The Uncomfortable Truth: There Were Weapons of Mass Destruction

For two decades, the American people have been force-fed a simple lie: that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was based on a catastrophic intelligence failure, a "fraud" perpetrated by a cynical administration. That Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. That the entire enterprise was a colossal mistake. That the men and women who gave their lives were sacrificed for a fiction.

This narrative is as dangerous as it is false.

The reality is that Iraq did possess weapons of mass destruction. Iraq did conceal them from inspectors. Iraq did retain the capability and intent to restart its programs the moment the world looked away. And the American people were told the truth, even if the full picture was more complex than the soundbites indicated.

This is not an argument for the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War. But it is an argument for the truth. And the truth is that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a WMD-capable state that never fully disarmed.

The Anfal Campaign

In 1987, Saddam Hussein's forces launched chemical strikes on Kurdish villages, and on March 16th, 1988, his regime perpetrated the Halabja massacre. Iraqi aircraft dropped chemical bombs containing mustard gas, sarin, and tabun on the defenseless town, killing between 3,200 and 5,200 people in a matter of hours. The massacre was the culmination of a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Kurdish population known as the Al-Anfal Campaign. The campaign cost the lives of between 100,000 and 182,000 civilians, with over 2,000 villages destroyed through the use of firing squads, mass deportations, and chemical weapons.

Saddam Hussein and his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as "Chemical Ali") decided to "make an example" of the Kurds for having supported Iranian forces during the Iran-Iraq War. In one audio tape from the period, Chemical Ali made his intentions plain:

"I will kill them all with chemical weapons!... Who is going to say anything?"

Beyond the thousands dead, ten thousand more survived, only to be blinded, maimed, disfigured, or otherwise severely and irreversibly debilitated. Iraqi soldiers returned to the town in protective gear to study the effectiveness of their weapons, using the data to gauge the ability of their chemical agents to kill, maim, and terrorize population centers. They would then "shoot the survivors and burn the bodies."

As the Iran-Iraq War drew to a close and Saddam Hussein's regime became increasingly isolated, the world demanded accountability. In 1991, following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and its subsequent defeat in the Gulf War, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 687, imposing restrictions on Iraq as the price of peace. Under this resolution, Iraq was required to unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless of all its chemical and biological weapons, all stocks of agents, and all related subsystems and components. It was also required to destroy all ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometers. Iraq was further prohibited from acquiring or developing nuclear weapons or nuclear-weapons-usable material. To enforce these demands, the UN established the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), tasked with verifying Iraq's compliance through on-site inspections. Iraq formally accepted the resolution on April 6, 1991, and agreed to cooperate fully with the inspectors. This marked the beginning of a decade-long cat-and-mouse game between Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime and the international community, a game in which Iraq would repeatedly lie to retain its WMD capabilities.

The Biological Weapons Programs

Initially, Iraq denied having ever had an offensive biological weapons program. According to the White House archive, for four years, from 1991 to 1995, Iraq took "active steps to conceal the program" from UNSCOM. One Iraqi defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a civil engineer, said he had visited twenty secret facilities for chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, supporting his claims with stacks of Iraqi government contracts complete with technical specifications. In 1995, Saddam's son-in-law Hussein Kamel defected to Jordan. Kamel had been the Director of Iraq's Military Industrialization Corporation, with responsibility for all of Iraq's weapons programs. His defection forced Iraq to admit to the weaponization of 30,000 liters of anthrax, botulinum toxin, and aflatoxin for use with Scud warheads, aerial bombs, and aircraft. The White House archive documented that UNSCOM experts concluded Iraq's declarations on biological agents vastly understated the extent of its program, and that Iraq actually produced between two to four times the amount of most agents, including anthrax and botulinum toxin, than it had declared.

The UNSCOM report of January 1999 documented Iraq's possession of massive quantities of biological growth materials that the regime could not account for, including enough yeast extract and peptone to produce tens of thousands of liters of anthrax and botulinum toxin. The report identified 360 tons of chemical warfare agents, 1.5 tons of VX nerve agent, and 550 filled chemical munitions that remained unaccounted for. When UNSCOM confronted an Iraqi official with evidence of additional anthrax-filled warheads, he suggested the numbers had been "accidentally switched" and told inspectors: "Just put down whatever numbers you like."

Given appropriate storage conditions, according to the UN, the yeast extract and peptone (the most dangerous items) could have been usable by at least 1999. We still do not know what happened to almost all of this unaccounted material. All Iraqi biological weapons were declared as destroyed by their own accounts by July of 1991. However, there remained no certainty regarding the quantity of WMDs destroyed or the conditions under which such destruction took place. Iraq's entire civilian hospital system consumed just 200 kilograms of bacterial growth media per year. Yet in 1988 alone, Iraq imported 39 tons of it (195 times more than it could possibly need for civilian use), enough to produce catastrophic quantities of anthrax and botulinum toxin.

This was not the behavior of a compliant state. It was the behavior of a regime that believed it could outlast the inspectors and had no intention of telling the truth.

And so, as the 1990s wore on, the United Nations was left with a terrifying question: What had Iraq actually destroyed, and what had it kept? UNSCOM's final report made clear that the answers remained elusive.

UN Obstruction

From the inception of the inspections in 1991, Iraq's compliance had been limited. The 1999 UNSCOM report documented a litany of violations that "have had a significant negative impact upon the Commission's disarmament work." Iraq's disclosure statements had never been complete. Iraq admitted it "decided to limit its disclosures for the purpose of retaining substantial prohibited weapons and capabilities." Iraq undertook "extensive, unilateral and secret destruction" of large quantities of proscribed weapons and items, destroying weapons outside UN supervision, making it impossible to verify what was actually destroyed. Iraq pursued "a practice of concealment" of proscribed items, including weapons, and a "cover up" of its activities in contravention of Council resolutions.

But the obstruction went far beyond bureaucratic stonewalling. The regime engaged in acts of outright hostility against the inspectors, oftentimes at gunpoint.

On June 23-28, 1991, Iraqi forces fired warning shots at inspectors to prevent them from intercepting vehicles suspected of carrying nuclear equipment. In February 1993, an Iraqi flier threatened to shoot down two helicopters carrying UN weapons inspectors as they attempted to photograph suspected Scud missile sites near Baghdad. The inspectors broke off their attempts when they realized they were being tracked by anti-aircraft guns. UNSCOM Chairman Rolf Ekeus told the Security Council: "The threat was extremely serious when you have guns that trailed and tracked you down." In another incident, Iraqi forces trained antiaircraft guns on two UN helicopters, and an Iraqi official warned the inspectors against the continuation of their activities. In January 1993, Iraq refused to allow UNSCOM the use of its own aircraft to fly into Iraq altogether. In December 1992, Iraq refused to allow a UN helicopter surveillance flight to enter Iraqi airspace.

