Spring 1998 Board Resolution - Iraq
Resolution on Iraq
I) The Board of Directors of The Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs calls upon the government of the United States to provide overt
political and financial support for legitimate, democratic opposition to
Saddam Hussein in Iraq. This includes, but is not limited to:
* Recognition of a government in exile should one be established
* Unfreezing of frozen Iraqi assets in the US to provide financial
support for democratic Iraqi opposition groups
* Removing UN sanctions from areas controlled by opposition groups;
particularly within the safe zone in northern Iraq
* Instituting Voice of Iraq broadcasts to be heard throughout Iraq.
* Instituting a no-fly zone throughout Iraq and a no drive zone where
appropriate
Recognizing that this is a long-term process and not one guaranteed success,
the Board nevertheless believes that working with legitimate opponents of
the current regime provides the best possibility for long-term stability and
democracy in Iraq.
II) The Board of Directors calls for the indictment of Saddam Hussein as a
war criminal under the relevant statutes of the Geneva Convention and
recently enacted legislation in the US Senate, and calls for indictments for
Saddam's top political and military personnel. There should also be
indictments for the military commanders who authorized and used poison gas
in Halabja and during the Iran-Iraq war.
Events in Bosnia indicate that such indictments are taken seriously by the
international community and by the indicted persons themselves.
III) The Board of Directors resolves to initiate a Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) Request to determine what licenses were granted and to whom they
were granted by the US Departments of State and Commerce to Iraqi
institutions for the purchase of live cultures, including, but not limited
to anthrax and botulinum. This FOIA could be expanded to include other items
of a "dual-use" nature that might have immediate relevance to Iraq's
military and WMD capabilities. JINSA will coordinate this with appropriate
Members of Congress and other relevant interested parties.
IV) The Board of Directors strongly calls for improvements in American
domestic preparedness for a WMD contingency in the United States, and calls
for close coordination among civilian and military agencies to maximize
their capabilities. The Board further calls for strengthening the mandate of
UNSCOM to try to ensure that Iraq's WMD capabilities are limited.
General Background to Iraq Resolutions
Military lessons of the 1998 US-Iraq confrontation: While there are a
variety of political lessons to be learned about the Clinton
administration's handling of the Iraq crisis of late 1997 and early 1998,
JINSA's specific interests lie mainly in the military/security lessons to be
learned and applied.
1. Air attacks alone would have been unable to accomplish the goal of
destroying Iraqi stocks of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Because
elements of production are portable (and US intelligence indicates that
elements have been moved repeatedly), and because they are often located in
disparate and hardened sites, pinpointing all of the sites was impossible.
Furthermore, there was a possibility that strikes on WMD facilities would
not kill the active agents (anthrax, etc.) but could release chemical or
biological agents into the atmosphere.
This is not to say that air strikes would have had no utility in damaging
Saddam's WMD capabilities, or that they could not have been useful in
destroying military-related infrastructure or elements of the Republican
Guard; only that it would have been impossible to entirely destroy the WMD
capabilities and could have led to a release of WMD agents.
2. There was no credible option to use US ground forces as follow-on to air
attacks.
A. There has been a 40% reduction in the US Army since the Gulf War, and
elements of the Army are deployed in over 100 countries - including such
places as Laos and Mozambique as well as personnel in most countries of
South America. If the US deployed all of the Army's available tank and
cavalry units outside of Korea and Bosnia to the Gulf, it would only equal
one of the three Army corps groups that were deployed during the Gulf War.
There was no way to recall, regroup and retrain them for deployment in a
timely manner. Furthermore, there was no country willing to be the staging
place for such a force if it was organized.
B. The US Navy and Air Force had similar shortcomings. The Navy has been
reduced by 180 ships since the Gulf War and the Navy admits to undermanning
some. With two carriers in the Gulf, the US currently has no carrier group
anywhere else on the high seas, or immediately available. A shortage of
naval aviators has become acute. The Air Force suffers from a similar
shortage of pilots and the number of tactical air wings has been reduced
from 35 in 1991 to 20 today.
3. There was no short-term option for the US except the UN-brokered
agreement. The agreement, however, is flawed. The first - and perhaps
insurmountable problem - is that UNSCOM has not been able to do its job
since October 1997. During those months Saddam has had time to remove
everything of interest to UNSCOM from the "palaces" that are the object of
its search. It is unclear how long it will take UNSCOM to return to the
point it was in last October. Furthermore:
A. The agreement treats the US and Iraq as equally aggrieved parties to the
UN resolutions and their positions as equally valid. This moral equivalence
ignores the fact that Iraq's position derives from invading a sovereign
country in 1990 and the ensuing Gulf War. The proximate cause of Iraq's
complaints stems entirely from Saddam's own decision to ignore the UN
resolutions that derived from the war. Had Iraq complied with the
resolutions, there would be no sanctions and no inspections at all. [This
sort of moral equivalence will sound familiar to those who watch the State
Department's handling of Israel and the PLO.]
