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Should the U.S. Invade Iraq? Week 2

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from: Jeffrey Goldberg
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Aflatoxin

Posted Thursday, Oct. 3, 2002, at 3:47 PM ET

This is the second week of this discussion. To read last week's, click here and to read the continuation, click here. And for Michael Kinsley's column that started it off, click here.

David Plotz has offered a not-unconvincing argument for Saddam's removal, but let me offer a better one: aflatoxin.

In 1995, the government of Saddam Hussein admitted to United Nations weapons inspectors that its scientists had weaponized a biological agent called aflatoxin. Charles Duelfer, the former deputy executive chairman of the now-defunct UNSCOM, told me earlier this year that the Iraqi admission was startling because aflatoxin has no possible battlefield use. Aflatoxin, which is made from fungi that occur in moldy grains, does only one thing well: It causes liver cancer. In fact, it induces it particularly well in children. Its effects are far from immediate. The joke among weapons inspectors is that aflatoxin would stop a lieutenant from making colonel, but it would not stop soldiers from advancing across a battlefield.

I quoted Duelfer, in an article that appeared in The New Yorker, saying that "we kept pressing the Iraqis to discuss the concept of use for aflatoxin." They never came up with an adequate explanation, he said. They did admit, however, that they had loaded aflatoxin into two warheads capable of being fitted onto Scud missiles.

Richard Spertzel, who was the chief biological weapons inspector for UNSCOM, told me that aflatoxin is "a devilish weapon. From a moral standpoint, aflatoxin is the cruelest weapon—it means watching children die slowly of liver cancer."

Spertzel went on to say that, to his knowledge, Iraq is the only country ever to weaponize aflatoxin.

In an advertisement that appeared in the New York Times on Tuesday, a group of worthies called upon the American people to summon the courage to question the war plans of President Bush. The advertisement, which was sponsored by Common Cause, asks, in reference to the Saddam regime, "Of all the repugnant dictatorships, why this one?"

I do not want, in this space, to rehearse the arguments for invasion; Jacob Weisberg and Anne Applebaum have done a better job of that than I could, and they have also explained why multilateralism and congressional sanction are not the highest moral values known to man. There is not sufficient space, as well, for me to refute some of the arguments made in Slate over the past week against intervention, arguments made, I have noticed, by people with limited experience in the Middle East (Their lack of experience causes them to reach the naive conclusion that an invasion of Iraq will cause America to be loathed in the Middle East, rather than respected). I will try, instead, to return to the essential issues: the moral challenge posed by the deeds of the Iraqi regime; and the particular dangers the regime poses to America and its allies. Everything else, to my mind, is commentary.

There are, of course, many repugnant dictators in the world; a dozen or so in the Middle East alone. But Saddam Hussein is a figure of singular repugnance, and singular danger. To review: There is no dictator in power anywhere in the world who has, so far in his career, invaded two neighboring countries; fired ballistic missiles at the civilians of two other neighboring countries; tried to have assassinated an ex-president of the United States; harbored al-Qaida fugitives (this is, by the way, beyond doubt, despite David Plotz's assertion to the contrary); attacked civilians with chemical weapons; attacked the soldiers of an enemy country with chemical weapons; conducted biological weapons experiments on human subjects; committed genocide; and then there is, of course, the matter of the weaponized aflatoxin, a tool of mass murder and nothing else.

I do not know how any thinking person could believe that Saddam Hussein is a run-of-the-mill dictator. No one else comes close—not the mullahs in Iran, not the Burmese SLORC, not the North Koreans—to matching his extraordinary and variegated record of malevolence.

Earlier this year, while traveling across northern Iraq, I interviewed more than 100 survivors of Saddam's campaign of chemical genocide. I will not recite the statistics, or recount the horror stories here, except to say that I met enough barren and cancer-ridden women in Iraqi Kurdistan to last me several lifetimes.

So: Saddam Hussein is uniquely evil, the only ruler in power today—and the first one since Hitler—to commit chemical genocide. Is that enough of a reason to remove him from power? I would say yes, if "never again" is in fact actually to mean "never again."

But at a panel this past weekend on Iraq held as part of the New Yorker festival, Richard Holbrooke scolded me for making the suggestion that genocide was reason enough for the international community to act against Saddam. Holbrooke, who favors regime change, said the best practical argument for Saddam's removal is the danger posed by his weapons programs. He is right, though the weapons argument, separated from Saddam's real-life record of grotesque aggression, loses its urgency. Because Saddam is a man without any moral limits is why it is so important to keep nuclear weapons from his hands.

