"SADDAM'S BOMBMAKER"---Book review from the Washington Post, Nov 20, 2000

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Unk's Wild Wild West : One Thread

The Washington Post's Bookworld, November 20 2000:

From the Inner Circle of a Dictator's Hell

By William E. Odom

SADDAM'S BOMBMAKER

The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda

By Khidhir Hamza with Jeff Stein

Scribner. 352 pp. $26

Iraq's ruler, Saddam Hussein, has remained a major international problem for several years now and shows no sign of disappearing soon. After nearly a decade of war with Iran, which he started but almost lost, he invaded Kuwait and then refused to accede to the U.N. demand that he withdraw. A U.S.-led military coalition devastated his forces, driving them out of Kuwait in 1991, and his country has been under economic sanctions ever since. Yet he remains in power, hurling verbal threats at Israel, the United States and other countries he dislikes. U.S. fighter aircraft still enforce the "no-fly zone" over northern Iraq, periodically dueling with Iraqi air defense weapons. Neither dissident Iraqis nor Kurds has been able to unseat him.

Iraq might just be ignored were it not for Hussein's relentless efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. He outgamed the U.N. inspection team and then expelled it from Iraq; the economic sanctions have not reduced his ostentatious standard of living, although they have caused untold suffering to ordinary Iraqis. How has this brutal dictator and warmaker survived? Why has he behaved in ways many observers consider wholly irrational?

Khidhir Hamza's book is of more than passing interest precisely because it helps answer these questions. An American-trained nuclear physicist who headed the Iraqi nuclear weapons program for several years before his defection, he brings dozens of firsthand observations of Hussein and provides a textured sense of life inside the top circles of the regime. Written in an easy journalistic style provided by his American co-author, Jeff Stein, the book should attract a wide range of readers, from foreign policy and security specialists to bored airplane passengers looking for a thriller.

Hamza's story, assuming that it is all true, is not only stranger but frequently bloodier than fiction. It lays bare the weakness of many nuclear nonproliferation efforts; the cynicism of French, German and British businessmen dealing with Hussein's purchasing agents; and the naivete of some aspects of U.S. policy toward Iraq in the decade before the Persian Gulf War. As Hamza tells his story, Israeli intelligence operatives kill Iraqi agents at critical moments, while German, French and British intelligence services sponsor schemes actually helping Iraq's nuclear program. American firms and organizations seem more cautious, yet also willing to sell to Iraqi buyers.

When Hamza first offered his services to CIA operatives, they showed no clue of who he was. Instead, they tried to dupe him into telling what he knew, leaving him to his fate inside Iraq. He rejected their transparent gambit and struck out on his own. That he survived for nearly a year is remarkable, but why and how the CIA eventually woke up to its mistakes is left vague.

Hamza's description of the International Atomic Energy Agency makes it look more like a facilitator of than an obstacle to nuclear proliferation. Iraqi agents used it to gain valuable technical information. But the Iraqi bomb team made far greater use of declassified materials from the World War II Manhattan Project, filled with details that U.S. officials wrongly considered of no technical value to contemporary nuclear weapons designers.

The bloodier parts of Hamza's story concern life among Hussein's lieutenants, his Baath Party officials and security agents, as well as the scientists and engineers on whom he depends to build materiel for his war machine. Hussein lavishes privilege and wealth on these technicians--unless they irritate or cross him. Then he metes out torture and sometimes death. Life in the Baathist Party is no more secure. One official showed Hamza a video taken at a large gathering of party members at which Hussein compelled some of them to execute others on the spot--their friends and co-workers.

Hamza's picture of the Iraqi emigre political organization, the Iraqi National Congress, is mixed. Not a serious threat to Hussein, even with CIA backing, it seems unlikely to become a vehicle for toppling his regime. Hamza also offers distressing glimpses of Hussein's annihilation of the Shiite population in southern Iraq after President Bush's call for an uprising there in 1991. The degree of human suffering is difficult to comprehend. Likewise, the extermination of Kurdish villages in northern Iraq by poison gases defies moral comprehension.

Hamza seldom preaches policy prescriptions but simply tells his own story. Yet several germane points implicitly emerge. First, Hussein is a killer and tyrant of more monstrous proportions than Westerners vaguely appreciate; this makes his behavior easy to misjudge. Second, Iraq is still at war with the United States, whether we realize it or not. For Hussein the outcome of the Gulf War was a stalemate, not a defeat.

These points might not be disturbing were it not for Iraq's talented scientists. The only thing that prevents them from producing nuclear weapons is an inadequate supply of bomb-grade fissile material. Hamza and his fellow scientists were able to produce a limited amount, suggesting that Iraq will eventually overcome this constraint. Hamza leaves no doubt that Hussein will use such weapons once he has them.

