The Threat From Weapons of Mass Destruction

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ATTEMPTING TO UNRAVEL THE TRUTH OF BIOWEAPONS IN
IRAQ How did we get it so wrong? Patricia M.
Lewis UN Institute for Disarmament Research
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The cats out of the bag

• Youll see me there, said the Cat, and
  vanished. Alice was not much surprised at this,
  she was getting so well used to queer things
  happening. While she was still looking at the
  place where it had been, it suddenly appeared
  again. Bye-the-bye, what became of the baby?
  said the Cat. Id nearly forgotten to ask. It
  turned into a pig, Alice answered very quietly,
  just as if the Cat had come back in a natural
  way. I thought it would, said the Cat, and
  vanished again.

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Grave errors

• In 2003, the prevailing view that Iraq still
  possessed a considerable WMD capacity was an
  error. It was an error that cost tens of
  thousands of lives and so we must spend time
  trying to understand how such a dreadful mistake
  could have been made.
• What can we learn from this mistake so that
  structures are put in place to prevent the like
  of such errors being made again?

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UNSCOM

• 1991-1998
• first bioweapons inspection August 1991
• programme of biological research for military
  purposes.. could be used for both defensive and
  offensive purposes
• 7 August, Iraq handed over 70 unused, original
  vials of microbial materials including bacillus
  anthracis, clostridium botulinum, clostridium
  perfringens and brucella.
• claimed that all microbial cultures had been
  ordered to be destroyed in late 1990.

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Defection Admission

• August 1995 defection of Hussein Kamal Hassan,
• October 1995 Iraq admitted weaponizing bioagents
  including the filling of 166 bombs and 25 Al
  Hussein warheads.
• Iraq admitted the production of 19,000 litres of
  botulinum toxin, 8,500 litres of anthrax and
  2,200 litres of aflatoxin, of these some 10,000
  litres of botulinum toxin, 6,500 litres of
  anthrax and 1,580 litres of aflatoxin were
  reported to have been filled into weapons.

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Oral Order

• 1996, Iraqi claimed that in May-June 1991, an
  oral order was given to destroy the biomunitions
  and the bulk agent.
• Some 8,000 litres of botox, 2,000 litres of
  anthrax and 340 litres of gas gangrene and
  aflatoxin were said to have been emptied into the
  septic tank at Al Hakam and been thus destroyed.

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All gone in 91?

• Recent genotypic analysis of the samples showed
  that the anthrax strain from the Al Hakam site is
  the same strain as used in Iraqs agent
  production
• And analysis of potassium permanganate, nucleic
  acids, bacilli and spore-forming bacteria from
  the sites, supports hypothesis that large amounts
  of B.Athracis were deactivated and destroyed
  prior to 1997
• It is now clear that the most likely fate of the
  B. Athracis was destruction in 1991-2

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Hiatus

• 1998-2002
• No inspections
• Setting up UNMOVIC
• Time to analyse

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Back to Iraq

• 2002-2003
• UNMOVIC inspections
• 2003-2005
• US inspections

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Lessons

• Arms Control
• Treating Information
• Intelligence and verification
• Knowledge

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Arms Control Lessons

• A combination of inspections, export controls and
  sanctions work
• Before 2003 it was believed that inspections in
  Iraq had failed and that Iraq had managed to hide
  away its bioweapons capability.
• The BWC protocol negotiations collapsed due to
  the belief that effective verification was not
  feasible.
• But that belief was based on error UNSCOM had
  indeed unravelled the full extent of Iraqs BW
  programme and had found what there was to find.
• It is now clear that the efficacy of the UNSCOM
  inspections coupled with the sanctions regime
  were the deciding factors in Saddam Husseins
  decision to destroy stocks of WMD.

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Treating Information

• Not believing is not equal to believing the
  opposite.
• It was justifiable to be sceptical of Iraqs
  statements but should have also kept in mind that
  we had no hard proof that Iraq had such weapons
  still.
• Decision-makers need to be less sure of their
  assumptions.
• Uncertainties inherent in the human sources of
  the intelligence agencies (such as single source
  concerns, motivations, ambiguities, fabrication,
  exaggeration etc.) should be given greater weight
  than they are.

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Intelligence Verification

• The information gleaned from intelligence methods
  is different from the information gathered
  through arms control verification measures
• Time to stop pretending that through intelligence
  gathering we can know everything or that a
  verification regime has to provide us with 100
  certainty for it to be valuable or even
  admissible.
• We live with uncertainties.

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Knowledge

• What is it we know? What is it we understand?
• Each generation has to build on the knowledge
  acquired by the ancestors and thus will find
  flaws in past understandings and gaps in our
  knowledge.
• What we handle so badly is the extent of our
  ignorance.
• Somehow leaders feel the need to pretend to know
  things when they dont. Thus we can embark on a
  programme of self-delusion and deception, not
  through any malicious intent, rather through
  feelings of inadequacy when faced with our own
  ignorance.

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Are you sure?

• What we firmly believe, if it is true, is called
  knowledge. What we firmly believe, if it is not
  true is called error.
• Knowledge, Error and Probable Opinion, in The
  Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell, Oxford
  University Press, first published 1912, taken
  from sixteenth impression, 1989, p81

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That cat again

• All right said the Cat and this time it
  vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of
  the tail, and ending with the grin, which
  remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

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