Hunting for Iraq's Terror Weapons
merica will not be able to claim victory in Iraq until it secures Saddam Hussein's missing troves of unconventional weapons, the ingredients for making them and the network of scientists able to produce them. This is a long-term challenge. But over the next days and weeks, American commanders face an urgent task: to make sure that none of this deadly arsenal leaks out to terrorist groups or neighboring states like Syria or Iran.
This will not be easy. Components of every kind of unconventional weapon Iraq may have can be smuggled out in compact forms amid throngs of refugees crossing the thousands of miles of borders. Germ agents and seed stocks can be freeze-dried, sealed and carried in a shirt pocket. Nerve gases can be converted into talc-like powders.
Washington thought it knew where less than a third of this material was when the war began. Some of Baghdad's biological and chemical agents are in mobile weapons labs the size of rental trucks. More complete information has been assembled about the identity of Iraq's leading weapons scientists, though not about midlevel engineers, technicians and security officials.
Some experts believe that to avoid detection, Iraq may have retained only seed stocks, growth media and the technical know-how to be able to start up production again quickly. These basic ingredients are likely to be hidden at locations known only to a very select group of leading scientists and top regime loyalists.
This means that the main tools for tracking down Iraq's hidden weapons caches must include offers of financial bounties to ordinary Iraqis and a pragmatic openness to plea bargaining with detained Iraqi security officials and scientists. These include leaders of such notorious formations as the Special Republican Guard and the Special Security Organization. Some of the sadistic members of the Iraqi Baath leadership may have to be offered a measure of leniency.
Despite years of inspections, the current state of Iraq's weapons programs can only be guessed at. Most estimates start from what Iraq was known to have before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. On this basis, Iraq is assumed to have substantial quantities of highly lethal biological agents, like anthrax and botulinum toxin, and huge stocks of chemical weapons, notably VX nerve gas and mustard gas. Most experts believe Baghdad's nuclear weapons programs have been fully eliminated.
It will be necessary to find new civilian work for Iraqi weapons scientists who might otherwise be tempted to sell their skills to the highest bidders, including terrorist groups. The United States should help set up science centers like those that now provide employment to some former Soviet weapons scientists, and the European Union and Japan should contribute some of the funding.
Continued international inspections and monitoring will be needed for years. Despite the Bush administration's irritation with United Nations inspectors, they constitute a cadre of technical experts with important knowledge that should be put to use as soon as possible.
President Bush has declared that keeping unconventional weapons out of the hands of international terrorists is one of his administration's highest goals. That objective must guide American actions in Iraq now and for many years to come.
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