The UN, US and Iraq IV

Sometime in the second week of December, inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) will once again assemble in Iraq to carry out surprise inspections of so-called "sensitive sites." These are locations that Iraq claims are related to its national security, dignity, and sovereignty, but that the inspectors believe house documents and other material related to Iraq's production of weapons of mass destruction. Unfettered access to such sites is critical not only for verifying Iraq's compliance with its Security Council-mandated disarmament obligations but also for the conduct of any meaningful long-term monitoring of Iraqi compliance once such disarmament has been achieved. As such, the coming inspections are not only a critical "test" of Iraqi compliance with its recent decision to resume cooperation with UNSCOM in the face of U.S. air strikes, but also a defining moment for the future of UNSCOM and all multilateral disarmament efforts.

Yet, in a real sense, this exercise is a sham that will almost certainly play right into Saddam Hussein's hands. Since Saddam has blocked the inspectors from conducting any meaningful information-gathering for the past four months, the targets of their "surprise" inspections will most likely be drawn from a list of suspicious sites dating to last summer. Today, surely, those facilities will be empty, their contents having been moved to secret locations elsewhere. In effect, Saddam will have managed to have his cake and eat it too. He will have prevented the inspectors from gathering any real evidence against him, while at the same time appearing to give them unfettered access to sensitive sites.

As a member of UNSCOM since 1991, and its chief inspector responsible for investigating Iraq's concealment mechanism from July 1995 until my resignation on August 26, 1998, I know that this is hardly the first time Saddam has pulled such tricks. In fact, they are at the heart of his strategy for preserving his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and, eventually, getting rid of U.N. economic sanctions (which he has largely succeeded in eluding anyway). Through skillful manipulation of the situation on the ground in Iraq, international public opinion, and rifts among the members of the Security Council, Saddam actually aims to cap his comeback by getting UNSCOM to issue a clean bill of health. It is an audacious plan, but it may succeed, thanks in no small part to the mistakes of U.S. policymakers themselves.

If it succeeds, the consequences could be dire. The Baghdad regime-- strengthened by having retained the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction and psychologically fortified by having outlasted the world's sole remaining superpower--will rapidly restore its internal and regional constituencies and reemerge as a force to be reckoned with. Since his defeat in the Gulf war, Saddam has built up eight years' worth of resentment and frustration that can only be released through renewed efforts at territorial expansion through armed aggression and blackmail, both economic and military.

Even today, Iraq is not nearly disarmed. UNSCOM lacks a full declaration from Iraq concerning its prohibited capabilities, making any absolute pronouncement about the extent of Iraq's retained proscribed arsenal inherently tentative. But, based on highly credible intelligence, UNSCOM suspects that Iraq still has biological agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, and clostridium perfringens in sufficient quantity to fill several dozen bombs and ballistic missile warheads, as well as the means to continue manufacturing these deadly agents. Iraq probably retains several tons of the highly toxic VX substance, as well as sarin nerve gas and mustard gas. This agent is stored in artillery shells, bombs, and ballistic missile warheads. And Iraq retains significant dual-use industrial infrastructure that can be used to rapidly reconstitute large-scale chemical weapons production.

Meanwhile, Iraq has kept its entire nuclear weapons infrastructure intact through dual-use companies that allow the nuclear-design teams to conduct vital research and practical work on related technologies and materials. Iraq still has components (high explosive lenses, initiators, and neutron generators) for up to four nuclear devices minus the fissile core (highly enriched uranium or plutonium), as well as the means to produce these. Iraq has retained an operational long-range ballistic missile force that includes approximately four mobile launchers and a dozen missiles. And, under the guise of a permitted short-range missile program, Iraq has developed the technology and production means necessary for the rapid reconstitution of long-range ballistic missile production.

Iraq supports its retained prohibited capabilities with an extensive covert procurement network operated by Iraqi intelligence. While images of starving Iraqi children are beamed around the world by American television, Iraqi front companies have spent millions of dollars on forbidden material related to all weapons categories--in direct violation of existing sanctions and often under the cover of the humanitarian "oil for food" program.

Finally, Iraqi security forces have kept critical documentation, including the vital "cookbooks" that contain the step-by-step process to make chemical agent, outline the procedures for producing weapons-grade biological agent, detail the final design of the Iraqi nuclear weapon, and provide the mechanical integration procedures for long-range ballistic missiles.

These capabilities may seem paltry compared with what Iraq had before the Gulf war. But they represent a vital "seed stock" that can and will be used by Saddam Hussein to reconstitute his former arsenal. His strategy for doing so has emerged over the past seven years of struggle with UNSCOM. That struggle began almost as soon as the commission was created to verify a declaration Iraq was supposed to provide to the Security Council 15 days after the end of the Gulf war. A Security Council resolution required Iraq to set forth the totality of its proscribed arsenal, as well as all its components and the means of producing it. But, instead of telling the truth, Iraq gave a radically misleading and incomplete account. UNSCOM's original mandate, a seemingly simple exercise in conventional arms control verification, evolved into an endless game of cat and mouse.

https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?r=sub&uri=%2Farchive%2F1298%2F122198%2Fritter122198.html

Actually I'm not going to describe what I saw there because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I'm waging peace.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,351165,00.html

When Ritter resigned in 1998, calling the inspection program a sham, he testified in Congress:

"Iraq is not disarmed. Iraq still poses a real and meaningful threat to its neighbors."

Amid the rising tattoo of Bush administration war drums, Ritter took off for Baghdad, singing a different tune. "The truth of the matter is that Iraq has not been shown to possess weapons of mass destruction," he said in an address to the Iraqi National Assembly -- the first by an American and widely seen as a propaganda coup for Hussein. "Iraq today is not a threat to its neighbors."

"I don't deviate -- I don't backtrack from anything I've ever said or done," former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter says.

His September trip was assisted, in part, by a wealthy Iraqi American businessman who opposes U.N. economic sanctions on Iraq and who also invested $400,000 in a documentary Ritter researched there two years ago. In the film, which has not been commercially released, Ritter condemns the sanctions, calling American policy toward Iraq immoral.

The Ritter affair swirls with its own mysteries. Primarily, his old friends wonder: What happened?

"I like Scott and I honestly think he's a man of great integrity, but I don't know what's going on in his mind," says Tim Trevan, ex-spokesman for the U.N. special commission to disarm Iraq (UNSCOM). "I do believe his credibility is shot . . . and I think that's very sad."

A former nuclear inspector, David Kay, said recently in Congress: "He's gone completely the other way. I cannot explain it on the basis of known facts."

Richard Butler, Ritter's old boss at UNSCOM, said on CNN: "I don't know why, I'm not a psychoanalyst."

"He has completely marginalized himself and turned himself into a pathetic, strange figure," says Francis Brooke, Washington adviser to the anti-Hussein Iraqi National Congress.

"The thing he wants most is attention," says Danielle Pletka, a former staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who ran the 1998 hearing at which Ritter also testified that Iraq remained "an ugly threat." "He is cynically manipulating information in order to call attention to himself."

Others say Ritter seeks the spotlight for a simple reason: He needs money. He relies on speaking engagements for income; he has to promote his film and books.