Interviewee:           Scott Ritter, former Chief Weapons Inspector, Concealment Unit, United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), 1991-1998

Interviewer:           Nathaniel Hurd, The Boston Research Group.

Date: 27 April 2000

BRG: When commenting about Iraq, speakers and writers often state that “Saddam is a threat to his neighbors” and then erect images of Iraq launching chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons and conventional ballistic missiles in rapid-fire succession across its borders.  But these same speakers and writers do not seem disposed to further elaborate on and answer certain questions.  For example, which neighbors will Iraq use these weapons on?  During the Iran-Iraq war Iraq repeatedly used on Iranian troops one chemical weapon [CW] after another [1] without focused condemnation from the United Nations General Assembly [2] or Security Council. [3] Moreover, no State government, including the United States, strongly condemned with action Iraq’s CW use. [4]   The weapons of mass destruction [5] programs themselves were propelled by parts, components, technological know-how, etc. from West Germany, the United States, Great Britain, France, and many other States. [6]   So Iraq faced a lack of Western condemnation for its CW use on one hand and Western support for its non-conventional programs on the other. [7]   However, during the Gulf War non-conventional weapons were not used. [8]   Iraqi officials later testified to UNSCOM officials that they had prepared missiles capped with weaponized biological warheads but did not use them because then-Secretary of State James Baker warned Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz in a 9 January 1991 meeting that if Iraq used chemical or biological weapons the United States would retaliate with nuclear weapons. [9]   This seems to suggest that as far as Iraq is concerned; military deterrence is possible; that the military decision-makers are not deranged; and that there are certain pre-conditions for use and certain pre-conditions for non-use.  If you look regionally at who Iraq can potentially use non-conventional weapons against, you can start with Iran.  However, Iran is an unlikely candidate because it has its own fully-fledged CW program as well as a large conventional force. [10]   Obviously Iraq is probably not going to use non-conventional weapons against Saudi Arabia or Kuwait because the United States, as demonstrated by its Gulf War mobilization, will probably responsd to such a threat to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for they are, in the eyes of United States foreign policy-makers, vital regional petroleum producers.  Non-conventional weapons probably won’t be employed against Israel because Israel has its own nuclear, [11] chemical, [12] biological [13] and ballistic missile [14] capabilities and the capacity and willingness to non-conventionally respond to Iraqi non-conventional attacks. [15]   So the question is, as far as the neighbors are concerned, who will these weapons be used against?  Internal use ought to be the primary concern but potential internal use doesn’t get talked about as much as potential external use. [16]

Ritter:  That’s a complex question.  You have to answer it on a number of levels.  One, when you talk about weapons of mass destruction, the UN defines that in four categories that are applicable to Iraq: long-range ballistic missiles, that is missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometers; chemical weapons; biological weapons; and nuclear weapons.  If you look at how Iraq developed its weapons of mass destruction program originally in the 1970s, the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein, before its invasion of Iran, was looking at weapons of mass destruction as publicly visible deterrents to Israeli weapons of mass destruction. [17]   It has always been modern Iraq’s, Ba’athist Iraq’s, dream to be the Arab leader, the leader of the Arab world.  In order to be the leader of the Arab world you need to be willing to stand up, in the eyes of the Arab people, to the Zionist entity.  That means that you need to have a credible counterpart to Israel’s weapons of mass destruction. [18] But you don’t just snap your fingers and make weapons of mass destruction.  They’re horribly complicated things.  They require tremendous amounts of expenditure, technological know-how, and industrial capacity, all of which Iraq lacked in the 1970s.  Saddam embarked in the ‘70s and early ‘80s on a mission to acquire technology and know-how so that Iraq could start developing the broad spectrum of weapons of mass destruction.  Primarily Iraq looked at chemical weapons and nuclear weapons. [19]  

In 1980 Iraq went to war with Iran and that war continued on for eight years.  That led to a new imperative.  The war that Iraq fought with Iran was supposed to be a quick war, a war where Iraq took over Khuzistan and the southern, Arab parts of Iran. [20]   The causes of the war were complex.  They date back to Iran pushing its weight around in the ‘60s and ‘70s in terms of defining control over the Shatt al-Arab waterway.  This has important implications in terms of Iraq being able to have free access to the Persian Gulf. [21]   After the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Iraqi government felt that Iran was weak and that it was time to take advantage of Iraqi strength.  I’m not defending what they did, but that’s why they did it.  They didn’t succeed the way they wanted to and they got bogged down in a very costly war. 

Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator, but people tend to believe that he has always had an absolute hold on power.  His hold on power, especially in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, was actually fairly tenuous.  Iraq has a history of military coups.  He had to worry about the army and now he has the army bogged down in a war where they are getting badly beaten by the Iranians with no foreseeable end.  He has to worry about the Iraqi people.  He’s promised them prosperity and now billions of dollars are being diverted into this war.  He has to worry about body-bags.  How many Iraqi boys are going to be allowed to come home dead before he loses the support of the population? 

He turned the war into a crusade.  He tried to get Arab support to fund it, support it politically, and turn it into a crusade...

BRG: Which he did very successfully.

Ritter:  Very successfully. [22]   And because of Iran’s unpopular position vis-à-vis the West, he was able to get sympathetic hearings in the United States and Europe.  No one wanted this fundamentalist regime in Tehran to spread its evil web across the Middle East.

At first, support was primarily conventional in nature.  For example, the United States provided intelligence information [23] and the United States and Western Europe made sure that Iraq had enough artillery shells to fight a war. [24]   But the Iranians showed a disregard for the casualty aspect.  They were willing to come at Iraqi front-line positions using human wave assaults with 12-13 year-old kids.  Iraqi machine gun barrels would overheat and run out of ammunition before the Iranians ran out of kids, positions would be overrun, and thousands of Iraqis would be taken prisoner and killed.  Body-bags were coming home. 

The Iraqis needed a solution, and the solution was seen in the form of chemical weapons.  Chemical weapons do two things: One, they allow to you to effectively break up an attack before it closes on your position.  Two, it’s a terror weapon.  These were untrained Iranian troops.  When you have a chemical agent a well-disciplined fighting force will merely put on its protective gear.  Chemical agents are not very effective weapons.  If you look at Iranian casualties incurred because of chemical weapons, you’ll find that the numbers are in the few thousands.

BRG: Chemical weapons were primarily a psychological tool.

Ritter:  That’s right.  More Iranians died from land mines, machine gun fire, and artillery shells, many more, hundreds of thousands more, than died from chemical weapons. [25]   But it’s a terror tool.  It strikes fear in the hearts of untrained soldiers. [26]   And it achieved what it was meant to achieve.  The Iranians did not close around Iraqi positions.  The Iranians would retreat in disorder and it gave the Iraqis the tactical advantage on the battlefield.  So the great expansion of Iraq’s chemical weapons program came as a result of the Iran-Iraq war and Iraq achieving the tactical advantage on the battlefield.

