Iraq - This Time It's Personal

Last week I stated my belief that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. The very next day, the UN inspectors found twelve warheads, capable of carrying chemical weapons. Does this prove my prediction wrong? No. That Iraq has the delivery mechanism for chemical weapons is something we already knew. Indeed, possession of short range delivery vehicles is not contrary to the various UN resolutions and the 1991 cease-fire.

Equally, the papers found the same day in the home of an Iraqi scientist are irrelevant. Notes from the eighties that prove that Iraq was interested in acquiring nuclear weapons material is not news. Indeed, we know that the mechanism described (using lasers to refine uranium) was passed over by the Iraqis in favour of centrifuges, which are easier to build. In short, these discoveries confirm what we already knew about Iraq's ambitions from a decade or more ago, but nothing about the current situation.

Some people will doubtless argue that the means to deliver chemical weapons or the knowledge of how to refine uranium is evidence of a current weapons program. A little thought will show the fallacy of this argument. Whether the knowledge was recorded on paper or not, there has never been any doubt that Iraq knew how to refine uranium. The Iraqi declaration lists some 500 scientists involved in their past weapons programmes. The idea that these scientists, between them, do not know how to produce weapons grade uranium is laughable.

The warheads that were discovered could be used to deliver chemical weapons. What we are not being told is whether they could also deliver a more conventional payload. I have not heard anyone claim that this is not possible. Given that interpreting these warheads as proof of a chemical weapons programme supports our government's push for war, I find this omission significant. Since neither Blair nor Bush are heralding the solely chemical use of these weapons, I can only conclude that they could be used to deliver, for instance, high explosives. Even if the warheads can only be used to deliver chemical weapons, the existence of so few warheads proves little. We know Iraq has possessed chemical weapons in the past - indeed has used them. We also know that Iraq has in the past tried to hide its weapons from the UN inspectors. One of the problems of lying is that eventually you can't remember what the truth is. That a small number of relatively unimportant pieces of equipment have been found that may not have been accounted for properly tells us nothing we didn't already know. Even a country with a completely open, honest, and moral government like Britain has been known to lose the odd piece of military hardware, as occasional stories of farmers discovering ammunition dumps testify.

So the weapons inspectors' finds of last week amount to nothing more than evidence that Iraq used to have a programme to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Something we knew already, if for no other reason than we sold most of the weapons to Iraq in the first place. But then this has never really been about Iraq's weapons programmes anyway, as the other major Iraqi news story of the last week shows.

Both Donald Rumsfield and Colin Powell have expressed support for the Saudi Arabian plan to allow Saddam Hussein to go into exile in order to prevent war. There has even been talk of a UN-endorsed amnesty for the dictator should he agree to step down and leave the country. In other words, the Bush administration considers Hussein's removal from power to be sufficient grounds for not invading Iraq. While I am in favour of any measure that will prevent this unjustified war, I fail to see how this even begins to address the issue of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Should Hussein leave power voluntarily, one of two situations will occur. Either someone will quickly seize power, most likely a junior member of the current ruling elite since the senior members will be required to follow Hussein into exile, or more likely Iraq will collapse into civil war. In the former case, Iraq will retain whatever weapons it currently possesses and, with the US presumably satisfied and turning its attention elsewhere, will be in a far better position than currently to acquire more. In the latter case, the country will be in chaos, and the chances for whatever weapons do exist to be either used or sold to terrorists or other countries will increase dramatically. Hussein's removal cannot make Iraq's weapons less dangerous, and is likely to make them more so.

Unless, of course, there are no weapons of mass destruction. If there are no stray chemical, nuclear, or biological material to fall into terrorist hands, then Hussein's removal can, at worst, destabilise the region temporarily. That would be a result that the Bush administration would be quite happy with. America will probably even be able to supply arms and troops to one faction or another in the resulting civil war, leading to a (temporarily at least) more friendly dictator sitting on all that oil. Once again, every indication is that our leaders do not believe that Iraq has these weapons.

Instead, this is personal. The war isn't about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. It isn't about human rights abuses - we wouldn't have supported Hussein prior to 1991 if we cared about the rights of Arabs, nor would we support Saudi Arabia or Yemen now. It isn't even about Iraq. The war is about one man. Perhaps it is truly personal - the son out to get the man who humiliated and tried to kill the father. Perhaps it is just an attempt to place in charge a man with whom we can do business. Oil is more central to this than the politicians would like you to believe. American support for sending Hussein into exile proves that the current Iraq crisis is not about improving the situation in the country, the region, or even the world. This time it is about only one man. Hussein. This time it's personal.

Graham Robinson. 22nd January 2003.

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