In September 1991, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors discovered documents relating to Iraq's nuclear weapons program. In response, the Iraqi government kidnapped them, preventing the inspectors from leaving the site for four days. In June 1997, an Iraqi officer physically attacked one UNSCOM inspector on board an UNSCOM helicopter while the inspector was attempting to photograph unauthorized movement of Iraqi vehicles inside a site designated for inspection.

Iraq denied UN access to inspection sites repeatedly. In June 1996, inspectors were denied access to sites associated with the Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard, believed to be involved in concealment of weapons of mass destruction. Iraq denied access to four of six sites, claiming they were "presidential areas." Iraq was condemned in August for "gross violations" of UN resolutions. In June of the following year, Iraq again blocked UNSCOM teams from entering certain sites for inspection. Inspectors reported that they were not provided with "unfettered access" to any site in the country, contrary to what had been agreed. Inspectors were frequently turned away at the door, as was the case at Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces. By December 1997, inspectors said they had been formally told that these sites were off limits.

Iraqi officials refused to allow inspectors to interview scientists who would have revealed the truth. Only selected people were allowed to interact with inspectors. Iraq demanded that US citizens working for UNSCOM leave Iraq immediately in November 1997. In October 1997, Baghdad barred American weapons inspectors altogether.

Iraq's harassment of UN Inspectors was relentless, and deeply personal. According to a study of the inspection experience, the Iraqis would alternate "friendly, 'good host' behavior" with hostile behavior. They attempted to harass inspectors by utilizing long travel times to sites to tire them out. Abusive and threatening telephone calls were often made to inspectors' rooms at all hours of the night. The Iraqis would sometimes use delaying tactics, driving to a site by a circuitous route, getting lost, or professing confusion, which often resulted in "cleansing" of the site by the time inspectors arrived, sometimes to the extent that all paper was gone from desks, bookshelves, and filing cabinets. On September 17, 1997, while seeking access to a site declared by Iraq to be "sensitive," UNSCOM inspectors witnessed and videotaped Iraqi guards moving files, burning documents, and dumping ash-filled waste cans into a nearby river.

Beyond physical obstruction, Iraq engaged in a systematic sanitization of documentary and computer evidence. Hard drives were destroyed, specific files were burned, equipment was cleaned of all traces of use, nameplates were even removed from office doors, buildings were torn down. UNSCOM documented that the Ba'athist dictatorship built dummy facilities to deceive inspectors, bulldozed military sites, and concealed accumulations of chemical and biological components. Iraq engaged in a "systematic, massive, and blatant program of deception, deceit, denial, diversion, and evasion." By October 1998, Iraq completely ceased cooperating with UNSCOM. On October 31, 1998, Iraq ended all cooperation with UNSCOM. Security Council Resolution 1205 was passed, which unanimously condemned Iraq's non-compliance with the inspections, and on December 16, 1998, the Special Commission withdrew its staff from Iraq.

The Iraqi Nuclear Program

The man at the center of Saddam’s WMD program was named Mahdi Shukur Obeidi.

As Director General of Iraq's Ministry of Industry & Military Industrialization, Obeidi headed Iraq's gas centrifuge program, aimed at enriching uranium for nuclear weapons. Saddam had kept Obeidi's identity secret longer than that of any other scientist, recognizing the immense value of the knowledge he possessed.

In 1991, as the Gulf War drew to a close and United Nations inspectors prepared to descend upon Iraq, Obeidi received a direct order from the regime's highest echelons. Qusay Hussein, Saddam's son, and Hussein Kamel, as the director of Iraq's Military Industrialization Corporation, commanded Obeidi to bury the most critical components of Iraq's nuclear program. Under the cover of darkness, Obeidi took the parts of a gas centrifuge system (the heart of Iraq’s uranium enrichment program) along with accompanying plans and diagrams and buried them beneath a rose bush in his garden. He was ordered to keep them hidden "to be ready to rebuild the bomb program."

When Obeidi finally led US officials to the buried cache in June 2003, they discovered the central components of Iraqi nuclear technology: The parts needed to develop a bomb program. The documents and components represented a complete set of what would be needed to rebuild a uranium-enrichment program. Obeidi told CNN that the hidden equipment was part of a highly sophisticated system he was ordered to preserve, expressing grave concern about the materials falling into the wrong hands. "I have very important things at my disposal that I have been ordered to have, to keep, and I've kept them, and I don't want this to proliferate, because of its potential consequences if it falls in the hands of tyrants, in the hands of dictators or of terrorists," he said.

The CIA, which showed the recovered components and documents exclusively to CNN at its Virginia headquarters, was unequivocal about what the discovery meant. While this was not evidence that Iraq currently possessed a nuclear weapon, it was evidence that the Iraqis had concealed, up until the final day, their plans to reconstitute a nuclear program as soon as the world was no longer looking. As one intelligence official stated: "These documents and components were deliberately hidden at the direction of Iraq's senior leadership with the aim of preserving the regime's capacity to resume construction of a centrifuge that at some point could be used to enrich uranium for a nuclear device." The concealment was part of a secret, high-level plan to reconstitute the nuclear weapons program once sanctions ended. The official added: "Their existence validates our long-standing view that Iraq had hidden nuclear technology... in contravention of U.N. Security Council resolutions."

David Kay, who led three UN arms inspection missions in Iraq in 1991-92 and now headed the CIA's search for unconventional weapons, was brought to Baghdad to examine the find. His reaction was one of both regret and vindication. "It begins to tell us how huge our job is," Kay said. "Remember, his material was buried in a barrel behind his house in a rose garden. There's no way that that would have been discovered by normal international inspections. I couldn't have done it. My successors couldn't have done it." He confessed, "It was a realization that I hadn't gotten all the parts [of Iraq's nuclear program]. So there was a moment of regret, but there was also an exhilaration that now maybe we have a chance to take this to the very bottom." David Albright, a former UN nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq and head of the Institute for Science & International Security, confirmed that inspectors had long suspected such concealment. "We understood that Iraq probably hid centrifuge documents, may have had components, and so it is very important that those items be found," Albright said. He elaborated: "What it is that Obeidi was ordered to keep was all the information and some centrifuge components, so that if he was given the order, he could restart the centrifuge program." Albright had met Obeidi in Iraq in the 1990s, when UN inspectors were dismantling Saddam's WMD programs. He later revealed that US officials initially did not understand the significance of Obeidi's offer. "I have never seen anything like it. Obeidi is sending all sorts of signals, and they just missed it completely," Albright said. "They were going to walk away from him."

