AT WAR
The Inspections Dodge
Why are France and Germany pro-Saddam? Follow the
money.
BY KHIDHIR HAMZA
Tuesday, February 11, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
My 20 years of work in Iraq's nuclear-weapons program
and military industry were partly a training course in
methods of deception and camouflage to keep the
program secret. Given what I know about Saddam
Hussein's commitment to developing and using weapons
of mass destruction, the following two points are
abundantly clear to me: First, the U.N. weapons
inspectors will not find anything Saddam does not want
them to find. Second, France, Germany, and to a
degree, Russia, are opposed to U.S. military action in
Iraq mainly because they maintain lucrative trade
deals with Baghdad, many of which are arms-related.
Since the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution
1441 we have witnessed a tiny team of inspectors with
a supposedly stronger mandate begging Iraq to disclose
its weapons stockpiles and commence disarmament. The
question that nags me is: How can a team of 200
inspectors "disarm" Iraq when 6,000 inspectors could
not do so in the previous seven years of inspection?
Put simply, surprise inspections no longer work. With
the Iraqis' current level of mobility and intelligence
the whole point of inspecting sites is moot. This was
made perfectly clear by Colin Powell in his
presentation before the U.N. last week. But the
inspectors, mindless of these changes, are still
visiting old sites and interviewing marginal
scientists. I can assure you, the core of Iraq's
nuclear-weapons program has not even been touched.
Yesterday's news that Iraq will "accept" U-2
surveillance flights is another sign that Saddam has
confidence in his ability to hide what he's got.
Meanwhile, the time U.N. inspectors could have used
gathering intelligence by interviewing scientists
outside Iraq is running out. The problem is that there
is nothing Saddam can declare that will provide any
level of assurance of disarmament. If he delivers the
8,500 liters of anthrax that he now admits to having,
he will still not be in compliance because the growth
media he imported to grow it can produce 25,000
liters. Iraq must account for the growth media and its
products; it is doing neither.
Iraq's attempt to import aluminum tubes of higher
tensile strength than is needed in conventional
weapons has been brushed aside by the IAEA's Mohammed
El-Baradei. He claims there is no proof that these
tubes were intended for modification and use in
centrifuges to make enriched uranium. Yet he fails to
report that Iraq has the machining equipment to thin
these tubes down to the required thickness (less than
one millimeter) for an efficient centrifuge rotor.
What's more, they don't find it suspect that Iraq did
not deliver all the computer controlled machining
equipment that it imported from the British-based,
Iraqi-owned Matrix-Churchill that manufacture these
units.
Mr. Blix also discounted the discovery of a number of
"empty" chemical-weapons warheads. What he failed to
mention is that empty is the only way to store these
weapon parts. The warheads in question were not
designed to store chemicals for long periods. They
have a much higher possibility of leakage and
corrosion than conventional warheads. Separate storage
for the poisons is a standard practice in Iraq, since
the Special Security Organization that guards Saddam
also controls the storage and inventory of these
chemicals.
What has become obvious is that the U.N. inspection
process was designed to delay any possible U.S.
military action to disarm Iraq. Germany, France, and
Russia, states we called "friendly" when I was in
Baghdad, are also engaged in a strategy of delay and
obstruction.
In the two decades before the Gulf War, I played a
role in Iraq's efforts to acquire major technologies
from friendly states. In 1974, I headed an Iraqi
delegation to France to purchase a nuclear reactor. It
was a 40-megawatt research reactor that our sources in
the IAEA told us should cost no more than $50 million.
But the French deal ended up costing Baghdad more than
$200 million. The French-controlled Habbania Resort
project cost Baghdad a whopping $750 million, and with
the same huge profit margin. With these kinds of deals
coming their way, is it any surprise that the French
are so desperate to save Saddam's regime?
Germany was the hub of Iraq's military purchases in
the 1980s. Our commercial attach�, Ali Abdul Mutalib,
was allocated billions of dollars to spend each year
on German military industry imports. These imports
included many proscribed technologies with the German
government looking the other way. In 1989, German
engineer Karl Schaab sold us classified technology to
build and operate the centrifuges we needed for our
uranium-enrichment program. German authorities have
since found Mr. Schaab guilty of selling nuclear
secrets, but because the technology was considered
"dual use" he was fined only $32,000 and given five
years probation.
Meanwhile, other German firms have provided Iraq with
the technology it needs to make missile parts. Mr.
Blix's recent finding that Iraq is trying to enlarge
the diameter of its missiles to a size capable of
delivering nuclear weapons would not be feasible
without this technology transfer.
Russia has long been a major supplier of conventional
armaments to Iraq--yet again at exorbitant prices.
Even the Kalashnikov rifles used by the Iraqi forces
are sold to Iraq at several times the price of
comparable guns sold by other suppliers.
Saddam's policy of squandering Iraq's resources by
paying outrageous prices to friendly states seems to
be paying off. The irresponsibility and lack of
morality these states are displaying in trying to keep
the world's worst butcher in power is perhaps
indicative of a new world order. It is a world of
winks and nods to emerging rogue states--for a price.
It remains for the U.S. and its allies to institute an
opposing order in which no price is high enough for
dictators like Saddam to thrive.
Mr. Hamza, a former director of Iraq's nuclear-weapons
program, is the co-author of "Saddam's Bombmaker: The
Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and
Biological Weapons Agenda" (Scribner, 2000).
=====
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq:
Your enemy is not surrounding your country � your enemy is ruling your
country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be
the day of your liberation." -George W. Bush 1/29/03
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day
http://shopping.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
