What Does Saddam Have?

By Josh Tyrangiel

If there's anything even halfway reassuring about the anthrax scare, it's that tiny doses sent through the mail can cause only isolated outbreaks. Bioterrorism experts agree that the kind of catastrophic damage haunting our collective psyche requires the resources and weaponry of a sovereign state. Which is why Iraq, the Middle East's dormant volcano, suddenly appears to be smoking at the summit.

Casting a cold eye on Iraq, which experts believe has stockpiled as much anthrax as any other nation on Earth--except possibly Russia--is not merely an automatic response to threatening times. Intelligence reports indicate that an Iraqi agent has met with an associate of Osama bin Laden. Also, Mohamed Atta, the Sept. 11 hijacker, reportedly had a June 2000 encounter with an Iraqi operative in Prague. There is as yet no evidence linking Iraq to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, but with four verified exposures to anthrax in the U.S. and a highly unstable situation in the Middle East, getting a precise inventory of Saddam's arsenal is a top priority.

Before U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspectors were forced to pull out of Iraq in December 1998, the world knew what Iraq had. At least four tons of VX gas--a sulfurous compound that is among the most toxic chemical agents--were unaccounted for, as well as an estimated several hundred metric tons of the raw materials required to make sarin and mustard gas. After years of denying that it even had a biological-weapons program, Iraq admitted in 1995 that it had produced 8,500 liters of concentrated anthrax and 19,000 liters of undiluted botulinum toxin. UNSCOM destroyed most of those supplies, but officials believe that Iraq hid four times as much anthrax and twice as much botulinum as was discovered. Iraq still has the best biological expertise in the region--thanks in part to the efforts of Rihab Taha, 48, a British-educated biochemist known as Dr. Germ--and experts agree that since UNSCOM left, Saddam has been aggressively stockpiling materials and converting production facilities for bioterror use.

Chemical and biological agents are hazardous, but to cause mass annihilation they need to be made into weapons--a process that entails producing the material in large quantities, turning it into a powder and placing it in a delivery system such as a warhead, bomb or aerosol diffuser. All but two of Iraq's Soviet-made Scud missiles were accounted for after the Gulf War, but last year Iraq began testing short-range ballistic missiles, which could potentially be loaded with viruses or gases and fired as far as 95 miles away. U.S. defense experts were quick to ridicule the Iraqi efforts as unsophisticated, but they missed the point: Iraq is back in business as a threat.

Can Saddam be contained? Any diplomatic scenario depends heavily on Russia. Not only are rogue elements within Russia the likeliest source of fissionable material for Iraq's nuclear-weapons program, but the Kremlin has been Saddam's strongest ally in rejecting UNSCOM inspections. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, Colin Powell has pressured Russia to change its stance, but so far he has met with resistance. Within the Administration, a battle is raging between Powell and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who proposes bombing Iraq for harboring terrorists. Dick Cheney is said to have sided with Powell, though that could change if new evidence points to an Iraqi role in the events of Sept. 11.

Wolfowitz has asked former CIA director R. James Woolsey to look for that evidence. If he finds it, one scenario has the U.S. going to allied Arab governments and presenting them with a clear operational plan for taking out Saddam. "They would basically be asked to salute," says a U.S. official. "What the U.S. would have to guarantee is that it be over quick and that it would work."

--By Josh Tyrangiel. With reporting by Helen Gibson/London and Scott Macleod/Middle East

With reporting by Helen Gibson/London and Scott Macleod/Middle East