[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 160 (Thursday, November 13, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12646-S12648]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   THE CURRENT CRISIS INVOLVING IRAQ

 Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, last week I submitted a statement 
for the record discussing my views on the situation in Iraq and the 
need for the United States to remain resolute in its dealings with the 
regime of Saddam Hussein.
  Today, I would like to submit a paper on the subject written by Tony 
Cordesman, currently at the Center for Strategic and International 
Studies and formerly a member of my staff. Tony's paper offers an 
excellent summation of Iraqi intentions and capabilities as well as 
providing expert analysis of what is at stake for the United States and 
its interests in the Middle East as a result of this most recent crisis 
involving Iraq and the United Nations Special Commission.
  I urge all of my colleagues in the Senate and the House to read this 
paper carefully. It offers insightful commentary on the potential 
ramifications of various policy alternatives that the United States and 
the United Nations may select in responding to Saddam's latest 
provocation. Toward that end, I respectfully request that Dr. 
Cordesman's paper be included in the Record, as well as this statement.
  The paper follows:

 What Is At Stake in the Crisis with Iraq--The Threat of Iraqi Weapons 
             of Mass Destruction and U.S. Military Options

                       (By Anthony H. Cordesman)

       Iraq's process of proliferation is so complex that it is 
     sometimes difficult to determine just how serious the 
     violations that UNSCOM has discovered really are, or to put 
     these violations in perspective relative to what UNSCOM has 
     already accomplished. Attachment One provides a short summary 
     of UNSCOM's most recent conclusions relating to Iraq's 
     efforts to cheat the UN. Attachment Two describes Iraq 
     programs before and during the Gulf War, what UNSCOM has 
     accomplished in the seven years that have followed, and what 
     remains unknown.


                 iraq's clandestine breakout capability

       These attachments show that the issue is not one of 
     sweeping up the details, but rather one of dealing with 
     massive violations, some of which occurred as recently as 
     August, 1997. At the same time, it is important to understand 
     that many UNSCOM and US experts believe Iran has started 
     completely separate new programs since the Gulf War, which 
     are so secret and dispersed that they are almost impossible 
     to detect. These programs may be largely at the research and 
     development level, but they may give Iraq a major ``break 
     out'' capability to rapidly produce and redeploy weapons of 
     mass destruction the moment that sanctions are lifted.
       Major possibilities that could be accomplished in small 
     research facilities and which could be rapidly moved or 
     dispersed include:
       UNSCOM and the IAEA's success have created new priorities 
     for Iraqi proliferation. The UN's success in destroying the 
     large facilities Iraq needs to produce fissile materials 
     already may well have led Iraq to focus on covert cell-like 
     activities to manufacture highly lethal biological weapons as 
     a substitute for nuclear weapons.
       All of the biological agents Iraq had at the time of the 
     Gulf War seem to have been ``wet'' agents with limited 
     storage life and limited operational lethality. Iraq may have 
     clandestinely carried out all of the research necessarily to 
     develop a production capability for dry, storage micro-power 
     weapons which would be far easier to clandestinely stockpile, 
     and have much more operational lethality.
       Iraq did not have advanced binary chemical weapons and most 
     of its chemical weapons used unstable ingredients. Iraq has 
     illegally imported specialized glassware since the Gulf War, 
     and may well have developed advanced binary weapons and 
     tested them in small numbers. It may be able to use a 
     wider range of precursors and have developed plans to 
     produce precursors in Iraq. It may have improved its 
     technology for the production of VX gas.
       Iraq is likely to covertly exploit Western analyses and 
     critiques of its pre-war proliferation efforts to correct 
     many of the problems in the organization of its proliferation 
     efforts, its weapons design, and its organization for their 
     use.
       Iraq bombs and warheads were relatively crude designs which 
     did not store chemical and biological agents well and which 
     did a poor job of dispersing them. Fusing and detonation 
     systems did a poor job of ensuring detonation at the right 
     height and Iraq made little use of remote sensors and weather 
     models for long-range targeting and strike planning. Iraq 
     could clandestinely design and test greatly improve shells, 
     bombs, and warheads. The key tests could be conducted using 
     towers, simulated agents, and even indoors. Improved 
     targeting, weather sensors, and other aids to strike planning 
     are dual-use or civil technologies that are not controlled by 
     UNSCOM. The net impact would be weapons that could be 5-10 
     times more effective than the relatively crude designs Iraq 
     had rushed into service under the pressure of the Iran-Iraq 
     War.
       UNSCOM and the IAEA's success give Iraq an equally high 
     priority to explore ways of obtaining fissile material from 
     the FSU or other potential supplier country and prepare for a 
     major purchase effort the moment sanctions and inspections 
     are lifted and Iraq has the hard currency to buy its way into 
     the nuclear club. Iraq could probably clandestinely assemble 
     all of the components of a large nuclear device except the 
     fissile material, hoping to find some illegal source of such 
     material.
       The components for cruise missiles are becoming steadily 
     more available on the commercial market, and Iraq has every 
     incentive to create a covert program to examine the 
     possibility of manufacturing or assembling cruise missiles in 
     Iraq.
       UN inspections and sanctions may also drive Iraq to adopt 
     new delivery methods ranging from clandestine delivery and 
     the use of proxies to sheltered launch-on-warning 
     capabilities designed to counter the U.S. advantage in 
     airpower.
       Iraq can legally maintain and test missiles with ranges up 
     to 150 kilometers. This allows for exoatmospheric reentry 
     testing and some testing of improved guidance systems. 
     Computer simulation, wind tunnel models, and production 
     engineering tests can all be carried out clandestinely under 
     the present inspection regime. It is possible that Iraq could 
     develop dummy or operational high explosive warheads with 
     shapes and weight distribution of a kind that would allow it 
     to test concepts for improving its warheads for weapons of 
     mass destruction. The testing of improved bombs using 
     simulated agents would be almost impossible to detect as 
     would the testing of improved spray systems for biological 
     warfare.
       Iraq has had half a decade in which to improve its decoys, 
     dispersal concepts, dedicated command and control links, 
     targeting methods, and strike plans. This kind of passive 
     warfare planning is impossible to forbid and monitor, but 
     ultimately is as important and lethal as any improvement in 
     hardware.
       There is no evidence that Iraq made an effort to develop 
     specialized chemical and biological devices for covert 
     operations, proxy