The war between Iran and Iraq was a very complicated affair.  Up in the North it was fought via the Kurdish population.  The Iraqis had Kurdish surrogates operating in Iran to take on the Iranian government.  The Iranian government had Iraqi Kurdish surrogates operating in Iraq to take on the Iraqi government. [27]   So the Kurdish population became an extension of the battlefield. Again, I’m not justifying what eventually happened.  I don’t condone the use of chemical weapons.  But in 1988, when the Iranians made a thrust through the mountains of Iraq and took the town of Halabja, throwing out Iraqi ground forces and threatening the Darbandikhan Dam and the strategic water supply for the city of Baghdad and central Iraq, [28] the decision was taken to fight the battle on two fronts.   One, send the special Republican Guard north to engage the Iranians and the Kurds.  This is the elite force of Saddam Hussein, totally dedicated and loyal to him.  And he committed them, his last reserves.  That shows you the seriousness of the situation.  Two, break the Kurdish population’s will to support the Iranians.  How do you do that?  Terrorize them.  How do you terrorize them?  Use chemical weapons.  And they used them against Halabja and a couple of other villages, and yes, five, six, seven thousand people died a horrible death.  I’m not condoning it, I’m condemning it.  But I’m also trying to put it in perspective.  It wasn’t a knee jerk-reaction.  Saddam Hussein does not use chemical weapons against his population as a matter of course.  Chemical weapons were used by the Iraqi regime at times of great desperation by the Iraqi regime and to survive in a battlefield environment.

One of the things that they learned during their offenses of ’87 and ’88 was that by integrating chemical weapons into the way that they fought the battle they could significantly reduce their casualties.  The Iraqis fired a conventional smoke and chemical rounds’ mixture into the rear area of the Iranian forces and then followed up with more smoke.  The Iranians yelled “It’s [chemical] smoke,” the Iraqis fired in a few more chemical rounds and people started choking.  Suddenly, 300,000 Iranians were running, and the Iraqis followed up with their ground forces. [29]   It’s a very efficient way of fighting as far as the Iraqis are concerned.  So they fully integrated chemical weapons into their doctrine.  Not unlike what the United States did in Europe in the 1970s.  The United States was concerned about the Russian threat moving in.  The United States integrated chemical weapons into our arsenal.  The United States would have used chemical weapons to stop a Soviet thrust into Europe and into NATO.  And the United States would have ultimately have used nuclear weapons.  But that’s neither here nor there.  My point is that it is not uncommon for a nation to incorporate chemical weapons into its doctrine.  On a tactical level, that’s what the Iraqis did. 

The war with Iran ended victoriously and not only because of what happened on the ground.  The Iraqis were able to lengthen the Scud missiles and convert them from 300 kilometer range battle support artillery rockets to 600 kilometer strategic weapons that could strike in the heart of Iran, into Tehran, into Qom, into other strategic cities, terrorizing the population. [30]   It wasn’t just the conventional 150 kilogram payload that terrorized people.  There was also the fear that Iraq might put chemical warheads on them.  The people were scared to death of chemically weaponized missiles, [31] when in fact the biggest risk was to have a missile land on top of someone.  The technical reality of an Iraqi warhead was such that if it had a chemical warhead it would have plummeted to earth at a very high rate of speed — it had a very small chemical agent and very primitive burster — and by the time it impacted the ground and dug a hole six meters into the ground and burst, the chemical agent would be totally contained in that area.

BRG: They were also using very crude binary munitions.

Ritter:  They called them “binary,” but what that meant was that they had a warhead full of isopropyl alcohol and at the last second they mixed in the difluor. [32]

BRG: “Mix-in-flight.”

Ritter:  It’s not even “mix-in-flight.”  They mix it before they launch. [33]   At the Muthana State Establishment, which was responsible for developing Iraq’s chemical weapons, whenever they would mix these things Iraqi workers would get up there and then pour the agent in and stir the Sarin by hand in the warhead.  Invariably there’s an accident and you’ve got guys writhing,  convulsing and dying because of the nerve agent.  The Iraqis killed more of their own people loading the chemical agent into the warhead than they did with the warheads themselves.

BRG: It seems as though one of the points that you’re making is that at the height of its chemical weapons program, the actual chemical weapons that Iraq was able to produce were crude, not tremendously lethal, and very likely to fail....

Ritter:  Ballistic missiles...

BRG: Yes, I’m referring to ballistic missiles, not aerially dropped chemical bombs or on-the-ground chemical shells. 

 Ritter:  They did have chemical weapons in aerial bombs, artillery shells, rocket shells, 122 millimeter rocket shells, and mortars.  But this is all battlefield stuff. 

BRG: And if Iraq was to use chemical weapons against “its neighbors” it would not  employ short-range munitions.  If Iraq started out with a long-range offensive...for example, if Iraq were to chemically target Saudi Arabia, Iraq would presumably use ballistic missiles with chemical warheads.

Ritter:  Yes, ballistic missiles.  But we need to back up a step.  That was the Iranian fear.  But the Iraqis did not have a chemical warhead for their missiles during the Iran-Iraq war. [34]   It was fear based upon a zero threat.  After the Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqi Government was faced with a number of problems: It had this huge army that sucked up a lot of money and no war to fight.  During the Iran-Iraq war, in order to keep the economy stable, the government of Iraq brought in a large number of guest workers, namely Palestinian and  Egyptian workers.  They were in there working.  This was good for Egypt because a lot of that money was heading back home to help the Egyptian economy. [35]   Now you have these soldiers and you want to de-mobilize them?  Into what?  There are no jobs for them.  If you kick out the Egyptians you create discord between Iraq and Egypt who were in the process of negotiating Egypt’s re-entry into the Arab League. [36]

Saddam was in between a rock and a hard place.  What does he do?  Keep the army up.  How does he keep the army up?  He had to create the perception of a threat.  If he didn’t have Iran, what’s his threat?  Israel.  This gives Iraq voice.  It can say “We are the Arab superpower.  We saved the Arab world from the Shia threat, the Persian threat, and now we’re going to save the Arab world from the Israeli threat.”  That’s fine and dandy.  A lot of rhetoric.  But then Iraq develops weapons.  Iraq’s big concern was being seen as countering Israeli nuclear capability.  Israel had Jericho missiles that could strike Baghdad or any Arab country with a 20 kiloton nuclear warhead. [37]   Iraq already had a huge nuclear effort underway but it was years away from accomplishing anything viable.  And the Iraqis knew that.  They needed an immediate counterpoint.  It came in the form of biological and chemical warheads.  In 1988 the Iraqis published papers which directed the Military Industrial Commission [MIC] to weaponize biological and chemical agents, air-delivered munitions, and long-range ballistic missiles so that they could be oriented toward Israel. 

What was clear in all of the language was that these were weapons of deterrence.  The Iraqis had no “first-strike” plans.  They did talk about something called “Thunderstrike.”  Thunderstrike would be a massive launch to knock out Israel’s strategic capability.  But Thunderstrike would be retaliatory.  If the Israelis used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq, or if Israel targeted the Iraqi leadership — this is an important point, for we’re talking about the survival not only of Iraq but of Saddam Hussein —  and it got to the point where Israel launched an attack against Baghdad and command and control was lost from Saddam Hussein and his strategic forces, Iraq would automatically launch a chemical and biological attack against Israel using aircraft and long-range ballistic missiles.  This was the Iraqi strategy.  I’m not defending it, I’m not justifying it, I’m condemning it.  But what I’m saying is that that is not a first-strike capability.  That is not Iraq seeking to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.  Quite the contrary.  It’s Iraq saying, “Israel has the capability to wipe us off the face of the earth, and therefore to be the regional superpower that we want to be we need a counterpart.” [38]    

BRG: And of course it’s worth pointing out that during the Gulf War, when Iraq launched its Scud campaign against several sections of Israel, Iraq didn’t use chemical warheads.

