elucidator: I don’t know how interesting you’ll find it. This whole thing sounds like a minor misunderstanding, or at worst a very slight mischaracterization. According to the article you linked:
You can quibble over whether there was an actual official IAEA report (looks like there wasn’t, and Bush either accidentally or intentionally misattributed the source), but the essential facts are there - In 1991 Iraq was six months away from being able to produce enriched uranium. That means they were about six months away from a nuclear bomb, because the design for the bomb could have been done in parallel and completed in about the same time.
You are simply picking nits, although I agree that the Bush administration should do a better job of getting their attributions straight. In case you haven’t noticed, errors like this happen all the time, in every administration. But they should do better, for sure.
But the essential point is exactly the same, so Bush was not concocting a lie or exaggerating a threat. He merely got a source wrong.
Is Saddam suicidal? No. But he IS reckless, and he makes gross miscalculations. It was amazingly stupid of him not to withdraw from Kuwait when it became clear that he would face the U.S. military if he didn’t. It was amazingly stupid of him to attack Iran, and insane to use weapons of mass destruction.
There is a common pattern around dictators like Saddam - they surround themselves with yes-men who are afraid to speak their minds, and instead blow rosy sunshine up their leader’s ass to keep themselves from being killed. Whatever harebrained scheme the glorious leader comes up with gets approval from anyone who wants to stay alive. So these leaders become dangerously disconnected from reality and common sense.
This point is made better in the new book “The Threatening Storm” by Kenneth Pollock. He happens to be the Clinton Administration’s top expert on Iraq. And he strongly supports military action to overthrow Saddam.
In case you missed the scenario, here it is: Saddam builds a nuke. He announces it to the world, along with enough evidence to prove he’s not kidding. Photos, design documents, a sample of the enriched Uranium, whatever. Then he announces a new policy: Unless the U.S. withdaws from the gulf region immediately, he will attack Tel Aviv with his nuclear weapon.
Have fun deciding what to do.
The worst-case scenario: Saddam buys time by playing games with inspectors for the next five years. In the meantime, he surreptitiously builds five or six bombs. He smuggles one into New York, and one into LA or some other large city. Or, if he can’t get them into the U.S. he smuggles them overland into Europe and plants them in large cities. Maybe he keeps a couple at home. Now he makes the same threat: leave the gulf, or Paris goes up.
So the world decides to play his game of brinksmanship, and the U.S. starts its military buildup in Qatar. 100,000 troops land there, and Saddam obliterates them with a nuke. And the same threat comes out - leave me alone, and we’ll call it a draw. If you destroy me with nukes, five European cities will be destroyed.
Is that the future you’re hoping for? Because it’s the type of scenario that is likely if Saddam stays in power, in my opinion and the opinion of people like Pollock. You can discount mine, but there are few people around with as much knowledge of Iraq as he has, and he has no political axe to grind, since he’s a Democrat and was part of the Clinton administration.
As for the uranium being ‘apparently headed for Iraq’ - it was confiscated on the main highway leading towards Iraq, and they were going in that direction. And Saddam has been trying to buy enriched Uranium. But if you want to believe it was actually headed for Africa or something, be my guest.