[[Page S12647]]

     warfare, or terrorist use. It would be simple to do so 
     clandestinely and they would be simple to manufacture.
       The key point is that only effective UNSCOM operations can 
     deter Iraq from rapidly rebuilding its wartime capabilities, 
     and sparking a new arms race that is certain to lead Iran to 
     reply in kind and present major new problems for U.S. forces 
     in the region and our Southern Gulf allies.


                         U.S. military options

       The U.S. must be careful to try to preserve as much 
     international consensus as it can in support of the UNSCOM 
     effort. It must be careful to avoid using threat or force in 
     a way that could further split the U.N. Security Council, or 
     win this round and lose the war. We need to be sensitive to 
     humanitarian concerns about punishing the Iraqi people in 
     ways that do not really punish Saddam. We also need to be 
     careful about the kind of threats and token strikes that have 
     no real effect on what Saddam holds vital, and which end in 
     convincing him that he can win a war of sanctions against the 
     U.S., and allowing Saddam to show that he can defy the U.N. 
     and U.S. with impunity.
       We also need to understand that UNSCOM and sanctions are 
     not a failure. Iraq imported over $80 billion worth of arms 
     during the Iran-Iraq War. It was importing around $3 billion 
     worth of arms a year at the time of the Gulf War. It needs a 
     minimum of about $1.5 billion a year worth of imports simply 
     to keep its military machine alive. Iraq, however, has had no 
     significant military imports since 1990, and has had no 
     successes in mass producing a single advanced weapon in Iraq. 
     It has a $20 billion deficit in arms imports, and it has not 
     been able to import a single new weapon or technology to 
     react to the devastating lessons of the Gulf War. It has less 
     than half the tanks and half the combat aircraft it did at 
     the time of the Gulf War.
       UNSCOM is not perfect, but it is the most successful arms 
     control regime in history. It has destroyed virtually all of 
     Iraq major facilities for producing missiles, and chemical, 
     biological, and nuclear weapons. Virtually all of these 
     facilities survived the Gulf War. It has supervised the 
     destruction of nearly 100,000 chemical and biological weapons 
     and/or major components and manufacturing devices for such 
     weapons, and thousands of tons of precursors for making 
     chemical weapons.
       It was UNSCOM that discovered Iraq's massive biological 
     weapons and VX nerve gas programs, and it did so in 1995, 
     four years after the war was over. In the six years since the 
     cease-fire, there has never been a six month reporting period 
     in which UNSCOM has not made another major discovery, 
     including the period between April and October, 1997. It is 
     UNSCOM intrusive monitoring program which limits Iraq's 
     unceasing clandestine efforts and prevents Iraq from rapidly 
     manufacturing large numbers of advanced biological and 
     chemical weapons.
       Keeping UNSCOM alive and effective is far more important 
     than forcing a military showdown with Saddam. If threats and 
     negotiation can work, they should be allowed to do so. 
     Unilateral U.S. military action, or action with a limited or 
     forced international consensus, should be a last resort 
     because making Saddam back down this time might come at the 
     cost of undermining or ending support for sanctions.
       At the same time, force and no inaction must be the last 
     resort. Preventing Iraq from proliferating and a new and 
     totally destabilizing arms race between Iran and Iraq is a 
     vital national security interest. So is the defense of our 
     Arab allies and Israel, and the protection of our own power 