Ritter:  What’s more important to talk about is that in August of 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Iraqis deployed to western Iraq seven missiles tipped with chemical agent.  These missiles were under the special control of the President of Iraq and their purpose was to be a retaliatory force.  There was a lot of concern that Israel would launch a pre-emptive strike against Iraq’s nuclear reactors and so the Iraqi leadership deployed these missiles.  These missiles were in place throughout the entire period.  Throughout the entire war — the buildup to the war and the war itself — Iraq had seven al-Hussein long-range ballistic missiles tipped with chemical weapons in western Iraq ready to fire against Israel.  And Iraq didn’t.  There are any number of reasons why it didn’t.  One, Iraqi decision-makers knew firing these weapons would amount to committing suicide.  You hit Israel with a chemical weapon and they will nuke you.  The point was also made by James Baker that if you use those weapons against Americans then you will pay a price heavier than you are willing to pay.

BRG: He was very explicit about that.

Ritter:  Very explicit.  But again, Iraq did not have a first-use chemical weapons policy.  There was never a risk of Iraq firing off chemical agent.  They did deploy chemical munitions into Southern Iraq and Kuwait after their invasion.  But the reason for that was primarily because they had so thoroughly integrated chemical weapons into their doctrine that when they deployed into Kuwait, and pushed the Republican Guard down there, chemical weapons just automatically followed them down.  But the chemical weapons were always kept in rear area depots and were never forward deployed to the troops.  Never.  The only things that were forward-deployed to the troops were conventional artillery munitions.  The Iraqis would not have released that chemical agent unless Iraq was attacked with weapons of mass destruction or the leader was eliminated.  In that case all bets are off.  Iraq goes out in a Massada complex.  “We’re just going to kill everybody and we’re going to die and it’s going to be a big blaze of glory.”  That’s Iraq’s deterrence.  Here are the weapons of mass destruction.  Take out our leadership and we’ll take everybody out with us.  Or we’ll try to. 

Everybody talks about Iraq’s biological agent, but the reality of Iraq’s biological weapons — and the Iraqis knew this — is that their biological agent’s quality is horrible.  To be honest, it’s questionable as to whether it would kill anybody.  The botulinum toxin was of a quality — in terms of percentage of lethal dose — that was fairly low by Western standards and from a quality control perspective.  If they used a burst or two to burst the biological agent were they going to kill the agent with all the heat generated from the burst or two?  If the agent comes in on a bomb and the bomb hits, is the bomb designed to actually employ biological weapons?  In fact, the bombs were not designed to employ biological weapons.  They were modified to take them, but what would happen?  These weapons were never fully tested.

BRG: The delivery system was there but the dispersal mechanism was ineffective. [39]

Ritter:  If the Iraqis employed biological agent with missiles, the biological agent would have contaminated a few dozen square feet of earth. [40]   That’s it.  So to talk about tipping missiles with biological agent and wiping out the population of Israel is wrong.  Iraq did not have that capability.  But Iraq could terrorize people with the thought that Iraq could do it.  This is really what Iraq wanted to achieve in that case.

BRG: When reading the UNSCOM documents that detail the total tonnage of different types of chemicals and biological agents, you say that as a reader one shouldn’t be overly impressed or frightened by those tonnage statistics.  That is, Iraq may have had large quantities of certain biological and chemical agents but because of these agents’ low quality and the inability to either deliver them or disperse them upon delivery, perhaps the often mentioned chemical and biological weapons threat, in terms of lethality, was very much exaggerated and still is exaggerated. 

Ritter:  There’s no doubt that the threat has been exaggerated.  But I don’t want to minimize the threat.  The fact is that Iraq had biological weapons and they are a concern and have been identified as a concern.  But can Iraq wipe out the earth?  No.  That’s never going to happen. 

Read Ken Alibek’s book Biohazard. [41]   Ken Alibeck is the former head of the Soviet Union’s biological warfare program and he wrote this fascinating account of how the Soviets built their bio-weapons.  What comes across is that building biological weapons is horribly difficult.  One of the things that people keep talking about is that you can build them in your basement.  I hate [former UNSCOM Executive Chairman (1997-1999)] Richard Butler when he says this, when he talks about the “basement bomb.”  He is so far off.  If biological weapons could be built that easily everybody would have one.  The point is that they are some of the most difficult weapons to produce and weaponize.  There’s a big world of difference between making anthrax in a vial and putting that same anthrax in concentrated form in a munition.  And then you have to be able to store that munition, employ that munition, and have that stuff still be deadly and viable once the munition is used.  Alibeck talks about producing thousands of tons of agent every year and then every year again producing the same amount of agent.  Why?  Because the agent they produced last year is no longer viable.  They have to replace it.

BRG: It doesn’t have a very long shelf-life.

Ritter:  No.  It doesn’t.  And this is the Soviet Union, the world’s most advanced biological weapons manufacturer.  Of the nations that moved into bio-weapons, Iraq is one of the world’s least advanced.  Iraq actually had a very primitive program.  Not impressive at all.  They had the potential to produce vast amounts of botulinum toxin and anthrax, but the stuff was of questionable viability and even then weaponizing it was another issue.  Once they weaponized it would it survive?  Would it be sustainable?  And when they employed it would it be viable on the ground?  All major questions.  My key point is that we stopped the biological weapons program in its tracks in 1991.  Stopped it cold.  It’s now 2000.  Iraq has not built biological weapons since then.  I’m not saying that they haven’t experimented with agent in a laboratory environment.  I’m not saying that they haven’t held on to a couple of bombs with botulinum toxin that they somehow think will be viable.  I’m saying that Iraq hasn’t produced another batch of bio-weapons since 1991.  And the stuff that they have today is useless in any meaningful category or way of judging it.  For Iraq to hold on to five 200 kilogram bombs full of bio-agent is ludicrous.  Why would they do that?  Those weapons are not viable in any sense of the word.  For them to hold on to warheads filled with biological agent makes no sense whatsoever.

BRG: What would it take for Iraq to re-assemble its biological weapons program?

Ritter:  There are two questions: What would it take for Iraq to be able to produce biological agent?  Not very much.  They have the know-how.  They’ve solved the technical problems.  They know what to do.  They can assemble within Iraq the technology to produce biological agent on a laboratory scale.  Any modern nation can.  You can make botulinum toxin.  Botulism is a disease.  You can make it in the United States.  Anthrax is found in the ground.  You isolate the strain and grow it.  The question is then can you weaponize it?  Can you make it into a biological weapon?  For that you need a massive industrial infrastructure.  Al-Hakam factory, which was destroyed by the United Nations [42] — destroyed, it doesn’t exist anymore — was a massive biological factory disguised as a single-cell protein plant.  But everyone who looked at it knew what it was.  It was readily identifiable from the air, we knew what it was, we identified it, and we got rid of it.  There is no al-Hakam in Iraq today. And all of the single-cell protein manufacturing plants were under monitoring by the Special Commission [UNSCOM] before the United States had the inspectors removed prior to the start of Operation Desert Fox. 