Obeidi's decision to come forward was not without personal risk. After American troops entered Baghdad, he was afraid to approach US soldiers directly. Instead, he approached international journalists at random outside the Palestine Hotel until he convinced one to contact David Albright. Obeidi said he felt unsafe in Iraq after the invasion and was getting pressure from different quarters. Despite assurances from US officials, two days after he turned over the nuclear components and documents to the CIA, the US Army broke down the door of his home, handcuffed him, and detained him for one day. Once released, Obeidi resumed his cooperation.

Obeidi crucially revealed that he was not the only scientist ordered to hide such nuclear equipment. "I think there may be more than three other copies," he warned, urging that investigators search for them. To this day, we do not know whether those copies were ever found and kept classified, or whether they remain buried somewhere in Iraq, waiting for the order to be dug up and used.

The Obeidi discovery definitively proved that Saddam Hussein's regime never abandoned its nuclear ambitions. The regime preserved the critical components of a nuclear enrichment program, maintained the complete blueprints and documentation needed to restart production, ordered its top nuclear scientists to hide this material for future use, and planned to reconstitute the program the moment international sanctions were lifted.

The inspections regime, for all its effort, would never have found what was deliberately buried beneath a rosebush in a Baghdad garden. The only reason we know about it today is that one man, a man of conscience and courage, decided to reveal the truth.

As early as 1975, Saddam Hussein had set his sights on acquiring a nuclear bomb. In 1976, Iraq acquired two research reactors (the 40MWt Osiraq reactor (Tammuz I) and the smaller Isis reactor (Tammuz II)) along with a fuel manufacturing facility and a pilot plutonium separation laboratory in 1979. All were located at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center near Baghdad. Saddam himself stated in September 1975 that procurement of the Tammuz I reactor represented "the first Arab attempt at nuclear arming." Greatly concerned by Iraq's procurement efforts, Israel bombed the Osiraq facility in June 1981, destroying the reactor core before it could come online. From then on, Iraq shifted to covertly developing a uranium enrichment capability at undeclared nuclear facilities. Over the next decade, Iraq pursued several enrichment methods in parallel: Electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS), gas centrifuges, and gaseous diffusion. The EMIS project received priority attention for much of the decade. By January 1991, Iraq's centrifuge enrichment was "still at the stage of single machine testing," while EMIS was "years away from completion". Between 1991 and 1998, the IAEA conducted more than 1,500 inspections in Iraq. The IAEA released a report in 1997, with updates in 1998 and 1999, which it believed offered a "technically coherent picture" of Iraq's nuclear program.

By the time of the Gulf War, Iraqi scientists had progressed through several design iterations for a fission weapon based on an implosion design, one far more difficult to develop than the simpler gun‑type design. The weapon design component was making the best progress. With the solution of the few problems remaining in January 1991, the PC‑3 Fourth Group (Weaponization) group was confident that the finalization of a viable design could have been achieved close to schedule. By mid‑1990, Iraqi scientists had made "some progress in understanding how a relatively crude nuclear explosive device with a core of highly enriched uranium would work, and they had done some experiments on parts of the technology". The weaponization program carried the code name Petrochemical 3 and was aimed at producing an implosion‑type bomb, which uses chemical explosives to suddenly compress a sphere of highly enriched uranium.

At the request of the IAEA, a group of nuclear weapon designers from the United States, Britain, France, and Russia met in April 1992 to assess Iraq's nuclear progress. They concluded that bottlenecks could have delayed completion of a working bomb for at least three years. However, several experts familiar with the inspections believed Iraq could have produced a workable device in as little as 6-24 months had they decided to seize foreign‑supplied highly enriched uranium (HEU) from under safeguards and focus on a crash program. Iraq had a target date of 1991 for its first nuclear weapon. It is reasonable to suppose the first device containing indigenously produced HEU would not have been available before late 1992. Mahdi Obeidi himself stated in his book that had Saddam not invaded Kuwait in August 1990, he likely would have possessed a crude atomic bomb by 1993. In October 1991, United Nations inspectors reported that Iraq was within 12-18 months of building a nuclear bomb and was already testing a missile system to deliver it.

In 1990, Iraq launched a crash program to divert safeguarded research reactor fuel and recover the HEU for use in a nuclear weapon. Hussein Kamel himself disclosed that right after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, he ordered a crash program to recover bomb‑grade uranium from French and Russian‑supplied civilian nuclear fuel by the following April. The IAEA report of December 1st, 1995, confirmed that Iraq had launched this crash program in August 1990 to produce a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible. Had the Gulf War not intervened, Iraq could have potentially built a weapon between November 1990 and April 1991. The war interrupted Iraq's crash bomb program, and all the diverted bomb‑grade fuel was eventually recovered and removed.

Iraq's A1 Atheer nuclear weapons development and production plant was dedicated to research and development of weaponization capabilities for implosion‑based nuclear weapons. The delivery system design had progressed through several meetings and detailed technical exchanges during the second half of 1990, between the nuclear weapons design group and the missile development group. After 1991, Iraq was caught trying to procure 60,000 high-strength aluminum tubes that were banned under UN sanctions. These tubes became the most tangible piece of physical evidence the Bush administration could brandish of Saddam Hussein's revived nuclear ambitions. Khidhir Hamza, one of Saddam's most senior nuclear scientists, who defected in 1994, provided critical testimony about the tubes' significance. In meetings with US officials, Hamza described how Saddam was trying to refine uranium for his nuclear program using a centrifuge technique in small labs scattered throughout the country. Hamza was insistent, claiming that Baghdad was purchasing from abroad a specific kind of aluminum tube needed for the process.

Hamza was not alone in his assessment. A former Iraqi nuclear scientist who worked in the program confirmed that the specifications of the tubes Iraq was trying to acquire (7075-T6 aluminum with an 81 mm outer diameter, 74.4 mm inner diameter, and 900 mm length) matched the same specifications of tubes Iraq had used in its pre-1991 centrifuge program. The CIA published its first detailed paper on August 1, 2002, explaining its assessment that the aluminum tubes were destined for Iraq's nuclear program. Intelligence analysts argued that the tubes were well-suited to building gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment and were too sophisticated to be plausibly meant for any alternative application. Condoleezza Rice, the president's National Security Adviser, explained on CNN: "The tubes are 'only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs'". Vice President Dick Cheney reinforced this point, stating the United States had "irrefutable evidence": thousands of tubes destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges. The CIA also cited cost as a factor: 7075 aluminum is more expensive than steel used in rockets, suggesting Iraq's intent to use the tubes for centrifuges rather than conventional weapons.

