In recent weeks there have been a number of Congressional hearings on whether or not sufficient evidence existed to prevent the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It seems reasonable to say that if we could have stopped the Sept. 11 attacks before they occurred, most people would have supported such a policy. Yet if one looks at the small amount of evidence we had before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and compares that to the abundance of evidence we have regarding Saddam Hussein's possession and use of biological and chemical weapons, his history of genocide against his own people, his obsession with obtaining nuclear weapons, his record of invading other countries, his repeated lies and violations of U.N. resolutions and his involvement in terrorism and hatred for the United States -- the necessity for regime change should be evident.
After Sept. 11, the fact that groups like al-Qaida intend to inflict mass death on American civilians is clear. A critical element of the "War on Terror" will be preventing terrorist groups from matching their intentions with the means of carrying them out. Those who insist on a specific, proven link between Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks miss the point. Their implication is that we should ignore threats and wait for an attack before we take action. In a new age, where terrorist attacks can be sudden, unpredictable and capable of unprecedented civilian death, our goal should be to prevent an attack before it occurs.
Whether with Al Qaeda or other organizations, it is a fact that Hussein has engaged in terrorism directly, while at the same time supporting terrorists indirectly. For example, it is a fact that Hussein was directly involved in the assassination attempt of former President Bush and the Emir of Kuwait, that a hijacking training camp exists in Iraq, that he has funded terrorists abroad, that known Al Qaeda terrorists and non-Al Qaeda terrorists have lived in Iraq (a country with tightly locked borders) -- including Abdul Rahman Yasin, who was indicted for the first World Trade Center terrorist attacks in 1993 and is on the FBI Most Wanted List. Hussein shares with other terrorists the motive of driving the United States out of the region so that he can expand his power, and he would not hesitate to use terrorist networks to achieve his objectives.
Some have argued that Hussein would be deterred from overtly attacking a great power -- be it America, Israel or a European nation -- with weapons of mass destruction because the response could be devastating. Yet even if one accepts this risky assumption, there is still a real danger that he would use proxy terrorist networks to unleash these weapons on his enemies, and the potential cost in lives would make Sept. 11 look minor in comparison. We cannot be certain that intelligence agencies could trace such an attack to Hussein. For example, the United States still does not know who was behind the 1996 Khobar Towers terrorist attack against Americans in Saudi Arabia or who was behind the anthrax attacks last year. The latter example is especially relevant because it highlights how difficult it is to trace the sources of biological weapons.
The potential devastation that could be wreaked by biological weapons should not be underestimated. The recent "Dark Winter" study done by Johns Hopkins University demonstrated the effects of a biological terror attack on the United States, in which terrorists put the deadly smallpox virus in three separate places in the United States. By only the second month, smallpox could reach almost the entire country, and there could be as many as 2 million infected and 1 million dead. Nuclear weapons would enable Hussein to obliterate entire countries, and according to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, Hussein is within a few months of having a nuclear weapon -- once he obtains fissile materials (like enriched uranium or plutonium).
We should also be concerned that he might use nuclear weapons to intimidate the world into allowing the invasion of weak, oil-rich countries in the Persian Gulf. His expansionist intentions must be taken seriously since he has already invaded -- without provocation -- two of his oil-rich neighbors, Kuwait and Iran. Should we believe that Hussein would suddenly lose his ambitions once he has nuclear weapons and is immensely more powerful? If he doesn't, we would face this unpleasant choice: Do we want to go to nuclear war with Iraq in order to save small Persian Gulf countries from Iraq's aggression or do we want to allow Hussein to terrorize the entire Middle East and control the world's oil supply? The threat posed by Hussein and the difficulty of overthrowing him only increase with time.
The necessity to disarm Iraq should be clear, but there is still some question about how that should be done. Some have advocated new weapons inspections, despite the fact that inspectors failed to disarm the country from 1991 to 1998, when they were kicked out. In 1991, Hussein claimed, like he does now, that he had no weapons of mass destruction. It was only after the UNSCOM inspections uncovered sites throughout the country that Hussein revised his story. During the inspections, U.N. inspectors were deceived, threatened, physically forced out of buildings while documents were destroyed and in one case were held in a parking lot for four days. Only an extremely small proportion of the inspection sites were visited by surprise. The Iraqi biological weapon program was only discovered in 1995 on the basis of information released by Iraqi defectors. As the inspectors discovered, many of Hussein's weapons labs were in mobile vans, hidden in schools, underground or disguised with dual purposes (nerve gas/pesticides). Because of this, former Chief Biological Weapons Inspector Dr. Richard Spertzel testified to Congress that monitoring these kinds of weapons is "virtually impossible."
Similarly Dr. David Kay, former UNSCOM Chief Weapons Inspector, testified that disarming Hussein would take "tremendous resources, actually resources beyond anything I can imagine," and that the only inspection regime that could possibly work would be "very much like an occupation." That's because inspections are designed to confirm the progress of a cooperating government -- not a hostile regime that is determined to thwart inspectors. We can have no confidence that a few dozen U.N. inspectors -- even with "unfettered access" -- can stop a totalitarian regime that has spent approximately 20 years and $40 billion dollars, and employed 40,000 Iraqis, for the sole purpose of developing these weapons. Both Dr. Kay and Dr. Spertzel agree that "ultimately, the only way out of this is the replacement of Saddam."
For the last decade Iraq has violated 16 U.N. resolutions -- resolutions which were the premise for ending the Gulf War and sparing his regime in 1991. Throughout the last decade, he has changed his message to reflect the weight of international pressure upon him. Now, after rising momentum against him, he is attempting the same trick.
After this record, trusting Hussein's intentions or believing that inspections can work when they never have is, as President Bush said, to "hope against the evidence."