Vexing Questions On Iraq's Arsenal

The Bush administration claims to know with certainty that Iraq possesses biological and chemical weapons. But dangerous uncertainties will confront U.S. troops if they invade Iraq, reports CBSNews.com's Jarrett Murphy.

Military commanders face vexing questions: What weapons does Iraq really have? Where are they located? Will they actually be used?

Ideally, Pentagon planners would be able to pinpoint where Iraq's weapons are stored.

Experience suggests that reality will not match that ideal. CBS News Consultant Stephen Black, a former weapons inspector in Iraq, notes that during the 1991 Gulf War, only 15 percent of Iraqi nuclear, chemical, biological or missile sites were successfully targeted.

Even with sophisticated satellites and other data, there's an element of guesswork in tracking weapons down for destruction.

"It all comes down to this notion: What does a chemical bomb look like from space? It looks just like any other bomb, so you don't get intelligence that's explicit about movement of specific weapons," Black said.

U.S. targeting officers, then, have to rely on other indicators — things that, in the past, have been associated with weapons on mass destruction. For example, a convoy of Iraqi trucks could be hauling regular bombs or WMB bombs. But a convoy of Iraqi trucks followed by a chemical decontamination unit is likely to be carrying the latter.

However, there are things U.S. surveillance satellites probably won't see, including whether or not Iraq is placing its alleged stores of chemical or biological weapons inside warheads — if it hasn't already.

Some types of chemical weapons are so stable they can be stored for years. These "binary munitions" involve two types of liquids that combine at the last moment to form a deadly cocktail.

"We know that Iraq was working with binary munitions in the late eighties with a small measure of success," Black said. It's unclear whether they continued this project in the 1990s, but it would have been a logical "next step in the development of their chemical arsenal."

The problem is that U.S. surveillance could not see Iraq rushing to manufacture these weapons, because Iraq would not need to do so.

Other chemical and biological weapons that are less stable need to be manufactured just prior to deployment, so the agents inside them don't break down or leak out. Of this type, Black said, "We would expect that the Iraqis are right now filling munitions or that they filled them in the last week or so."

But even this last-minute rush may be invisible to U.S. surveillance. The process for loading agent into warheads is simple and small; in other words, it is easily hidden.

Iraq denies having any weapons of mass destruction, and in four months of work weapons inspectors did not discover any evidence that Iraq was hiding them — with one exception, the Al Samoud 2 missile.

Some tests showed the missile's range exceeded limits. Iraq moved to destroy them.

Unlike during the earlier inspector regime in the 1990s, the U.N. teams were allowed access to all sites. The inspectors have questioned U.S. intelligence that was supposed to point to illegal arms.

However, the United States contends that the Iraqis deceived the inspectors, and the inspectors themselves complained that Iraqi cooperation was lacking in several areas. Iraq said it had destroyed weapons but provided few documents, and was slow to grant private interviews with scientists.

If the U.S. allegations are true, Iraq could move very quickly from having weapons-grade material to actually deploying weapons. According to Black, a batch of liquid anthrax could be mixed up in about a week. Mobile weapons labs, if they exist, would come into play.

More important that the doubts over what Iraq has is whether Saddam Hussein will give his troops the authority to release chemical or biological weapons. There are two leading theories on that question.

"One is to realize that the use of special weapons has pretty significant downsides for Saddam and his people, and his underlying hope is, I think, that he will still be in charge of Iraq a year from now," Black said.

"One way to make sure that we will not go home without his head on a stick is to gas a bunch of Marines. So he's going to be loath to just give that release authority to anybody."

The other theory, Black explains, is "the use it or lose it notion." This holds that if Saddam thinks he cannot survive the war, "he's going to take as many people as possible."

An Iraqi official reportedly told a U.N. inspector that in the 1991 war, Saddam gave authority to his men to launch missiles containing chemical or biological materials at Israel if Baghdad were destroyed or the missile command lost contact with Saddam's high command.

But even that statement cannot be accepted on its face. It could be a strategic bluff, meant to discourage an attack with the mere idea that Saddam could do that again.

The danger of chemical and biological weapons is not nullified just because Saddam opts not to use them. The U.S. attack itself could release deadly agents into the vicinity of coalition troops.

During the 1991 war, there were concerns that Sarin gas was released when coalition troops destroyed the Iraqi ammunition depot at Khamisiyah.

"There's been an enormous amount of concern in the past ten years about whether or not coalition forces were exposed, if it was concentrated enough to hurt people, and if that was the cause of Gulf war syndrome," Black said.

Because of that worry, the military has spent a lot of time modeling what will happen when different types of bombs strike assorted kinds of weapons facilities. The Pentagon has also designed so-called "agent defeat munitions" that are designed to eliminate chemical and biological weapons with minimal risk to troops.

The molecular structure of the weapons themselves will be an ally of coalition troops in that effort.

"The same thing that makes them very effective against people makes them very fragile in a chemical sense," Black said.

If the Iraqis do use chemical or biological weapons, knowing what kind has been used could be crucial to troops' survival. Different agents disperse at different rates and require different contamination regimens. To some extent, victims need treatments specific to the agent with which they've been hit.
By Jarrett Murphy