The inspectors weren’t kicked out by Iraq. [43]   They were asked to leave by the United States so they wouldn’t be taken hostage when the United States and United Kingdom carried out its bombing campaign.  The Iraqis were enraged by the fact that this inspection system had been manipulated and essentially said “You’re not coming back.  You’re not weapons inspectors.  You’re a tool of the United States.  You’re here to justify bombing and the continuation of sanctions.  You’re not solving the problem.”  I don’t necessarily totally agree with the Iraqi position.  I think that it’s self-defeating.  But they had a point.  The other point that people don’t understand is that UNSCOM was monitoring Iraq in 1998. [44]   There’s a big difference between the inspections that I was trying to carry out — which were hunting down these last vestiges of Iraq’s weapons program — and monitoring the infrastructure to prevent the reconstitution of weapons capacity.  Iraq could not reconstitute its weapons capability because we were monitoring its infrastructure.  Had we disarmed Iraq?  No.  Not from a quantitative standpoint. [45]   I was still looking for ballistic guidance and control components.  I was still looking for the components of disassembled missiles.  Notice what I’m saying.  Components.  Disassembled.  I’m not talking about a missile.  I’m not talking about something that can be fired.  I’m talking about the parts.  We were still looking for blueprints, documents, cook-books on how to make chemical and biological weapons.  The Iraqis still had these cook-books.  Under the law [UN Security Council Resolution 687] they had to give it back.  As long as they were holding onto it many people could say, “If they are going through this much effort to hold onto it, this obviously means that they want to re-constitute.”  I think that that’s reading a lot into it.  I think that you have to understand the difficult political position that Saddam Hussein is in.  Saddam can’t just do everything that the world tells him to do because he will lose face at home and abroad.  Saddam has to be seen as being someone who can stand up. He’s done that. He’s held on. Within the inner-circle he can say “we never surrendered.”  But the point is that this isn’t about Saddam.  The issue is not Saddam.  The issue is Iraq’s disarmament obligation.  Unfortunately, the issue hasn’t been pursued in accordance with the mandate originally set forth by the Security Council in terms of the intent — let’s remember that the intent wasn’t to disarm Saddam so that he fell out of power — to eliminate Iraq as a weapons of mass destruction-based threat to its neighbors.  The fact is that we have done that.  Today, Iraq is not capable of using weapons of mass destruction in any meaningful manner against any of its neighbors.  They can’t launch long-range ballistic missiles. [46]   Even if they could, they don’t have the chemical agent or biological agent to put on it.  And anything that they might have held onto, a couple of 100-155 millimeter artillery shells, five or six 200 kilogram bombs with botulinum toxin, is not militarily viable.  I bet that if they dropped the botulinum toxin bombs on any city they would kill nobody.  Unless the bomb directly hit somebody.  Otherwise the bomb would hit, the agent would disperse, some people would get inoculated and that would be the end of it. But they don’t have them anymore.  They’re not going to use them.  It’s a false argument. 

BRG: Suppose that there is an effective regime of military sanctions, particularly supplier-side. Suppose that the United States, Great Britain, and all of the countries that actively contributed to Iraq’s non-conventional programs 1980s imposed supplier-side controls, self-imposed or in the form of a much stronger regime.  Suppose they made it very clear that if, for example, Great Britain, exported certain chemical components to Iraq, there would be some sort of punitive response to that from the States that actually abide by this regime.  Suppose there is a very strict supplier-side monitoring regime in place that makes sure that, for example, U.S. corporations and government agencies [47] can’t export to Iraq all of the things that they exported in the 1980s.  And suppose you lift economic sanctions.  What chance is there that Iraq will, how easy would it be for Iraq to, and to what extent can it, divert and use certain types of dual-use technology to not only re-assemble its various weapons programs to their peak capacity as they were before UNSCOM disassembled them, but to also take them to the next level and to make them more sophisticated and lethal? [48]                                      

Ritter:  What people have to understand is that the Security Council actually passed three resolutions that Iraq ended up accepting: Resolution 687 [49] calling for the prohibition of weapons of mass destruction and disarmament; Resolution 715 [50] calling for long-term monitoring of Iraq’s compliance with its disarmament obligations; and Resolution 1051 [51] which was the export/import control regime.  The export/import regime does exactly what you say.  Iraq has to declare everything that it’s going to import.  There’s a whole list of declarable items.  Anything that Iraq imports that is not declared and we find is subject to destruction.  It's a dead item.  We find it, we say “where is the paperwork,” and if the paperwork is not there we blow it up.  We have proven that point several times to the Iraqis by destroying items that were brought in and that were illegal.  There is also a requirement for nations to declare to the United Nations that they are selling something to Iraq that’s on that list.  If they don’t, punitive damages can be imposed, similar to the kind of punitive damages that are imposed on oil companies that are today bringing out Iraqi oil.  A recent example is the $2 million fine levied by the Security Council against Dutch Shell. [52]   The system isn’t perfect.   No system ever is perfect.  But, if we monitor Iraq’s industrial capacity with the kind of monitoring regime that we had in place in December of 1998 before Desert Fox, and if we use the export/import control mechanism as designed, Iraq will have an extremely difficult time defeating that.  Can they defeat it?  Yes.  Of course they can.  But the odds of us detecting them are very great. 

Iraq is allowed to and should have dual-use technology.  It’s not and shouldn’t be prohibited.  All the Security Council does is make Iraq declare it so that weapons inspectors can monitor it to make sure that it’s not being used for the wrong purposes. [53]   I guess that the story has not yet come out.  Iraq tried repeatedly to cheat.  In 1995 they tried to bring in guidance and control components from Russia. Based upon intelligence tip-offs we were able to intercept it in Jordan before it came in. [54]

BRG: Guidance and control components for ballistic missiles?

Ritter:  Correct.  In 1997-1998 we intervened in the Ukraine to stop Russian and Ukrainian middle-men from shipping dual-use components to Iraq.  In 1998 we did the same in Romania to stop Iraq from acquiring dual-use components and had I not resigned we would have the same thing in the Far East and Middle East where dual-use components were being procured.  We received intelligence tip-offs and we were able to intervene to stop it. [55]  

BRG: But some of these Middle-Eastern States are perceived by the United States and much of Western Europe as so-called “rogue states.”  Consider that most of the components, technological know-how, and everything else that went into Iraq’s non-conventional programs came from the United States and western Europe, do you think that it’s imperative that the Wassenaar Arrangement [56] and Australia Group [57] be bumped up from the levels of informal agreements and arrangements to formal regimes?  Do you think that binding codification is a critical aspect of military sanctions?   

Ritter:  If you take at look at Resolution 1051, the Australia Group list [58] is expanded.  We expanded the Australia Group list into a formal agreement, [59] a law vis-à-vis Iraq.  The point is that it will work.  It won’t work perfectly.  Nothing ever does.  But it will work.  Iraq would not be able to re-constitute in any meaningful fashion its weapons of mass destruction capability.  Would they be able to have basement activity?  Yes.  Now another question is whether the weapons inspectors will carry out hunts for this basement capability.  I think that we’ve proven that the world has no stomach for long-term confrontation of that nature.  It’s very nebulous and it’s very difficult to quantify.  But if the UN focused on the big picture, monitoring Iraq to prevent it from becoming what it was in the late 1980s, there will be every opportunity to succeed.  And Iraq will play the game if the Security Council carries out two promises that it made: One, that if Iraq complies the Security Council will lift economic sanctions.  Two, that that means they will still play the game of inspections, monitoring, and export/import control.  But we must keep the promise of paragraph 14 of Security Council Resolution 687 [60] : That we use Iraq’s disarmament as a vehicle, as a stepping stone, for regional disarmament.  Iraq does not want to be gutted. 

BRG: It’s a tough neighborhood.

Ritter:  That’s right.  Frankly speaking, we should have learned our lesson from the Treaty of Versailles.  You can’t gut a regional superpower or regional power and then expect it just to stay there gutted.  If we disarm Iraq, reach this agreement, re-quantify their disarmament, lift sanctions, put in monitoring, etc., and we do nothing to address regional disarmament, Iraq will re-arm.  It will kick out the inspectors after a number of years and re-arm.

BRG: Iraq was to a certain extent a regional superpower, but bear in mind that even when Iraq was near its on-paper conventional peak it was only able to turn the tide in the Iran-Iraq War as a result of chemical weapons and United States satellite intelligence. [61]   Although many United States military and political analysts concluded that Iraq was a tremendous military power, and Iran underwent a revolution and completely purged its military leadership, Iran was still beating Iraq on the battlefield.  And Iraq’s army now is nowhere near the size or efficiency that it was during the Iran-Iraq War’s mid to later stages.

