This report's goal was to alert the House of Representatives that Bill Clintons' bombing campaign would neither destroy Iraq's WMD operational capabilities nor touch its main WMD production lines in Libya and Sudan. If only America and Europe listened.
The report examines heretofore unpublished information that delineates Iraqi weaponry as sophisticated and lethal not only to the Middle East but through terror attacks that can affect many countries. Iraqi weaponry is available to the Iraqi leadership from other countries, notably Libya and Sudan, as they have been the repositories for these banned weapons for a number of years. An excerpt:
Despite Baghdad's protestations, Iraq does have a small but very lethal operational arsenal of WMD and platforms capable of delivering them throughout the Middle East and even beyond. Although Iraq has been subjected to an unprecedented regimen of UN inspection and destruction of strategic military programs since the end of the Gulf War in the Spring of 1991, the international community has proven incapable of learning the entire scope of the Iraqi programs for fielding weapons of mass destruction, let alone eliminate these programs as mandated by the Security Council.
Most important was the realization that there is an on going Iraqi program the UN inspections team is highly unlikely to discover and stop. In January 1996, the assessment of the Israeli Military Intelligence was that within the next four years, Iraq would have ten SCUD launchers and some 150 SCUD-type missiles. Some of these missiles are to be equipped with warheads containing WMD. A major aspect of the Iraqi program as of the mid-1990s was the organization of a highly mobile transportation system for the operational elements. Thus, by late 1997, the Iraqis were capable of transferring a few thousand liters of biological materials to new concealed sites within two or three weeks without supervision. As far as Baghdad was concerned, once the materials were hidden, supervision may be permitted to resume as usual. Another indication of an anticipated expansion of Iraq's ballistic missile activities came in late 1997/early 1998 with the appointment of two senior officers -- Abd-al-Rizzaq Shihab of the Army and Muzahm Tassab al-Hassan of the Air Force -- as deputy heads of the Military Industries authority. Both generals held senior command positions of Iraqi missile forces during the Gulf War and are considered Iraq's leading experts in ballistic missile operations. Moreover, during 1997, Iraqi military units conducted several simulated deployments and launching of ballistic missiles of the type and range Iraq is not permitted to have.
In early 1998, Iraq is known to possess 48 SCUD-type missiles and six launchers. (Gen. Wafiq Samarraj, the former chief of Iraqi Military Intelligence, knew of at least 45 SCUD-type missiles with range of over 600 km and several others being repaired at the time of his defection in 1994.) A large portion of the 45 BW warheads/bomb containers Iraq acknowledged constructing in the late 1980s are believed to have survived the Gulf War and still elude the UN inspectors. The British Government estimates that the Iraqis still have 30 warheads capable of carrying chemical and\or biological weapons' material. For these warheads and other weapons, Iraq has at least 8,400 liters of Anthrax, as well as 600 tons of chemicals that are sufficient for the production of 200 tons of VX nerve gas -- where a single droplet can kill. (Samarraj reported that in 1994 Iraq concealed 200 containers with biological weapons, more than half of which are still considered in operational condition.) Source.
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