The Iraqi Survey Group (ISG) ultimately concluded that the tubes were intended for 81-mm rockets, in agreement with the IAEA, which found that the tubes were likely unrelated to centrifuges. However, this “rocket explanation” was significantly flawed. First, Iraq had a long history of using these exact tubes for nuclear centrifuges. Prior to the Gulf War, Iraq had used heavy-gauge aluminum tubing to build centrifuges for refining uranium; those devices were destroyed during the 1990s by UN weapons inspectors. The tubes Iraq was trying to acquire in 2001 had the same specifications as tubes Iraq had used in its pre-1991 centrifuge program. Second, Iraq had already produced 81-mm rockets using lower-quality tubes. The ISG itself acknowledged that Iraq accepted lower-quality, indigenously produced aluminum tubes for 81-mm rockets in the months before the war despite continued foreign procurement attempts for high-specification tubes. If the tubes were simply for rockets, why was Iraq pursuing such high-specification, expensive tubes when it could use cheaper domestic alternatives? Third, the dimensions do not fit the rocket explanation. The tubes had an outer diameter of 81 mm (the same as the rocket) but the wall thickness and metallurgical specifications were far beyond what was needed for a conventional rocket. The tubes were made of 7075-T6 aluminum, an expensive, high-strength alloy normally used in aerospace applications, not in cheap artillery rockets. The IAEA's own assessment noted that while the tubes could be used for rockets, the specifications were unnecessarily high for that purpose. Fourth, the tubes were subject to nuclear controls under Annex 3 of the UN's Ongoing Monitoring & Verification Plan, meaning they were specifically identified as possible centrifuge components. This is why Iraq was prohibited from importing them.

Critics, including the IAEA's Mohamed ElBaradei, argued that the tubes were "not directly suitable" for centrifuges and that the wall thickness was too great. This argument assumes Iraq would use the tubes exactly as purchased. But Iraq had a history of modifying imported materials for nuclear purposes. As the New York Times noted, "After the gulf war, it was not implausible that Iraqi scientists would attempt another subterfuge: importing aluminum tubes for small artillery rockets and modifying them to produce centrifuges based on a declassified 1950's German design". The fact that the tubes were not perfect for centrifuges does not mean they were not intended for centrifuges. The DOE itself acknowledged that the tubes "could have been used to manufacture centrifuge rotors". Iraq had a history of working with suboptimal materials and modifying them for nuclear purposes. As Obeidi documented, Iraq had acquired prohibited items (including designs, materials, and hardware) from firms in Germany, Switzerland, England, the United States, France, and China.

The ISG concluded that it “did not uncover evidence of a program to design or develop an 81-mm aluminum rotor centrifuge". However, an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, especially given Iraq's demonstrated ability to conceal its programs. If Iraq could hide nuclear components in a backyard garden for over a decade, it could certainly hide evidence of a centrifuge program. Moreover, the ISG's conclusion about the tubes was not definitive. The ISG itself noted "inconsistencies that raise questions about whether high-specification aluminum tubes were really needed for such a rocket program". The ISG also acknowledged "bureaucratic momentum made it difficult to abandon the perceived need for high-specification tubes from abroad", meaning that even if the tubes were not currently for centrifuges, the intent to use them for that purpose remained. The ISG's own report documents that Dr. Huwaysh (the head of Iraq's Military Industrialization Commission) was "keenly interested in high-strength, high-specification aluminum tubes for rocket production". But Huwaysh was also the man Saddam approached in both 1999 and 2001 about restarting chemical weapons production, hardly the profile of a regime official who had abandoned WMD ambitions.

550‑600 tons of yellowcake natural uranium oxide (the basic ore concentrate used as feedstock for enrichment) that remained at Tuwaitha after the 1991 Gulf War was the last major stockpile from Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. Canadian uranium producer Cameco accepted delivery of roughly 550 tons of that uranium oxide. But the yellowcake was far from the only concern.

In the chaotic weeks after the fall of Baghdad, the sprawling 120‑acre Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Facility, located about 12 miles south of the capital and the centerpiece of Iraq's nuclear efforts, was left unguarded for nearly two weeks after Iraqi troops fled. As many as four hundred looters a day ransacked the site. Storage drums and containers, some still holding processed uranium, were stolen or tipped out. Local residents took the barrels to use as drinking water cisterns, food storage containers, and even to wash clothes. More than 500 tons of natural uranium and 1.8 tons of low‑enriched uranium were stored at Tuwaitha, alongside smaller amounts of highly radioactive caesium, cobalt, and strontium, materials that could be used in a radiological "dirty bomb".

Greenpeace deployed a team of campaigners and radiation experts to Iraq in June 2003 to investigate the contamination. They documented a metal container in a laborer's home emitting radiation 10,000 times above normal levels, and readings 3,000 times background levels outside a primary school. Greenpeace brought a barrel containing a radioactive sample of yellowcake to coalition headquarters, but was refused entry. Colonel Mark Melanson of the US Army's own radiation protection unit, along with the Iraqi atomic energy commission and the IAEA, recommended that a UN team be allowed to assess the situation. Despite this, the US administration blocked IAEA inspectors from conducting a proper survey. The team was only permitted to count missing containers and repackage spilled material, not to measure environmental contamination, investigate reports of radiation sickness, or access the main Tuwaitha complex or six other looted nuclear sites.

The looting ensured that we will never know the full extent of Iraq's nuclear capability.

In 2006, defense officials acknowledged that the US government had no idea whether any of Tuwaitha's potentially deadly contents had been stolen, because it had not dispatched investigators to appraise the site. Hundreds of radioactive sources remain unaccounted for. While the yellowcake was eventually removed in a secret operation in 2008 (airlifted on 37 military flights and shipped to Canada) the removal did not address the hundreds of unaccounted radiation sources scattered by looters, nor the lingering contamination in surrounding communities. The Iraqi government has repeatedly asked the IAEA to help clean up the site, but the agency has been hindered by lack of funds, support, and access.

