Saddam’s “Special Weapons” went by air to Syria, Belarus, and possibly Russia and Libya as well. They went by ground to Syria, and they went by sea to points unreported. The plan was called “Sarindar” (“Emergency Exit”), and wasn’t much different in general strategic terms from the American flight from Saigon, South Vietnam. Just as US embassy officials shredded and burned documents in Saigon, and again in Tehran, Kabul, and a dozen other fallen nations, the Russians and others did what they could to move, hide, and/or destroy their sensitive documents, equipment that they’d provided to Saddam’s Regime, and allegedly his WMD and WMD equipment as well. “By air, by land, and by sea” That is the claim made by Gen. Sada, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Shaw, and Gen. Ibrahim, Ariel Sharon, Israeli intelligence, and many more.
Clandestine movements by air and land have been discussed. The story of “Sarindar” by sea follows. Allegedly two Russian ships left the Umm Qasr port in the months before the war and went to the Indian Ocean. On board were supposedly some of Saddam’s WMD chemical precursors. According to the “Sarindar” plan, they were to be taken to a deep part of the ocean and dumped. It is completely impossible to fathom that Russian ships could enter the Persian Gulf, dock in Iraq, load up and pass through the Persian Gulf again, then into the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean all within 100 miles of between one and three entire American aircraft carrier battleships as well as two Marine Amphibious Assault task forces. There is no way that those two ships were not monitored by dozens-perhaps even hundreds-of American and Coalition warships. What is known for certain is that just before the war, mainstream media reported that two Russian warships and a tanker were positioned off the Persian Gulf allegedly to monitor the situation. More likely they were there to ensure that none of the Coalition naval forces threatened to board the Russian ships. In fact, from March 20 onward the Coalition stopped and seized all ships bound for Iraq (often under the disguise of being part of the Oil-For-Food program). Those that were in fact found to be carrying humanitarian supplies had their cargos delivered by the US military instead.
Now, opponents of the war often like to parse words and rhetorically argue that the war was about WMD and not WMD precursor chemicals. Compare Saddam to the late Timothy McVeigh. Both committed mass murder, both belonged in prison. Had Timothy McVeigh worked in the prison autoshop and been caught with a gallon of gasoline in his locker as well as a few pounds of fertilizer, would that have been a threat? Absolutely! He used those chemicals to make the bomb that used to commit mass murder, and similarly Saddam used different combinations of different chemicals to commit mass murder.
The Duelfer Report, after action reports from US Forces, and even mainstream media have all shown photos and video of the thousands and thousands of empty artillery shells positioned at chlorine plants, pesticide plants, and “former” chemical weapons manufacturing plants. While empty artillery shells are not an imminent threat, they could be filled in hours and turned into WMD. Most of Saddam’s program had been redesigned to make fresh, potent chemical and biological weapons in hours in some cases, and so the issue becomes his intent.
Did he intend to make fresh WMD with chemical precursors-like those allegedly dumped by Russian ships? The Duelfer Report says absolutely yes, and it makes that claim based on interviews with regime leaders as well as Saddam and his history of doing so. Having said all that, some chemicals-like chlorine and pesticides-are dual use and do have non-military uses, but other chemicals do not. For example SCUD missile fuel is unique to SCUD missiles. Hans Blix’ UNMOVIC couldn’t even explain why Saddam’s regime was making SCUD missile fuel. When the war started, this chemical was gone. Perhaps deep-sixed in the Indian Ocean? Missing also are the binary chemical agents that Saddam could only have used to combine and make fresh nerve agent before loading into empty artillery shells and rockets, or the illegal missiles he was found to have by post-war investigations (at least 22 of these illegal missiles were fired at Coalition forces. None had chemical warheads, but post-war investigations did find that the missiles had been widened to fit SCUD warheads of which there remain several missing chemical warheads).
