[lit-ideas] Did Al Queda get any of Saddam's nukes?
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2006 10:14:26 -0800
Of course the right-wing is quickest out of the block to talk about the
Saddam tapes, General Sada, etc. Some of them (including Mark Alexander
below) are saying, "I told you so." Alexander's article is of special
interest because he takes the next step and asks, since the WMDs (including
nuclear WMDs) exist, how likely is it that some will make it into the hands
of Al Quaeda and be used against us?
Lawrence
By Mark M. Alexander
Mar 31, 2006
The Cold War nuclear threat may have subsided with the collapse of the
Soviet Union, but
<http://www.townhall.com/phrd.html?loc=http://patriotpost.us/alexander/editi
on.asp?id=318> The Long War, our campaign to secure the U.S. and our
national interests and allies against Islamist terror, is heating up. Also
on the rise is the risk of nuclear attack on Western targets. Albeit limited
in scope, such attacks are much more probable now than during the Cold War.
Preventing nuclear attack is more difficult today because our Jihadi foes
are asymmetric rather than symmetric entities.
For most of U.S. history, perilous national security threats were symmetric,
emanating from distinct nation-states or alliances with unambiguous
political, economic and geographical interests. In the last century, World
Wars I and II, Korea, and Vietnam involved symmetric threats -- that is,
well-defined adversaries. Symmetric threats are tangible and easier for our
political leaders to define. For the American people, this enemy is easier
to identify.
Ronald Reagan tagged the Soviet Union as "The Evil Empire," and Americans
understood this enemy and its characterization. Similarly, George W. Bush
called our post-Cold War symmetric adversaries -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea
-- the "Axis of Evil."
When a symmetric adversary like the USSR possessed large quantities of WMD
and a proven delivery capability, the principle method for preventing their
use was deterrence. Throughout the Cold War, the doctrine of Mutually
Assured Destruction stayed offensive strikes, and limited conflicts between
communist and democratic nations to conventional warfare.
When symmetric adversaries do not possess, or have obtained only limited
quantities of WMD, our method of damage control is active nonproliferation
-- using all political, economic and diplomatic means to prevent, constrain,
or reverse their spread. In the case of Saddam's regime in Iraq, which
possessed substantial quantities of WMD (and used them on Iraqi civilians),
the failure of nonproliferation efforts led to
<http://www.townhall.com/phrd.html?loc=http://patriotpost.us/alexander/editi
on.asp?id=470> Operation Iraqi Freedom -- the deposition of Saddam and
seeding of democracy in place of his tyrannical regime.
But OIF was more than the enforcement of a nonproliferation policy, because
another adversary had emerged which defied political, economic and
geographical definition. OIF was, more accurately, an act of
Counterproliferation -- using all means to protect against the threat of a
WMD attack by non-state actors (terrorists surrogates) who have been
provided WMD by their state sponsors.
In 2001, President Bush estimated, correctly, that Iraq had, and was
prepared to provide, WMD to Islamist terrorists like al-Qa'ida. As The
Patriot reported in October 2002 our well-placed sources in the Southwest
Asia theater and intelligence sources within the NSA and NRO estimated that
the UN Security Council's foot-dragging (with substantial help from the
French and Russians) provided an ample window for Saddam to export some or
all of his WMD to Syria and Iran prior to the launch of OIF. It now appears
that they may have done so with the help of Russian special forces.
At that time, we reported that Allied Forces would be unlikely to discover
any WMD stores, noting, "Our sources estimate that Iraq has shipped its
nuclear WMD components -- including two 'crude nuclear devices' designed to
utilize U235 cores -- through Syria to southern Lebanon's heavily fortified
Bekaa Valley." In December 2002 our senior-level intelligence sources
re-confirmed estimates that some of Iraq's biological and nuclear WMD
material and components had, in fact, been moved into Syria and possibly
Iran. That movement continued until President Bush finally pulled the plug
on the UN's ruse.