Iraq's Unapproved Renovations

But Iraq was not merely hiding old, decaying weapons stockpiles from a bygone era. By 2003, it was actively, systematically, and with international assistance, rebuilding the very infrastructure to produce new chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

In 2001, Iraq announced it would begin renovating the al-Dawrah Foot & Mouth Disease Vaccine Facility without United Nations approval. The al-Dawrah facility is one of only two known biocontainment level-three facilities in Iraq, possessing an extensive air handling and filtering system designed to contain deadly pathogens. Iraq itself had previously admitted that this facility was a biological weapons plant. Taken over by Iraq's biological warfare program in the fall of 1990, the al-Dawrah facility conducted research on viral warfare agents including hemorrhagic conjunctivitis, human rotavirus, and camelpox. It was also used to produce thousands of liters of botulinum toxin. Approximately 55 people worked unimpeded on this project throughout the Gulf War and until at least 1992. The facility conducted experiments simulating explosive dissemination of biological agents from artillery shells and bombs. When UNMOVIC inspectors finally visited the site in November 2002, they discovered that some of the equipment they had previously tagged and monitored was missing. This equipment was later found at a secondary facility, a small company called Al-Nasir al-Adhim, which the UN had no follow-up on. Saddam’s regime was actively relocating dual-use equipment to evade detection. The al-Dawrah facility was still being considered a "facility of concern" as late as September 2002. Iraq's declared purpose for the renovation (to produce vaccines that it could "more easily and more quickly import") was a transparent cover for reconstituting its biological warfare capability.

By September 2002, Iraq had rebuilt structures at the al-Mamoun facility that had been carefully dismantled by UNSCOM. These structures were originally designed to manufacture solid propellant motors for the Badr-2000 missile program, a program with a planned range of 700 to 1,000 kilometers, far exceeding the 150-kilometer limit imposed by UN resolutions. According to intelligence reports, the al-Mamoun facility included a partly subterranean factory where some 250 engineers were reportedly working on producing the short-range Ababil-100 missile. New missile-related infrastructure under construction included rocket propellant mixing and casting facilities that appeared to replicate those linked to the prohibited Badr-2000 program. The Iraqis rebuilt two structures used to "mix" solid propellant for the Badr-2000 missile, with new buildings "about as large as the original ones" that were "ideally suited to house large, UN-prohibited mixers". As one analysis concluded, "the only logical explanation for the size and configuration of these mixing buildings was that Iraq intends to develop longer-range, prohibited missiles". Perhaps most tellingly, Iraq completed a new ammonium perchlorate production plant at al-Mamoun. Ammonium perchlorate is an important oxidizer used in solid propellant missile motors. Baghdad "would not have been able to complete this facility without help from abroad", help that was provided illicitly by NEC Engineers Private Limited, an Indian chemical engineering firm. Iraq had managed to rebuild and expand its missile development infrastructure under sanctions, with intermediaries actively seeking production technology, machine tools, and raw materials in violation of the arms embargo.

The al-Furat gas centrifuge manufacturing facility tells an even more disturbing story. Construction of the building at al-Furat was suspended in 1991. But in 2001, construction resumed. By October 2002, the building appeared to be operational. The building was originally intended to house a centrifuge enrichment cascade operation supporting Iraq's uranium enrichment efforts. This machine plant had produced centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS) components for Iraq's nuclear weapons program prior to Desert Storm, according to the IAEA. The site had been bombed during Operation Desert Fox in 1998, yet by 2002, it was being rebuilt. New satellite photos showed rebuilding at al-Furat since UN inspectors had pulled out of Iraq in December 1998. The reconstructed buildings were assessed to be capable of producing precision components for centrifuges and missiles. The Iraqi government had no publicly disclosed intentions for the reconstruction. No civilian cover story, no alternative explanation. The only logical purpose was to reconstitute the capability to produce components for a nuclear weapons program.

The Fallujah chlorine facility represents perhaps the most brazen example of Iraq's reconstruction efforts. The plant was controlled by Iraq's military bureaucracy from its inception. N. Katturajan, the project manager who built the plant in 1999, stated: "The chlorine plant at Fallujah was directly under control of Ministry of Military Industries of Iraq government". The plant was producing 22 tons of chlorine per day, far more than needed for civilian water treatment. The chlorine was being bottled and removed daily, exceeding storage capacity. Chlorine is a key precursor for chemical warfare agents like mustard gas and nerve agents. Iraq had produced 2,850 tonnes of mustard gas up to 1991, requiring about 1,250 tonnes of chlorine. The Fallujah II plant was one of Iraq's principal chemical weapons precursor production facilities before the Gulf War. According to Indian court documents, large amounts of chlorine were removed from the Fallujah chemical complex. The British government's own Ministry of Defence noted that the Iraqis could produce epichlorohydrin, "a key precursor for the chemical warfare agent mustard". The Fallujah 2 chlorine plant was pinpointed by the United States as an example of a factory rebuilt by Saddam to regain his chemical warfare capability.

The Post-Invasion Discoveries

The discovery of chemical weapons did not end with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In fact, it continued throughout the occupation, and the US government kept much of it secret, from the public and from the troops who were being exposed.

On May 15, 2004, an American patrol was sweeping a highway in Baghdad, trying to clear the route for a convoy. An attacker detonated a roadside bomb as the patrol neared the anticipated kill zone. There was a small blast, but something was clearly different from the typical explosions that accompanied roadside bombs. Although the soldiers did not yet know it, they had just been attacked by a previously unseen type of makeshift bomb: a device made from an artillery shell designed to disperse a nerve agent. The resulting release of sarin, the first case in history of a nerve agent being used in an improvised explosive device, eventually wounded two American explosive ordnance disposal technicians: Staff Sgt. James F. Burns and Pfc. Michael S. Yandell. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt announced at a news briefing that U.S. forces had found an exploded artillery shell that was emitting sarin gas.

Between May and June 2004, the Iraq Survey Group recovered a total of 53 chemical munitions from Coalition military units and other sources. All of them appeared to have been part of pre-1991 Gulf war stocks based on their physical condition and residual components. But the most interesting discovery was a 152mm binary sarin artillery projectile containing a 40 percent concentration of sarin. The existence of this binary weapon not only raised questions about the number of viable chemical weapons remaining in Iraq but raised the possibility that a larger number of binary, long-lasting chemical weapons still exist. Former Iraqi scientists involved with the program admitted that the program was considered extremely successful and shelved for future use. Under UN Security Resolution 687, Iraq should have destroyed or rendered harmless all CW munitions, but we cannot determine whether the rounds recovered were declared or if their destruction was attempted. One of the key UN unresolved issues involves 550 mustard-filled rounds that remain unaccounted for.

