The Road to War . . .
and Beyond
Panel Discussion with
Gary Milhollin
American Enterprise Institute
March 4, 2003
Excerpts
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MR. MILHOLLIN: Thank you, Dani.
I'm pleased to be a guest here. I run a small think tank in town called the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, and I'm a former academic. So I can't resist the temptation to refer you to further reading, and to make a non-commercial, non-ideological, non-partisan announcement. We do run the largest website on Iraq. It's called iraqwatch.org, and it has all sorts of wonderful things in it, which, at my age, I can no longer remember having written. But I recommend it to you very strongly.
We conducted a couple of roundtables on Iraq last summer. One was devoted to inspections. We had five former inspectors plus the CIA person who was the point person for the CIA with respect to the Iraqi inspections. And we also had a roundtable on how the war would be fought. We had the commander of the 101st Airborne in the first Gulf War, the commander of the Air Force, and also the commander of most of the Marines. And we've written a number of things that have spun out from those roundtables.
I learned a tremendous amount in the roundtables. I'll start with the one on inspections. Our project has written, I think, three op-eds on inspections in which we pointed out that inspections are not really designed to achieve disarmament. They're designed to verify that disarmament has happened. And I think the events that have occurred since we had our roundtable and since we've written on the subject bear out the truth of that statement. As long as the country being inspected is not cooperating, there is, I think, a very small chance that inspections can achieve disarmament.
The present inspections, I would say, are having the effect of delaying disarmament. If you consider that, for example, there are by export records some 30,000 munitions in Iraq of the kind of which 18 have been discovered, if you discover 18 of these a month, it takes a long time to get 30,000.
Also, if you discover a little bit of chemical or biological agent and you know there are secret sites, and you know that there is capability of production, and you know that there has been past success in production, maybe even weaponization, you have to assume that while you're inspecting, they could be making a lot more than you're finding. And so if the effect of inspections is to delay disarmament, to string it out, it's really--even if you look at the quantities of things produced, it's probably a losing game.
It's been suggested that Mr. Blix, when he arrived in Iraq, might have considered just setting up a little booth somewhere and inviting the Iraqis to bring everything over. And if it didn't arrive in a certain period of time, he would just close his booth and go back to New York, or wherever, and announce that the Iraqis had decided not to disarm.
I think that would have been quite a respectable and responsible point of view to take, at least as effective as the point of view that was taken, which is that the inspection process should go to sites that are already known and look for things that are already listed in the files to make sure those things are still there. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But it doesn't get you to disarmament.
Now, we published this opinion months and months ago--actually, last fall, and, well, I'll try to be a modest academic, but it is true that things have gone pretty much according to the schedule that was laid out for us by the former inspectors at our roundtable.
The last act, of course, has not occurred yet, the last act they predicted, and that act is that Saddam finally starts bringing things to the booth right at the last minute. When the troops really look like they're coming across the border, our inspectors expected the Iraqis to show up with more. And that would be a trigger for their lawyers in the United Nations, the French and the Russians, to immediately ask for a new trial, stay the proceedings, emergency appeals. I think that is awaiting us, probably. At least that's what was predicted by them last summer, last fall. So I think we're going to see one more little chapter of the drama of inspections before it ends.
The second thing I'd like to talk about is what we're likely to--Dani asked me to talk about is what we're likely to find in Iraq after the war. The short answer to that is we're going to find our own stuff. We're going to find the products that the West supplied. These products are--I just can't resist this--listed in great detail in iraqwatch.org.
We did a large graphic for the New York Times Week in Review, a pie chart showing who supplied what to Iraq. These are things that we're still looking for, by the way. These were things that were supplied just before--for the most part, just before the Gulf War.
One of the most dangerous and irresponsible exports, in my opinion--here we go, we're getting personal now--was made by a company that I noticed on the elevator on the way up this morning, Unisys, two or three floors -- [tape ends].
[Laughter.]