Ritter:  Their army has been totally gutted.  The Republican Guard, on the evening of the invasion of Kuwait, was at its peak in terms of manpower, training, etc.  And yet, when it moved into Kuwait it almost defeated itself.  There were logistics’ foul-ups while moving troops forward as well as command and control break-downs.  If there was any concerted defense on the part of the Kuwaitis, it’s questionable as to whether or not the Republican guard would have succeeded. 

BRG: And Kuwait is not much of a military power.

Ritter:  No.  Kuwait just folded.  The Kuwaiti Army was a lot like the Saudi National Guard.  They bought a lot of fancy weapons, but never properly maintained them.

BRG: In some instances they didn’t have adequate training to operate those weapons.

Ritter:  That’s right, they didn’t have the training to do it.  But the Iraqi Army sort-of limped to the Saudi-Kuwaiti border.  They were in no position to project power.  And yet, when we started to plan our troop movements, we were drawing these bold arrows.  The Iraqi thrust down the coast to the oilfields.  The flanking move on Riyadh.  We were giving them this tremendous capability.  And yet they had never fought a war with that kind of depth before. 

BRG: They have not proven themselves to be an effective fighting force.

Ritter:  That’s right.  There’s no doubt that Iraqi soldiers would fight and die bravely on the battlefield.  But that doesn’t mean that they were an effective fighting force.  Near their height, in 1988, they were just your basic — they were doing things in 1988 that the world called “combined arms,” things that you would expect from troops just out of basic training.  But when you talk about the United States and the Marine Corps...when I was at Twenty Nine Palms doing combined arms training, the things that we did were so much more complicated.  We did real combined arms.  We did “deep battle.”  We did “live battle.”  We fought on all spectrums.  The Iraqis can’t operate that way.  You click off their command and control and they disintegrate.  They don’t have the requisite training.  Combined arms implies the ability to fight independent actions.  They cannot fight independent actions.  They are not a modern military.  They had good equipment.  They don’t have good training.  And they may have good leadership in terms of brave leadership, but their leadership is not good at coordinating battles. [62]   Iraq’s military at its peak was poor.  Today it’s totally gutted.  It is a threat to no one.  Zero.

BRG: Let’s go back to the issue of dual-use technology.  Recently, the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1284 ordered a “green-list” of humanitarian items [63] that in in future would be imported into Iraq through a notification-only procedure.  Do you think that it’s realistic and feasible to draw up a similar “red-list” for dual-use technology items?  As of the present, because of Resolution 1051, these items are not banned from going into Iraq.  Rather, there is a joint monitoring mechanism that was then jointly operated by UNSCOM and IAEA and is now employed by UNMOVIC and IAEA. [64]   They will notify the Sanctions Committee that a supplier is trying to export to Iraq an item that is on the list.  The decision is then made as to whether or not to let it in.  Do you think that it would be easier and possible to have a list of items that would just be out from the beginning?  It would be made very clear to Iraq that it can’t import these items and it would be made equally clear to exporters that they can’t export to Iraq such items. 

Let me follow that up with a note from the historical record.  During the 1980s, when United States companies wished to export dual-use technology to Iraq, applications were supposed to go through a review committee on which sat the Department of Defense, various intelligence agencies, the Energy Department, and so forth. [65]   According to Congressional hearings, Stephen Bryen, then-Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Trade Security Policy, the Defense Department objected to 40 percent of applications for Iraq-destined items that came to it for review. [66]   It’s interesting to compare that with the Defense Department’s application objection rate for Soviet-bound items: Only five percent. [67]   The point is that the Defense Department knew what the end-use facilities were doing.  Intelligence sources had made it clear that in specifically identified facilities Iraq was developing ballistic missiles and chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. [68]   So there were certain items that raised red flags to people in the defense and intelligence communities.  On the other hand, the Defense Department did not object to a full 60% of applications that it actually reviewed.  Now the Defense Department didn’t have the actual control to block or allow export.  The Commerce Department had that power and often ignored the Defense Department’s review conclusions by approving items that the Defense Department objected to. [69]   The point is that there are certain dual-use technology items that raise red flags, that perhaps should be put on a red-list of items that ought not to go into Iraq.  But that still leaves a bevy of items that can be used for the telecommunications industry, the power sector, water and sanitation, etc.

Ritter:  But why are we doing that?  Why are we putting the red-list in place?

BRG: It has been repeatedly stated by representatives at the Security Council and State level, particularly in the United States and Great Britain, that “Iraq is a threat.”  Now whether or not that’s being said for political purposes is another matter.  That’s the rhetoric.

Ritter:  Would that threat be solved if we had monitoring in place?

BRG: Perhaps the optimal solution is a two-pronged approach: Firstly, supplier-side export controls that make it very clear from the outset what suppliers can and cannot export to Iraq.  This removes the approval decision-making from the highly politicized Sanctions Committee.

Ritter:  That’s already been put into place with 1051.  The bottom line is this: How can you deny from Iraq or from any nation access to four-axis, high-precision machine tools that we use in our automobile factories?  How can we deny that to Iraq?  Are you telling Iraq that they are forever condemned to Third-World status? 

BRG: Which is where, I suppose, your suggestion of monitoring...

Ritter:  It’s not my suggestion.  It’s the law.  The law as qualified by the Security Council is that Iraq undergo ongoing monitoring.  My point is that as a sovereign State, Iraq must be allowed to have access to the same industrial and construction structures as its neighbors.  But we need to monitor Iraq.  We need to have in place an export control regime that prevents certain single-use material from going into Iraq, material that can only be used for weapons of mass destruction.  And we need to monitor dual-use technology.  You cannot forever keep Iraq imprisoned by reducing the level of technology. 

BRG: I should have qualified my comments. 

Ritter:  But a lot of people think along that line.  That somehow it’s okay for the world to tell a sovereign State...what are we going to say?  That’s it okay for Japanese kids to play with Sony Playstation IIs but Iraqi kids can’t have them? 

BRG: Some of the greatest problems that have occurred over the past 10 years, for those interested in or concerned with economic sanctions, are the political games that get played in the Security Council.  The United States has often been publicly indirectly, and privately directly, criticized by the Secretary-General and by Benon Sevan, the head of the Office of the Iraq Program, for repeatedly putting on hold in the Sanctions Committee items that Kofi Annan and Benon Sevan unequivocally state are critical to fixing Iraq’s oil infrastructure and other infrastructural sectors as well. [70]   So for those on the Security Council who are keen to lift economic sanctions or in  general to change policy, [71] could a red-list be a temporary measure, a stepping stone?

Ritter:  That doesn’t solve the political problems.  In fact it exacerbates them.

BRG: Can you elaborate on that?

