Useful Fools

Almost all attention to the “failure of pre-war intelligence” about Iraq concerns the incorrect determination that Iraq had significant stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Almost all of the controversy revolves around the failure to find these stockpiles, and the realization that they probably didn’t exists.

But stockpiles of WMDs are irrelevant to the war’s rationale. The war was fought as part of a wider war against terrorism. Terrorists have little use for large quantities of WMDs. After all, they have neither storage nor delivery capabilities (except in a few unlikely scenarios).

Of more interest to terrorists is small quantities of highly lethal agents, or nuclear weapons. Intelligence correctly determined that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons, nor the capability to rapidly produce them. This leaves radiological, chemical and biological agents.

A likely terrorist scenario is the release of a relatively small (liters) of a chemical agent into a population concentration such as a sporting event. Another is the release of a biological agent, which in the case of Anthrax requires a few grams to a few kilograms, and in the case of an infectious agent requires from microliters to a few liters of agent.

Small amounts of either chemical or biological agents can be produced quickly in any reasonably equipped laboratory. Such laboratories were discovered hidden in a number of secret police offices and safe houses.

It is these capabilities, combined with the known expertise of Iraqi scientists and technicians, which created the possibility of transference of WMDs to terrorists.