from France, Botullinum was from three countries (Brittish, America, and France), Afla Toxin was French (I think, but am not sure), ricin (no specific source), and I can't remember what else he actually weaponized. Those were the biggies. I know he did research into gang green, but I don't recall him having success at weaponization. Almost ALL of his biological research and production equipment came from the Germans. The shells to put them in are EASY to obtain since all you need are unfilled, thin walled rounds such as smoke canisters.
Pre-Gulf War 1, he produced massive quantities of botulinum toxin (a particularly nasty and rather stable biological toxin.) A biological toxin is basically a poison like a chemical warfare agent, but it is produced by a bacteria instead of an petro-chemical process. His second favorite item was liquid anthrax (a particularly nasty and very stable biological agent.) He produced an minor quantity of Camel Pox and experimented with Afla Toxin. That last one is the bizarre one. Iraq is the ONLY country even know to have attempted to weaponize Afla Toxin. I just doesn't make sense as the toxin has NO immediate effects. It only does one thing....It cause liver cancer and is rather effective (especially effective on children.)
Post-Gulf War 1, we knew he had a biological weapons program going but were unable to track it down until........1995. Two of the heads of Saddam's special weapons programs defected and gave a tell all report to the U.N. They were Saddam's son-in-laws, but he's got a bodacious butt load of them so that really isn't significant unless you are talking about wife number 1. They later returned to Iraq and were immediately executed. They spilled the beans on his programs and the U.N. went about destroying it. Almost all of what was found was liquid botullinum toxin (mostly) and liquid anthrax. We found 7 or 8 SCUD warheads loaded with Afla Toxin which makes no sense as a tactical weapon.
1998, we found some video of a 1996 test spraying a liquid anthrax simulant from a fighter jet modified to operate like a crop duster. We also found a couple of helicopters with similar modifications. ALL were destroyed by the U.N.
Mid-1990's, Iraq conducts research on production of a dusty anthrax agent. The research was a massive technical failure and was discovered by the U.N. around 1998. The only reason I specifically remember this one is the fact that the grinding mills were never accounted for and dusty agents scare me.
Early 2000's, the U.N. claims there is no evidence of a continuing biological program and all stocks have been destroyed. Some equipment is in the process of destruction while a tracking system is being developed to track dual use equipment. 2003, Collin Powell claims we have evidence of mobile Iraqi biological weapons labs. We found some mobile lab equipment, but nothing even close to the equipment required to produce chemical or biological warfare agents. The Iraqi's claimed they were part of their weather baloon program. The Iraqi claims are a LOT more valid than any weaponization claim I have ever heard given the details of the truck contents and the results of extensive swipe testing performed out of desperation to prove otherwise.
chemical: This is where it gets REALLY involved and this was the bread n butter of his WMD programs. It started in early 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war. Iraq was getting slaughtered by Iran's mass wave attacks (simular to what the Chineese did to us in the Korean War) and NO they are not suicide attacks. The only way to break such an attack is with highly effective, mass casualty weapons like cluster bombs. Iraq didn't have cluster weapons, but they did have a very advanced petro-chemical industry. It didn't take long for their chemical engineers to say, "You know. We've got advanced phosgene production capabilities. It's only a couple of steps further to start making Mustard gas." In less than one year, they were cranking out a pretty danged pure version of mustard and breaking the attacks.
The technology was all home grown. His engineers were trained out of country, but chemical agent production isn't very hard for a well established petro-chemical country. His equipment came from America, Germany, and Brittain. His materials came from a variety of sources, mostly South African. However, nothing in of itself looked odd. You had to put all the pieces together to know what was up and this was the hieght of the Cold War. Who wants to ask questions of a country is fighting a Communist backed Iran????
A year later, they had gone to the next logical step and were cranking out two gaseous nerve agiants (sarin and cyclo-sarin.) These agents became the staple of Saddam's non-conventional weapons program. In 1985 (?), Donald Rumsfield visited Saddam under the direction of president Reagan. He formally asked Saddam to stop the use of chemical weapons in return for American provided cluster bombs. He agreed. We gave him custom built cluster weapons (custom built to function with his Russian and French aircraft) through an Argentinian weapons manufacturer. Instead of halting the use of chemical agents, he took apart the cluster bombs and figured out how to construct ones of his own. He made some attempts to produce chemical cluster weapons, but they met with dismal failure.
The Iran-Iraq war ended and following a bunch of American foreign policy screw ups (thank you GW41 and your dumb ass ambassador), Saddam fealt empowered to invade Kuwait. (Not that he needed much encouragement, but we sure didn't give him any discouragement.) Following the surrendor of Iraq, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers went on a detonation frenzy. They were in Southern Iraq blowing up EVERYTHING as fast as we could. We knew that the signing of the resolution would require our pull out and we were taking a scortched earth approach. Two of the detonated bunkers were loaded with sarin and cyclosarin shells. This exposed well over 100,000 U.S. troops to less than lethal doses of nerve agents. (If you want more details, google Khamisiyah + sarin). This one REALLY pisses me off as the State Department kept it classified until 1996 (I think). A large number of the symptoms of Gulf War Illness are identical to the symptoms of less than lethal exposure to nerve agents.
We played a cat n mouse game with Saddam over chemical weapons through 1996 (or 1998). He was trying to develop VX but we never found evidence of him succeeding. The attack on Halabja had some persistance issues that suggest VX, but cyclo-sarin also has a great deal of persistance and has identical symptoms. Before we invaded Iraq, Halabja convinced me that he had been able to produce VX but our inability to find any elsewhere leads me to believe it was his favorite cocktail (sarin and cyclosarin).
Following the late 1990's, the U.N. didn't find much of anything. There biggest question was Iraq's need for such a high phosgene production capability and negotiations were underway to reduce that capability. Phosgene is a very common chemical in the petro-chemical industry and the precursor to most chemical warfare agents. (It is also a military choking agent, but it's battlefield efficy is so pitiful that you're better off using straight chlorine gas.)
Upon our invasion, we didn't find squat for chemical agents. We found a few stashes that the U.N. was aware of and had been planning to destroy when they were clear to return to Iraq, We found two pallets of mustard gas mortar shells sunk in the swamps east of Bahgdad. Seriel numbers dated back to the Iran-Iraq war and they were so rusted out that they would have ruptured on firing if filled with propellant and dropped into a mortar tube. The insurgents found "a very small number" of sarin-cyclosarin shells and used them in an IED without knowing what they had. They put so much conventional explosive around the shells that the chemical agent was massively incinerated and dissapated upon detonation. There were no nerve agent exposure injuries reported and (to my knowledge) no other chemical agent shells have been reported in IEDs or in bomb factories.
Bush Administration's Claims: The current claim is that he HAD ended his program but we were justified because he maintained the technology to restart it.....
WTF?????
How do we remove his ability to restart? Require him to kill his scientists and destroy his entire petrochemical industry? Nothing short of that will remove the ability to restart.
I believed we were right when we went in and I still believe Saddam was a bad dude. That said, we only had ONE reasonable justification for going in.......and ACTIVE weapons program. It didn't exist and I am man enough to admit that I was wrong in my position. How is it HONORABLE or RESPECTIBLE to change your justification because you didn't find what you claimed to exist????
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