Dissecting The Case

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Saddam and Inspections

There's plenty of old evidence laying out Saddam's suspected arsenal of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons that has for years formed the bedrock of the case against Iraq. Inspectors who searched for eight years after the Gulf War left a well-documented file of banned items they were pretty sure existed but they couldn't find or couldn't prove were destroyed. Those are still missing and remain a central concern (see chart). But the trouble from the public relations perspective is precisely that that evidence is familiar and that it has already been judged by many to be insufficient grounds for military confrontation.

But even without something graver, the Bush Administration believes the old evidence is good enough to justify action. Administration officials argue that the issue of proof has gone topsy-turvy. They say Saddam has to prove he doesn't have banned weapons, but skeptics insist the U.S. needs to prove he is, in fact, hiding them. Hans Blix, the chief inspector hunting biological and chemical weapons, provided the White House with an unanticipated boost when his Jan. 27 report to the Security Council gave Saddam's cooperation low marks and complained that Iraq had shown no "genuine acceptance" of full disarmament. That played beautifully into the Administration's fundamental argument that even if inspectors had all the time in the world, they would never prove a match for Iraq's cunning efforts to conceal its illicit arsenal.

Powell says he hopes to nail home that point by filling in "some of the gaps." One way to do that is to demonstrate tangibly how or where Iraq is systematically hiding weapons of mass destruction. Iraqi defectors have told U.S. intelligence they helped build mobile biological-weapons labs; Powell could parade satellite images the CIA has of large semitrailers crowned with oversize air vents that indicate the vehicles could house such labs. Also available are photos said to show dump trucks converted into missile launchers. And CIA analysts have drawn up a voluminous list of Saddam's shopping spree for hardware and raw ingredients that they assert are intended for weapons making.

The trouble is, very little of this kind of thing is incontrovertible proof of anything. Bush's mobile lab may look like a high-topped recreational vehicle. The dump-truck launchers probably won't be loaded with suspect missiles that fly beyond the permissible 93-mile range. And some of the suspect imports do have legitimate dual uses to make fertilizer or vaccines.

The most controversial items are still those infamous aluminum tubes Iraq tried to procure. Bush asserted again in his State of the Union address that they were for constructing centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. But the chief nuclear inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, has reported his expert conclusion that they were for legal artillery rockets. The Administration intends to show that ElBaradei is wrong--that these are specially calibrated, high-tensile-strength tubes able to take more stress than regular missile tubes and that the Iraqis paid 50 times the $1 market price for conventional pipes.