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05/13/2003
Iraq Expert Says It's Too Early to Assess Saddam's WMD Program
Ken Pollack believes Iraqi WMD capability, at least, will surface
Washington -- It is much too early to make a determined assessment as to what the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq did or did not have in the way of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), according to Iraq analyst and author Kenneth Pollack.
Pollack spoke to journalists in London, Madrid and Moscow by digital video conference May 13. His topic was WMD.
"I think it is still very early in the process," he said. But he added that the reported discovery of an Iraqi mobile biological warfare laboratory April 19 "is potentially a very important development." Pollack noted that the laboratory continues to undergo testing. [The Pentagon announced May 13 that a second, similar laboratory was found by U.S. troops in Iraq on May 9, and is also undergoing further examination in Baghdad.]
"[T]he press reports that we've seen do seem to suggest that this is exactly what it's suspected to be: that it is one of the Iraqi mobile biological warfare laboratories which several of the defectors reported on. But obviously, until the U.S. government comes out and makes an official statement, I'm not going to go out on a limb and suggest that I know something that the U.S. government doesn't know. Because in point of fact, I don't."
Pollack acknowledged that though reports before the war indicated that Iraq was deploying chemical and biological weapons (CBW), that clearly was not true. He speculated that the Iraqis may have destroyed their existing stocks of CBW, but kept the capability to make them -- which would be consistent with finding the mobile biological weapons laboratory. The weapons are very easy to make, he said, especially the chemicals, but once weaponized they are very difficult to store. He noted that in the Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqis mixed the components in the field to make chemical weapons.
"It's clear that Saddam wanted very much to win the war without weapons of mass destruction," Pollack said. It may be that Saddam thought that the war would develop much more slowly than it did, he said, and it may be that Saddam thought that he would have time to use his CBW capability if it proved necessary. "As it turned out, he didn't have the time to do so," Pollack said.
"I think that we will find the [WMD] stuff," Pollack said. "I think it's simply a matter of time, but I think that we will find, at the very least, the production capability."
A reporter for Spain's El Pais asked Pollack to assess the transition in Iraq. He replied that it was inevitably going to be messy and chaotic, and that replacing a totalitarian dictatorship that was widely feared and hated would surely release pent-up emotion among the Iraqis. In fact, Pollack said, he "would have been stunned" if an Iraqi version of Czechoslovakia's "Velvet Revolution" had occurred.
On the other hand, he faulted the Bush administration for having too few soldiers to take control of all government ministries, hospitals and the antiquities museum right away, and for not having a better plan in place for deciding who would do what once the regime fell. He noted that U.S. forces understandably did not want to appear to be "the new occupiers, the new dictators," whereas it is now clear that it made the Iraqis think the Americans don't really know what they're doing, and that they wanted and needed U.S. forces to come in and say, "We're in charge and here are the rules." Pollack drew a comparison to Yugoslavia collapsing after the fall of Tito because the people felt uncertainty and decided that meant that no one was in charge anymore.
Pollack believes the United Nations should have a major role to play in Iraq, because of the resources it can call on and because the reconstruction of Iraq is going to be a very long process, perhaps needing five to ten years, and maybe longer. He criticized Russian and French tactics at the United Nations --- citing their decision to offer amendments to a U.S.-backed draft Security Council resolution on Iraqi reconstruction as "deplorable" moves that will simply antagonize the United States. French and Russian efforts to make changes should be done behind closed doors, Pollack said.
Pollack also noted that the European Union's Chris Patton had made a "terrific" statement some weeks ago, to the effect that the EU wanted to help in the reconstruction of Iraq, but that it must have "that U.N. imprimatur" to do it. Statements like that, Pollack said, are very helpful, because they send the right message to the Bush administration: Our allies want to help, but it means allowing the United Nations to play a major role.
Pollack is a senior fellow and the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy of the Brookings Institution. He is the author of "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq," which he wrote as a senior fellow and director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was director for Persian Gulf affairs, as well as director for Near East and South Asian affairs at the National Security Council (NSC) during the Clinton administration. He has been a research professor at the National Defense University (NDU), and served as Iran-Iraq military analyst during seven years with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He has a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a bachelor's degree from Yale University.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