UNSCOM's actual mandate is contained in UN Resolution 687 (April 1991), in
which Iraq is obliged to:
(a) accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless of all its ¨
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and ballistic missiles with a
range of over 150 km; and ¨ research, development and manufacturing
facilities associated with the above; and
(b) undertake not to develop such weapons in the future.
B. The agreement sets up a diplomatic mission that will, in effect, function
as a counterweight to the professional UNSCOM mission. The two bodies have
different mandates. When they cannot agree on a position, the UN will have
to mediate between its own bodies - leaving Saddam outside, watching the UN
argue. [This is similar to the effect of watching the US and Israel argue
with each other about what concessions Israel should make in the peace
process, while Arafat and the PLO benefit from watching presumed allies
fight about how firm to be with their adversary.]
C. The agreement holds out the short-term possibility of ending sanctions
against Iraq without ensuring that the WMD capability will be abolished.
4. There is no short-term solution to the problem of Saddam and WMD in Iraq
Iraq has been engaged in the R&D and engineering of WMD since before the
first Gulf War. During the 1980s, there were strong arguments between the
Defense Department and its counterparts in State and Commerce about
licensing items for sale to Iraq - including anthrax cultures. DOD was often
overruled, and in some cases, the Commerce Department granted licenses
without DOD review. Possible US complicity in the building of Saddam's
arsenal requires serious assessment. This possibility drives JINSA's
interest in a FOIA request for information.
Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran and against Iraqi civilians - the
best known incident was in the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1989; recent
visits to Halabja by journalists show the ugly aftereffects on the
survivors. The work in Iraq continued through the 1990-91 Gulf War and
continues today. While UNSCOM had believed that it found most of the arsenal
by 1996, the defection of Saddam's sons-in-law provided a wealth of
information about previously unknown chemical and biological facilities.
Until October 1997, UNSCOM was following up on that information and related
leads.
The British Foreign Ministry released a report on UNSCOM activities on 4
February 1998, which reads in part:
Despite constant Iraqi deceit, concealment, harassment and obstruction,
UNSCOM has succeeded in destroying:
* ¨ 38,000 chemical weapons
* ¨ 480,000 litres of live chemical weapon agents
* ¨ 48 operational missiles
* ¨ 6 missile launchers
* ¨ 30 special missile warheads for chemical and biological weapons
* ¨ hundreds of items of CW protection equipment. Iraq originally
claimed much of it was for peaceful use, but later admitted its real
purpose.
* ¨ Iraq claimed that the VX nerve gas project was a failure. UNSCOM has
discovered Iraq had the capability to produce VX on an industrial scale, and
produced 4 tons. Work was also going on into numerous other agents: sarin,
tabun and mustard gas.
* ¨ The Al-Hakem BW factory (3 km by 6 km) which was able to produce
50,000 litres of anthrax and butulinum. Iraq claimed it was for animal feed.
* ¨ UNSCOM has also discovered that Iraq produced 19,000 litres of
butulinum, 8,400 litres of anthrax, 2,000 litres of aflotoxin (produces
liver cancer) and clostridium (gas gangrene). Iraq has admitted filling
ballistic missile warheads and bombs with the first of these agents. These
weapons were subsequently destroyed. Iraq denied the existence of all of
these biological agents until August 1995.
The report continues:
Iraq has consistently tried to evade its responsibilities. Its required full
disclosure document on missiles was not produced until July 1996, five years
after it was demanded. It has so far produced three versions on chemical
weapons and four on biological weapons, all shown to be seriously
inaccurate. In particular, UNSCOM is concerned that:
* ¨ Iraq may still have operational SCUD-type missiles with chemical and
biological warheads. Critical missile components, warheads, and propellant
are not accounted for. Nor are 17 tons of growth media for BW agents --
enough to produce more than three times the amount of anthrax Iraq admits it
had. Key items of CW production equipment are also missing.
* ¨ UNSCOM strongly suspects that admitted Iraqi figures for production
of BW agent are still too low.
* ¨ Iraq's CW programme was on an enormous scale. 4,000 tons of CW
precursors are not accounted for. These could have produced several hundred
tons of CW agents, enough to fill several thousand munitions. Over 31,000 CW
munitions are not accounted for.
* ¨ Over 6,000 tons of VX precursors are also not accounted for. These
could make 200 tons of VX. One drop is enough to kill. 200 tons could wipe
out the world's population.
UNSCOM needs to continue to monitor Iraqi WMD facilities because
* ¨ UNSCOM has evidence of a deliberate government-controlled mechanism
of concealment to continue developing WMD and procuring materials.
