It is incontrovertible that Iraq under Saddam possessed biological and chemical WMD.
Iraq itself disclosed possession of substantial quantities (i.e, enough to kill millions) of biological and chemical agents in its 1998 Declaration to the UN. Shortly thereafter, Iraq expelled all UN weapons inspectors.
In its declaration to the UN in response to the final resolution before the present war, Iraq did not account for the aforesaid biological and chemical agents.
Before 9/11 - indeed, before Bush even became President - regime change in Iraq was official U.S. policy under Clinton.
On March 16, 1988, Saddam's troops made widespread use of various chemical weapons against civilian Iraqi Kurds living in the Iraqi town of Halabja. There are still no final numbers as to casualties: estimated dead range from 4,000 to 10,000; and estimated maimed and injured exceed 10,000. Here's a description from Human Rights Watch:
The Iraqi counterattack began in the mid-morning of March 16, with conventional airstrikes and artillery shelling from the town of Sayed Sadeq to the north. Most families in Halabja had built primitive air-raid shelters near their homes. Some crowded into these, others into the government shelters, following the standard air-raid drills they had been taught since the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980. The first wave of air strikes appears to have included the use of napalm or phosphorus. "It was different from the other bombs," according to one witness. "There was a huge sound, a huge flame and it had very destructive ability. If you touched one part of your body that had been burned, your hand burned also. It caused things to catch fire." The raids continued unabated for several hours. "It was not just one raid, so you could stop and breathe before another raid started. It was just continuous planes, coming and coming. Six planes would finish and another six would come."
Those outside in the streets could see clearly that these were Iraqi, not Iranian aircraft, since they flew low enough for their markings to be legible. In the afternoon, at about 3:00, those who remained in the shelters became aware of an unusual smell. Like the villagers in the Balisan Valley the previous spring, they compared it most often to sweet apples, or to perfume, or cucumbers, although one man says that it smelled "very bad, like snake poison." No one needed to be told what the smell was.
The attack appeared to be concentrated in the northern sector of the city, well away from its military bases--although these, by now, had been abandoned. In the shelters, there was immediate panic and claustrophobia. Some tried to plug the cracks around the entrance with damp towels, or pressed wet cloths to their faces, or set fires. But in the end they had no alternative but to emerge into the streets. It wasgrowing dark and there were no streetlights; the power had been knocked out the day before by artillery fire. In the dim light, the people of Halabja could see nightmarish scenes. Dead bodies--human and animal--littered the streets, huddled in doorways, slumped over the steering wheels of their cars. Survivors stumbled around, laughing hysterically, before collapsing. Iranian soldiers flitted through the darkened streets, dressed in protective clothing, their faces concealed by gas masks. Those who fled could barely see, and felt a sensation "like needles in the eyes." Their urine was streaked with blood.
Those who had the strength fled toward the Iranian border. A freezing rain had turned the ground to mud, and many of the refugees went barefoot. Those who had been directly exposed to the gas found that their symptoms worsened as the night wore on. Many children died along the way and were abandoned where they fell.
Link: http://hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/ANFAL3.htm
And there is no question but that Iraq used chemcial weapons against Iranian troops during the decade-long war between Iran and Iraq duruing the 1980's.
As brutal as chemical weapons may be, biological weapons are much worse for the following reasons: BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
Biological agents are odourless, tasteless, and when dispersed in an aerosol cloud, are invisible to the human eye because the particle size of the aerosol is extremely small (1 to 5 micrometers or microns. Weight-for-weight, biological weapons are hundreds to thousands of times more potent than the most lethal chemical weapon, meaning that even small amounts (e.g., a few kilograms) could be used with devastating effect, whereas hundreds or thousands of tons of chemical agents could be required for militarily significant operations.