By air, by land, and by sea, Saddam paid the Russians and Syrians to get rid of his illegal WMD, WMD equipment, documents, and people. That Saddam once had horrific weapons is not in debate. Many were destroyed or decayed, and the Duelfer Report lists them in great detail, but it also lists many Remaining Unresolved Disarmament Issues. For someone to claim that all of Saddam’s weapons were destroyed and not moved out of Iraq in the 15-month “rush-to-war”, then that someone must be able to present greater evidence of the destruction of those remaining Unresolved Disarmament Issues-evidence greater than the mounting pile that suggests they were removed from Iraq. When someone claims that Saddam destroyed all his anthrax and other chemical and biological agents, and the war was one big “Bush lie” about WMD, they need only be asked to provide some evidence of its destruction: contaminated sand, witnesses, documentation, photos, any evidence. Fact is, for thousands of liters, there is no evidence of destruction by Saddam, but there is evidence it was moved. These terrible weapons do not simply vanish on their own, and given that a tablespoon of some can kill hundreds of thousands…it seems to me that they should be accounted for rather than dismissed to fit a political agenda.
Part one here
Part two here
Part three here
Author of “Reparations and America’s 2nd Civil War
Reparations and America’s 2nd Civil War: Malensek, Scott: 9798864028674: Amazon.com: Books
After four years of listening to the WMD arguments of not having them, it dawned on me that hey,there was/is no statute of limitations that I know of!!
cs
Trackbacked by The Thunder Run – Web Reconnaissance for 06/22/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
Nicely done. How and why Saddam earned so much trust from the anti-war Bush-hating Left I don’t know. Oh, wait, I just answered my own question.
Do you remember the 3 ships in the Indian Ocean that were unmarked and unresponsive to everyone? This was before, during and after the war. I am still waiting for an explaination of those ships.
Also, who ever heard of giving your enemy 8 freakin’ months advance notice that you were going to attack? We might as well have given the directions we were coming! Oh, wait. We did, didn’t we? Remember the NY Times?
If we do not look at the whole ME as the problem, we neglect it at our own peril. Great post. Have a good day.
Rosemary,
I remember that in the early days of OIF.
My mind is not going!
It’s not a mirage….it’s not a figment of my imagination.
Three mystery ships are tracked over suspected “weapons” cargo
By Michael Harrison,
Independent.,
19 February 2003
“The ships were chartered by a shipping agent based in Egypt and are flying under the flags of three different countries. The continued radio silence since they left port, in addition to the captains` failure to provide information on their cargoes or their destinations, is a clear breach of international maritime laws.”
http://www.homelandsecurityus.net/ports%20and%20maritime%20terrorism/three_mystery_ships_are_tracked_.htm
I remember hearing that on the network news.
We did give Saddam ample time to clear his illicit wares out of the country. He knew we would get bogged down with Kofi’s UN procedures and that would buy time.
Three mystery ships are tracked over suspected “weapons” cargo
By Michael Harrison,
Independent.,
19 February 2003
“…the ships have been sailing around the world`s oceans for the past three months while maintaining radio silence in clear violation of international maritime law, say authoritative shipping industry sources.
http://www.homelandsecurityus.net/ports%20and%20maritime%20terrorism/three_mystery_ships_are_tracked_.htm
No, it’s not. Iraq’s Scud variants used kerosene as fuel, which as we all know has rather a large number of other, non-Scud applications. Iraq’s Scuds did use IRFNA as oxidizer, which has a rather narrow regime of uses, to understate it. But in any case, rocket fuel (or oxidizers) aren’t particularly unique to one missile type or other. Unless you’re talking really exotic fuels like pentaborane, or exotic oxidizers like ClF5, but no one uses those, least of all copycat rocketry nations like Iraq.
Great comments Slartibartfast! I’m no rocket scientist, and so I can only attest to what’s been reported by weapons inspectors:
Iraqi engineers believed that the performance of their engines would be improved by using a more energetic fuel instead of kerosene. Iraq contracted with a foreign firm for such a fuel, and 10 tonnes of the propellant, UDMH, were delivered around October 1989. Iraq sought foreign assistance to set up a production line, but failed in these efforts.