In 2005, the CIA launched an extraordinary arms purchase plan known as Operation Avarice. Working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, the CIA repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups. The effort was run out of the CIA station in Baghdad in collaboration with the Army's 203rd Military Intelligence Battalion and teams of chemical-defense and explosive ordnance disposal troops. It led to the United States acquiring and destroying at least 400 Borak rockets, one of the internationally condemned chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein's Baathist government manufactured in the 1980s but that were not accounted for by United Nations inspections mandated after the 1991 Gulf war. Many rockets were in poor condition, and some were empty or held a nonlethal liquid. But others contained the nerve agent sarin, which analysis showed to be purer than the intelligence community had expected given the age of the stock. An internal record from 2006 referred to "agent purity of up to 25 percent for recovered unitary sarin weapons".

What makes this discovery so devastating is the scientific context. Sarin degrades over time, and this process is greatly accelerated by impurities. Iraq struggled to produce high-purity nerve agents; the average quality of its sarin was in the range of 45-60%, sufficient for use during the Iran-Iraq War but certainly not for long-term storage. By October 1991, sarin agent purity at Khamisiyah had degraded to 10% purity. Other sarin samples produced in 1988 had degraded to a range of 18% to 2% by 1991. This rapid degradation is why the CIA assessed in 1996 that some Iraqi sarin had a shelf life of only a few weeks, and why the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) estimated the shelf life of Iraq's sarin-type nerve agents to be only 4-6 weeks. Given these documented rates of degradation, the 25% purity found in 2006 becomes an anomaly that is difficult to reconcile with the expected decomposition of Iraqi sarin produced in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

This points to a different type of weapon entirely: binary chemical munitions. Iraq was acutely aware of the short shelf life of its unitary nerve agents. To solve this problem, it developed binary weapons, where the two precursor chemicals are stored separately and only mix to form the nerve agent immediately before or when the round is in flight. This made the shelf life of the agent irrelevant. By 1990, Iraq had successfully tested 155-mm artillery shells and other binary munitions and launched a ballistic missile with a binary warhead. According to the Iraq Survey Group's Duelfer Report, a 152mm binary Sarin artillery projectile (containing a 40 percent concentration of Sarin) was discovered after the invasion. Former Iraqi scientists involved with the program admitted that the binary program was considered extremely successful and shelved for future use. The precursor chemicals used in binary weapons are not true agents; they have lower toxicity, are easier to produce with good quality than unitary agents, and therefore have a longer shelf life. The 25% purity sarin in the Borak rockets is proof of this more advanced, binary chemical weapons program that was never fully accounted for. The potency of sarin samples from the purchases, as well as tightly held assessments about risks the munitions posed, reinforced veterans' claims that during the war the military did not share important intelligence about battlefield perils with those at risk or maintain an adequate medical system for treating victims of chemical exposure.

In a 2014 investigation, The New York Times revealed that American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs in Iraq between 2004 and 2011. The newspaper based its report on dozens of pages of classified documents and interviews with soldiers and officials. The newspaper tracked down 17 US soldiers and seven Iraqi police officers who said they had been wounded during at least six separate incidents. On six occasions, soldiers suffered wounds; at least 20 American troops and seven Iraqi police officers were exposed to nerve or mustard agents. The Pentagon withheld information on the finds, including data on the number of warheads discovered, from the public and from Congress. Some of the weapons were reportedly designed in the United States and manufactured in Europe, filled with chemical agents produced in Iraq from ingredients purchased in some cases in the United States. Many of the old caches of chemical weapons were discovered around the ruins of the Muthanna State Establishment, the center of Iraqi chemical weapons production in the 1980s. The investigation exposed shocking failings by the Pentagon, including a callous disregard for the safety and care of American and Iraqi troops and a disturbing pattern of secrecy that can only erode public confidence in government.

On June 21, 2006, the Director of National Intelligence declassified key parts from a National Ground Intelligence Center report on the recovery of approximately 500 chemical munitions that contained degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. The report's central finding was that since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, coalition forces had recovered about 500 shells, canisters or other munitions that contain degraded mustard gas or sarin nerve agent. The declassified information specifically states that coalition forces recovered about 500 munitions containing mustard or sarin nerve agent, the same types of chemical warfare agents that Saddam Hussein used to kill thousands of Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war and to slaughter thousands of his own countrymen in northern Iraq. The NGIC study was conducted, Lt. Gen. Michael Maples said, to allow commanders in Iraq to prepare their troops for potential hazards when they came across the old shells or rockets. Rep. Weldon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, stated unequivocally: "These 500 chemical munitions are weapons of mass destruction". To those who claimed these weapons were not the weapons of mass destruction that the United States went to war over, Weldon referred them to the 17 United Nations Security Council resolutions that Saddam Hussein violated, and in particular, the 14 that specifically addressed WMD. The very first one after Operation Desert Storm, UNSCR 687, directed the destruction of Iraq's stockpiles of chemical weapons. Saddam Hussein violated this resolution and others like it, and the verified existence of such chemical weapons proves that.

Concealed Resumption

The post-invasion discoveries raise a question that has never been adequately answered: If Iraq's chemical weapons were merely degraded remnants of 1980s production, why did they contain sarin that was purer than 1980s sarin should have been? Why were binary weapons, a technology developed in the early 1990s, still in circulation? And why did Iraq's chemical industry surge in the late 1990s, precisely when inspections had ceased? The answers point to a disturbing conclusion: That Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons program was not merely "preserved" after 1991. It was quietly reconstituted during the four-year window when UN inspectors were absent.

When UNSCOM inspectors were expelled in December 1998, Iraq gained something it had not possessed since 1991: operational freedom. The inspections did not resume until November 2002. A February 1999 joint intelligence report from the CIA, DIA, NIMA, and U.S. Central Command warned that "without an effective monitoring presence, Iraq could probably resume its CW program immediately, if it has not already done so." The report further noted that "few of Iraq's chemical warfare facilities were targeted or damaged" during Operation Desert Fox, and that the operation "probably had very little impact on Iraq's ability to reconstitute its chemical warfare programs." The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate assessed that "Baghdad started reconstituting its nuclear program about the time that UNSCOM inspectors depart - December 1998." The DIA assessed that Iraq could "restart limited agent production quickly, probably within a few weeks of a decision to do so." One 2003 CIA proliferation report acknowledged that, "given its past behavior, this type of activity must be regarded as likely."

Iraq's chemical industry surged in the late 1990s, when more financial resources became available to the regime. Iraq's capacity to produce nitric acid, specifically for explosives and chemical agents, tripled between 1998 and 2003. The December 2000 Intelligence Community Assessment found that "Iraq's expansion of its chemical industry is intended to support CW production." By January 2001, US officials confirmed that Iraq had rebuilt a series of factories long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons. One rebuilt factory was ostensibly producing castor oil for brake fluid for the purposes of producing a deadly biological toxin known as ricin. Iraq was preparing to resume production.

