Spring 1998 Board Resolution - 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

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.