There is not a single confirmed biological or chemical target on their lists, Air Force officers working on the war plan say.
No one doubts that Iraq has consistently lied and cheated about its proscribed arms capabilities. This is a country that has used chemical weapons against Iran and against its own population, a country that fired missiles at Israel and its Arab neighbors in 1991.
And the rundown of Iraqi weapons that remain incompletely accounted for since the 1991 Gulf War is daunting: 6,500 bombs filled with chemical agents, 400 bombs filled with biological agents, 31,500 chemical munitions, 550 artillery shells loaded with mustard gas, 8,500 liters of anthrax.
Moreover, CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency analysts believe that Hussein's forces could launch two types of short-range missiles, rockets or artillery that are capable of carrying chemical agents. The analysts say Iraqi aircraft or unmanned drones could mount sprayers to disperse chemicals or biological agents.
Analysts also think it possible for Iraqi commandos to penetrate coalition lines with small quantities of these weapons.
And U.S. intelligence has received reports that Special Republican Guard units, as well as secret police and security services charged with defending the regime, have been given bio-chem protective gear. President Bush, in his Feb. 8 radio address, said the administration had intelligence "that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons."
"We cannot rule out of course that Saddam might try in some kind of desperation to use chemical or biological weapons," National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said, echoing the administration line.
Yet, in fact, there is as much uncertainty as certainty about Iraq's capabilities, as well as about the military effectiveness of any 11th-hour resort to chemical and biological weapons. So much of what the U.S. believes is based upon Iraq's history, not knowledge of current conditions.
Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said as much when he told Congress last month that U.S. beliefs were "based on ... past patterns and availability ... that he will in fact employ them."
But the thinking that lies behind such statements when made by military professionals is quite different from that underlying the pronouncements of Rice and Wolfowitz.