On the subject of Saddam's weapons programs, let me quote once more the Common Cause advertisement: "Do we have new information suggesting he has obtained or is about to obtain weapons of mass destruction (including nuclear warheads) and the capacity to deliver them over long distances?," it reads.

Yes, actually. There is consensus belief now that Saddam could have an atomic bomb within months of acquiring fissile material. This is not unlikely, since the international community, despite Kate Taylor's assertion, is incapable in the long run of stopping a determined and wealthy dictator from acquiring the things he needs. It is believed now that Saddam's scientists could make the fuel he needs in as little as three years (the chief of German intelligence, August Hanning, told me one year ago that he believed it would take Saddam three years to go nuclear).

The argument by opponents of invasion that Saddam poses no "imminent threat" (they never actually define "imminent," of course) strikes me as particularly foolhardy. If you believe he is trying to acquire an atomic bomb, and if you believe that he is a monstrous person, than why would you possibly advocate waiting until the last possible second to disarm him?

After returning from Iraq, I dug out an old New York Times editorial, which I recommend people read in full. It was published on June 9, 1981 under the headline, "Israel's Illusion."

"Israel's sneak attack on a French-built nuclear reactor near Baghdad was an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression," the editorial states. "Even assuming that Iraq was hellbent to divert enriched uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons, it would have been working toward a capacity that Israel itself acquired long ago."

Israel absorbed the world's hatred and scorn for its attack on the Osirak reactor in 1981. Today, it is accepted as fact by most arms-control experts that, had Israel not destroyed Osirak, Saddam Hussein's Iraq would have been a nuclear power by 1990, when his forces pillaged their way across Kuwait.

The administration is planning today to launch what many people would undoubtedly call a short-sighted and inexcusable act of aggression. In five years, however, I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality.

—Jeffrey Goldberg is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a frequent contributor to Slate.

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Aflatoxin

Posted Thursday, Oct. 3, 2002, at 3:47 PM ET
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Notes From The Fray Editor:

Because this Dialogues feature promises to be ongoing, I have broken up the responses by day. If a good post is not directly responding to one of the entries, I will still put it under that day's topic (like tek's below).

Remarks From The Fray Day 3: Saletan:

With a president who cannot often be bothered to think far enough ahead to make the last half of a sentence agree with the first half, it can be argued (as well as demonstrated) that he cannot be bothered to think through the consequences of invasion.

This government does not have the will to effectively deal with long-term effects. The current war talk itself is a long-term effect of things done and left undone in past governmental muck-ups.

Let me make a genuinely conservative statement: With these politicians, the less done the better.

-- tek

(To reply, click here.)

You can't get more Orwellian than Rumsfeld arguing that weakness is strength. Our enemies are so weak, he claims, that they are free to attack with impunity. It is an argument that assumes because Iraq doesn't have a stock market and MTV, they do not value the life and culture they DO have. How evil and how arrogant.

The fact is, the Iraqis have a lot to lose. They have babies, for instance. I'm sure they are fond of them. I'm sure that they don't want to see them all incinerated as part of a suicidal chess game by their leader to obtain more territory, let alone some abstract geopolitical advantage.

They have lots and lots of oil, that can be sold to the world, to build a thriving economy. Unlike the Sudan or some sub Saharan African nation, Iraq can make a nice life for itself with its huge oil reserves. They are not likely ever to be in such a desperate situation that national suicide would be the preferred option.

They are not religious fanatics. Probably because of their ethnic divisions, the Iraqis are pretty secular folks. They are not likely to go off on a nation destroying jihad. That type of behavior one might expect someday from nuclear armed Pakistan, but not Iraq.

So why is Iraq so scary to Saletan and the others? I can't fathom it. But then, I can't fathom how a person can urge the unleashing of massive death and destruction on a nation that has not attacked us, and will never really attack us. Couldn't figure out how the Germans convinced themselves it was cool; can't figure out how we are about to do the same thing. If we had a fraction of the guts that we claim to have as a nation, we would not be so ready to kill out of pure, unadulterated, cringing fear. I guess to follow up on Rumsfeld's tact: the home of the brave is the residence of the craven.

-- doodahman

(To reply, click here.)

