Where Are Saddam?s Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Published in Spanish translation under the title “¿Dónde están las armas de Saddam?"

Where are the large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that Washington and London insisted were in the hands of Saddam Hussein?  Where is the substantial and active nuclear weapons program he was said to possess?  After many weeks of intense searching at dozens of the sites thought most suspicious, nothing of consequence has been found.  With each passing day, this situation grows more embarrassing for the Bush and Blair governments, especially as they are increasingly criticized from within their own intelligence establishments for distorting and exaggerating Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities.  His alleged nuclear, biological, and chemical programs were not only the threat that motivated the war against him, they constituted the illegal behavior that provided the legal justification for the war.  On the basis of the evidence so far, it appears that an accurate portrayal of Saddam’s WMD programs would have massively undercut the case for war.

It is extremely puzzling that Washington and London could claim with such confidence that they possessed secret knowledge about extensive WMD activities in Iraq and yet be completely unable to locate any evidence of this now that the war is over.  Coalition forces have controlled all of Iraq for more than two months.  Many senior Iraqi officials, including some scientists associated with Saddam’s WMD programs, have been captured and interrogated.  Still, there is nothing yet discovered to back up the claims made before the war at the highest levels of the US and British governments.  Indeed, it appears that some of the specific allegations about Iraq’s capabilities were untrue, even if some WMD stockpiles are discovered to support the general claims about Saddam’s appetite for nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.  Particularly in the United Kingdom this has led to heated charges that the Blair government engaged in shamefully deceitful behavior in order to advance the prospects for war.  Such criticisms arouse great passions but are in truth impossible to assess meaningfully until much more evidence is in the public domain and until the situation in post-war Iraq is more settled.

Why haven’t Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction been found?  Six possible explanations remain plausible.  First, perhaps they never existed.  Saddam’s government insisted all along that its WMD programs had been destroyed during the 1990s as a consequence of the UN inspection efforts at that time.  According to public reports, this is what is still being said by some of the Iraqi scientists now in the custody of the United States.  This is the most damning interpretation for Blair and Bush.

Second, perhaps Saddam’s WMD still exist in Iraq but are so well hidden that they have not been found yet.  This is the interpretation that finds favor with the Bush and Blair governments.  Iraq, they say, is a large country and Saddam’s regime had grown very adept at hiding illicit activities.  With time, at least some of his WMD will be discovered – at which point, of course, this entire issue will be instantly transformed.  This is the most favorable interpretation for Bush and Blair.  If this turns out to be the true scenario, they will be largely vindicated (including in their doubt that a small number of constrained UN inspectors would ever have succeeded in finding Saddam’s illegal weapons).

Third, perhaps Saddam had recently possessed WMD (his appetite for such weapons was well known) but destroyed them before the war.  This would have been sensible to do if Iraq expected a protracted period of UN inspection, particularly since it would have been so damaging to Saddam’s cause if any WMD were actually discovered.  And it seems clear in retrospect that Saddam’s regime adopted a diplomatic strategy for the war – he could not hope to win militarily but might survive if other powers intervened diplomatically to stop the war – but such a strategy would never succeed if the discovery of Iraqi WMD revealed his cheating and justified the war.  In short, the possession of WMD posed a great risk to Saddam, whether in peace or in war, so eliminating them made perfect sense.  But this interpretation, if true, would support those who claimed that international pressure and UN inspections were working, that the disarmament of Iraq was being achieved.

Fourth, perhaps Saddam possessed WMD but moved them out of the country so that none would be found on his territory.  There has been some speculation that he might have sent them to Syria for safekeeping.  There has been worry that he might have passed them on to Al Qaeda or some other terrorist group outside his borders.  With the tremendous intelligence effort directed against Iraq in the run-up to the war, it is hard to believe that the huge WMD inventory Saddam was alleged to possess could have been moved great distances across international borders without ever once being detected.  Moreover, if there were serious suspicion that this is true, coalition forces would be looking for the weapons somewhere other than Iraq.  But this interpretation, if true, would support the conclusion that the war has made things worse, that the whereabouts of Saddam’s WMD are unknown.

Fifth, perhaps in the disappointing chaos and looting that followed the destruction of Saddam’s regime, Iraq’s WMD were “liberated” by private entrepreneurs hoping to make huge sums of money by selling on the international black market or by ideologically motivated groups hoping to strengthen their favorite terrorist organization.  For years, there has been fear of “loose nuclear weapons” because of the protracted period of social and economic distress in Russia.  Perhaps the war in Iraq created conditions that produced “loose weapons of mass destruction.”  It is hard to believe that in this scenario all of Saddam’s WMD would completely disappear without a trace.  And it would seem likely that some WMD would remain hidden within Iraq.  But still, this is a very dangerous and disturbing interpretation, and another that suggests the war made things worse.

Sixth, we are still asking not only where are Saddam’s weapons, but where is Saddam.  Perhaps Saddam, or forces still loyal to him, are in possession of his WMD and hope eventually to use them against Iraq’s occupiers.  This would be another, but particularly worrying, variant of the scenario in which Iraq’s WMD exist but are extremely well hidden.

It is impossible, for now and probably for some time to come, to judge which of these interpretations is correct.  Given what we know of Saddam Hussein, it remains distinctly possible that he was indeed cheating and that some significant stockpile of WMD will eventually be found.  On the other hand, it is striking to note that only one of the six plausible explanations is really favorable to Bush and Blair, and that is the interpretation that is steadily confounded with each day that nothing is found.