Hide and Seek . . . and Seek: Where'd those weapons of mass destruction get to?

In a perverse game of international Where's Waldo, American inspectors have fanned out across Iraq searching for weapons of mass destruction (WMD). With the exception of two trailers, the search has yet to yield a smoking gun. And, even though the trailers have been designated as mobile bio labs, this might be wishful thinking. Colin Powell says that there is no proof that they are labs -- it's just that no one can think of any other purpose for them.

One thing we do know is that Iraq had WMDs throughout the 1980s and was not shy about using them. In at least ten documented attacks against the Kurds and Iranians, Saddam killed or maimed over 35,000 people (see Table 1). After the Gulf War, the Iraqis admitted to having thousands of tons of nerve and blister agents, along with thousands of gallons of bio-weapons (see Table 2). When U.N. inspectors arrived, Iraq claimed that they had destroyed all of these stocks, but was never able to provide any evidence.

So, what happened to Iraq's WMDs? Theories abound.

Pentagon officials are sticking to their original line: The weapons exist, but it will take some time to find them. Spokesmen have recently claimed that the search could take a couple of years to complete. This is ridiculous. Yes, Iraq is a big place, approximately the size of California, but we have over 150,000 troops there. Dividing the land by the troops available, each soldier would have to cover only 1.14 square miles. It might take a few months, but definitely not years. Someone appears to be hedging the bet and hoping everyone forgets about the issue.

Theoretically, Iraq could have concentrated its WMD material in one location. In fact, all of the chemical and biological agents that Iraq admitted to possessing could easily be buried in an area not much bigger than a large swimming pool. It is unlikely that they did so, but if they did, there are people in Iraq who know the location. The proper inducement would surely get those people talking. The current offer of $200,000 for WMD information is a bit chintzy considering the stakes.

Unfortunately for the United States, finding the much-easier-to-locate production facilities will be of little value in the court of public opinion. Too many of them could have dual, civilian uses (for example, for fertilizer). Even those that could be used only for WMD production could be explained away as pre-sanction sites that had ceased to be used.

Some officials believe that Iraq has moved all of its illegal weapons to Syria. Gen. Yossi Kupperwasser, head of research at Israeli intelligence, told the Knesset as early as last October that Iraq was moving WMDs into and building facilities in Syria. One senior American officer said that the U.S. has to look very closely at whether Iraq was paying for a Syrian WMD program with the intention of importing it at a later date. Apparently, scientists in coalition custody have stated that researchers and facilities were moved to Syria. To date, however, there has been no official confirmation of these claims.

Several Iraqi scientists have gone on record as saying that the Iraqi weapons program was ordered destroyed just prior to the invasion. If that's true, Saddam could have saved himself an infinite amount of trouble had he taken a moment to announce this fact to the world or let U.N. inspectors witness the destruction. Still, it is hard to believe that Saddam would order the secret destruction of weapons he was soon to need very badly.

In what could be interpreted as a sign of desperation, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice floated the idea that Iraq may have had a baseline production system capable of just-in-time delivery operations. Rice's theory was ridiculed for equating the actions of Saddam and his henchmen with the administrative practices of a Harvard MBA. Beyond semantics, though, the theory has some validity. It would make sense for Saddam to maintain a bare-bones infrastructure that would be hard to detect and plausibly deniable if discovered. For a minimal investment, he could have kept in place a production line that could be ramped up within weeks. Unfortunately, not a single piece of evidence has been uncovered to support this theory.

What has been uncovered is not promising. The unit looking for WMDs, the 75th Exploitation Task Force, has so far uncovered a cache of vacuums, a buried swimming pool, powder from a high-school student's chemistry experiment, and a number of suspect sites that had already been looted. In recent weeks, discouraged members of the task force have been looking mostly for mass graves and other evidence of Saddam's atrocities.

That doesn't mean that the U.S. has given up on finding WMDs. Although the Exploitation Task Force is winding down, it will be replaced by the newly formed Iraq Survey Group, a force consisting of 1,200 inspectors and 800 support personnel and led by Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton of the Defense Intelligence Agency. In effect, the U.S. is doubling down in what has been until now a prolonged losing streak. A senior member of the group said he was confident that the weapons would eventually be found: "It's just a matter of poking a nose into the right hole. Eventually we will find the right hole."

That may be true. There might be just enough WMDs lying around from a decade ago to prove that Saddam had them. Unfortunately, we already knew he had them, and one of the justifications for this war was that there was a massive, ongoing weapons program. After 60 days of searching, it is beginning to appear that there was no such thing. The CIA is already beginning the process of examining its intelligence analysis to determine what went wrong. Official comment out of Washington claiming a just-in-time production line, or asking for multiple years to find proof, has to be seen for what it is: a process of lowering expectations.

Who is responsible for selling us this basket of goods? To that question there is only one answer -- Saddam Hussein.

It was Saddam who ignored 17 U.N. resolutions, kicked out U.N. inspectors, made verification impossible when he let the inspectors return, and obfuscated about the extent of his program at every opportunity. In the decade after the first Gulf War, it suited Saddam's purposes to create a high degree of strategic ambiguity about his weapons program. By denying that the weapons existed, he sought to forestall a U.S. attack. At the same time, he was doing everything possible to make it look as though he had a program. Why? Because in that area of the world there is a tremendous strategic gain in convincing your neighbors that you are the baddest kid on the block.

In all likelihood, Saddam played a game with the world and miscalculated. He did everything possible to convince all concerned that he was a dangerous man who possessed dangerous weapons. It was unfortunate for him that people took him at his word -- and that there was a U.S. president willing to act on the very real threat that he posed.

Are there still WMDs in Iraq waiting to be found? Did Saddam move his program to another country or underwrite another country's program? Did Iraq maintain only a base-level program that could be quickly brought up to scale once international pressure was lifted? Eventually, we will have the answers to all of these questions, but in terms of long-term geopolitical stability, it hardly matters. As the hunt for WMDs goes on, there are some simple truths that many seem to be forgetting: 1) At one time, Saddam had an extensive WMD program and enough chemical weapons and toxins to annihilate the eastern United States; 2) in the past, he used those weapons against his enemies, internal and external; and 3) he was an aggressive dictator who tortured and massacred his own people and bullied and periodically invaded neighboring countries.

For the past ten years, Saddam may have found it too costly or too difficult to maintain his WMD program. If that is true, we have U.N. sanctions to thank -- and the United States, which maintained pressure on the Iraqi regime and those who appeased it. Which leads to the greatest truth of all: In time, sanctions would have been relaxed and U.S. attention would have shifted to other areas of interest. And when that happened, Saddam would have had the ability, wherewithal, and proven inclination to quickly reconstitute a WMD program. The world is better off without that risk.