Once they are built, WMD are relatively easy to hide. But the facilities and processes that are used to build them are much harder to conceal. Zinni’s people knew quite a lot about these. The delivery systems and the fuels that powered them were vulnerable, as were the security systems and personnel that protected the programs; the various documents, information, materials, and the research-and-development operations; and the special and difficult-to-acquire machinery required to fabricate high-tolerance parts (such as centrifuges needed to separate fissile uranium from its more stable forms).

Whenever an air strike was imminent (normally tipped off by a buildup of CENTCOM forces in the region as tensions mounted), the Iraqis would move the more vulnerable elements of their WMD programs out of harm’s way. These were the elements that could be taken out . . . if they could be hit before they’d been moved to safety.

“The Iraqis are allowed to have certain missiles,” Zinni reported to the President. “But within that capability, they can research and develop an expanded capability, which at some point can be turned into a delivery system. We can eliminate that. We can bomb their missile facility.

“They also have experimental, developmental programs on fuel for missiles and rockets. We can take these out.

“We know the security forces charged with protecting WMD program information, documents, materials, and R & D studies. The Special Republican Guard is charged with these missions. We can hit them.

“We know the facilities where they keep high-tolerance machinery that is necessary for a nuclear program. We can hit those facilities.

“And we can add targets vital to the regime, like their intelligence headquarters and the Ba’ath party headquarters. Taking out such targets will do serious damage to their command and control capabilities.

“Taking out all these things will not end forever their WMD program,” Zinni said in conclusion. “If the strike goes well, if we are really lucky, the best we can do is set back their programs for two years. It will take about that much time to reconstitute and replace what we’ve destroyed.”

With the President’s approval, Zinni was given the go-ahead to plan for striking these targets.

Desert Viper

Butler and his UNSCOM inspectors soldiered on, but with ever-increasing difficulties. From May 1998 to the end of that year was a time of almost constant crisis.

Though UNSCOM was intended to be a verifying and not an investigative body, the Iraqi obstacles to its proper functioning had required the creation of an investigative and forensic unit. In June 1998, the UNSCOM investigations discovered long-sought smoking guns—stores of Scud-specific propellants and incontrovertible evidence of VX production (one of the most vicious of the nerve agents4).

Because the propellants could be used only for Scuds, there was no reason for the Iraqis to have kept the stuff around—if, as they had long claimed, they had destroyed all their Scuds.