MR. MILHOLLIN: Does Unisys contribute?
Unisys sold the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior about an $8 or $9 million computer system especially configured for tracking individuals. This was in the late '80s. That was a lot of money back in those days for a computer system. Computers didn't cost very much in the late '80s. For an $8 million system configured to track individuals, that's a lot of tracking power.
I think it's pretty clear that that computer has helped Saddam stay in power if it's still working, and it certainly helped him hang on during the early '90s. And we have a literal mountain of information about who supplied the WMD programs in Iraq. Mostly it was the Germans.
In our pie chart--it's a great pie chart. I recommend that you look it up at iraqwatch.org.
[Laughter.]
MR. MILHOLLIN: It shows the Germans supplied 50 percent of all of the WMD-related things that the Iraqis imported and that the rest of the world divided the remainder. The Swiss came in second. The Swiss have an unreasonably good reputation in the world. Actually, if you look at their exports, they are not a clean country when it comes to WMD exports. At least they haven't been. They came in second. The United States was not innocent. Saddam was a good shopper. He bought his machine tools from the Germans and the Swiss. He bought the electronics from us.
U.S. electronics went into almost every major weapons site in Iraq. It went to the Iraqi air force, went to Iraqi nuclear sites, went to Iraqi missile sites. And in several cases that I know of, the destination and use of those things was revealed during the export control process, and most of this, the lion's share of it, was approved by the Commerce Department, and approved by other countries. Most of what Saddam imported was not smuggled. It was legal. It was approved. I'm talking about turnkey poison gas plants, as someone said, for two-legged flies. These were imported from Germany, turnkey. At the same time Germany was selling poison gas plants to Libya, it was selling the same thing to Iraq. This was in the late '80s.
Both of the poison gas plants in Libya need process control computers to determine how these--to run the chemical operations. The first process control computer--sorry, Dani. This is one of my favorite subjects here.
[Inaudible comments.]
MR. MILHOLLIN: One of the--the first process control computer--this was at Rapta (ph), the poison gas plant--was made by Siemens. Well, that created somewhat of a stir. Siemens has sent delegations to our office on three different occasions asking how they can "get off our list." We put Siemens in the New York Times frequently. The answer is you can stop selling bad things.
The second poison gas plant that Mr. Qaddafi built was under a mountain called Tarhuna (ph). It, too, needed a process control computer.
Now, where do you suppose the process control computer for the second poison gas plant came from? It came from Siemens.
The point I'm making here is that this problem in Iraq that we're going to solve with U.S. troops and U.S. blood and U.S. treasure is an imported problem. The WMD program is imported lock, stock, and barrel. There's no indigenous capability in that country. And the same is true of Iran. It's imported, and it's imported--Saddam imported it from us in the '80s.
Now, we have done better through public humiliation, generated mostly by our little operation. The West has been a lot more careful since the Gulf War. The procurement efforts by the Iraqis have been turned east to Eastern Europe. That's now the weak place--Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Belarus. Those are the targets.
In iraqwatch.org, you can also find articles about that. But you should be clear that this is a global problem that Iraq is only one part of it, and Iran is another part of it. And it's not being solved. And so even if we go into Iraq and find all this, which we will, there's the question in my mind whether it will be public; that is, it's going to be an interesting thing. I hope you all keep this in mind. Watch and see what happens. There will no longer be any just reason for shielding the companies that supplied Saddam. They're now being shielded from official disclosure by the argument that, well, investigations are still going on and we need their cooperation. After the war, that argument won't be present. I'll bet you that it will still be covered up, that it will have to be extracted by journalists and people like me so that we can learn a lesson or two from what actually was sold to Iraq.
Well, have I exhausted my time here?
