We Still Face the Menace of Iraq's Hidden Horrors
Saddam Hussein's regime has been deposed, and the world is slowly losing interest in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. There are even some who suggest the weapons don't exist. But this is dangerous. If they still exist -- as much evidence indicates -- those weapons could make their way into the wrong hands. And the time to prevent this is growing short.
Before the Iraq war, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Iraq might still possess 10,000 liters of anthrax and 15 times the amount of gaseous gangrene-causing agent that it had declared to the inspectors. Both these deadly items would still be viable today if properly stored. Blix also pointed to new evidence that Iraq could have 6,500 more chemical weapon warheads than previously thought.
And let's not forget that when U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998, they had compiled a frightening catalog of Iraq's undeclared poison gas, including almost four tons of missing VX, the deadliest form of nerve gas, and at least 600 tons of ingredients to make more of it. Also unaccounted for were up to 3,000 tons of other agents like tabun, sarin and mustard gas, about 550 artillery shells filled with mustard gas and about 31,000 chemical munitions, both filled and empty.
There's more. A classified CIA report prepared last spring and leaked to the press in November reported for the first time that the agency had "high" confidence that Iraq possessed smallpox. Add to this the mobile biological weapons labs described by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell before the U.N. Security Council in February. Two or three such trailers side by side could produce enough dried anthrax and botulinum toxin in a month to kill thousands of people. The United States has found only two trailers out of the total of 18 that Powell claims Iraq has. Those two are still being tested to verify what they were used for.
And there is Saddam Hussein's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iraq never turned over drawings showing its latest nuclear weapons design to the first inspection teams. In 1998, Iraq tried to buy 120 high-precision electronic switches, ostensibly for medical purposes, which are also used to trigger atomic bombs. And though suppliers claim to have provided only eight, sources at the United Nations and in the U.S. government believe that the number supplied was higher.