Remarks From The Fray Day 2: Chapman:

Just about on cue, someone decided to answer the challenge I made the other day in the Readme Fray. This was to people who thought it might not agree that if the worst case assumption about Saddam Hussein's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction turned out to be right, it would be a pretty bad thing. The challenge to them was to say so.

Along comes Steven Chapman to say that even if Iraq does acquire nuclear weapons, it's no big deal. He's only interested in defense, in deterring the United States from attacking him. Besides, deterrence has worked like a magic charm to prevent nuclear war since 1945, so there's no reason to think it won't work with Saddam.

Sort of throws 50 years of thinking about the importance of nuclear non-proliferation right out the window, doesn't it? Call it the "don't worry, be happy" theory of arms control. Naturally the same logic Chapman applies to Iraq's getting nuclear weapons would fit any other country seeking them, starting with Iran -- which certainly would seek them with a nuclear-armed Iraq on its border. Not to worry: none of these weapons would ever go off, because of the magic of deterrence.

Reality check: deterrence, especially nuclear deterrence, is not magic. The theory surrounding it grew out of a very specific set of circumstances involving countries and people about whose motivations, inhibitions, and fears we now know a great deal. What Chapman does is to take a theoretical template and apply it to a very different situation, involving among other things one man who has already done several things that led to the deaths of thousands of people and other men -- the men who will succeed Saddam -- about whose conduct in office we now know nothing.

Chapman suggests we run this staggering risk rather than consider war now, which is bad enough. But he goes farther and asserts that even a nuclear arsenal would not lead Saddam Hussein to believe he could seize Kuwait, or support any terrorists attacking the United States. There is only one circumstance under which this would be true -- if Saddam thought the United States were willing to incinerate Baghdad in response.

There's a peace platform for you. I'm sorry if saying this makes me seems like a softy, but I don't really want to be in a situation where incinerating Baghdad is an option. I might if I got as much satisfaction as Chapman seems to from the prospect of the plucky little Iraqi dictator thumbing his nose at the American President "...obsessed with getting rid of Saddam." Then again, probably not. For the sake of peace now, Chapman proposes to have us take a wild ride into the unknown. Maybe his is the best antiwar argument out there. If anyone has a better one, let's hear it.

-- Zathras

(To reply, click here.)

Getting back to Iraq, Chapman fails to understand that a US deterrent has to be credible to have any value. Is it credible that the US would incinerate Baghdad if Saddam seized, say, Saudi territory? West to war against Iran again? Even if he nuked Israel? No, it's just plain not (Israel would wipe Iraq off the map, but that's another matter). Why is that?

On the other hand, the deterrent value of a single nuke to Saddam is entirely credible. Would any US President send a half million US troops to invade Iraq if the result could be tens of thousands of US casualties, followed by hundreds of thousands of Iraq dead? Of course not; it won't happen and Saddam knows it won't happen. A nuke or two is his insurance against US intervention in his neighborhood. Since there is no other power around likely to interfere with him, the possession of such weapons would make him extraordinarily dangerous -- because he has demonstrated his aggressive designs.

It's legitimate to assert that it does not matter to the US who controls the Persian Gulf or which Arab states are in a position to come into conflict with Israel or with each other (stupid, but legit). It is pure nonsense to think the US nuclear arsenal protects us through deterrence against all threats.

-- Publius

(To reply, click here.)

Steve Chapman Assumes that if we don't bother Sadaam Hussein into using biological weapons then nothing else will, either.

Well, that's a bad bet if there ever was one. Think, for example, about the possibility of an Iraqi civil war of succession. But let's leave that aside - Hussein may very well be deterred from using weaponized pox viruses by our nuclear weapons. I don't know if we really would retaliate like that, but that could be enough - if Hussein doesn't know we wouldn't nuke him, then he probably can't use them.

But here is the real danger, which it appears, needs to be spelled out for everyone.

If we allow Iraq to pursue biological weapons, then one day there will probably be an accidental release.

There was at least one such an accident in the Soviet Union (thank God it was only anthrax that time the maintenance guy forgot to turn the safety filters back on), but Iraq may not be able to be as safe with their program if they have to hide it from today's more rigorous intelligence gathering.

If instead of wimpy little anthrax, it's a weaponized, airborne, durable, virus that gets released - or even worse, say, a virus strain under study that is too dangerous to be a weapon (such things exist), then we're all in grave danger.

Because even if here in the U.S. our public health response could snuff a pandemic, which might not even be true, do you think we'll be able to contain it as it murders it's way through Jordan and Iran, Afghanistan?