EFFECTS
Biological agents contain either living organisms or their derivatives, such as toxins, which cause disease or death. Living organisms can multiply within the living targets to produce their effects, while toxins cannot reproduce themselves. Toxins are generally more lethal, and act relatively quickly causing incapacitation or death within minutes or hours. Living organisms (microbial pathogens), require incubation periods of 24 hours to 6 weeks between infection and appearance of symptoms. This incubation period places limits on their battlefield utility, but means that biological weapons can continue to have a significant impact many weeks after the initial attack (eg by causing a long-term pandemic). Likewise, this delayed incubation period may mean that a biological attack can be completed before those on the ground have realised that it has occurred, or even take place entirely covertly, the effects being confused with a natural outbreak of disease.
A biological attack can contaminate an area for between several hours and several weeks, compromising equipment and forcing troops to wear highly restrictive protective clothing (reducing their efficiency) and / or take antidotes whose side effects remain largely unknown.
Biological attacks could cause widespread panic amongst both military and civilian populations. The very large number of potential casualties could place huge burdens on medical facilities and overwhelm military resources. The relatively poor warning devices available against biological attack and the potential delayed effects of some agents make mis-identification of the agent or agents used more likely, leading to the failure of defence measures. One US Army study suggested that a Scud attack with an anthrax BW warhead would see the effectiveness of military units downwind fall by 90% if the attack were not correctly detected. With prior detection, the study estimated a fall in effectiveness of only 20%. The same report noted that:
A Scud missile warhead filled with botulinum could contaminate an area of 3,700 square kilometers (based on ideal weather conditions and an effective dispersal mechanism), or 16 times greater than the same warhead filled with [the nerve agent] Sarin. By the time symptoms occur, treatment has little chance of success. Rapid field detection methods for biological warfare agents do not exist.
Perhaps even more than chemical weapons, the intimidatory nature of biological weapons is such that an attack or the threat of an attack is likely to cause wholesale disruption or paralysis of civil and economic activity in the affected area. The psychological effects on civilian populations is almost guaranteed to cause panic or terror.
METHODS OF DELIVERY
The high stresses, gravitational forces (G-forces) and heat generated by the acceleration and re-entry of ballistic missiles makes them a less-than-ideal method of delivering live biological agents. Considerable technical efforts are required to package live BW agents in a missile warhead and ensure that the agent is dispersed at the correct height and angle of delivery to create an airborne aerosol. However despite these technical challenges, recent UN revelations that Iraq may have retained 16 ballistic missiles armed with BW warheads in violation of UN Resolutions underlines the serious potential threat posed by ballistic missiles armed with BW agents.
POTENTIAL TARGETS
The main potential targets of biological weapons include: troop concentrations; dispersal areas; logistics centres; command and control centres; air bases; ports; key infrastructure installations (oil and power facilities, desalination plants, etc), and civilian population centres.
The contamination of water supplies would seriously hamper the ability of an army to wage war. Biological weapons also have naval applications. An attack on a ship would contaminate the vessel and crew, reducing or destroying its operational efficiency. This would be particularly useful against large ships that can withstand multiple conventional hits (such as the large US fleet aircraft carriers).
Significantly, in exercises during the summer of 1995, Iranian forces used helicopters to spray their own ships with aerosol liquids, suggesting the development of a capability to use biological and/or chemical weapons against oil tanker movements in the strategically vital Persian Gulf.
LIMITATIONS
Unlike chemical weapons, biological agents are not as controllable or predictable in their effects and are even more dependent than chemical agents upon temperature, weather and topographical conditions. Thus there is always a major risk of contaminating the wrong area. However, most biological agents must be inhaled or ingested to be effective: unlike many chemical agents, skin contact is unlikely to cause infection, making it easier to defend against biological agents than chemical agents if the agent can be correctly detected.
Most biological agents also degrade rapidly, although dry agents such as anthrax spores and some toxins, are persistent. Such agents could also pose long-lasting hazards, (anthrax spores may persist in the soil in deadly form for decades), meaning that areas an attacker wishes to move across or occupy may remain contaminated, necessitating the use of protective equipment and / or decontamination for attacking forces. The weaponisation (storage and delivery) of biological agents also poses technical hurdles.
