Indian Defence Review

Fourteen years after the grand invasion of Iraq by USA — what became known as the second Gulf War — there is still a lot of disinformation pertaining to WMD’s in Iraq.  Recall that one of the reasons the USA gave to invade Iraq was the “proven” presence of WMDs that threatened to be used by a mad dictator on God-fearing, God-loving humans.  The general thread of events as reported by the media “proved” in the media, not in the courts, that since no WMDs were found, there simply were no WMDs, thus decrying and belying the legitimacy of USA’s invasion of Iraq.

It is incredible how this “spin” came to be thrust on the world, in a massive disinformation campaign within the “free” world, that rivals the propaganda machinery of Goebbels, the disinformation practiced by closed countries such as China, or even the propaganda spread by the Indian government on civil rights and separatist movements inside the country.  This article reveals facts and evidence that Iraq did, indeed, have weapons of mass destruction.  Though the capability was eroded and diminished, there is no doubt that those weapons were present in Iraq.  Saddam Hussein of course could not use them because that would have simply proved to the rest of the world that Iraq had them, a fact he was denying, thereby compelling Hussein to lose the moral ground altogether.

The Media

The same media that bashes Trump created the common perception that George Bush was a “liar” in the excuses he gave to invade Iraq, even though Congress authorized the Iraq invasion[1].  In their desperation to bash the Republican Party, the media, which has come to be controlled by elements that aim to divide Americans from within by promoting liberal and anti-national ideologies, comes to spin political statements with alarming scare at how the Republicans are misleading Americans and the world at large.

Because the American media is considered as the free bastion of a free society, American media is much respected around the world.  But, with what they are doing by misleading and misinforming the public and world, much needs to be said about them.  It is thus not unbelievable when Donald Trump criticizes the media for overtly biased reporting.  The concern with what the media reports is a common concern among billions of people worldwide, which is what makes Trump a mainstream candidate in the USA, because 70% in the USA believe the media deceives them.   But, for long, people have known how the media can be used to “convincingly” deceive the world’s public.

It is well known that a falsehood that is repeated multiple times becomes manifested as a truth.  So, it was with news reporting of WMDs.  The liberal media, particularly CNN, ABC, MSNBC, NPR, CBS, and NBC promoted the notion that no WMDs were found.  People who watched the above news channels were much less likely to believe that WMDs were found in Iraq.[2]  That said, 33% of all respondents who watched FOX news believed that WMDs were found in Iraq.[3]

The Media and Trump

In explanation, when Trump says that Mexicans have illegally entered the USA, after which many of them have committed crimes, murders, and rapes, the media “spins” these words to report that Trump calls all Mexican as murderers and rapists.  When Trump says that America has protected Europe for much too long at their own expense, and wants NATO member countries to pay their fair share of supporting American troops in Europe, the media “spins” this to say that Trump wants to break up USA’s relations with NATO.

When Trump says we must temporarily halt Moslem immigration, and increase governmental scrutiny of Moslems seeking immigration to USA, because all modern-day terrorism is Moslem terrorism – from Al-Qaeda to ISIS to LeT and JeM, etc. – the media “spins” this to report that Trump “hates” Moslems and Islam.  And, let’s not even go into womens’ issues where the media paints Trump as anti-women, when, instead, he loves them very much.  Combining the Mexican rhetoric with the Moslem rhetoric, the media paints Trump as a racist without any logic or arguable reason to back their assertions, casting Trump in a mold that goes against the very central values of American society and values, thus aiming to “shame” the public to oppose him.

Using voice and tone fluctuations, and shame and laughter to tilt reasoning in their favor, the media makes its deliveries sound “convincing.”  In this way, the media brainwashes a whole country and a whole world.  However, nothing can arguably be more dangerous than this.  Thus, the input of researchers, professors, and analysts is sent down the drain because very few read expert analysis, while virtually everyone watches TV and many read the newspapers where the same media continues unashamedly bashing the truth.

Logic set Aside for WMDs in Iraq

Thus, it is a strange reasoning in a strange world where black is made to look like white, where day is passed off as night, and where falsehood is portrayed as truth.  Ask anyone whether it happens that the guilty are judged non-guilty, and the non-guilty are convicted, or murderers are acquitted while innocents are hanged.  The answer is a resounding yes to anyone you ask.  This even happens in the public court systems all over the world, so let alone where the media acts as judge and jury.  Does it not happen that when the murder weapon is not found, it is judged that the crime was not committed?  But does that make the murderer honest?

Mathematically speaking, Bayes’ theorem focuses on analyzing the probabilities of events given identical outcomes.  For instance, given two possible alternatives – being guilty or not guilty – there are still identical outcomes of conviction and acquittal.  Subsequently, posterior probabilities can be found for, say, acquitting a person when she is guilty, or convicting a person when he is not guilty.  This is the classic Bayes’ theorem that has been used in forensic science and admitted in courts for more than 150 years.