In January of this year, Saddam's air force deputy commander, General
Georges Sada, now a national-security advisor for Iraq's new government,
confirmed that in June, 2002, under Saddam's direction, he arranged
transportation of WMD and related technology to Syria aboard retrofitted
commercial jets under the pretense of conducting a humanitarian mission on
behalf of flood victims. The Patriot has corroborated evidence that there
were such flights during that timeframe, though our sources would not
confirm the manifest -- other than to suggest that the flights did not
contain humanitarian relief.
It is worth noting here that the major intelligence failure in Iraq was not
about WMD but about how long it would take to stabilize Iraq after removing
Saddam. The original estimate, based primarily on assurances from Dr. Ahmed
Chalabi, the man who was scripted to replace Saddam after the invasion, was
90-180 days.
Of course, we thought we would only be in Japan and Germany for 5 years
after the cessation of WWII hostilities -- yet we are still in both
countries today. As The Patriot noted prior to the invasion of Iraq, we
clearly have long-term objectives to establish one or more bases in southern
Iraq as forward deployment strongholds in the region.
Currently, there is mounting evidence that Saddam's government did provide
significant intelligence and operational support for al-Qa'ida. The burning
question remains, were any of Saddam's nuclear components, in whatever state
of readiness, acquired by al-Qa'ida?
Unfortunately, there is no neat Cold War doctrine -- no Mutually Assured
Destruction -- to stave off a nuclear attack from an asymmetric threat such
as al-Qa'ida. The only counter-proliferation doctrine capable of keeping
this enemy at bay is that of pre-emption -- initiating first strikes on
their turf to keep them off our own.
Al-Qa'ida's protagonist, Osama bin Laden, has called for an "American
Hiroshima" in which al-Qa'ida cells detonate multiple nukes in U.S. urban
centers. Al-Qa'ida has made it clear that they will use any means at hand to
disrupt continuity of government and commerce in the U.S. in an effort to
impede our influence in the Middle East. As Osama put it, "Why do you use an
ax when you can use a bulldozer? ... We love death. The U.S. loves life.
That is the big difference between us." Osama's lieutenant Sulaiman Abu
Ghaith says al-Qa'ida aspires "to kill 4 million Americans, including 1
million children."
Why does al-Qa'ida choose nuclear weapons? Because chemical weapons are low
consequence, and biological weapons are indiscriminate -- more likely to
inflict mass casualties among Muslims in Asia and Africa than Christians in
the West.
And what is al-Qa'ida's nuclear weapon of choice? While radiological
dispersal devices (dirty bombs) are low tech, they are also, like chemical
weapons, low consequence. The highest consequence nuclear weapon would be
one utilizing U239, but plutonium is extremely hard to produce, unstable,
easily detectable, and the bomb hardware is highly sophisticated, requiring
great precision in the manufacture and machining of its parts.
A nuclear device utilizing U235 is therefore the weapon al-Qa'ida will use.
Highly enriched uranium is more accessible and stable, and it requires a
comparatively low-tech detonation sequence. This is precisely the type of
weapon our sources indicate Saddam had in production.
Al-Qa'ida has a broad and amorphous network, including cells in North
America. It is unlikely that these cells are in possession of a nuclear
weapon, because moving such a device subjects both the mover and the weapon
to detection -- and our methods for detecting nuclear devices are very good.
But they are not infallible. As Harvard's Graham Allison, author of "
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805078525/ref=nosim/townhallcom>
Nuclear Terrorism," grimly notes, "It's a great puzzle. ... I think that we
should be very thankful that it hasn't happened already. ... We're living on
borrowed time."
To be sure, an asymmetric nuclear threat is not the greatest potential
hazard we face as a nation. That would be the very real threat of another
<http://www.townhall.com/phrd.html?loc=http://patriotpost.us/alexander/editi
on.asp?id=335> Pandemic. Still, the nuclear threat remains very real -- and
it is greatly enhanced by the political infighting over OIF and domestic
security issues such as the USA Patriot Act and our NSA terrorist
surveillance programs.
Mark Alexander is executive editor and publisher of
<http://www.townhall.com/phrd.html?loc=http://patriotpost.us/subscribe/townh
all.asp> The Patriot Post, the Web's "Conservative E-Journal of Record." You
may contact him
<http://www.townhall.com/opinion/contact/markalexander/172463.html> here.
Copyright C 2006 Townhall.com
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