We did one other roundtable that I mentioned on how the war will be fought. I don't want to encroach on others' territory, but our general said that it would be a Panama-like operation in which we would come at the Iraqis from all sides at the same time, there would not be a prolonged preliminary bombing campaign, and that we would try to paralyze the Iraqis and split up their forces and demoralize them, just as we did in Panama, but on a much larger scale, and that about 250,000 to 300,000 troops would be used.
It seems to me like that was a pretty good prediction. That was, as I said, made last summer. So you can read all about the historical antecedents of today's news stories if you'd look at--what was the name of it again? I've forgotten.
I'd like to close by saying that when we finish up in Iraq, it's going to be very important to make sure that we have everything. And it's possible that things are going to start leaving Iraq before the war or during the war, and there may be a need to track where they went in the world. That we're not quite ready for, but I think it may come about.
Thank you, Dani. I'll stop there.
MS. PLETKA: Gary, I've been a little bit embarrassed that I wasn't more fulsome in your introduction, but luckily we all know where it is. And, by the way, just an impartial endorsement: It is a fantastic website, incredibly useful, and, of course, now everybody understands where we're deriving all our information. So much for free riding, I guess.
We're going to open up the floor to questions. I do want to make sure that you, Gary, at some point take the opportunity, hopefully with a question from the audience, to explain the concept of dual use that I think escapes many people. Because the reason--and when I used to be on Capitol Hill, we fought this fight many times. The reason that Iraq and Libya and Iran and others can buy these things with licenses, not just from the United States but from European countries and from others, is the great concept of dual use. And I think one of the other things that you didn't mention that we will find when we do go into Iraq and get rid of Saddam is that a lot of the dual-use items that he's been using since the Gulf War, when the United States stopped licensing things, were bought through the oil for food program with the sign-off of the United Nations.
MR. MILHOLLIN: That's true.
MS. PLETKA: So that's another important factor to bring in.
So, in any case, with that last comment I'm going to open the floor to questions, and if everybody would confine their question to a question, not a speech, please, and if you would wait for the microphone and identify yourself. Thank you.
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MR. MORROW: Steve Morrow, (?) . Actually, two quick questions. First for Dr. Milhollin, any comments on the reports over the last few weeks that chemical weapons from Iraq have shown up with the Hizbollah in southern Lebanon?
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MR. MILHOLLIN: I don't have any specific knowledge about the question you pose concerning the migration of chemical weapons. One thing I didn't mention that we might find in Iraq--I hate to bring this up, but there were a lot of rumors and a certain amount of evidence concerning human experimentation, experiments on humans with chemical and biological agents. I don't know whether we're going to find that or not. If we do it would be, I think, well, rather spectacular. But there is that possibility.
But to answer your question, I don't know.
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MS. PLETKA: I'm going to answer your first question about the transfer of chemical weapons. I don't think anybody knows for sure, but one of the things that concerns the United States and others about Iran throughout the 1990s was the fact that they began to play a coordinating role among terrorist groups, and they ran what was called the Jerusalem Committee, and they would bring all the terrorist groups. Few people have paid attention to the fact that Iraq has now also taken that role and that there have been a number of significant meetings in Baghdad of radical terrorist organizations, not just al Qaeda but others, including Hizbollah, the various Palestinian groups, where they've come to Baghdad, have meetings, including during this year, where they've talked about it. Take that in conjunction with the fairly recent announcement by the spiritual leader of Hizbollah, Sheikh (?) , that, in fact, the enemy is no longer Israel or just Israel but that, in fact, Israel is only a soldier for the greater enemy, which is the United States.
It's the first time he ever said that. Did they hear that in Baghdad? I wonder.
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MR. MILHOLLIN: One more footnote. Why not? When the reactor was supplied, it used high enriched uranium fuel, and there was a question how much fuel the Iraqis would get because the fuel was enriched to a point where it was directly usable as nuclear weapon fuel. It was 93 percent. You can do the chemistry in your basement. It's not radioactive. You can just separate--you can do basic chemistry with fuel rods, and you get bomb material.