In the case of WMDs in Iraq, people heard from the media about the non-finding of WMDs in Iraq and immediately concluded that no WMDs existed. After all, couldn’t the public and other “famous” analysts think that any WMDs could have been trashed, washed into the river, burnt, buried underground, or shipped away to another place for safe keeping?  Why jump to conclusions?  The false logic concerning not finding WMDs and extending it to believe that no WMDs existed is alarming.  Even educated people and respectable security analysts fall into this trap.

What are WMDs?

So, first of all, millions of people learned about “WMD” only when that word started to appear in the media, not having had even the slightest cognizance of that acronym[4].  Many millions more never fully understood what a WMD is, believing it only to mean nuclear weapons.  So quickly do educated analysts jump to conclusions that it is astonishing they do so.  And, even educated people very quickly interrupt a discussion with authority and assertion, and a snicker and a scoff, to say”But WMDs were never found!” thereby squelching all discussion.

But, yellow cake is like cow dung that can be hidden in farms, under a wagon, or washed into a river.  How can yellow cake be detected even though the UN sent a special detection task force?  It is egregious to believe that the task force was able to look everywhere.  In fact, the task force admitted that they could not find WMDs “anywhere they looked.”  This surely does not mean by any logic that they looked everywhere and that Iraq never had WMDs.

Now, the shocking revelation: most people equate WMD’s to nuclear weapons.  But, that is patently wrong: WMDs include biological weapons, chemical weapons, radiological weapons, and other weapons that can cause mass damage to the public. And, missiles such as Pershing II and the SCUD are considered weapons of mass destruction.[5]   There is no doubt that Iraq had hundreds of SCUD missiles.  Hence, the problem about WMDs is not in what the USA and Britain asserted, but in what the mass public did not understand.

Facts of WMDs

In this regard, the following additional facts deserve painful attention, in a nutshell:

• In 1981, the Israelis bombed and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear facility, but nuclear material, centrifuges, and intellectual capacity remained with Iraq.
• Pakistan’s AQ Khan continued to supply Iraq and Libya with nuclear know-how.[6]
• The US themselves gave biological and chemical weapons to Iraq soon after Iran started gaining the upper hand in 1983 in the Iraq-Iran war.  In fact, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary under President George Bush was USA’s special envoy sent by President Reagan in 1983 to sell those weapons to Saddam Hussein.[7]  Included in this sales list were anthrax, the bubonic plague, West Nile virus, botulism, and insecticides that were used as chemical weapons against the Shias, Kurds, and Iranians.
• In the 1970s, Saddam Hussein started a clandestine nuclear weapons program.  Despite Israelis bombing the nuclear reactor in 1981, Iraq continued to get centrifuges from Germany up to 1989.
• As part of the Muthana State Establishment, codenamed Project 922, German firms helped build Iraqi build chemical weapons laboratories, bunkers, and production factories in the early 1980s, under cover of a pesticide plant.  Various German firms sent more than 1,000 tons of precursors to mustard gas, tabun, and sarin, among other. This work allowed Iraq to produce 150 tons of mustard agent and 60 tons of Tabun, continuing throughout the 1980s.  German firms also equipped Iraq to manufacture botulin toxin and mycotoxin for germ warfare. Laboratory equipment and other information was provided, involving many German engineers.[8],[9] In fact, an abundance of information is available on the internet on how the West themselves gave Iraq WMDs, and how Iraq could not finally account for all of them after the First Gulf War.
• After the first Gulf War, the US destroyed massive quantities of chemical weapons.  But, not all those weapons could be located.  Hence, a deficit was evident that wasn’t accounted by the amounts Iraq had used against its own Shias and Kurds in the late 1990s, which meant Iraq still had those chemical weapons.
• In 1999, after non-cooperation by the Iraqi regime in the UNSCOM investigation, the Unites States withdrew UN and IAEA inspectors.  In 1999, The United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) reported that large quantities of WMD material were yet unaccounted for.[10]
• In 2003, Hans Blix reported that little to no progress had been made in accounting for the remaining materials, which the Iraqi regime claimed had been destroyed.[11]

• Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, who had vacillated in his statements in 1998 and 1999, now asserted in 2003 that “…[W]e can’t give Iraq a clean bill of health, therefore we can’t close the book on their weapons of mass destruction.”

• US inspections after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein “found that Iraq had worked covertly to maintain the intellectual and physical capacity to produce WMDs and intended to restart production once sanctions were lifted.”[12]
• In April 2003, US Marines discovered unusual radiation emanating from a number of buildings.  It turned out that those buildings contained low-grade uranium, known as yellow cake.  Thus uranium was later sold in 2008 to Cameco Corp., a Canadian company for tens of millions of dollars.[13]
• In 2004, hundreds of containers of chemical warheads were located buried near the Iranian border.[14]  It is a stretch of imagination to believe that the Iraqi regime was unaware of this, as claimed.
• In 2015 it was again learned, ten years after Operation Avarice was declassified, that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction had not been fully accounted for by UN inspections.