* ¨ Iraq has four plants that have been used to produce CW munitions,
and 30 that could be converted to produce CW materials. It has numerous
personnel with the required expertise. These factories cannot be destroyed
because they have legitimate alternative civilian uses. But it is important
that they are monitored closely.
* ¨ Without monitoring, Iraq could produce CW and BW in weeks, a
long-range missile within a year and a nuclear weapon in five years.
* ¨ Iraq could produce up to 350 litres of weapons grade anthrax per
week -- enough to fill two missile warheads. It could produce mustard CW
agent within weeks.
* ¨ Iraq has continued trying to acquire banned WMD technology. In late
1995 Jordan intercepted a shipment of advanced missile guidance parts on the
way to Iraq.
The problem breaks down into a) the items of production and b) the
personnel. The US and the UN need to gain control of both. It has become
clear that Iraqi workers simply move papers, machinery and weapons-related
materiel from place to place. The list of UNSCOM "finds" is impressive, but
little was ultimately irreplaceable. Furthermore, there are thousands of
Iraqis involved in one way or another in the quest for WMD and ballistic
missile technology. These people form a core of capability that was
untouched by the allies during the Gulf War. They are well paid and
protected for their loyalty to Saddam.
The former Chairman of UNSCOM, Ambassador Rolf Ekeus stated publicly in 1993
that he believed Iraq fully intended to restore its military industrial
base. "The capabilities are there, the supply system including banks and
payments is there. The day the oil embargo is lifted, Iraq will get all the
cash. With the cash, the suppliers, and the skills they will be able to
re-establish all the weapons...It may grow up like mushrooms after the
rain." One might only add that Saddam isn't waiting for the embargo to be
lifted.
The Bush administration had hoped for an uprising of Iraqis to depose Saddam
and, apparently, the CIA assisted Iraqi officers in developing coup attempts
from the inside. Officers loyal to Saddam inevitably thwarted these coups.
Had there been a "palace coup" however, it is not clear that the next leader
would have taken command of the materiel and personnel involved in WMD and
stopped them. The world might have seen a new government that was simply
"more of the same" - except that because it was not Saddam himself, the UN
(and probably the US) would have rushed to support the new government. That
government then would have control of the same WMD potential.
Therefore, if the US is to support the removal of Saddam in some form, the
government must be certain that the replacement is a government of a
different order. Hence JINSA's interest in overt support for legitimate,
democratic opposition groups.
Background to Resolution IV
David Kay, former chief weapons inspector for UNSCOM has said, "One
shouldn't focus entirely on missile warheads as the means of delivery" for
an Iraqi terrorist act. Conceivably, Saddam might use WMD as a terrorist
weapon, which, in Kay's opinion, is a more effective threat than missiles
because of the extreme difficulty of defending against it and the
psychological effect it inflicts on civilians. In terms of the Middle East,
Kay said, "If Saddam threatens Tel Aviv, the Israelis are better prepared to
handle themselves, but the populations of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and
Bahrain are nowhere near as prepared."
Terrorism specialist Neil C. Livingstone considers the US to be ill prepared
as well. He cited US government studies that portray the catastrophic
effects of a biological or chemical terrorist attack on a major US city,
saying, "This is not Cassandra-type stuff, these are very real terrorist
capabilities. A country that wishes to punish us can pick its time, its
place and its vehicle, and it's very unlikely that we're prepared to preempt
it or respond to it effectively."
There is some disagreement among security experts about the likelihood of a
terrorist attack using WMD. However, on two points there is little
disagreement: a) it is possible because of the nature of the weapons
involved; and b) the US is poorly prepared to deal with any such threat
despite an allotment of Nunn-Lugar anti-WMD funds.
Biological warfare detection and protection are better than they were in
1991, according to an Israel Internet News Service (IINS) analysis.
According to the IINS report, the US could deploy the Marine Corps'
Chemical-Biological Incident Response Force (CBIRF), but there is only one
unit and cannot be everywhere.
IINS cites Clark Staten, Senior Analyst and Executive Director of the
Emergency Response and Research Institute as saying The United States has
begun a program to train and equip America's police/fire/EMS responders for
an attack using chemical or biological weapons, but that it is presently far
from complete. Staten, a retired paramedic, former policemen, hazardous
materials instructor, and analyst, said, "In the past few years, we've come
a long way in ending America's denial in regard to our vulnerability to
terrorist attack, but unfortunately...we still have a lot of work to do. Our
emergency response forces still need additional gear, and a confirmed
mindset that it can happen here...let's hope that we have the time and the
financial wherewithal to get everyone prepared before the next attack
comes."
JINSA should strongly support military and civilian efforts along these
lines and adequate funding of initiatives.
ARTICLE SOURCE
http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles.html/function/view/categoryid/1366/do
cumentid/454
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