The Iraqi Threat
Khidhir Hamza (Saddam Hussein's Bomb Maker)
Testimony, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
July 31, 2002
1- Failing to obtain concessions in return for allowing the inspectors back, the Iraqi
government turned the argument around by claiming that the inspectors’ job is to disarm
Iraq and leave it defenseless against an American strike. Since the inspectors are charged
only with dismantling weapons of mass destruction and their facilities, this was an
admission that Iraq may possess these weapons and also an implied threat that facing an
invasion it might use them.
Iraq is currently the country with the most extensive experience in the use of chemical
weapons (CW). Its extensive use of these weapons and biological toxins during the war
with Iran and against its own Kurdish population provided the Iraqi government with a
huge database of information about the effectiveness and strategy of use of each of these
agents. The two tests of dirty bombs carried in Mohammediyat in 1988, though were
inconclusive as to their effectiveness in a war setting, provided Iraq with extensive design
and testing experience in this area, probably the only Middle East country to do so in the
last two decades. This provides Iraq with another tool for possible use in a terrorism
setting. The recent defector reports of purchases of Russian radioactive materials through
an African country re-enforces Iraq’s intents in this direction.
It is understood that CBW use is mainly intended to create a terror situation in the
targeted area. Any lethality that can be achieved using CBW can be surpassed by
conventional means. But the effects are not the same. The Iranian attackers who showed
no hesitancy in facing all the fire Iraq can muster were terrified of the limited CBW Iraq
used at the time. The Iraqi port of al-Fao was occupied by Iranian forces that repelled
many conventional attacks, but collapsed easily under the continuous flow of CW that
was thrown at them in the closing days of the war with Iran. The same goes for the Kurds
who fought with incredible bravery against the Iraqi armed forces but ran away in terror
to Turkey and Iran when the Iraqi armed forces approached after the Gulf war fearing the
use of CW after the Halbja massacre.
2- Iraq’s use of these weapons included also the threat of use to prevent an attack. Thus
Saddam’s government firmly believe that it thwarted a second Israeli strike against its
nuclear installations in 1990 when Saddam threatened to “burn half of Israel using the
binary” (chemical weapon.) Thus a firm belief in the utility and effectiveness of these
weapons by Saddam’s government emerged to present an option that the regime believe
that it cannot survive without. The WMD option is firmly believed to be the reason
behind not losing the war with Iran and preventing further strikes by Israel, and if the
Americans have not interfered would have helped in quelling the Kurdish uprising.
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