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The Cupboard Was Bare

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Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a research professor of molecular biology at State University of New York at Purchase, is chairwoman of the Arms Control Center Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons.

Chief weapons inspector David Kay, after six months of leading a postwar search by the Iraq Survey Group, resigned last week and announced his conclusion -- the same one that United Nations inspectors had reached just before the war began: Iraq had no significant weapons of mass destruction nor any effective programs to develop them in the months leading up to the invasion. Iraqi WMD programs were largely eliminated after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, under pressure from U.N. inspections.

The real message of Kay’s statement is this: U.N. weapons inspections, coupled with sanctions, work. As Hans Blix, who headed the pre-war inspections told reporters in Stockholm last week: “We were not wrong. Most others were wrong. We were looking at the matter with a critical mind.”

U.N. inspectors had the advantage of long familiarity with scientific and technical activities in Iraq between 1991 and 1998. When they returned in November 2002, a small band with an annual budget of $80 million, they quickly perceived that Iraq’s capabilities had markedly deteriorated and that Iraq did not have the resources to pursue WMD.

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In on-site inspections of potential weapons sites, the U.N. found Iraqi declarations accurate. They also found much of the equipment essential to an ongoing WMD program in disrepair, unusable even for legitimate purposes. There was strong evidence that earlier research programs had been cut back or abandoned. Nothing was found at suspected sites, including those identified by U.S. and other intelligence sources. No significant illegal activities, with the exception of a marginal missile program the Iraqis claimed they thought was within permissible limits, were uncovered in the three months before U.N. inspectors were prematurely withdrawn from Iraq last year.

Kay’s Iraq Survey Group -- with a staff of 1,400, high-tech equipment and a monthly budget of $100 million -- had the disadvantage of arriving in Iraq after war and looting had ravaged much of the infrastructure that might have been capable of weapons production. By now, though, the ISG surely knows where all the chemical plants, biological fermenters and weapons scientists were located. They must know whether there were missiles, bombs, rockets or other systems capable of delivering WMD. The inspectors had free access not only to sites but to confidential documents. And they could conduct candid interviews that could be checked against each other for consistency.

Vice President Dick Cheney has suggested that inspectors need much more time to “look in all the cubby holes.” But this idea is laughable to anyone with a knowledge of standard verification techniques. A weapons program is not an easy thing to hide.

Consider, for example, biological weapons -- the easiest to conceal. Mere vials of biological weapons agents have no significance; every major country has stored them for reasons of public health and defense. Even if a significant stock of a biological agent could be hidden, it would have been grown and processed elsewhere at sizeable sites with recognizable safety equipment, run by skilled workers who are likely to have immunity to the agent, which can be tested. Traces of the agent could probably be found wherever it was handled. For the agent to be usable, delivery systems with special spray devices would need to be manufactured at other sites and stockpiled along with filling equipment.

In a conference call with journalists after his report to Congress last October, Kay -- already fairly certain that his team would find few smoking guns -- said something the U.S. needs to remember: “It may well be necessary to reassess what a lot of us thought was the impact -- and quite frankly thought was the eroding impact -- of [U.N.] sanctions over the years.” As we now realize, sanctions, in conjunction with weapons inspections, worked. They made it impossible for Iraq to import materials needed for restarting WMD programs.

We now know that for many years prior to the recent U.S.-led invasion, U.N. inspections were the only reliable source of intelligence about Iraqi weapons. A Pentagon official said in July that “once the inspectors were gone, it was like losing your [global positioning system] guidance.... We had to go back to our last fixed position, what we knew in ’98 and plot a course from there ... but you can swing way off to one side or the other.”

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The lack of more timely intelligence sources explains why intelligence agencies did not realize that Saddam Hussein was being misled about WMD by his own scientists. It should also have made intelligence officials less eager to provide a rationale for war.

There are lessons in all this. Most important for the future, we have learned that, contrary to expectation, the U.N.’s strategy of inspections and sanctions to eliminate WMD in Iraq worked. War could have been avoided.

Considering that a number of other countries and non-state terrorist organizations are suspected of possessing or seeking WMD, the organizational and personal experience gained in Iraq ought to be preserved. The successful U.N. strategy of sanctions and inspections must remain available, if needed in future proliferation crises. That means that the Security Council should establish a permanent body like the one that carried out its Iraq strategy. The mere existence of a permanent disarmament, monitoring and inspection agency, backed by the power of the Security Council, would have a deterrent effect. As a first step, a study to review the entire complex strategy and consider means for improving it should be undertaken right away.

Britain and most of our other allies favor a permanent U.N. inspectorate, but U.S. officials have declined to discuss the matter until the U.S.-led search for WMD in Iraq is over. That time may be near. Sharing the responsibility and costs for future investigations, and gaining reliable intelligence about WMD, would surely be in the U.S. interest.

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