The roadside bomb encountered by American troops in Baghdad on May 15, 2004, contained sarin which should have been destroyed during the 1990s. The bomb was one of many munitions left unaccounted for by Iraq during the UN inspection window. The 2004 discovery of such a weapon proved that at least some of these binary munitions were still in circulation. The 40% concentration of Sarin is significant. 40% purity in a binary weapon indicates the agent was produced relatively recently. A 40% concentration in 2004 is consistent with production any time after 1990, but it is not consistent with a 15-year-old, degraded stockpile.

Analysis of the Borak rockets recovered through Operation Avarice showed they contained sarin that was "purer than the intelligence community had expected given the age of the stock." One sample reached 13 percent purity, "higher than expected given the relatively low quality and instability of Iraq's sarin production in the 1980s." For example, by October 1991, agent purity at Khamisiyah had fallen to 10% while other sarin samples produced in 1988 had degraded to between 18% and 2% by 1991. This rapid degradation is why the CIA assessed in 1996 that some Iraqi sarin had a shelf life of only a few weeks. Given these documented degradation rates, the 13% purity found in 2005 becomes an anomaly that is difficult to reconcile with sarin produced in the late 1980s. The discovery of munitions containing sarin gas with a purity level of 13% is not proof of massive production, but it is proof of some chemical production, production that likely occurred later than the shells' outer casings would indicate.

The Iraq Survey Group's findings, while concluding that Iraq had not restarted full-scale production, acknowledged that Iraq's "rebuilt chemical industry, though still not up to pre-Gulf war capacity, had a 'breakout capability' to produce large quantities of sulfur mustard CW agent." This "breakout capability" is precisely the small-scale, concealed production model that the evidence suggests. UNMOVIC, the UN inspection body that operated in Iraq from November 2002 to March 2003, admitted that it "had been unaware of some of Iraq's procurement efforts after 1998", indicating that Iraq successfully concealed at least some of its post-inspector activities from international monitors.

By 2002, Iraq had a secret agreement with Egypt to have nitric acid shipped from Egypt through Syria to Iraq. Iraq signed a $9 million deal in November 2000 with a Yemeni group. The British Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which had access to intelligence unavailable to the ISG, concluded that Iraq "retained some chemical warfare agents, precursors, production equipment and weapons from before the Gulf War" and that these stocks would enable Iraq to "produce significant quantities of mustard gas within weeks and of nerve agent within months." The JIC further assessed that "chemical and biological weapons play an important role in Iraqi military thinking" and that "Saddam attaches great importance to the possession of chemical and biological weapons which he regards as being the basis for Iraqi regional power."

The Testimony of Iraqi Scientists

The Iraqi scientists themselves confirmed the regime's intentions, and the documentary record provides chilling detail about how close Iraq was to restarting remarkable chemical-weapons production.

Abd al-Tawab Mullah Huwaysh, Saddam's Deputy Prime Minister and head of the Ministry of Military Industrialization from 1997 until the fall of Baghdad in 2003, was the regime's most senior weapons procurement official. In the event of Saddam's death or incapacitation, the decision on whether to use WMDs against coalition forces would fall to Huwaysh. Huwaysh recalled that Saddam approached him immediately following a ministers' meeting to ask how long it would take to restart production of chemical agents. Huwaysh investigated and reported back: experts could readily prepare a production line for mustard gas within six months, but VX and sarin were more complicated and would take longer. Another senior Iraqi chemical weapons expert gave an even more alarming estimate that mustard gas could be produced in as little as two months, and sarin within two years. A third source suggested that Iraq could start producing mustard within just a few days if it was willing to sacrifice production equipment.

The Iraq Survey Group's Duelfer Report confirmed that senior military officials told investigators that Iraq had explored the "possibility of chemical weapons production in recent years, possibly as late as 2003". One such official believed that by 2000 Saddam had "run out of patience" with waiting for UN sanctions to end and wanted to resume a nuclear weapons program. Scientists told the ISG that "Saddam Hussein remained firmly committed to acquiring nuclear weapons". In 2001, Saddam approached Huwaysh again, asking: "Do you have any programs going on that I don't know about?". Saddam had become increasingly worried about his declining conventional forces, and was increasingly fearing an attack from Iran. In 2002, Saddam ordered Huwaysh to begin production of a ballistic missile that could travel more than 300 miles and hit targets in Israel and Iran, in direct violation of UN cease-fire resolutions. Saddam also decided not to let UN weapons inspectors re-enter the country, and to avoid disclosure, "ordered that no written documentation and no phone calls were allowed".

By early 2002, Saddam's son Qusay Hussein asked Huwaysh to compile a list of Iraqi biological weapons experts, supposedly to supply to Bashar Al-Assad. The scientists provided on the list were the architects of Iraq's WMD programs: Dr. Rihab Taha ("Dr. Germ"), who kick-started Iraq's bio-weapons program; Nassir al-Hindawi, described by UN inspectors as the "father" of Iraq's biological weapons program; Dr. Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash ("Chemical Sally" or "Mrs. Anthrax"); and Amir al-Saadi, a chief chemical weapons researcher. Qusay, who oversaw the regime's weapons development programs and had been groomed as Saddam's successor, was ensuring that when the moment came to reconstitute Iraq's nuclear programs, the expertise would be ready.

The regime's interest in WMD production never stopped. Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized.

Project Babylon

But Saddam Hussein's genocidal ambitions were not confined to merely chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

In 1988, after seven years of offers and maintained contact, the Iraqi government signed a contract worth $25 million with Gerald Vincent Bull, a Canadian artillery prodigy whose genius was matched only by his willingness to sell it to the highest bidder. Bull had spent the 1960s working on Project HARP (High Altitude Research Program), a joint US-Canadian effort to fire projectiles into the upper atmosphere using massive guns. When HARP was cancelled in 1967, Bull went into business for himself. He was convicted in 1978 for illegally shipping 30,000 155mm artillery shells to South Africa and later imprisoned again for attempting to ship the same equipment to China. By the time Saddam Hussein came calling, Bull had already demonstrated that he would sell his expertise to anyone with the money to pay for it. According to Hussein Kamel, the Iraqi government specifically asked Bull to produce artillery "meant for long range attack and also to blind spy satellites." Kamel further specified that the weapon was designed to "explode a shell in space that would have sprayed a sticky material on the satellite and blinded it." This was an anti-satellite weapon designed to blind American surveillance from the ground. The formation of the program itself is accredited to Bull's own research on ballistic missiles spanning about a decade prior.

