Saddam's Arsenal

...She was specifically referring to the means to deliver weapons of mass destruction," says an administration source...

...The case that Saddam already possesses such weapons, and that he's not reluctant to use them, is overwhelming...

...Imagine the outcry, then, if inaction results in more lives lost...

...While that notion is absurd on its own, it is even more preposterous when one considers that Saddam thinks his WMD arsenal prevented his demise at the end of the Gulf War...

...Rice's comments were part of an interview she gave the British radio network for a documentary commemorating the first anniversary of September 11...

...I'll stop...

...Despite reports to the contrary, the Bush administration appears to be paying attention...

...These messages, the administration should have known, meant that terrorists on September 11 would use box cutters, knives, and then airplanes to kill thousands of Americans...

...In one case, he even produced a contract that his company signed with the Iraqi regime...

...Charles Duelfer, the highest-ranking American inspector on the U.N...

...The discussion of Iraq was a small part of that larger conversation, and not intended as a newsmaker...

...Last fall, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, an Iraqi civil engineer who fled the country, told U.S...

...weapons inspectors...

...But we know he's got the weapons of mass destruction...

...team, put it this way: "Why would Saddam say, 'This stuff saved my ass one time, but oh yeah, you're right, this isn't moral...

...Saddam built an extensive biological and chemical weapons arsenal...

...So, was this indeed a calculated attempt by the Bush administration to soften its claims that Saddam already possesses weapons of mass destruction...

...He provided those officials with detailed accounts of the operations—including descriptions of storage facilities designed to look like water wells—and reported that a major task was to make weapons facilities impenetrable from the outside and leak-proof from the inside...

...The Iraqi threat is well defined and, for more than a decade, has been clear to anyone paying attention...

...The paper claimed that Rice "was careful not to say that Iraq currently possesses chemical, biological or nuclear arms," and suggested that a "sense of uncertainty" about Saddam's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) "is influencing Bush's preparations for a major effort to sell his Iraq policy this fall...

...House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt went so far as to invoke the Nixon-era cliché, wondering aloud what the president knew and when he knew it...

...Al-Haideri said he was told to wear a protective work suit before entering the facility...

...Interesting that those comments didn't find their way across the Atlantic onto the front pages...

...The condemnations came following revelations that an FBI field office had raised questions about Middle Eastern men taking flight lessons and that the National Security Agency had failed to translate, until September 12, two Arabic messages: "Tomorrow is zero hour" and "The match begins tomorrow...

...While no one can say for sure just how extensive Saddam's arsenal was when inspectors were withdrawn in 1998, there is little doubt that he retained weapons of mass destruction...

...Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...USA Today's John Diamond, in a report of the interview that ran on the front page, wrote: "U.S...

...He devised an elaborate concealment program to thwart the efforts of U.N...

...found and destroyed vast quantities of chemical and biological weapons, and significantly degraded his nuclear program...

...The inspection regime was little more than a seven-year game of highstakes hide-and-seek, with Iraq repeatedly denying it retained weapons of mass destruction and then feigning surprise when inspectors discovered a cache...

...intelligence cannot say conclusively that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction," and the resulting "information gap is complicating efforts to build support for an attack on Saddam's Iraqi regime...

...Indeed, to argue that Saddam is merely "intent on developing" weapons of mass destruction—the favorite phrasing of those who argue that Saddam is "bottled up"—one must disbelieve a mind-boggling number of reports from highly credible sources that suggest the Iraqi dictator already has them...

...We don't know how good his means of delivery are...

...BY STEPHEN F. HAYES LAST WEEK, in an interview with BBC radio, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice called Saddam Hussein "an evil man," and warned of dire consequences "if he gets weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them...

...The one thing that is clear," she said, "is that the status quo is unacceptable because it permits Saddam to possess weapons of mass destruction...

...There are several indisputable facts about Saddam's history with weapons of mass destruction...

...Rice and other administration officials have repeatedly referred to Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction as the source of the Iraqi threat...

...To believe that Iraq is clean today, then, requires an assumption that Saddam chose unilaterally to get rid of all of his remaining weapons of mass destruction after inspectors left...

...He told the New York Times's Judith Miller that he worked on a biological weapons facility in Waziriya, which he said, "was near the Mercedes dealer...

...He shocked inspectors twice with the advanced state of his nuclear program, once after the Gulf War and again when his son-in-law defected to Jordan in 1995...

...In early July, for example, Rice gave a blunt assessment of the Iraqi threat in an interview with an Italian newspaper in which she spoke only of the weapons, not the means of delivery...

...intelligence officials that he had worked at nearly two dozen of Saddam's biological and chemical weapons facilities under the auspices of Iraq's Military Industrial Organization...

...Richard Butler, who headed the inspection team in its last two years, details the charade in his compelling book, The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Crisis of Global Security...

...Despite those efforts, the U.N...

...He used chemical weapons on the Kurds in 1988...

...A succession of Iraqi defectors who left after the inspectors were withdrawn in 1998—some more credible than others—have confirmed Saddam's continuation of his WMD programs...

...In the months after September 11, after a brief pause for bipartisanship, Democrats began to criticize the Bush administration for failing to predict and prevent those attacks...