Recently, the United States Congress received a report from David Kay,
the man whom the US Administration asked to investigate Iraqi
violations of UN ban against chemical, biological, nuclear or
radiological weapons. He found little or no evidence of deployed
weapons.
This suggests one of three possibilities:
* That such weapons were abandoned and that the Iraqi government
decided to keep its designs going and maintain a `surge'
capability, or
* That such weapons were hidden by the Iraqi government when it
decided to fight an asymmetrical war against the US, which it
might win, rather than fight a regular war against the US, which
it would be sure to lose, or
* That some, perhaps most, weapons were abandoned under the pressure
of UN inspections and some were hidden.
To me, the latter suggestion seems most likely. Unlike some, I do not
think that Saddam Hussein abandoned all this weapons.
If true, the third suggestion implies the following:
* That Kay's investigators would find little or nothing, and,
* That willy-nilly, the US failure to search for WMD in late April
was irrelevant, since none of those 900 or so sites had anything
in them then or more recently, when Kay's investigators looked at
them.
(The latter does not excuse the US government from its failure to
search those sites in April: it is evident that the US government did
not expect continued asymmetrical war against it and so would not have
expected that WMD would be better hidden than anticipated. Based on
what it thought then, it should have searched those sites.)
Currently, the US is losing the asymmetrical war. This is not so
different from the outcome of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. In that
situation in 1968, the US won militarily, but because the then US
government had previously said that no such offensive could be staged
by US enemies, the US lost politically. Thus, even if most parts of
Iraq are peaceful, the contrast with previous expectations dooms the
US.
(I personally hope the US will build a peaceful, prosperous Iraq, with
a sound educational system, an administration based on law, little
corruption, and with democratic changes of government; unfortunately,
I fear that is unlikely to happen unless the US spends huge amounts of
money as foreign aid and manages its occupation policy well.)
If the Saddam Hussein forces still have WMD, then we should not expect
to see them used at this time in Iraq. This is because the war is
primarily political, and use of chemical, biological, nuclear or
radiological weapons used in Iraq would benefit the Bush
Administration more than its enemies. (Indeed, if WMD are used in
Iraq, the first question will be `who benefits'. One can imagine some
anti-Saddam clan or religious group figuring that they will lose if
things keep on as they have, but that it won't matter, and may help
them, if many people from some other clan die in a grisly manner.)
In the past, the Saddam Hussein forces had no reason to ally
themselves with Al Qaeda or similar anti-US groups, since the
Ba'athist part was a modernizing, anti-clerical, fascist party (to use
European terms). Al Qaeda is a religious group that is against modern
Western culture. It was not, originally, a good ally for Saddam
Hussein. Moreover, in the past, Saddam Hussein himself would have
figured that he dare not give a strong weapon to some group he did not
control, lest that group betray him as he had betrayed others.
However, over the past two decades Saddam Hussein has presented
himself as more pro-clerical. And, in any event, for him now, the
most important action is to defeat the US and its allies.
While the Saddam Hussein forces would most likely lose in the long run
if WMD were used in Iraq, they would benefit if the US or its allies
suffered an attack outside of Iraq. Such an attack would push US
citizens to figure that the current US Administration is incompetent.
(Historically, people in the US have not been too much opposed to a
long war with heavy casualties, such as World War II, so long as they
thought that the US was in the right and going to win. However, they
have become opposed to a war, such as the Vietnamese War, that
appeared run incompetently.)
So, I would not be surprised if the Saddam Hussein forces provided new
allies with biological or radiological weapons. Although such weapons
would, most likely, have little military effect, they could certainly
have great political effect.
Besides the United States, targets include China, south-east Asia,
Europe, and Australia.
Each non-US target is an ally in one way or the other -- France, for
example, is an exemplary of Western culture, even if it opposed US
actions in Iraq. China is a target because so much of its territory
is Muslim, not Han. Also, in this case, China is an ally of the US.
In south-east Asia, Indonesia is a target because its government is
allied with the US, as are the other governments of the region, more
or less. Australia is a target because it has helped the US.
The goal of the Saddam Hussein forces would be to win the asymmetrical
war with the US. It would do this by getting the US to pull out of
Iraq, as it did from Vietnam, the Lebanon, and Somalia. The goal of
Al Qaeda would be to gain victory over the current Saudi government
and to establish a new caliphate (perhaps in alliance with some
Saudis; the Saudi clan, after all, is not homogeneous). Al Qaeda has
already succeeded in getting US military out of Saudi Arabia, which
from its point of view, is a major victory.
As for an attack against the continental US: an agent could carry
weaponized anthrax in a container of Johnson's baby powder. I doubt
it would be discovered. He could then disperse it in a number a
different places. A shipping container could carry a radiological
bomb that would detonate either at its destination or if a custom's
agent opened or x-rayed it. (As far as I know, US customs currently
checks about 2% of incoming containers.) From an enemy's point of
view, it does not hugely matter whether a radiological bomb detonates
in the Port of New York at customs or at a receiving dock for Bank of
America.
Either action would cause US citizens to think ill of their
government's security operations, and tend to persuade them that a
short-term accommodation with their enemy is the better part of valor.
Thus, as far as I can see, presuming that the Bush Administration was
at least some what dcorrect in thinking that Saddam Hussein had WMD,
the Kay report is very bad. Only if it turns out that Bush
Administration was really really wrong, and not just lying somewhat,
might the Kay report turn out to be good news.
--
Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises
http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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