Ritter:  What you’re doing now is playing Iraq’s game.  I’m totally against economic  sanctions as a tool.  They don’t work at all.  We should never have imposed them.  But we did impose them on Iraq.  And we linked them with disarmament.  And we quantified that in international law, a Chapter Seven resolution. [72]   Anything that deviates from that is an aberration.  I think that it’s safe to say that today, 10 years after sanctions were imposed, they don’t work.  They don’t work at all.  They aren’t achieving the objective that they were meant to achieve.  Now, we’ve also talked about disarmament, the trigger for the lifting of economic sanctions.  And I think that we are in a position where we can re-quantify Iraq’s disarmament obligations to the point where we can lift economic sanctions, given an effective and viable monitoring regime.  One of the reasons that I resigned is that the actions of the United States in manipulating the inspection process was making a mockery of the Security Council and the inspection process. [73]   And I said that if they continue to manipulate in this fashion, using the weapons inspectors for achieving their own purposes, all that’s going to happen is that they are going to destroy the inspection process and Iraq will win, because without a safety net Iraq is a threat.  I told you now that they don’t pose an immediate threat to anybody.  You lift economic sanctions, and you don’t have an inspection regime in place, Iraq will be a threat.  Why?  Because it’s in a tough neighborhood and it is surrounded by military threats.  Iraq will re-arm and equip for the same reasons that it armed and equipped to begin with, because it’s in a tough neighborhood and it has to have these weapons to survive, at least in the political mind of Saddam Hussein.  Anytime you de-link sanctions from Iraq’s disarmament obligations you make a mockery of international law, you denigrate the ability of the Security Council to viably implement its will, you will further entrench the United States as an imperialist power because you’ll allow the United States to dictate its will in total disregard for the Security Council process, and you’re not solving the key issue which is Iraq’s disarmament.  If you do what you propose with sanctions, all you’re doing is saying “sanctions don’t work.”  These are salami tactics.  All you’re doing is slicing down the issue of sanctions without addressing the issue of disarmament.  We should say that sanctions are not effective.  What we need to do is get monitoring in place.  I’m telling you right now that Iraq will accept monitoring.  They did accept monitoring.  Iraq will accept 1051.  They did accept 1051.  Why are we playing this game?  Get the inspectors back in and lift economic sanctions and what you will have is a working model of what I think we want to achieve in the long-run, which is an international consensus on the control of dual-use technology for weapons of mass destruction.  That will be in place in Iraq, and as long as the Security Council follows through on its promise to regionally pursue paragraph 14 I think that prospects for long-term success are good.  But to separate the two and to try and come up with a sanctions solution in a vacuum will lead to long-term failure because a sanctions solution in a vacuum isn’t a solution at all.  It has to be tied in with this disarmament issue.  You can’t de-link the two.

BRG: In a worst case scenario this proposal is put forward, the Security Council fundamentally re-defines Iraq’s disarmament obligations, offers to exchange monitoring for sanctions, and Iraq says “no.”  While you suggest that there are many indications that Iraq will accept such a proposal, what if Iraq says “no”?  What do you think the next step should be?  In this scenario Iraq states that “everything that we’ve said in the past about ongoing monitoring and verification is off.  No inspections, no inspectors.  You can do whatever you want as far as supply-side export regimes go but there will be no inspections in Iraq.”

Ritter:  Then it’s up to the Security Council to determine what it is and is not willing to do.  I don’t think that continuing a long-term policy of containment and isolation is going to succeed.  The Iraqi Government has the wherewithal to outlast us all.  It outlasted Bush, it will outlast Clinton, and I guarantee that if we continue this policy it will outlast the next president.  I think that a categorical “no” from Iraq would galvanize the Security Council to undertake some decisive steps.  But understand that Russia, France, and China — Iraq’s major supporters on the Security Council — want sanctions to be lifted.  None of them have said that the weapons inspections process should stop.  They’ve all said that “there will be a weapons inspection process.” [74]   But that has not been defined very well.  One of the main problems is that from the very beginning the United States has used the weapons inspection process for objectives which are not mandated by the Security Council [75] , and there is a lot of fear on the part of Russia, France, China, and Iraq that, as currently constituted, the weapons inspection process will just continue that United States control.

I don’t think that the Iraqis will say “no.”  They’ve already said “yes.”  I think that Iraq is rejecting the current set-up.  That’s okay.  You can solve that problem.  I think that when we talk about an Iraq solution we need a solution that is not only going to solve the Iraq problem but that is also a useful model for global disarmament and global arms control agreements.  And in that case it can’t be a radical solution.  It has to be a common sense solution.  It has to be a solution that doesn’t condemn Third-World nations to permanent Third-World status by denying them access to technology.

BRG: You mentioned the term “de-linking,” that is separating military issues from economic issues and dealing with military issues in the absence of economic sanctions, acknowledging that economic sanctions are ineffective, and acknowledging that economic sanctions in and of themselves can be used as leverage but that they cannot effectively accomplish disarmament tasks.  I think that that is what de-linking has come to mean.  Furthermore, I think that there has been such a push for de-linking because there are policy-makers, and now I’m specifically talking about United States policy-makers, who have taken a very hard-line stance on this particular issue and don’t seem willing to listen to arguments like yours.  If one’s primary goal is disarmament on one hand, and on the other hand to stop what continues to be, despite post-Resolution 986 improvements, a grave and unacceptable humanitarian situation in Iraq, is proposing something like a red-list, as a temporary stop-gap measure, to people who have already indicated very strongly that they are hard-liners on this issues, a possibility?

Ritter: Without a viable monitoring regime in place in Iraq a red-list is meaningless.  Because a red-list implies that you are going to return control over the Iraqi economy to the Iraqi Government.  The issue of sanctions isn’t just the fact that not enough food and medicine is going in.  Its the fact that Iraq’s money is going into an escrow account and Iraq isn’t in control of it’s economy.  So when you de-link the sanctions, are you returning control  to the Iraqi Government or is the escrow account still in place?

BRG: Let’s analyze different scenarios.  The UN eliminates the escrow account, no longer has control over Iraq’s money, and returns complete control over Iraq’s oil revenues to the government of Iraq.  There are then two possibilities:  One is a ports-of-entry solution.  There are ports-of-entry inspectors now.  They can stay in place and have a computerized red list and cross-check whatever is on the computerized red-list with items going in.

Ritter:  What I’m saying is that without a complete monitoring system that would be defeated.  I know how the Iraqis operate.  They’ll use cutout, after cutout, after cutout.  Japan will think that it’s sending Sony Playstation IIs to Korea but they will end up in Thailand or Malaysia. And then they will go into Jordan and then into Iraq.  I use the Playstation II as an example because that seems to be the big thing right now with its 128 bit chip.  But my point is that that is irresponsible because it only guarantees that there will be a crisis with Iraq in the future.  It only guarantees long-term instability in the region.  It doesn’t solve the problems.

BRG: The problem is that one must address not only Security Council politics but also many Washington policy-makers that seem closed to a policy change.

Ritter:  They are completely stubborn because they are not confronted on the issue.  If you try to de-link you will be politically defeated by the hard-liner who is going to say that “Saddam will re-arm and we can’t allow this.  Your proposed de-linking guarantees that Saddam will re-arm and now we don’t have any mechanism in place to stop him from re-arming.  This is unacceptable.  Sanctions, containment, etc..”  The only way to effectively end sanctions is to go through the due process of international law which has already  linked the lifting of sanctions with Iraq’s acceptance of being disarmed.  It is the simplest and quickest way.  Go in and find an acceptable solution in terms of quantifying Iraq’s disarmament obligations.  Get Iraq to accept and get the Security Council to agree that if Iraq accepts sanctions will be lifted.

BRG: Do you think that as a result of Resolution 1284 the bar has actually been raised?

Ritter:  Oh yes.  Resolution 1284 is an American resolution.  The Americans were losing the political war on sanctions.  America basically ripped up international law during Operation Desert Fox and was being called to account.  Resolution 687 was no longer viable.  America needed a new resolution and it got it.  The United States sold out the arms control aspect of 687 for the economic sanctions control.  Resolution 1284 no longer lifts sanctions.  It suspends sanctions [76] and it guarantees UN control over Iraq’s economy forever.  This is unacceptable.  The Iraqis will not go for it.  It’s a non-starter.  But that’s what the United States wants.  The Iraqis won’t go for it.  Therefore it allows the United States to continue containment through economic sanctions by saying that “Iraq’s not complying and therefore sanctions are still on.”  What the United States doesn’t understand is why Russia, China, and France did not veto this.  The United States walked into a trap.  The United States is going to lose the sanctions battle if it continues.  Eventually the world is going to disregard sanctions.  The United States will be totally isolated on this issue.

