Rumsfeld says Iraq has chemical, biological weapons, links to terrorism
Iraq-USA, Politics, 7/31/2002

Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq has chemical and biological weapons and is seeking to develop nuclear capabilities, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Yesterday.

Rumsfeld said the U.S. government has been explaining to people at home and abroad what this capability plus Iraq's ties to organizations like al Qaeda mean to the security of the world.

He said Iraq's efforts at concealing weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them are indicative of the problem worldwide. He said Iraq and other countries are "burrowing underground" to conceal these facilities. They are also building mobile facilities, which make them difficult to find and hit.

Further complicating the situation is dual-use technologies. These are technologies that have a benign civilian use and a military use. Examples are technologies that can make medicines, but also can be used to make biological weapons.

Finding all these facilities is difficult. "Think back to Iraq, and the number of inspectors that were milling about that country for a good, long period and the difficulty they had -- except when prompted by defectors -- to know where things were," Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld said that a biological research factory can be on a moving truck. A matter which constitutes a problem in case only air weapons are used.

He opined about having U.N. inspectors back in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction, missiles and factories to make such weapons. "It would take such a thoroughly intrusive inspection regime, agreed to and then lived up to by Iraq, that it's difficult to even begin to think they might accept such a regime," he said.

He said any inspection regime in Iraq would have to be without notice. Inspectors must have the freedom to go anywhere at anytime. "I still suspect it would require the assistance of defectors and insiders simply because of the ease of hiding things," he said.

Rumsfeld said it is no secret a regime change in Iraq has been U.S. policy for some time. The policy started in the Clinton administration, is approved by Congress and is supported by the Bush administration. He said the United States is addressing this in a variety of ways including through diplomatic, economic and military means.

Meantime, Rumsfeld commenting about the news reports of various US plans to attack Iraq said yesterday "One of the responsibilities of the Department of Defense is to see that we have thought through a host of different contingencies and possibilities."

All the plans are reviewed on a two-year cycle, US officials say. "when something happens that is close to that type of event, the plan is taken off the shelf, looked at, then recast and recalibrated to fit the fact pattern that actually occurred," Rumsfeld said. "And so they're always going to be slightly out-of-date. They're always going to be needing refreshed -- to be refreshed. And they always exist, and they have always have."

Previous Stories:
  New York Times: American plan to attack Iraq's center   (7/30/2002)
  Iraqi opposition leader visits Turkey, meets US officials   (7/30/2002)
  One Iraqi killed, 22 wounded in a raid against southern Iraq   (7/24/2002)
  Cheney: no Iraq -terrorism connection   (3/25/2002)

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