Do you think Iraq will conscientiously notify, and allow the World Health Organization to respond quickly when they have an accident? Yeah right. The Shah of Iran covered up a small outbreak of smallpox because it would have ruined his anniversary party, and as a result, thousands died. You think Sadaam Hussein is a better guy than the Shah was? Say what you will about him, at least the Shah never gassed a whole town of his subjects.

It's not safe to even let Iraq _try_ to develop biological weapons, let alone try to safely store mass quantities. One mistake, and billions of people are at risk. That's right, billions. Read up some day on how many people died from smallpox. Then think about the Iraqi experiments on camelpox.

-- Andrew Mullhaupt

(To reply, click here.)

Remarks From The Fray Day 1: Weisberg:

Are we going to war for Wolfowitz's reasons or Rumsfeld's?

Is Bush a Wolfowitzian idealist or a realist? Rummy the realist was chummy with the butcher from Baghdad when the realists' strategic calculus made Iran the Great Satan. If this war is motivated by Wolfowitz's arguments then we need to be up front about a Germany/Japan type post-war rebuilding. This is the sort of thing that should come out in the debate people keep asking for but then not starting! If it is just a cold realistic concern about NBC weapons then two things follow. First, the Rummy realists can't help themselves to Wolfowitzian 'freedom-fighter' rhetoric. Second, the realists need to explain why Hussein can't be deterred.

-- Kevin Thomson

(To reply, click.)

Still trying to find the common thread of Bush's axis of evil? It's not dictators or despots or totalitarian governments or WMD R&D programs or even the support or the existence of terrorists; it's the absence of the war on terrorism within their boarders. You can't rid the city of crime if you ignore the ghetto.

-- Ender

(To reply, click here.)

To me, the "only tolerable alternative line" is bunk. In the Gulf War we defeated Saddam and made him sign a paper saying he would throw all his weapons away. Then we left. Oh but we did send a handful of guys around to see if he did it. Of course he didn't disarm. What nation voluntarily disarms itself? The only reason he signed the cease fire in the first place is that we were going to kill him. When we left, it was very clear that we were not going to kill him. I mention all of this only to show that his "relentless drive to acquire chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons" isn't an act of madness, it's a normal reaction to our truancy.

-- Async

(To reply, click here.)

If Saddam is still a at least a year away from building a workable nuclear device after four years without inspections, and he was only six months away before inspections, then inspections have succeeded well enough in the past. I suspect that ones view on this issue is the most important factor in deciding whether the U.S. should go to war.

-- ds7878

(To reply, click here.)

Jacob Weisberg believes that President Bush (I) was dead wrong to stop the Gulf War after Saddam's forces was pushed back to Iraq. This did not stop him from abusing his own people (Kurds and Shiites) or stop his potential for aggression. Weisberg actually says it was perhaps the low pt of his presidency.

Weisberg is missing the pt. He praises Bush for setting an internationally backed force together, but ignores this support was based on limited ends. He ignores (like the administration itself ... this amnesia is as amusing as it is shocking) that the US supported Saddam for yrs in part because of his ability to hold together Iraq ... how? By being a nice guy? No, by oppressing the majorities not in control of the country. This is in part why we didn't further support the Shiite rebellion ... we didn't want the mess of a Iraq split about like a Middle East former Yugoslavia.

--Joe

(To reply, click here.)

Last time (Desert Storm) we DID prepare for war and look to all the world as if we meant it. Did Saddam withdraw his troops from Kuwait? No! If we prepare for war, amass troops from every nation along his every border, what evidence do we have that he will let us conduct "true disarmament through an effective regime of inspection and confiscation" with anything short of the coalition rolling into Iraq and conducting it themselves? None!

-- Mike Klepzig

(To reply, click here.)

While I personally agree with Weisberg that Iraq has to be attacked, I don't see how the process objections Kinsley raises can be so easily dismissed. An honest, democratic process is most likely to get you the right ideas, in general. Bush might be right now, as I think he is, but if democratic process is violated, he could get us in real trouble in the future.

Bush's approach is consistent with the low, dishonest demagogue he is. A pretense is made of getting UN resolutions, while he panders to the prejudices of the "guys in Lubbock" against the UN in his fund-raising speeches. The recent disclosures of Al-Qaeda/Iraq ties might have some validity to them, but the problem is that no one knows whether to believe them.

-- robert hall

(To reply, click here.)

(9/30)