BRG: In many ways the United States is isolated on this issue now.

Ritter:  What will happen is that States will say to the United States “we will ignore you, buy Iraqi oil, and deal directly with the Iraqi Government.  As the United States you are making up international law as you go along and we’re not going along with your policy.”  That’s the most dangerous thing because now the United States has lost its moral authority to speak on the issue.  Iraq will continue to simultaneously feel regionally threatened and emboldened by standing up to the United States.  They will re-arm and there will be crisis.  There will be conflict.  It will be horrible.  That’s the worst thing in the world that can happen.  American policy-makers ought to put on their thinking caps and take an opportunity to solve this problem now and move toward larger issues of regional peace and security, disarmament policy, etc. 

BRG: It seems as though 1284, because of the way that it is laid out and the language that it uses, says that “if you behave we’ll suspend sanctions for a period of time, but if we think that you’re misbehaving then sanctions will go back into place.”  Among other things, this scares off investors.

Ritter:  And how do you define “misbehaving”?  It’s not quantified.  Frankly speaking, after watching the United States take political control of the inspection process over seven years, you can’t trust the United States anymore and you can’t trust the inspectors anymore because they are politically controlled by Washington.

BRG: What is the primary difference between UNSCOM and UNMOVIC?  Is there a difference other than the acronym? 

Ritter:  The primary difference is that UNSCOM was in Iraq working.  UNMOVIC will never go to Iraq.  UNMOVIC is just a wolf in ram’s clothing.  It’s UNSCOM but they haven’t changed any of the problems that UNSCOM was facing.  They’re still talking about Presidential site inspections.  They’re still talking about “no-notice” inspections.  They’re still talking about total access.  And they’re not talking about bringing this thing to an end. 

BRG: I had some conversations with someone at the UN who used to be with UNSCOM and he said that from a technical perspective the reason that some people at UNSCOM were and are resistant to establishing for Iraq — and my discussions with IAEA officials confirm the IAEA’s agreement on this point — specific disarmament tasks is that if you establish specific tasks, and as you’re going along you find something that leads you in a different direction, you can’t go in that direction.

Ritter:  I’m not talking about specific tasks.  I’m talking about defining what Iraq’s disarmament obligation is.  Are we trying to hunt down every nut, bolt and screw?  Or, are we asking whether or not Iraq has a long-range ballistic missile capability today?  If the answer is every nut, bolt, and screw, we’ll never have an end to this because you can’t prove a negative.  Iraq says “we don’t have any,” we say “we can’t prove that.”  How do you prove it?  It’s a “forever game.”  But we can say “they don’t have any long-range ballistic missiles.”  We can say that “they don’t have a chemical weapons factory in Iraq.”  We can say that “they don’t have a biological weapons factory.”  We can say “they don’t have a nuclear weapons factory.”  That’s disarmed.  In any meaningful sense of the word, that is disarmed.

BRG: The 1999 Disarmament Panel report said — keep in mind that for the report the Panel interviewed people from UNSCOM and the IAEA [77] — that “some uncertainty is inevitable in any country-wide technical verification process which aims to prove the absence of readily concealable objects or activities.”  The report went on to say that  UNSCOM and IAEA’s approach “assumes that 100% of verification may be an unattainable goal.”  That is, verification in terms of quantitative disarmament, not in terms of monitoring, may be “an unattainable goal.” [78]

One thing that came across during my conversations with people from UNSCOM and the IAEA is that — and I think that this is something that people on both sides of the economic sanctions issue don’t often know — it is not the mandate of UNSCOM (now UNMOVIC) or the IAEA to “give Iraq a clean bill of health.”  They are technical bodies.  They are there to provide information and to say “here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know, and here’s perhaps what we’d like to know.”  And then it is the responsibility of the Security Council to do with that information what it desires. [79] One UNSCOM staffer said that there was a lot of pressure put on UNSCOM from both sides of the issue to say either ‘yes’ Iraq has been disarmed or ‘no’ Iraq hasn’t been disarmed.  Do you think that mandate of UNMOVIC and the IAEA should be changed to give them license to, in their expert, professional opinion, tell the Security Council whether or not they think that Iraq has been sufficiently disarmed?

Ritter:  If you take a look at the technical requirements of disarmament as set forth by Security Council Resolution 687, it’s very extensive.  That’s what has to be changed.  The Security Council is a political body.  They’re the ones that have to make a political decision.  But what UNSCOM can do is come in and say “we’ve fulfilled all the tasks that you’ve given us.  This is our final report, etc..”  If its full of holes it will be shot down.  Right now the door is wide open for the United States to say “well, we don’t know about 200 tons of growth media.  How can you say that Iraq is disarmed?  They’re not disarmed.  They have 200 tons of growth media.  And they keep throwing these things out there.”  But if you said “does Iraq have a biological weapons factory”? the answer is “no.”  Redefine Iraq’s disarmament obligation.

BRG: And you can never have 100% disarmament.  That’s the key. 

Ritter:  No you can’t.  But weapons of mass destruction are not part of a 100% game.  You can stop a viable ballistic missile program by controlling 80% of Iraq’s production.  Iraq will have to create the other 20% in a manner which is easily detectable.  We would be able to detect cheating.  I guarantee it.  With a monitoring system in place we will detect cheating.  Not all cheating, but we will detect cheating. 

Let’s deal with the facts.  The facts are that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities have been, by and large, eliminated. [80]   If we continue to judge Iraq with the yardstick that exists today it will never be found in compliance.  And as long as economic sanctions are linked to Iraq’s disarmament compliance, sanctions will never be lifted.  Plain and simple.  So you have to focus on the issue of disarmament and the key is re-defining Iraq’s disarmament obligation.  If you do that, you can get viable monitoring in place that takes care of all export/import concerns and get economic sanctions lifted.  That’s a huge step forward from where we are today.

BRG: In your 1998 Congressional testimony [81] and 21 December 1998 New Republic article [82] you seemed to argue that Iraq, in terms of its nuclear, chemical, biological, and ballistic missile programs, was a threat.  A reader can examine your testimony and New Republic article and conclude that then you maintained that Iraq is a threat and that now you contend that Iraq is not a threat.  To assess Iraq as a non-conventional threat, what has changed for you since late 1998?

Ritter:  What has changed is the law.  I spoke from August 1998, the time of my resignation, to December 1998 as a weapons inspector.  I didn’t write Security Council Resolution 687.  The Security Council did.  And in writing it they said, in effect, that “as long as Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, as quantified by the resolution, it represents a clear and present risk to international peace and security.  So as long as Iraq is not in compliance, it is a threat.”  That was the law.  All I was doing as a weapons inspector was saying “you created us, you told us to do a job, we’re trying to do it, and you’re not letting us do it.  And according to your own words, if we can’t do it there’s this great threat out there.  Now it’s up to you, Security Council, to sit back and say: ‘A) Do we let Ritter and company continue to move; or B) do we re-define the law?’  You can’t pass a law and not implement it.  That’s a joke.”  After December 1998, read everything that I’ve written since then, starting with my book and every op-ed page.  I’ve said, plainly and simply, the United States ripped up the law.  The law is no longer valid and we have to come up with a way forward, a new approach.  Now that that law is out of the way let’s re-evaluate Iraq’s weapons.  We’re not hampered by this lead weight around our necks.  As a weapons inspector one cannot re-define the law.  One cannot.  That is not a weapons inspector’s job.  One can’t be a weapons inspector and re-define the law.

