By Christopher Cooper
Wall Street JournalMarch 28, 2003
They are the stated cause of the Iraq war and they are its primary fear: the weapons of mass destruction the U.S.-led coalition believes Baghdad has. Yet in seven days of fighting, U.S.-led forces have found hints of chemical- and biological-weapons capability, but none of the weapons themselves. The closest troops have come so far was on Tuesday, when Marines overran a hospital in central Iraq and found 3,000 fresh chemical weapons suits inside -- far more than the U.S. military initially reported. "What we found at the hospital reinforces our concern," Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told reporters here Wednesday.
Several thousand coalition commandos are combing the countryside, many of them with the task of finding chemical and biological weapons. Others are hunting ballistic missiles -- Scuds -- that are illegal for Iraq to possess under United Nations resolutions. The question of whether and when the U.S. finds weapons of mass destruction is important politically as well as militarily. Any such discovery would help justify President Bush's decision to go to war, which was based on his desire to rid Iraq of the weapons of mass destruction it agreed to abandon after the 1991 Gulf War. What weapons Iraq has is especially crucial in the next few days, as U.S. troops engage Republican Guard units, which are considered the units almost certainly authorized to use chemical and biological arms.
By firing missiles into Kuwait, Iraq already has exposed weapons that go beyond U.N.-imposed limits. Several of 10 missiles fired by Iraq flew beyond the limit of 93 miles, Gen. Brooks said, with one going as far as 118 miles. "There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction," said Central Command Gen. Tommy Franks on the third day of the war. "And as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them. And of course there is no doubt about that."
But others with experience in hunting such weapons aren't so confident. David Franz, a retired Army colonel who hunted biological agents in Iraq as U.N. weapons inspector in the 1990s, said finding an anthrax lab is the equivalent of spotting a particular white car in the parking lot of a shopping mall. "The footprint of a biological lab is so small," Mr. Franz said. "I'd be pleased if they found something, but I'm not counting on it." Indeed, in the five years Col. Franz was a U.N. inspector, he never found actual biological agents. Documents about experiments were found, he said, as well as insecticide that resembled anthrax and the DNA residue of biological agents. Inspectors also discovered a MiG jet with a bladder on it designed to hold and disperse fine spray. But no smoking gun -- the weapons materials themselves.
He suggested if any biological labs are found, they would be in Baghdad. Chemical labs could be easier to uncover. "Three thousand weapons suits suggest the Iraqis have chemical weapons and plan to use them," Col. Franz said. "Chemical operations are big and I would expect them to find Iraq's chemical capabilities." But chemical weapons themselves are often difficult. On Sunday, soldiers searched a chemical plant outside the city of Najaf that U.S. intelligence agencies had thought for years was manufacturing chemical weapons. The soldiers found nothing suspicious, U.S. officials said.
Retired Brig. Gen. Walt Busbee, a chemical weapons expert, notes that artillery shells containing chemical weapons don't look much different than ordinary ones. During Desert Storm, he said, coalition troops destroyed an Iraqi ammunition dump and didn't realize until after the fact that it contained chemical weapons shells mixed in with the conventional ordnance. "Looking at an area that's the size of California and a terrain that's readily disposed to hiding stuff, I'm not surprised at all that they haven't found anything," Gen. Busbee said. In the early days of this war, U.S.-led troops are concentrating on overpowering a hostile military, he noted, not searching barns and under bridges for banned weapons. "All you have to do is throw a tarp over it and hide it in a sand dune and it's invisible," he said. Nonetheless, Gen. Busbee said he thinks U.S. troops will find the weapons eventually. Or Mr. Hussein could decide to use them. That becomes more likely to occur as U.S.-led forces near Baghdad. Gen. Busbee says that in 1991's Desert Storm, Mr. Hussein gave his field commanders authority to use chemical weapons only if Baghdad itself was threatened with a ground invasion. It never was.
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