Iraq D-Day? More Like ZZZ-Day

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Meanwhile, U.S. officials last week provided more details about Iraq's nuclear-, biological- and chemical-weapons program. According to Washington, Baghdad had almost 100 different major weapons programs under way before the gulf war began. The effort employed 500,000 people, which, in a country of 18 million, made the defense industry far and away Iraq's largest employer. One nuclear complex in Thaji, north of Baghdad, comprised 1,000 buildings and covered an area the size of the District of Columbia. U.S. officials also disclosed more specifics about Iraq's uranium-enrichment programs, the linchpin of Baghdad's efforts to develop an atom bomb. In addition to the three methods for separating uranium isotopes -- gas centrifuge, calutron and gaseous diffusion -- already identified by Washington, Iraq relied on a chemical technique and a jet-nozzle process used in South Africa. New intelligence information has also confirmed that Iraq's chemical stocks are actually 40% larger than Baghdad has admitted. Inspection efforts have been hampered because much of the stock is either buried beneath rubble or stored in leaking canisters that pose health risks. U.N. inspectors were recently treated to a sampling of the remaining inventory when Iraqis, instructed to destroy bomb- and artillery-shell casings, scattered a dose of unidentified chemicals just upwind of the U.N. team.

Biological agents, including anthrax and botulism toxin, remain the biggest threat. At the time of the allied aerial attacks last winter, pilots avoided targeting sites where biological weapons were believed to be stored, or hitting them with incendiary bombs. According to Air Force Lieut. General Charles Horner, who ran the allied air campaign, a strike by a conventional bomb could have spread a deadly agent across the countryside, killing millions. As a result, Iraq's biological stocks are largely intact, and a U.S. attack poses the same risks that it did during the war. Unless Saddam discloses the whereabouts of his entire arsenal, Iraq will retain at least some of its biological weapons.