BRG: They are technicians.

Ritter:  They are people who go forward and do what the Security Council mandates.  There is no interpretation.  That’s why my position, pre-Desert Fox, was painted in one direction. 

BRG: Therefore what you were saying is that “within the framework, within the context, of the UN Security Council resolutions, if you are asking me ‘whether or not Iraq is a threat’ and your definition of threat is the existence of any non-conventional weapons, components, materials, blueprints, etc., then I have to say ‘yes’.  But if you take it out of that context”....

Ritter:  I wasn’t that clever.  What I was trying to do was save UNSCOM.  I saw that because of the United States’ manipulation of the inspection process UNSCOM was dying.  Quickly dying.  If UNSCOM died disarmament was gone and everything that we had fought for was out the window.  There would be no block on Iraq and because of the situations that we’ve talked about, the fact that Iraq has been demonized and isolated and there are existing threats to Iraqi security, they would re-arm.  And that would be the end.  We would have lost everything that we’d fought for.  I was struggling for the existence of UNSCOM.  And the only way that UNSCOM can exist, and the only way that weapons inspections can exist, is to be pure and technical, not political.  So take the political aspect out of it.  We’ve been given a job.  Now it’s up to the Security Council to decide whether or not UNSCOM’s technical task is politically feasible.  And if it’s not then they must re-define it.  That means that UNSCOM won’t be killed like it was in December 1998.  Rather, UNSCOM will be re-directed.  The inspector and inspection process will then still be pure and going forward. 

One of the problems that UNMOVIC has is that it is basically grown from the ashes of a discredited program.  I was trying to prevent the program from being discredited.  I testified to that extent.  I was trying to get the United States and Security Council to wake up to the fact that the way they were going was killing UNSCOM.  If I had known that Desert Fox would come around, that I wouldn’t succeed, I might have toned down what I said.  But I was taking a very extreme position on defining the Iraqi threat because that’s all the law allowed me to define at UNSCOM.  I wasn’t allowed to define it any other way.  I was basically confronting them.  I told that that “I’m holding a mirror up to you.  Look in the mirror.  You created this.  What are you doing to do about it”?  I said that to everybody.  “You made this problem.  What are you going to do about it?  Don’t ask me for a solution.  I am an inspector.  And the law says that we do this.  Now you are going to screw around with the law?  Because if you do you are going to screw up the whole process and you will have this threat.  So what are you going to do.  Here is the law.  Enforce it or change it.” 

BRG: And now you are suggesting that they change it.

Ritter:  It  has been destroyed.  The law is not there.  I’m no longer saying “this is the law.”  I’m saying “where is the law”?  Resolution 1284 is not a law.  It’s an aberration.  Let’s make a law.  Let’s make a law that is enforceable.  Let’s make a law that’s viable.  And then let’s get out and implement and end this game.  That’s my position.

BRG: And do not draw a line in the sand as this current Administration has done by refusing to diplomatically engage Iraq.  Perhaps you have some insight on this.  Throughout the Cold War, during which time the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at the United States, we diplomatically engaged the USSR.  We also exported to the Soviet Union millions of tons of wheat and many technological components.

Ritter:  That’s because they were a threat and therefore we had to engage with them.  Iraq is a threat to no one.  We’re the bully superpower.  I think that one of the worst mistakes we made was to give Iraq a voice in this problem.  Early on we always kept Iraq pushed away.  But what happened with the Clinton Administration is that because of its failed policies it gave Iraq a voice.  The Clinton Administration allowed the Secretary-General to engage with the Iraqis.  It allowed the Iraqis to lobby their cause to the Security Council.  And Iraq suddenly had a voice.  It could still be dealt with because it was an illegitimate voice.  But when the United States undertook Desert Fox it not only gave the Iraqis more of a voice, it legitimized Iraq’s voice.  We cannot escape that reality.  Iraq is now an issue that we have to deal with head on.  This means diplomatic engagement.  If you read my book you see that I talk about how we have to engage Iraq.  Containment has not worked.  We need to engage.  Are we going to engage militarily?  There is no consensus for that.  The only other alternative is engagement through diplomatic means.  We are going to have to diplomatically engage whether or not we like it.  Diplomacy will solve this problem.  I guarantee it.  I put my entire reputation on the line.  If we had honest diplomatic engagement with Iraq this thing would be over and done with in a matter of weeks. 

BRG: The person that I spoke to at UNSCOM said that UNSCOM mostly frequently documented Iraq hiding components, agents, etc., all in the area of disarmament.  Whereas when it came to ongoing monitoring and verification Iraq was far more cooperative and compliant...

Ritter: Iraq cooperated fully.

BRG: Which bodes well for future ongoing monitoring and verification.

Ritter:  If Iraq’s excuse is a concern then evaluate the excuse more fully but at least give it a hearing.  Remember, the United States has a policy of never lifting sanctions till Saddam Hussein is gone. [83]   So the United States is looking for any excuse for the continuation of economic sanctions.  Every time Iraq admits something, instead of being rewarded for it, it gets hammered for it.  What are we chasing after right now?  In the VX program our best evidence that Iraq lied about VX nerve gas is destroyed warheads.  Destroyed warheads. 

BRG: UNSCOM made that very clear in its documentation.

Ritter:  Destroyed.  We are not looking for active weapons anymore.  We were looking for a concealment process or something worth being concealed.  It could be possible — and knowing how the United States has manipulated the system I give this high probability — that the Iraqis have said “we can’t tell the truth.  Because if we tell the truth we’ll be condemned.  So what we’ll do is hide the truth.  We have no weapons, but we can’t tell the truth because it will be used against us.  It will forever feed this mythology of the omnipresent Iraqi threat to external parties.”  UNSCOM will then be put in the more difficult position of having to prove the negative.  It will ultimately come down to “he said, she said.”  And UNSCOM will be called on to make a judgement and they can’t prove a negative.  And the United States will always opt not to believe Iraq.

BRG:  There is another significant problem.  First individuals express their external threat perception and then make the statement that “Saddam Hussein did it in the past and therefore he will inevitably do it again.  He was a threat then and so he’ll be a threat now.” [84] How does you address this argument?

Ritter:  That’s one of the most ludicrous things.  There are three periods that people talk about: Today, 1990 when he invaded Kuwait, and 1980 when he invaded Iran.  You have to examine the factors that led to Saddam’s invasion of Iran and what the Iraqi situation was.  Remember, when Iraq invaded Iran, Iraq had a small army.  Two hundred and fifty thousand people [85] and no chemical weapons.  In 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait it had an army of 1.2 million [86] people and lots of chemical weapons.  A totally different thing.  In 1980 when Iraq invaded Iran, Iraq was a regional economic superpower. [87]   In 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, Iraq was economically devastated. [88]   In 2000 they have no military capability [89] and they have no economy.  You cannot say that “the Iraq that invaded Iran had many similarities to the Iraq that invaded Kuwait.”

BRG: Moreover, in 1980 Iraq had the support of both the Gulf States and as well as members of the “international community” opposed to the 1979-on Iranian government.  Iraq did not have that support in 1990 and it does not have it now.

Ritter:  My point is that those are three isolated time periods and you cannot draw a continuum between them.  You can’t.  You can’t say that “1980 is 1990 is 2000.”  1980 was 1980.  1990 was 1990.  2000 is 2000.  Evaluate 2000 based upon the facts that exist today.  What I can tell you is that history does repeat itself.  And if we don’t do anything to change the course that Iraq is headed in, there will be a 2010.