Well, the French wanted to supply three full core loads, which would have been a small nuclear arsenal. We talked them--and Jacques Chirac was the point person for the French in this reactor deal. Some people called it the O'Chirac reactor. It was modeled after a small reactor in France. Same thing, same reactor. The Indians also have a small reactor which is a copy of a French reactor.
But think of what would have happened had we not convinced the French not to supply three full core loads. When the Gulf War began, the Iraqis immediately diverted the fresh fuel, but it wasn't enough for a bomb. One core load was not enough. Three core loads would have been plenty.
We also required the Iraqis to lightly irradiate the one core load they got, that is, they zapped it a little bit in the critical assembly that they had, which made it harder to deal with and made it harder to divert the material to bomb--to use in bombs. But that was because of U.S. diplomacy, and it was over the opposition of the French, who basically wanted to hand the Iraqis enough fresh, directly usable material for two or three bombs with this reactor.
That's my little footnote.
MS. PLETKA: I'm going to give for iraqwatch.org a picture of Saddam Hussein and Jacques Chirac inside a nuclear reactor.
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MR. : Yes, Chao Chen (?) , (?) correspondent. My question is to Professor Milhollin. I have two things. First is this: Which article you say published in which news media? And secondly is this: Do you have a monetary total of the products each Western country sold to Iraq? If you don't have, maybe it's very good to have that total so we can rank among them.
MR. MILHOLLIN: I'm sorry. Can you state your first question again?
MR. : You mentioned that you have an article published. Where?
MR. MILHOLLIN: Oh.
MR. : I'm sure they're all available at iraqwatch.org.
[Laughter.]
MR. MILHOLLIN: This is not a paid question. You can find our publications in two places: on iraqwatch.org, all one word, and our institutional website, which is called wisconsinproject.org.
The article on who supplied Iraq came from about a 200-page table we did at about the time of the war which had exports and imports from all countries in the world. Our exports to Iraq were in the many billions of dollars. But they were smaller than other countries'. I hope this interests the rest of you to some extent.
The United States and Germany, and other countries that supply dual-use equipment--dual-use equipment is something that can be used for civilian purposes or for military purposes. Example: There is a machine that destroys kidney stones inside the body called a lithotriptor. Siemens sold six lithotriptors to the Iraqis a few years back. Each lithotriptor contains a small electronic high performance switch which is the same switch that is used to detonate nuclear weapons. Saddam wanted to buy about 200 extra switches for spare parts.
MR. : They break a lot.
MR. MILHOLLIN: Yeah, they break a lot. It's unclear how many he got. That's a dual-use item.
In terms of numbers, actually the French and the Russians supplied conventional military equipment to Iraq which was worth a lot more than the dual-use equipment that countries like Germany and Switzerland and the United States supplied, because a jet costs a lot more than a computer. So in my view, the German exports were even more culpable because they produced a more nefarious result and generated much less income; whereas, the French, they were supplying fighter jets, which couldn't be used during the first Gulf War because they couldn't be--I'm sorry. They supplied fighter jets, and when the French wanted to help us during the first Gulf War, we had to keep their jets out of the way because we couldn't distinguish them from the Iraqi jets. That's a nice little story.
The French have a history here. The French and the Russians supplied--and the Russians, of course, supplied 819 Scuds, one of which killed our troops in Saudi Arabia, others of which landed in Tel Aviv. These were--the ranges of these Scuds had to be increased to reach their targets. But the Germans sold turbo pumps and other things that allowed the range to be increased.
I've often thought it would be a good idea to--well, to just look at the missiles that actually killed our troops, take it apart piece by piece to see where it came from. It would be an interesting exercise. Never had time to do it. It would be an international missile.
But the numbers are in the billions of dollars if you add it up. The numbers don't necessarily correspond to the importance. Something that doesn't cost very much can be very important. Like these little switches, they can be very important to a nuclear weapon effort, but they're not very expensive. So it's not always a question of dollars.
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