…
As Iraq has recently declared that it had resumed R&D of UDMH [Unsymmetrical Dimethyl Hydrazine] fuel, it needs to clarify the purpose for such activity. Concerning the new larger test stand in Al Rafah, Iraq needs to clarify the purpose of the stand, including the reason why it has developed a horizontal test stand.
Actions that Iraq could take to help resolve the issue
– Present documents or other evidence substantiating its declared destruction of the UDMH [Unsymmetrical Dimethyl Hydrazine] fuel.
– Explain with credible evidence why it had resumed R&D on UDMH.
– Explain with credible evidence why it has developed a horizontal test stand at the Al Rafah site.
-source: 3/6/03 UNMOVIC, Unresolved Disarmament Issues report
[curious, did Saddam’s regime do any of those actions demanded by UNMOVIC?]
We have discovered…
…Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.
-10/2/03 Iraqi Survey Group Interim Report (unclassified)-David Kay
According to several missile officials, Al Karamah changed the fuel used in the HY-2 from TG-02 to higher-energy AZ-11 (a blend of 89% DETA and 11% UDMH). The change required adjustments to the engine fuel pumps to optimize the fuel/oxidizer mixture ratios.
-Iraq Survey Group, “Duelfer Report†volume 2
Are there civilian uses for UDMH, and if so, why was Saddam’s rocket science dept pursuing it rather than those civilian entities that would use it as well?
No, UDMH doesn’t have much in the way of civilian use. Hydrazine itself does (hydrazine makes a decent fuel, too), but UDMH and MMH (monomethyl hydrazine) are pretty much only used as rocket fuel. Oh, there might be some arcane industrial use for one of those, but nothing that would require production of hundreds of pounds of the stuff.
UDMH has some advantages as far as specific impulse goes, which translates to ability to throw the same payload farther, or a heavier payload the same distance. The advantage isn’t all that big, though; about 5%; a Scud wouldn’t be instantly able to throw twice the payload. UDMH and MMH are preferable because they’re more stable, not because they burn “hotter” (they don’t; you sacrifice about 20% of the Isp improvement for stability).
None of that does anything to the Scud to make it a more useful weapon, though. Scud accuracy is measured in miles; Iraq would have done much better to improve its guidance system than tink around with propulsion. I’d guess that the dinking around with propulsion was aimed at longer-term development efforts, possibly to get them more independent of superannuated Soviet machinery.
Some of that was garble. If you use kerosene as a reference fuel, think of that performance as 1.0, normalized. On that scale, hydrazine would give you 1.05, while UDMH would give you about 1.04.
Again, GREAT post, but I have to reiterate further…
“Actions that Iraq could take to help resolve the issue
– Present documents or other evidence substantiating its declared destruction of the UDMH [Unsymmetrical Dimethyl Hydrazine] fuel.
– Explain with credible evidence why it had resumed R&D on UDMH.
– Explain with credible evidence why it has developed a horizontal test stand at the Al Rafah site.
-source: 3/6/03 UNMOVIC, Unresolved Disarmament Issues report
[curious, did Saddam’s regime do any of those actions demanded by UNMOVIC?]”
Clearly, the production or obtaining of some UDMH and even having mountains of SCUDs wasn’t a direct threat of an attack in motion, but they are symptomatic of the greater problem, and that is that by 2003 inspections could not be used to build “confidence” in Iraq’s claims that they’d disarmed.
I hate to degrade to analogies, but Gen Tommy Franks and his deputy Gen DeLong both described what was found in Iraq in terms of an analogy. They both essentially said that what was found was a convicted/confessed murderer who was out on parole. In the past, his worst murders were done using a Tommy gun. He was sitting at a table, with parts of a Tommy gun all around him, empty .45acp shell casings, a few bags of pistol powder, a shell loading setup, molds for .45acp, lead bars, a desktop lead smelter, a few empty .45acp clips and drums for a Tommy gun, oh, and all the while the guy’s sitting at the table saying almost every single day that he considers us a threat, and he raves about how “someone” could just do us in using a Tommy gun. Additionally calling on the Holy Warriors to kill us.