Finally, one can see from Hamza's purely empirical descriptions that Baathist political organizations create highly stable regimes, not fragile military dictatorships like those found in Africa and Latin America. They copy Soviet-type institutions without taking the ideology. Heretofore found only in the Middle East, this type of regime may also be emerging in Central Asia, where strongmen have kept Soviet institutions while casting off Marxism and Leninism. Possessing great capacities for military mobilization, such regimes are capable of sustained warfare and other kinds of troublemaking. And to judge by the case of Iraq, they will not be easily destroyed, short of military invasion and occupation.



-- Lars (lars@indy.net), October 01, 2001

Answers

Hamza leaves no doubt that Hussein will use such weapons (nukes) once he has them.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), October 01, 2001.

Saddam has germ warfare arsenal, says defecting physicist

By Jessica Berry in Beirut (Filed: 30/09/2001)

SADDAM HUSSEIN has directed his top scientists to work exclusively on expanding his chemical and biological weapons arsenal, one of the regime's former senior scientists has told The Telegraph.

He said Saddam has ordered the nuclear weapons programme to be shelved because it had proved too expensive. The disclosures by the nuclear physicist, a recent Iraqi defector, will add to the alarm of Western leaders who last week issued a warning of the prospect of chemical attacks on European and American targets.

Military experts said Saddam's decision could have been linked to the attacks on New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, which investigators believe were planned years in advance.

Over the past six months about 3,000 physicists and chemists have been working flat out on secret programmes to develop both toxins and the means to deploy them to lethal effect, according to Dr al Sabiri (not his real name).

The scientist formerly worked at the Atomic Energy Organisation in Baghdad, but defected because of his growing horror of the regime. "I created death in Iraq. I had to get out," he said. Details of Dr al Sabiri's defection cannot be revealed because of fears for his safety.

"I was asked to examine hundreds of complicated and dangerous toxins," he said. "They were very easy to use to create germs. You could put them in water or steam, throw them in the air or use them in the soil. We developed nerve gas, botulism and anthrax.

"One day a light green yellow substance, which was crystallised and packed in tins, arrived. Suddenly intelligence men came in and rushed it away. I later found out they were working on some secret project."

All these substances were tested on Iraqi prisoners, mainly Kurds and Shi'ites in Radwania jail, in west Baghdad. The projects are headed by Prof Shaher Mahmoud al Jibouri, a chemist and secret service agent. Senior Western intelligence officers confirmed the experimentation on prisoners.

"Between April and May this year, 30 prisoners died after being used in experiments," said one. Earlier this month The Telegraph revealed that at least 20 Iraqi soldiers had died and about 200 were injured after a chemical weapons training exercise had gone wrong.

Dr al Sabiri spent five years in the organisation's Neutron Analysis and Activation Department. Scientists, paid about £10 a month, worked exclusively on analysing substances, mostly imported, in order to copy and produce more. Using a small nuclear reactor, they are able to establish the exact composition of a substance.

There was a shortage of material, which was why he was told to copy the samples that he was given. At one stage he was asked to reproduce a wax, crucial for use in firing ballistic missiles. This he did with the help of several Bulgarian scientists. "Ballistic missiles," he said, "is just one method they want to use to spread the poisons."

More importantly, he said, the regime is currently working on adapting 12 pilotless aircraft, last used in the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s. "Engineers are now working on developing their range. So far they have managed a range of 700 miles," he said.

"The planes could easily reach Israel, Iran, Turkey or Saudi Arabia. The idea is to use them to deploy the toxins." Most of the parts, he added, were imported.

A senior Western intelligence officer said last night that at least 30 front companies, mainly pharmaceutical firms, are under investigation for supplying Iraq. They are based in Italy, Thailand, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates. The companies cannot be named for legal reasons.

The defector's disclosures refute comments by Tariq Aziz, Iraqi deputy prime minister, who last week denied that the regime had any biological weapons. Last week Paul Wolfowitz, the United States deputy defence secretary, told Nato colleagues of "the alarming coincidence between states that harbour international terrorists and those states that have active, maturing programmes of WMD [weapons of mass destruction]."

American hardliners are said to be keen to attack Iraq as soon as possible, and believe that aerial bombardment is sufficient. British defence advisers, however, have warned Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, against this.

It is unwise, they say, while there is no suitable successor to Saddam. One intelligence official added: "The other problem is, we have no idea where Saddam is."

-- (the@latest.news), October 01, 2001.


Hamza is a traitor and will receive the merciful justice of Allah. He will be stoned by a jury of his peers.

-- (Osama @ pajama.rama), October 01, 2001.

Moderation questions? read the FAQ