slate.msn.com/id/2114820
This Was Not Looting How did Saddam's best weapons plants get plundered? By Christopher Hitchens Posted Tuesday, March 15, 2005, at 5:29 AM PT Once again, a major story gets top billing in a mainstream paperand is p rinted upside down.
This was how the New York Times led its front page on Sunday. Sami al-Araji, the deputy minister of industry, says that after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, "looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hus sein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-pr ecision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms." As printed, the implication of the story was not dissimilar from the Al-Q aqaa disclosures, which featured so much in the closing days of the pres idential election last fall. In that case, a huge stock of conventional high-explosives had been allowed to go missing and was presumably in the hands of those who were massacring Iraqi civilians and killing coalitio n troops.
one comment from the Bush campaign surrogate appe ared to blame this negligence on the troops themselves. Followed to one possible conclusion, the implication was clear: The invasion of Iraq had made the world a more dangerous place by randomly scattering all sorts of weaponry, including mass-destruction weaponry, to destinations unknow n It was eye-rubbing to read of the scale of this potential new nightmare. There in cold print was the Al Hatteen "munitions production plant that international inspectors called a complete potential nuclear weapons lab oratory." And what of the Al Adwan facility, which "produced equipment u sed for uranium enrichment, necessary to make some kinds of nuclear weap ons"? The overall pattern of the plundered sites was summarized thus, by reporters James Glanz and William J Broad: The kinds of machinery at the various sites included equipment that coul d be used to make missile parts, chemical weapons or centrifuges essent ial for enriching uranium for atom bombs. My first question is this: How can it be that, on every page of every oth er edition for months now, the New York Times has been stating categoric ally that Iraq harbored no weapons of mass destruction? org activist in the entire c ountry who hasn't stated with sarcastic certainty that the whole WMD fus s was a way of lying the American people into war. Maybe we should have taken Saddam's propaganda seriously, when his newspaper pro udly described Iraq's physicists as "our nuclear mujahideen." The word is used throughout the long report, but here's what it's used to describe. "In f our weeks from mid-April to mid-May of 2003 teams with flatbed trucks and other heavy equipment moved systematically from site to site. But obviously, what we are reading about is a carefully planned military operation. The participants were not panicked or greedy civilians helpin g themselveswhich is the customary definition of a "looter," especially in wartime. They were mechanized and mobile and under orders, and actin g in a concerted fashion. Thus, if the story is factually correctwhich we have no reason at all to doubtthen Saddam's Iraq was a fairly highly -evolved WMD state, with a contingency plan for further concealment and distribution of the weaponry in case of attack or discovery. Before the war began, several of the administration's critics argued that an intervention would be too dangerous, either because Saddam Hussein w ould actually unleash his arsenal of WMD, or because he would divert it to third parties. That case at least had the merit of being serious (tho ugh I would want to argue that a regime capable of doing either thing wa s a regime that urgently needed to be removed). Since then, however, the scene has dissolved into one long taunt and jeer: "There were no WMD in Iraq. The UN inspectors, who are solemnly quoted by Glanz and Broad as having "monitored" the alarming developments at Al Hatteen and elsewhere, don' t come out looking too professional, either. If by scanning satellite pi ctures now they can tell us that potentially thermonuclear stuff is on t he loose, how come they couldn't come up with this important data when t hey were supposedly "on the ground"? Even in the worst interpretation, it seems unlikely that the material is more dangerous now than it was two years ago. Some of the elementscentr ifuges, for example, and chemical mixturesrequire stable and controlled conditions for effectiveness. They can't simply be transferred to some kitchen or tent. They are less risky than they were in early 2003, in ot her words. If they went to a neighboring state, though Some chemical v ats have apparently turned up on a scrap heap in Jordan, even if this do es argue more for a panicky concealment than a plan of transfer. But any way, this only returns us to the main point: If Saddam's people could ha ve made such a transfer after his fall, then they could have made it muc h more easily during his reign. It seems flabbergasting that an y of these sites were unsecured after the occupation, let alone for so l ong. Did the CIA yet again lack "human intelligence" as well as every ot her kind? The Bush administration staked the reputation of the United St ates on the matter. Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and a regular contrib utor to Slate.
READ MESSAGES Remarks from the Fray: The simplest explantations are always the best. There are several possibl e, simple explanations for the failure to secure Iraqi WMD sites immedia tely after the occupation. Which one is the preferred, depends at this t ime more on political conviction than on the available facts. Explanation 1: The intelligence available to the CIA and Pentagon was tha t bad, that it wasn't aware of the existence or importance of these site s, so the need to quickly secure was not perceived. Of course, at least some of the sites were well known the UN, so the term "intelligence fail ure" barely covers a mistake of this level. This is the "politicians are incredibly stupid, but honest" explanation. Explanation 2: Despite all its public statements, the US government and m ilitary did not actually believe that Saddam's weapons stock was a real imminent threat, so did not perceive a need to quickly secure them. With hindsight, that assesment of Saddam's arsenal would have been correct; So this is the "politicians ar e smart, but incredibly dishonest" explanation. Explanation 3: These so-called highly important sites where actually neve r that important, explosives and machine tools were stored there, but th ey (no longer) had a link with WMD This fits with these sites being kno wn to the UN, as the Iraqis would have pursued any WMD development only on secret sites. Of course the materials stored there were still strateg ic and included materials of great interest to terrorists, so not securi ng them was a serious error. This is the "politicians are moderately stu pid, journalists are moderately dishonest" explanation. Bad intelligence, del iberate exaggeration of the threat by some officials in the US administr ation, and sensationalist news reporting all contribute to obfuscate the facts.
What was stolen was high precision machinery, not nuclear weapons. On yes, and tons and tons of explosives that are being used daily against our troops and Iraqi civilians.
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