“Yes, at the hospital.”
“True. The isolation hospital. These are full of smallpox and cholera samples for analysis.”
This time the sergeant did jump back, a clear two feet. The marks on his face were no accident—as a child he had nearly died of smallpox.
“Get that stuff out of here, damn you!”
Martin apologized again, closed the rear door, slid behind the wheel, and drove away. An hour later, he was guided into the fish warehouse in Shuwaikh Port and handed over his cargo to Abu Fouad.
United States Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
October 16, 1990
MEMORANDUM TO: James Baker
FROM: Political Intelligence and Analysis Group
SUBJECT: Destruction of Iraqi War Machine
CLASSIFICATION: EYES ONLY
In the ten weeks since the invasion by Iraq of the Emirate of Kuwait, the most rigorous investigation has been undertaken, both by ourselves and our British allies, of the precise size, nature, and state of preparation of the war machine presently at the disposal of President Saddam Hussein.
Critics will doubtless say, with the usual benefit of hindsight, that such an analysis should have been accomplished prior to this date. Be that as it may, the findings of the various analyses are now before us, and they present a very disturbing picture.
The conventional forces of Iraq alone, with its standing army of a million and a quarter men, its guns, tanks, rocket batteries, and modern air force, combine to make Iraq far and away the most powerful military force in the Middle East.
Two years ago, it was estimated that if the effect of the war with Iran had been to reduce the Iranian war machine to the point where it could no longer realistically threaten its neighbors, the damage inflicted by Iran on the Iraqi war machine was of similar importance.
It is now clear that, in the case of Iran, the severe purchasing embargo deliberately created by ourselves and our British colleagues has caused the situation to remain much the same. In the case of Iraq, however, the two intervening years have been filled by a rearmament program of appalling vigor.
You will recall, Mr. Secretary, that Western policy in the Gulf area and indeed the entire Middle East has long been based upon the concept of balance: the notion that stability and therefore the status quo can only be maintained if no nation in the area is permitted to acquire such power as to threaten into submission all its neighbors and thus establish dominance.
On the conventional warfare front alone, it is now clear that Iraq has acquired such a power and now bids to create such dominance.
But this report is even more concerned with another aspect of Iraqi preparations: the establishment of an awesome stock of weapons of mass destruction, coupled with continuing plans for even more, and their appropriate international, and possibly intercontinental, delivery systems.
In short, unless the utter destruction of these weapons, those still in development, and their delivery systems is accomplished, the immediate future demonstrates a catastrophic prospect.
Within three years, according to studies presented to the Medusa Committee and with which the British completely concur, Iraq will possess its own atomic bomb and the ability to launch it anywhere within a two-thousand-kilometer radius of Baghdad.
To this prospect must be added that of thousands of tons of deadly poison gas and a bacteriological war potential involving anthrax, tularemia, and possibly bubonic and pneumonic plague.
Were Iraq ruled by a benign and reasonable regime, the prospect would still be daunting. The reality is that Iraq is ruled solely by President Saddam Hussein, who is clearly in the grip of two identifiable psychiatric conditions: megalomania and paranoia.
Within three years, failing preventive action, Iraq will be able to dominate by threat alone all the territory from the north coast of Turkey to the Gulf of Aden, from the seas off
Haifa to the mountains of Kandahar.
The effect of these revelations must be to change Western policy radically. The destruction of the Iraqi war machine and particularly the weapons of mass destruction must now become the overriding aim of Western policy. The liberation of Kuwait has now become irrelevant, serving only as a justification.
The desired aim can be frustrated only by a unilateral withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait, and every effort must be made to ensure that this does not happen.
U.S. policy, in alliance with our British allies, must therefore be dedicated to four goals: 1. Insofar as it is possible, covertly to present provocations and arguments to Saddam Hussein aimed at causing him to refuse to pull out of Kuwait.
2. To reject any compromise he may offer in exchange for leaving Kuwait, thus removing the justification for our planned invasion and the destruction of his war machine.