[Peace-discuss] Why K. Pollock is Wrong (was:Kenneth Pollack on PBS)

[Margaret E. Kosal]

 From Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in response to Kenneth 
Pollack NY Times Op-Ed.
HEU = highly enriched uranium or nuclear weapons material, without it (or 
Pu) Hussein can have all the aluminum cans he wants!

Carnegie is leftist leaning NGO, definitely anti-proliferation; they are 
belt-way functionaries.

Namaste,
Margaret

http://www.ceip.org/files/nonprolif/templates/article.asp?NewsID=4379

Why Pollack is Wrong: We Have Contained Saddam
By Joseph Cirincione and Dipali Mukhopadhyay
Friday, February 21, 2003 Ken Pollack is a gifted analyst. But in his 
lengthy February 21 New York Times op-ed, he assembles a house of cards to 
prove that (1) Saddam Hussein may soon get a nuclear bomb, and (2) if he 
does, we cannot deter him from using it. For Pollack to be correct, all of 
Saddam's efforts to build a bomb must work perfectly and all of our efforts 
to thwart him short of war must fail miserably. Here are six of his key errors:

1) Pollack charges that in 1995 defectors from Iraq reported, contrary to 
the IAEA assessment at the time, that "outside pressure had not only failed 
to eradicate the nuclear program, it was bigger and more cleverly spread 
out and concealed than anyone had imagined it to be."

Some may read this to say that in 1995 there was still an extensive nuclear 
program. This is not true. The IAEA had completely dismantled all the 
manufacturing and production elements of the program, including the removal 
of all the uranium fuel (beginning in November 1991) and destruction of all 
uranium enrichment capabilities.

If Pollack means that the defectors showed that the original program was 
bigger than had been known, this is true, but beside the point. Defections 
are a key part of the inspection process, not a reflection of its failure. 
The 1995 defections pressured Iraqi officials into disclosing the details 
of the "crash program" to the IAEA during high level technical talks in 
August 1995. These talks enabled the IAEA to thoroughly investigate Iraq's 
plans to extract HEU material from research reactor fuel. Ultimately, the 
IAEA concluded that this "crash program" never got off the ground: once the 
Iraqis realized that all of the research reactor fuel would be shipped out 
and placed under IAEA safeguards, the program was aborted. Because the IAEA 
was able to account for all of the research reactor fuel, experts concluded 
that Iraq never successfully retrieved any of the HEU material.

2) Pollack charges that another batch of defectors told western 
intelligence services that after the inspectors left Iraq in 1998, Saddam 
had "started a crash program to build a nuclear weapon."

There were defectors who said that former nuclear scientists and engineers 
who had worked on the nuclear program had been instructed by Saddam to 
restart the program. These defectors' stories may well be true, but there 
is no evidence that the resurrection of a weapons program has progressed 
very far. The IAEA said in 1999 that its "verification activities have 
revealed no indication that Iraq possesses nuclear weapons or any 
meaningful amounts of weapon-usable nuclear material or that Iraq has 
retained any practical capability (facilities or hardware) for the 
production of such material."

Nor have any of the inspections under Resolution 1441 yet discovered any 
evidence of a sustained nuclear weapons program. Pollack gets around this 
lack of evidence by simply dismissing the IAEA, saying that it's 
inspections cannot be trusted. But then we are left with just a fear, an 
uncertainty, not reliable, credible evidence.

Some may feel that defector tales are evidence enough. But even those who 
repeatedly cite defectors must acknowledge that defectors sometimes tell 
tall tales. For example, defectors have told intelligence officials that 
Iraq actually conducted a secret nuclear test in 1989. Others said in 2001 
that Iraq has two fully operational nuclear bombs and continues to make 
more. (Nuclear Control Institute, "Overview of IAEA Nuclear Inspections in 
Iraq, June 2001.) There is no evidence to support these claims and few 
believe them. So Pollack and others pick and choose the defector tales that 
fit their argument. This is not solid methodology. Defector information 
must be verified, as was the case with the 1995 defectors, before any 
conclusions can be drawn.

3) Pollack says, "the American, British and Israeli intelligence services 
believe that unless he is stopped, Saddam Hussein is likely to acquire a 
nuclear weapon in the second half of this decade."

Putting aside the embarrassing problem of the basis for the British 
intelligence dossier, Pollack's presentation of their conclusions is 
misleading. What the CIA actually says is that "In the absence of 
inspections, most analysts assess that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear 
program-unraveling the IAEA's hard-earned accomplishments." (CIA, Iraq's 
Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs, October 2002). But now inspectors are 
back in the country able to detect and stop any new activity.