All these demonstrate unequivocally that Iraq was simply culpable in the matter of WMDs.  To blame the USA for hypocrisy on this count is patently unfair and mischievous.

Operation Avarice

In 2005, the US forces came across a dealer of WMDs in Iraq.  The US forces’ dealings with this person, under the code name Operation Avarice, revealed much, even though this person remains anonymous to this day and even though Operation Avarice has been declassified.  US agents purchased large amounts of chemical weapons from this person.  Rather than arrest this person, the thinking was to buy and destroy as many WMDs as possible to avoid them getting into the wrong hands.  US forces subsequently acquired and destroyed the largest haul of chemical weapons found after the second Gulf war.  It was confirmed that these weapons were remnants of the Iran-Iraq war.[15]

2009: Chemical Weapons Convention

Iraq became a member of the Chemical Weapons Convention after declaring two bunkers worth of chemical weapons stockpiles.[16]  These bunkers were decommissioned by air strikes in 1991 and again in 2003.  It is believed that the stockpiles were unusable.  However, these stockpiles help to account for missing weapons that the USA knew existed in 2003 that Saddam Hussein was denying, for which he failed to cooperate with the UN.  These stockpiles were, themselves, evidence that Iraq had WMDs.  They also vindicate the USA for asserting that Iraq possessed WMDs.

Discussion and Conclusions

There is abundant evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction – both going into Gulf War II and after, even if Saddam Hussein didn’t know where they all were.  For sure, Iraq didn’t come clean on its WMDs, which left a deficit in the accounting of all the WMDs that Iraq had.  Hence, the West was justified in believing that Saddam Hussein was hiding those weapons.

In any event, WMDs include SCUDS and chemical weapons, of which Iraq had plenty.  Iraq still had capabilities for making nuclear bombs, and if Saddam Hussein had been given half a chance, he would have likely manufactured a dirty bomb if not the full thing.  Operation Avarice in 2005 unearthed large hauls of chemical weapons, while other stockpiles were found buried at the Iranian border.  In 2009, Iraq declared the existence of chemical weapons in two bunkers, just before joining the Chemical Weapons Convention.  That many of these stockpiles were unusable was because the ability to service them had been degraded, while production facilities had come under the global scanner, making it difficult for Hussein to manufacture more chemical weapons.  However, it is without a shade of doubt that the West sold chemical weapons to Iraq, all of which had still not been accounted for after Gulf War I and the UN inspections.

However, it is worth pondering the after-effects of Gulf War II.  One, a brutal dictator who oppressed his people was no more.  Besides the Sunnis of Iraq, the Shia and the Kurds shed no tears and were happy to be rid of him.  Two, the threat of invasion by Iraq of its neighbors abated after he was overthrown.  Three, justice was done by the capture and death of a cruel dictator: it appears that the prayers of millions of Iraqis were answered.  Four, the teeth of Arab vocalism against the free and secular West were crushed, spiraling into the Arab Spring and the overthrow of Gaddafi, another eccentric who once started a nuclear program and dared to replace the US dollar with the gold dinar, which would have upset the world’s economic balance.  Fifth, inasmuch as Saddam Hussein had planned to sell oil in Euros instead of dollars made him a natural US target.

But, one great dividend of the Iraq invasion, post 9/11, has been that the Moslem brethren of Pakistan have found their economic and military muscle diminish.  This is to India’s advantage, because no matter how idealistic one may be, the fact for India is that all Moslem countries have hitherto supported Pakistan in time of crisis with India, and not one has spoken up in support of India on the Kashmir issue.

In the final analysis, though, USA’s entrance into Afghanistan and Iraq has drawn it closer to India.  The USA now values India’s resistance against Moslem terrorism, and understands what India has been facing from Pakistan for seventy years.  The duplicity of Pakistan has been exposed, and Pakistan is likely to face a great boycott by USA in the coming years.  The event that brought US forces into South Asia and West Asia has come as a sign of defense protection for India.  While India’s own policies and regulations on armed forces modernization have wallowed in the doldrums, with corruption in defense procurement shaming the moral fiber of the country, the emergence of the USA as an ally has come at the right time for India, just as China is beginning to demonstrate its military prowess through technological innovation.

We can safely say – WMDs or not – that USA’s entry into Iraq and Afghanistan was in India’s interests.  However, when the argument about the WMDs is taken to the end game, it is undeniable that WMDs existed in Iraq, even if in small quantities.  Further, if additional time had been allowed to elapse, Saddam Hussein would have been intent on producing more destructive WMDs than simple SCUDS and chemical weapons.  This is not something that the free world could have tolerated, and neither could Iraq’s rich Gulf neighbors.  Yet, the whole issue of the existence of WMDs is small potatoes in the larger geopolitical perspective where nations must consider paramount their own defense and safety first.