THAT’s the threat.
‘course, today’s war in Iraq is a completely different war, with a different enemy, a different objective, and a different threat. All that remains the same is the location (over simplified).
I’m not arguing counter to any of that, Scott. I’m just pointing out that Scud fuel is not unique to Scuds. It might be that Scud fuel is unique to rockets, but I still think it might be a better argument that the oxidizer is, because I don’t think IRFNA has very many industrial non-rocketry applications.
IOW, I’m being nit-picky.
What else is UDMH used for again?
Besides, to 99.999% of the people out there UDMH, IRFNA, and WMD are just X to a an argument based on X where X can remain an unknown even if warehouses of crates marked X were shown on CNN.
nit picky…I dunno. I like that kinda discussion, but, again, most people just want to degrade the 1000+pages of the ISG rpt to 5 letters, “NOWMD”…same as Moby Dick’s Cliff’s notes are just 5 letters, “WHALE”
So, perhaps UDMH and IRFNA combined make the case better rather than one or the other?
😉
My apologies, Scott. I didn’t realize that you were citing UNMOVIC documents as evidence that Iraq was using UDMH as fuel. Possibly there’s context here (in the preceding articles to this) that I’ve missed, but those documents don’t say that UDMH was ever used in a fielded missile, just that they had acquired but not accounted for some UDMH that they were using to test some rocket motors. They imported 10 tons; they used (I estimate, if they were doing a full-length burn) 1 ton, which left them with enough UDMH for 9 missiles.
In a narrow sense, then, UDMH isn’t identifiable as Scud fuel because, simply put, fielded Scuds don’t use it as fuel. In a wider sense, UDMH is not identifiable as Scud fuel because other missiles use it as fuel.
Hydrazine and kerosene are a bit different because they have industrial use outside of rocketry, but the above applies in addition to that consideration.
You bring up a great tangential point re UNMOVIC and their reliabilty or their use for assessing Iraqi threat. UNMOVIC had to turn a blind eye to such things as pesticides, dual use chemicals, etc. I remember seeing pic on CNN online back when the invasion was still occurring. They showed drums of “concentrated pesticide” sitting in trenches with camo netting over them and stacks of mortar rounds next to them. Similarly, we can recall that US forces from the 3rd ID found pallets of empty artillery shells that were sitting outside chlorine production facilities. Or there’s the infamous “shampoo bottling” facility at the Muthanna chemical weapons and Iraqi hair supply military base. My personal favorite was the perfume atomizers shown in the ISG report. No big deal finding perfume bottle atomizers except that they were at the chemical weapons plant where detainees said they were waiting to be using in makeshift chem warheads. So many things are benign in and of themselves. A bullet does kill someone…it’s the person who uses their will to fling it at someone at 2100fps. To that end, what’s a dangerous threat look like? I mean, they could have shown a 10million gallon tank of IRFNA, UDMH, oxidizer, stacks of chlorine drums, tanks filled with anthrax (powder or liquid), and it wouldn’t matter to too many people. They could have paraded tanker trucks loaded with Iraqi VX through NYC to the UN, and it still wouldn’t have been deemed a threat (perhaps a material breach, but not a threat).
Why? Because too often we see (as we saw yesterday in the HuffPo piece) that dictators, the people who fire the bullet or don’t, who call for jihad or don’t, who use WMD or don’t, are excused. Yesterday we saw (and it’s not a new claim) opponents of the war claim that Hitler, Stalin, or any mass murdering dictator…isn’t as bad as President Bush. I don’t think there could be clearer evidence that no proof of WMD or presence of any proscribed matl would be accepted as proof of threat, and that’s because the opposition will accept any level of real threat, justify it, excuse it, and deny it to no end.