EXAMPLES
Potential Viral agents include smallpox, yellow fever, equine encephalitis and influenza, which may be genetically modified to increase their effectiveness.
Bacterial agents such as anthrax, meloidosis, pneumonic plague and glanders have incubation periods of between one and five days and are usually fatal without swift treatment.
Toxins include botulinum toxin, which produces an acute muscular paralysis resulting in death of animals or humans; ricin, derived from castor bean plants whose lethality is that of nerve gasses, and mycotoxins which produce nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, skin irritation and potential fatalities.
Link: http://library.thinkquest.org/C005719/page7.htm
Beginning in 1991, Saddam Hussein's government disclosed to the UN that Iraq possessed substantial quantities of the worst of the biological agents described above. See pages 97 through 135 of the 6 March 2003 UN Report http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/documents/UNMOVIC%20UDI%20Working%20Document%206%20March%2003.pdf
In 1998, Iraq unilaterally expelled the UN weapons inspectors. As noted in the following excerpt from UN Security Council Report S/1999/401 dated 9 April 1999, Iraq's biological weapons program had not been dismantled when the UN inspectors were expelled: C. Biological weapons
33. As the result of Iraq's decision of 5 August 1998 to stop the Commission's disarmament activities in Iraq, the Commission was unable to continue its disarmament inspections until returning to Iraq on 17 November 1998. Subsequently, three biological disarmament inspections were sent to Iraq to resume investigation of various aspects of Iraq's proscribed biological warfare programme.
34. An inspection team was in Iraq from 1 to 6 December 1998 and pursued the investigation on microbial agent research for biological warfare purposes and Iraq's planning for biological warfare agent production and weaponization. The team conducted numerous interviews with Iraq's representatives. These interviews yielded no new information that would enable clarification of outstanding issues.
35. A second inspection team was in Iraq from 6 to 10 December 1998, and held discussions with Iraqi officials on bacterial growth media for Iraq's biological warfare programme. The team requested Iraq to provide several specific documents to support its declaration, including a logbook with records of relevant imports for the biological warfare programme. Iraq did not provide the documents requested. The team also revealed to Iraq documentary evidence of the import of growth media for the biological warfare programme, previously not included in Iraq's declarations. Subsequently, Iraq admitted that this undeclared import had occurred, and as a result Iraq has recently provided to Council members an informal paper in which it has revised its previous statements on the material balance of growth media.
36. Another inspection team was in Iraq from 10 to 16 December 1998 to explore the consumption of growth media (yeast extract) by Iraq, and investigated issues related to its importation and possible connection with the biological warfare programme. The team was able to clarify aspects of the end use of this importation of growth media.
. . .
C. Biological activities
48. A non-resident inspection team was sent to Iraq from 3 to 10 December 1998 to conduct in-depth inspections of key biological sites. Iraq took actions to hinder the conduct of these inspections (S/1998/1172 and Corr.1).
49. During the period when the Commission's monitoring activities in Iraq were possible, the biological monitoring team carried out some 84 inspections of biological facilities and related sites. In addition, 12 inspections were carried out in conjunction with other weapons disciplines. Monitoring inspections discovered undeclared dual-use equipment, such as filter presses, biological safety cabinets and a fermenter control unit. Dual-use material, such as growth media which had not been declared by Iraq, was also discovered.
Link: http://www.un.org/Depts/unscom/sres401eng.htm
After 9/11, the UN Security Council unanimously passed a Resolution demanding Iraq's compliance with all previous UN Resolutions. Yet Iraq failed to disclose the amounts of biological agents it still possessed from what the Iraqis themselves had previously disclosed; nor did Iraq account for the disposition of the unaccounted for biological agents. Again, this is based on what Saddam's government itself admitted possessing.
And we know that Saddam had nuclear ambitions dating back to the early 1980's, when Israel destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor built by the French for Saddam.
During the more than six months advance warning before the United States invaded -- resulting from bickering over UN Security Council Resolutions -- Saddam had plenty of time to cover his tracks.
Anyone who contends that Iraq did not possess WMD is a fool or a knave or both.