     projection forces. Our economy is dependent on the global 
     price and availability of oil, and the Persian Gulf is the 
     key to energy security.
       Fortunately, the US does have military options that it can 
     execute with and without allied support. They also go far 
     beyond the kind of pointlessly expensive slap on the wrist 
     that the US has used in firing cruise missiles against 
     targets Saddam does not really value like an intelligence 
     headquarters, or military targets with cruise missiles could 
     not destroy.
       Some of these options do not require immediate US military 
     action. The US can shift the burden of triggering military 
     action to Saddam. These include ``halt or shoot'' options 
     like forbidding all Iraqi military flights. This could 
     include only combat fixed wing aircraft, or all aircraft 
     including helicopters and transports. A nation-wide no-fly 
     zone would paralyze and weaken critical Iraqi military 
     capabilities. Another step would be a demand for a nation-
     wide halt to all armored movements larger than battalion 
     sized units. This would destroy the Iraqi army's ability to 
     train and exercise. A third such option would be to attack 
     and destroy any facility where UNSCOM is denied timely 
     access. A fourth option would be to destroy any military 
     facility or production plant where new construction or 
     manufacturing activity began. A fifth option would be to 
     destroy any facility where Iraq has interfered with the UN 
     monitoring equipment or tags. None of these options would 
     hurt the Iraq people. All would threaten the ``crown jewels'' 
     of Saddam's regime.
       There are other ``crown jewels'' that the US could attack 
     without waiting and which would not hurt the Iraqi people. 
     These include the airbases with Saddam's remaining MiG-29s, 
     Su-24s, and Mirage F-1s: The only aircraft he has left that 
     really matter. The US does not have to destroy the entire 
     Iraqi Air Force. Few in Iraq would mourn the destruction of 
     the Special Republican Guards, and this force is critical to 
     Saddam's security. The US could expand these attacks to cover 
     all critical Iraqi security facilities, and this time the 
     attacks should be designed to kill as many occupants as 
     possible and should be sustained until Saddam completely 
     backs down. Destroying Iraq's remaining military production 
     facilities on a step-by-step basis would confront Saddam with 
     the risk of losing his conventional military capabilities. 
     Ordinary Iraqis are also unlikely to mourn the destruction of 
     Saddam's new palaces, and this gives us at least 17 targets 
     that were built or rebuilt after UN sanctions began.
       In short, we do have good options if we are forced to use 
     them and if we have the will to escalate beyond military 
     tokenism. Further, these options will exist long after the 
     current crisis is over. They can be made part of a clear 
     declaratory doctrine regarding Iraq, and such a doctrine is 
     clearly needed. It should be made unambiguously clear to the 
     world that the US will enforce the terms of the UN Cease-fire 
     until Iraq's capabilities to produce weapons of mass 
     destruction are destroyed and will not allow Iraqi to 
     rebuild. The US should not telegraph its punches by 
     specifying a given action for a given violation, but it 
     should make it clear to the world as well as Saddam that the 
     US will always act. The US should also make it clear that it 
     will raise the cost to Saddam each time he provokes another 
     crisis and that he will force escalation if other incidents 
     follow. We should not be trigger happy, but we must not let 
     ``sanctions fatigue'' lead to ``proliferation fatigue'' and a 
     horrifying new arms race in the Gulf.
                                  ____