The program consisted of four devices. The first was "Baby Babylon," a 350mm-caliber prototype with a barrel 46 meters (151 feet) long, weighing 102 tons. Mounted horizontally for tests, it was expected to achieve a range of 750 kilometers. But Baby Babylon was merely a warm-up for the true horror: "Big Babylon." Two full-sized Big Babylon guns were planned. Each would have featured a one-meter (3.3-foot) bore and a barrel 156 meters (512 feet) long, longer than a football field. Bull designed for the Iraqi government a cannon which was able to fire 600kg non-rocket assisted munitions over a distance of 1,000 kilometers, into outer space. The barrel was so massive that sections of it, manufactured in the United Kingdom, were seized in transit across Europe after Bull's assassination. Had it been completed, Big Babylon would have been suspended from a steel framework over 100 meters high and embedded into the side of a hill. It could have fired projectiles over 500 miles (800 kilometers), enough to strike targets across the Middle East, from Tehran to Tel Aviv, while rendering enemy aircraft, anti-aircraft guns, and all military defenses of an intended target completely useless.

The CIA assessed that while no completed gun-launched rockets existed for any of the Project Babylon guns by early 1990, the design was "well advanced." A CIA report declassified in 2012 confirmed that the 350mm test gun had been test-fired, and that data from those tests were being used to calibrate calculations for the larger supergun. A British firm had been contracted to build fifty-two 1,000mm-diameter tubes that would comprise the barrel for the operational supergun.

Then, on March 22, 1990, Gerald Bull was assassinated outside his Brussels apartment, shot multiple times in the back of the head. The killer was never found, but suspicion fell on Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, which had every reason to want Bull and his supergun dead. With Bull gone, the project collapsed. The components seized in Europe were never delivered, and without them, construction of the 1,000mm supergun could not be completed. While the originally intended length of the weapon was not materialized in final production, the Iraqi government based on Bull's designs had successfully manufactured a weapon with a length of 147 feet (Baby Babylon) which still possessed the same range and similar caliber.

After the Gulf War, UN inspection teams destroyed the components that remained in Iraq. In October 1991, the United Nations implemented procedures for the destruction of all Project Babylon components, including the 350mm test gun. The weapon itself was never employed due to the fact that Saddam Hussein's Scud missile program, also heavily spearheaded by Bull's innovations, proved to be more practical for the enemies the Iraqi military was fighting at the time, though for the most part only possessing a fraction of the range. In addition, the full production of the gun faced certain limitations which the Scud missile program did not, though Bull had demonstrated capability in circumventing these obstacles in other long-range weapons he had manufactured.

But the question remains: What was Saddam's true intention?

Bull himself believed he was building a "spacegun", a revolutionary device to launch satellites cheaply into orbit. But Saddam Hussein was not a space enthusiast. He was a war criminal who had already used chemical weapons against his own people and his neighbors. A gun with a 1,000mm bore and a range of over 500 miles would not have been used to launch satellites. It would have been used to level metropolises. A supergun capable of delivering payloads weighing hundreds of kilograms over distances of 800 kilometers would have given Saddam the ability to strike any city in the region with impunity, and with none of the telltale signs of a missile launch that would trigger early warning systems. While the gun itself was never completed, its very existence proves that Saddam Hussein was not merely a regional bully, but a man who sought the means to project devastation on a continental scale.

We will never know what Saddam would have done with a working supergun. But we know what he did with the weapons he already had. And that should be enough to convince anyone that Project Babylon was not a harmless scientific curiosity.

Why Didn't He Use Them?

The question is frequently asked: If Saddam had WMDs, why didn't he use them against American troops during the invasion?

The answer is simple: Saddam personally expressed that he feared retaliation by America if he were to deploy chemical weapons against them. He had been told that the deployment of WMDs on American troops would be disastrous for Iraq. The United States had made it abundantly clear that the use of chemical or biological weapons would result in catastrophic retaliation. In January 1991, Secretary of State James Baker delivered a stark warning to Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz: if Iraq used chemical or biological weapons, "The American people will demand vengeance. And we have the means to exact it. This is not a threat, it is a promise." He further warned that the American "objective would not be the liberation of Kuwait, but the elimination of the current Iraqi regime". Saddam took these threats with deadly seriousness. In the months before the Gulf War, he feared that the United States or Britain would use nuclear weapons against him. He ordered the evacuation of Baghdad and other cities in preparation for potential nuclear strikes and dispersed his military forces to make them harder to destroy.

Furthermore, the deployment of the WMDs which Saddam had access to would have been counteracted by American troops, who have access to anti-WMD military technology. Insurgents using sarin shows not a deliberate attempt by the Iraqi Army to use WMDs on American troops, but rather a breakdown in military command control. The Iraqi military, based on a Soviet command model, required explicit orders from above. When the American invasion proved to be overwhelming in speed and ferocity, Saddam's ability to command his forces disintegrated. As military planners later concluded, "its command and control was so overwhelmed by the speed and ferocity of the US advance that the order never went out". The chain of command was broken. The orders to use chemical weapons, if they ever existed, could not be transmitted.

Iraq expressly did not want to use chemical weapons on US troops ever since the Gulf War in 1991. In the aftermath of the Gulf War, Saddam concluded that his chemical weapons had served as a successful deterrent against a coalition march on Baghdad. He viewed them as a "final trump card, to be held in reserve to deter American or Israeli use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons and to prevent coalition forces from marching on Baghdad". Using them would have squandered this ultimate bargaining chip without guaranteeing his survival. Iraq's WMD program was for Iran and for internal suppression, not yet for the Western world. Saddam had used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and Kurdish civilians without restraint. But he understood that the United States was a different adversary. As interrogations of senior Iraqi officers after the war revealed, they were unanimous in their belief that Saddam recognized President Bush would react in a manner "unacceptable to Iraq if it employed chemicals". The Iraqi commanders themselves regarded chemical weapons as a bigger threat to their own poorly equipped soldiers.

Conclusion

The men and women who served in Iraq were not sacrificed for a fiction. They were tasked with neutralizing a regime that had demonstrated its willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against its own people, its neighbors, and the world. The Bush administration's handling of the war was a tragedy. The intelligence assessment was incomplete. The post-invasion planning was catastrophic. But the fundamental threat was real. The comfortable lie, that Saddam had no WMDs, is a betrayal of every American who served, every American who bled, and every American who died in Iraq. The truth is this: Saddam Hussein was a mass-murdering tyrant who never disarmed, never repented, and never abandoned his ambitions.

The history books will eventually correct this record. But the truth should not wait.