Friday, April 18, 2003

Where are the banned weapons in Iraq?
Failure to find them 'could be very harmful to Bush politically,' analysts say

By DAN FREEDMAN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- American forces in Iraq so far have come up empty in their search for weapons of mass destruction, leading some experts to question President Bush's primary justification for attacking Iraq.

Members of the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force -- scientists, CIA officers, and Defense Intelligence Agency officers in addition to soldiers -- are searching for banned weapons at suspected weapons labs, manufacturing plants, storage depots and military installations.

U.S. officials, expressing confidence that those weapons eventually will be found, say they hope that newly captured high-ranking Iraqi scientists and officials will provide helpful clues.

"I don't think we'll discover anything, myself," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said at a meeting with Pentagon employees last week.

"I think what will happen is we'll discover people who will tell us where to go find it. It is not like a treasure hunt where you just run around looking everywhere, hoping you find something."

Gary Milhollin, director of the Washington-based Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control and a respected independent expert on weapons of mass destruction, says "the likelihood is the weapons are there or they've been exported to someplace else."

But Milhollin continued: "If we don't find them, a lot of people in the administration are going to have a lot of explaining to do."

Prior to his downfall, Saddam insisted that all such weapons had been destroyed. Even as coalition forces surged into Baghdad, Iraqi troops did not respond with chemical or biological weapons as some U.S. officials had predicted they would.

Lt. Gen. Amir Saadi, a top Iraqi scientist who surrendered to U.S. forces April 12, told German television that Iraq possessed "nothing, nothing," and that "time will bear me out ... I was telling the truth."

Most Americans do not seem to care.

In the afterglow of a swift military campaign that cost relatively few American lives, the public appears blasé about the weapons issue. In a New York Times/CBS News Poll last week, 57 percent of respondents said the war in Iraq was worthwhile even if coalition forces do not find the disputed weapons.

Thirty-seven percent said the failure to find such weapons would mean the war was not worth it.

That could change if the effort to rebuild Iraq bogs down amid internal bickering and sporadic fighting that costs more American lives, according to David Lesch, professor of Middle Eastern history at Trinity University in San Antonio.

In that case, failure to find weapons of mass destruction "could be very harmful to Bush politically," Lesch said.

Robert Borosage, president of the liberal Institute for America's Future, said that if the occupation proves grinding and costly, "the fact that no weapons were found could come back to haunt the administration, eroding (Bush's) ability to get Americans to support staying the course in nation-building."

Borosage added: "It's always dangerous for the president to be exposed as misleading the public. That lack of credibility, as President Johnson discovered, will erode Bush's ability to operate at home as well as abroad."

In the 1960s, Johnson faced what was then termed a "credibility gap" over his upbeat assessments of the Vietnam War, which contrasted sharply with reports from the field suggesting the U.S. military effort was bogged down.

Although Bush and other U.S. officials cited Saddam's repression of internal critics and alleged connection to the al-Qaida terrorist network, Iraq's alleged development of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons consistently stood as Exhibit A in the administration's case for war.

Bush and his top aides cited their concern about these weapons time and again before the war and during it, including Secretary of State Colin Powell's memorable presentation of evidence to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5.

Iraq could have up to 500 tons of chemical agents and 25,000 liters of anthrax, Powell said.

Over the years, U.N. weapons inspectors and Saddam opponents gave nicknames to Iraq's most prominent advocates of forbidden weapons.

"Doctor Germ" referred to Rihab Rashida Taha, the one-time head of Iraq's biological warfare program whose whereabouts are unknown. "Chemical Ali" referred to Ali Hassan al-Majid, the alleged mastermind of chemical weapons attacks against rebellious Kurds in northern Iraq in 1988. He was killed in a bombing raid on Basra earlier this month.

Some experts say U.S. teams would have to find a significant quantity of weapons to fulfill the public expectations that the administration has nurtured.

"They set the bar pretty high," said Jonathan Tucker, a chemical weapons expert who is a visiting senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a government-funded think tank.

"Powell in his presentation talked about 500 tons of chemical agents ... tens of thousands of liters of anthrax. Even if the teams come up with some prohibited arms, it may not satisfy expectations the Bush team created before the war."

Whether any of this would make a difference to the American public remains to be seen.

Most Americans "seem to be above all pleased that the U.S. has won, and that Saddam Hussein is gone," said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "They'd be more delighted if weapons of mass destruction were found. But if not, people will shrug and go on to something else."