Iraq's ``Clandestine Break Out Capability:'' Covert Programs Iraq Could 
 Have Undertaken Since the Cease-Fire That UNSCOM Might Not Detect or 
                                Prevent

                       (By Anthony H. Cordesman)

       UNSCOM and IAEA's success have created new priorities for 
     Iraqi proliferation. The UN's success in destroying the large 
     facilities Iraq needs to produce fissile materials already 
     may well have led Iraq to focus on covert cell-like 
     activities to manufacture highly lethal biological weapons as 
     a substitute for nuclear weapons.
       All of the biological agents Iraq had at the time of the 
     Gulf War seem to have been ``wet'' agents with limited 
     storage life and limited operational lethality. Iraq may have 
     clandestinely carried out all of the research necessarily to 
     develop a production capacity for dry, storage micro-power 
     weapons which would be far easier to clandestinely stockpile, 
     and have much more operational lethality.
       Iraq did not have advanced binary chemical weapons and most 
     of its chemical weapons used unstable ingredients. Iraq has 
     illegally imported specialized glassware since the Gulf War, 
     and may well have developed advanced binary weapons and 
     tested them in small numbers. It may be able to use a wider 
     range of precurors and have developed plans to produce 
     precursors in Iraq. It may have improved its technology for 
     the production of VX gas.
       Iraq is likely to covertly exploit Western analyses and 
     critiques of its pre-war proliferation efforts to correct 
     many of the problems in the organization of its proliferation 
     efforts, its weapons design, and its organization of their 
     use.
       Iraq bombs and warheads were relatively crude designs which 
     did not store chemical and biological agents well and which 
     did a poor job of dispersing them. Fusing and detonation 
     systems did a poor job of ensuring detonation at the right 
     height and Iraq made little use of remote sensors and weather 
     models for long-range targeting and strike planning. Iraq 
     could clandestinely design and test greatly improve shells, 
     bombs, and warheads. The key tests could be conducted using 
     towers, simulated agents, and even indoors. Improved 
     targeting, weather senors, and other aids to strike planning 
     are dual-use or civil technologies that are not controlled by 
     UNSCOM. The net impact would be weapons that could be 5-10 
     times more effective than the relatively crude designs Iraq 
     had rushed into service under the pressure of the Iran-Iraq 
     War.
       UNSCOM and the IAEA's success give Iraq an equally high 
     priority to explore ways of obtaining fissile material from 
     the FSU or other potential supplier country and prepare for a 
     major purchase effort the moment sanctions and inspections 
     are lifted and Iraq has the hard currency to buy its way into 
     the nuclear club. Iraq could probably clandestinely assemble 
     all of the components of a large nuclear device except that 
     fissile material, hoping to find some illegal source of such 
     material.
       The components for cruise missiles are becoming steadily 
     more available on the commercial market, and Iraq has every 
     incentive to create a covert program to examine the 
     possibility of manufacturing or assembling cruise missiles in 
     Iraq.
       UN inspections and sanctions may also drive Iraq to adopt 
     new delivery methods ranging from clandestine delivery and 
     the use of proxies to sheltered launch-on-warning 
     capabilities designed to counter the US advantage in 
     airpower.
       Iraq can legally maintain and test missiles with ranges up 
     to 150 kilometers. This allows for exoatmospheric reentry 
     testing and some

[[Page S12648]]

     testing of improved guidance systems. Computer simulation, 
     wind tunnel models, and production engineering tests can all 
     be carried out clandestinely under the present inspection 
     regime. It is possible that Iraq could develop dummy or 
     operational high explosive warheads with shapes and weight 
     distribution of a kind that would allow it to test concepts 
     for improving its warheads for weapons of mass destruction. 
     The testing of improved bombs using simulated agents would be 
     almost impossible to detect as would be testing of improved 
     spray systems for biological warfare.
       Iraq has had half a decade in which to improve its decoys, 
     dispersal concepts, dedicated command and control links, 
     targeting methods, and strike plans. This kind of passive 
     warfare planning is impossible to forbid and monitor, but 
     ultimately is as important and lethal as any improvement in 
     hardware.
       There is no evidence that Iraq made an effort to develop 
     specialized chemical and biological devices for covert 
     operations, proxy warfare, or terrorist use. It would be 
     simple to do so clandestinely and they would be simple to 
     manufacture.

                          ____________________