WMD in Iraq Issues

WMD in Iraq Issues

OpinionJournal - AFTER THE WAR

Why then did Unscom and the U.S. intelligence community believe so firmly that the weapons programs continued big time long after 1991? It was because there was plenty of evidence indicating that the Iraqis were lying, in the form of documents, communications intercepts, defector reports, and other types of suspicious behavior. But this evidence may have been the product of a deeper deceit, and its importance overestimated by everybody.

We know for sure that the Iraqis had very ambitious chemical, biological, and nuclear programs in the '80s. They used chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iranians, and evidently had more potent stocks of VX and sarin ready for use. The U.S. was surprised with the extent of these programs, including their progress on nuclear weapons, when they were revealed by Unscom after the first Gulf War. Unscom, backed by the implicit threat of U.S. power, was able to destroy many of these weapons and evidently motivated the Iraqis to get rid of others it didn't find. After that point, with Iraq under U.N. sanctions, Saddam Hussein likely ordered that the programs be reconstituted, and some desultory efforts were made along these lines. But the extent of this reconstitution was vastly exaggerated by the Iraqis themselves.