It would be wrong to call U.N. Chief Inspector Hans Blix
naïve. He is so much worse than that. Blix can’t really
believe that the inspection regimen his men are implementing will
actually find any of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,
because they’re not looking where those weapons are most likely to
be. No, the whores of UNMOVIC are one embodiment of U.N. dogma. It
is a dogma that holds it more important to restrain America than it
is to rid the world of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.
If Blix ordered them to, the UNMOVIC team could go to Saddam’s
“palaces” to inspect the underground complexes where the weapons of
mass destruction are produced and hidden. Instead, the blunted
Blixies are inspecting above ground, passing their time looking at
mustard gas shells the earlier U.N. inspectors catalogued years
ago.
Saddam chose to deliver his “disclosure report” on WMD on
December 7, not wanting to miss the opportunity to add to the
infamy of the date. The 12,000-page “nyet” could, of course, have
been boiled down to a paragraph. He’s saying, as we all knew he
would, “If you say I have ‘em, prove it.” By this denial, Saddam
has materially breached the U.N. resolution Colin Powell
compromised so much to get. The denial also negates any claim to
legitimacy for the inspections. If Saddam is already violating one
major part of the resolution, there is no reason to expect him to
abide by any other part of it.
Saddam is playing for time, and he appears to be succeeding. The
President made a big mistake by not declaring immediately that the
report is a lie. Mr. Bush said the report needed to be reviewed.
For a minute, it looked like the Blixies wouldn’t share it with us,
but their Euro-qualms were assuaged and a copy is now in
Washington. It will take weeks or months for the U.N. team to read
through it and report to the U.N. Security Council on the Iraqi
disclosure. When they do, they will conclude that the report is
inconclusive, and that they have no direct proof that Saddam is
lying again. The Blixies will then ask for another six months or
more to complete their inspections, and when that period is over it
will be summer. We can conduct our military campaign to oust Saddam
in the summer. But it will be so much harder, and cost more
lives.
We need to short-circuit this charade. As Big Dog Rumsfeld has
said — and even Colin Powell agreed — we know damned well that
Iraq has WMD in a bunch of places. Ol’ Hans wants us to pony up all
the secret information we have about the WMD so his inspectors can
examine it and then ask the Iraqis if what we say is true. We
shouldn’t do that because whatever we give UNMOVIC will be leaked
quickly to Saddam. But the time has come for the President to make
a choice. He can either let the Saddam Charade play along for
another year, or he can give the world a glimpse of the less
sensitive information and demand action. He should do the latter.
Just for starters, he could tell everyone what the people at the
Iraqi National Congress told me.
There are about 100 “presidential sites” in Iraq, all of which
were off-limits during the 1990s inspections. They are the
principal places where WMD are produced and stored. Many of these
“palaces” have manmade lakes on their grounds. Beneath those lakes
are tunnel complexes in which Saddam’s WMD programs have continued
unabated since 1991.
Just a few minutes’ drive from UNMOVIC’s Baghdad hotel is the
Baghdad Presidential Complex. It contains several palaces,
including one known at “Al-Seqoor.” Under the Al-Seqoor palace is
the Al-Tahaddi lab where the Iraqis are producing biological
weapons. Among them, according to my sources, may be ebola, anthrax
and smallpox. A couple of miles away is the Al-Radwaniyeh palace
under which biological weapons are stored.
North of the city of Samarra is the Jabal Makhul “presidential
site.” It’s about ten square miles in size, with about 90 buildings
on it. Within Jabal Makhul is the Al-Fajir site, which houses
Project 555. This is the Iraqi nuclear enrichment program, which is
working around the clock to produce weapons-grade uranium. All
underground, of course. Farther north is the Al-Tharthar site near
Saddam’s home town of Tikrit. Its very large lake sits over a
tunnel complex for WMD storage. Al-Tharthar is supposedly guarded
by an Iraqi “frogman battalion.” (SEAL Teams 2 and 4 please note,
and quit laughing, dammit.)
There are many others scattered across Iraq, but those are
within a comfortable driving distance for the UNMOVIC
un-inspectors. If they really wanted to do something and not help
Saddam stall, they would already have searched those places. But
that’s not their game. They bloody well know that Saddam’s WMD are
underground, and under these closely-guarded “palaces.” We cannot
allow them to go on with their blindfolded masquerade indefinitely.
They will, if the President lets them.
The December 7 Iraqi report marks a turning point in the
conflict. By making this blanket denial, Saddam is declaring that
he has no intention of abiding by anything the U.N. says or does.
He has called the U.N.’s bluff, and it’s up to us to take decisive
action. Dubya should demand that the U.N. Security Council pass a
resolution that holds Iraq in material breach and do so before
Christmas. He should make it damned clear that we aren’t going to
allow the Blixies to become the longest-running farce on the world
stage.
In truth, it really doesn’t matter one bit what the details of
Saddam’s report say. His complete denial of his WMD programs is his
declaration that the 1991 war is still on. It should accelerate our
war plans significantly, and regardless of U.N. action. If Dubya
calls for action, and the U.N. delays, the Security Council should
wake up one day to the news that we have launched the attack. To
give the U.N. advance notice is to give it to Saddam, and that
would cost American lives. We need not have a Christmas War, but
once our pilots sober up after New Year’s Eve, the clock should run
out quickly on Saddam. By mid-January, Basra should be free. By
Groundhog Day, so should all of Iraq. Saddam delendus
est.
