As we read news today of Saddam Hussein’s trial in Iraq, we learn more about atrocities that the Kurds suffered under his rule, including attacks using chemical weapons. That subject is addressed in the 2002 New Yorker article I referred to yesterday, Jeffrey Goldberg’s “The Great Terror.”

However, I’d like to highlight a different element of that article that feels more like dubious old history - its strong claims regarding the likelihood of Saddam Hussein obtaining nuclear weapons. I include it here as evidence of the kind of information, or pseudo-information, published in the mainstream media that influenced my early support of the war:

There is some debate among arms-control experts about exactly when Saddam will have nuclear capabilities. But there is no disagreement that Iraq, if unchecked, will have them soon, and a nuclear-armed Iraq would alter forever the balance of power in the Middle East. “The first thing that occurs to any military planner is force protection,” Charles Duelfer told me. “If your assessment of the threat is chemical or biological, you can get individual protective equipment and warning systems. If you think he’s going to use a nuclear weapon, where are you going to concentrate your forces?”

There is little doubt what Saddam might do with an atomic bomb or with his stocks of biological and chemical weapons. When I talked about Saddam’s past with the medical geneticist Christine Gosden, she said, “Please understand, the Kurds were for practice.”

This article as much as any other influenced my hardline stance at the time.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Politics.