The US Department of Defense concluded that "Iraq would need five or more 
years and key foreign assistance to rebuild the infrastructure to enrich 
enough material for a nuclear weapon." (DOD, Proliferation Threat and 
Response, January 2001) But this is in the absence of any sanctions, 
inspections and with major help from other nations. Today, we have 
sanctions, inspections and no one is helping Iraq. We have stopped him, at 
least for now.

4) Pollack says, "Nor do we know to what extent the inspectors' presence is 
slowing the Iraqi program."

Not true. We know that we have inspectors on the ground who can go anywhere 
and inspect any thing. We have just begun flying U-2 reconnaissance planes 
and soon will have drones circling suspicious sites. Making nuclear weapons 
requires a highly visible infrastructure. It is impossible to hide this 
activity from determined inspectors equipped with high-tech gear and the 
full and active support of leading intelligence agencies. All the 
intelligence sources Pollack cites can now be used in support of actually 
stopping the activities they detect or suspect. They no longer have to be 
limited to writing speculative reports or warnings; the intelligence can be 
linked directly to action teams sent to investigate and dismantle any 
suspicious activity.

This is a key point. In order to strengthen their argument for war, war 
hawks must deride and dismiss the inspection process. Then, it would be 
true that the only recourse to stopping Saddam would be war. But the 
inspections are working now to prevent any large- scale production of 
nuclear, chemical or biological weapons or missile systems. With increased 
resources and authority, they can work to find and destroy hidden weapons 
caches.

5) Pollack spends the second half of his article arguing that Saddam cannot 
be deterred. He cites Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and subsequent attempts 
to assassinate the emir of Kuwait and former President Bush as examples of 
his reckless behavior in the face of American warnings.

But Pollack, himself, presents a clear example of the American ability to 
deter Saddam without the use of force. In demonstrating Iraq's propensity 
to aggress, Pollack cites Saddam's alleged intention in 2000 to move his 
military through Syria and into the Golan Heights. Pollack concludes that 
"only American and Saudi diplomatic intervention with Syria, combined with 
the Iraqi military's logistical problems, quashed the adventure." 
Evidently, diplomatic intervention successfully deterred Saddam.

6) Pollack says that not only would Saddam be undeterred, but, equipped 
with a nuclear weapon, he would consider the United States sufficiently 
deterred from responding to his future acts of aggression. Pollack says 
Iraq is uniquely aggressive in its posture. He argues, "America has never 
encountered a country that saw nuclear weapons as a tool for aggression. 
During the Cold War we feared that the Russians thought this way, but we 
eventually learned that they were far more conservative.

"Here Pollack slips into the convenient historical revisionism now in 
fashion in conservative circles. This view looks back fondly on the "good 
old" days of the Cold War, when the US confronted a knowable, deterrable 
foe. But that was not at all how it was seen at the time. The entire basis, 
for example, of the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), launched 
twenty years ago, was that the Soviets would not be deterred and that we 
should and could build a missile defense shield to destroy the first attack 
of 5,000 Soviet warheads. Typical of the view then was the Defense 
Department's "Soviet Military Report," of 1987: "The Soviets have developed 
extensive plans for using nuclear weapons first to preempt any use by other 
states." Saddam's aggression seems minor compared to the threat of a Soviet 
Union under Gorbachev still "committed to the long-term objective of 
establishing the USSR as the dominant world power."

We have no real way of knowing how Saddam would behave if armed with one 
nuclear weapon when faced with a United States with 10,000 nuclear weapons. 
Rather than engage in a debate with no valuable conclusion, we should stick 
to the facts: Iraq does not have a nuclear weapon and it is in our best 
interests to make sure Iraq does not acquire one. (!!!!) With inspectors on 
the ground, equipped with the necessary gear and intelligence, Iraq will 
not be able to re-ignite a nuclear weapons program without detection. The 
inspectors are not fools. In a 1999 letter to the Security Council, the 
IAEA acknowledges that there is an inevitable degree of uncertainty in any 
country-wide verification process that seeks to prove the absence of 
readily concealable items or activities. "It is this uncertainty," the 
agency says, "which makes it essential for on-going monitoring and 
verification to be a continuous process." The United States and other 
members of the Security Council must uphold and implement the intention of 
Resolution 1441 and, through the IAEA, verify the complete elimination of 
Iraq's nuclear program, compel answers to the open questions, and establish 
a permanent monitoring system to keep Saddam under house arrest for the 
rest of his life.