In my book, Iraq’s Smoking Gun, I have pics of the missiles in the Cuban Missile Crisis. I included them as an example of the kind of proof that is acceptable for pre-empting a nuclear holocaust, and thus should be acceptable for pre-empting an invasion of a country like Iraq. Prior to writing the book, I posted them on a few left-leaning sites and baited opponents of the war. I said, “Are these missiles proof of a threat?” Overwhelmingly the answer was a defiant and absolute, NO!
Clearly you know much more about rocket science than I. If IRFNA is a better example of a proscribed matl, ok. If UDMH can be used for dry cleaning or anything else, ok. My point is the bigger picture, that Iraq was a threat that couldn’t be removed or resolved via inspections. Deeper than that re UDMH, etc., I’d have to say that any specific rocket fuel disarmament issue could have and should have been resolved in the three months between 12/02 and 3/03. I am extremely confident that evidence of destruction of any and almost all chemical issues could have been made through soil sample submission if nothing else.
Great responses again btw.
Got any comments on the cluster warheads which were found for their non-scud missiles?
Ok, to be clear: I am not a rocket scientist. I’ve been around the stuff a bit, but I’m not a propulsion guy. I’ve been a guidance and navigation guy in a missiles context, and I’ve done some systems engineering work with whole missiles centering on propulsion, but I’m not a rocket scientist.
Just wanted to get that out of the way.
I didn’t see where they found cluster warheads, just that they were mentioned. Cluster warheads might or might not be alarming. As you’re probably aware, the problem with chem/bio weapons is getting them dispensed so that as large an area as possible is presented with a lethal dose, as opposed to a larger area getting a nonlethal dose, or a very very small area getting an overdose. Chem/bio clusters might make that easier, possibly; that’s definitely way out of my area. HE clusters would just be more or less what we currently use in weapons like WCMD.
If we’d found chem/bio cluster weapons post-invasion, that’s be pretty telling. But I don’t need convincing. And at this stage of the game, for those that do need convincing, you’d have to find barrels full of nuclear warheads together with irrefutable photographic evidence of where it came from and how. And I think we all know what the odds of that are.
And if it did happen, the timing would be questioned.
LOL!
Well, to me you’re a rocket scientist (propulsion, whatever). Take it as the compliment it is intended. 🙂
Yeah, they found cluster warheads for the rockets, but they were HE (I think). The only chem/bio cluster warheads were research done earlier where they took S African cluster bombs (big bomblets), and experimented with them. For some “odd” reason, Iraq bought more of these S African cluster bombs in 2000 and 2002. Pics of the all the cluster munitions just described are in the ISG rpt.
🙂
Actually, I used to tell anyone who asked what I did for a living that I was a rocket scientist. It was the shortest description I could come up with for my job at the time, even if it wasn’t entirely accurate.
The real rocket scientists eat, breathe and sleep mass fractions, payload ratios, exhaust velocities, etc. I’m a dabbler by comparison.
And now I’m off to check out the ISG photos. I recall seeing some pics of South African missiles, but not the submunitions.
S African cluster bombs. The cluster munitions on missiles were on the Iraqi missiles. ISG report has some interesting Xrays etc.
🙂
Hmmm…I’ve found an online version, but it has no pics. Do you have a link?
The CIA site has a link to each of the volumes, but downloading them is HUGE. Some are like 70mg. I dunno where they have it specifically, but I’m sure if you search their site you can find it.
I took some of the pics and cut/pasted them myself. Here’s some (along with a few from some GIs).
http://www.scottmalensek.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=248
CIA reports:
http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/duelfer.html
Revisiting the question: What happened to the WMD?
Scott Malensek over at Floppy Aces (great site!) has a very interesting post today. It is about the WMD issue. Were they there? Were they not? Did he get rid of them? How? Who received them? He tries to answer these oh so old questions in a fashion t…