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Barking Up the Wrong Tree -- for Now
Hirsh Goodman

An attack on Iraq, in this particular war at this particular time, would divert America�s eye from the ball it should be watching -- mega-terrorism

NOW THAT AMERICA�S WAR ON TERROR HAS reached the post-Taliban-Afghanistan stage, many people are asking which direction it should take. High on the agenda is the question of attacking Iraq. The Bush Administration itself is divided on the issue, with the hawks and those who want to settle an historic account with Saddam Hussein on one side, and those who want to concentrate on today�s war on the other.

As odd as this may seem, as an Israeli, who should have every interest in seeing Iraq pulverized militarily, I side with those who say "no" now -- not unless there is a definitive and clear link between Saddam�s regime and Bin Laden�s terror or the anthrax attacks that have shaken the U.S.

Unless those links are proved, attacking Iraq now would essentially be a detour. It would divert the resources and attention the U.S. has invested in fighting global terror since September 11 onto a secondary track. It would also weaken Arab and European support for America�s global initiative. And, finally, in terms of getting rid of the real problem, Saddam Hussein, it would in all probability end in miserable failure.

The Iraqi leader lives in some of the most bomb-proof structures ever built by man. In trying to get rid of him, the Americans would probably destroy much of Iraq. He, however, would rise from the ashes unscathed -- unless, that is, the Americans were to use a tactical nuclear weapon, which makes it an entirely different ball game.

An attack on Iraq, in this particular war at this particular time, would move America�s eye from the ball it should be watching -- the much talked about, but little understood phenomenon of mega-terrorism. The attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was one manifestation of this new form of mass terror. Biological, chemical and nuclear terror are others. And if biological and chemical attacks are neither as simple nor as complicated as they may seem, the nuclear issue is straightforward.

Could terrorists like Bin Laden�s Al-Qa�eda organization build a bomb? Could they get hold of the 20 kilos of enriched uranium, or half that amount of plutonium, needed to build a nuclear device that, if detonated where the Trade Towers once stood, would totally destroy the entire lower third of Manhattan? The answer is a chilling yes.

Never mind the counseling Al-Qa�eda is known to have received in recent years from Pakistani nuclear scientists, among others.The design for a bomb is openly available on the Internet. There have been some 120 intercepts of attempted sales of nuclear materials by individuals in the former Soviet Union in recent years, including one in early December. Many of these attempted sales were Western "sting" operations, designed to test security -- and no one knows how many other, actual sales took place undetected.

Graham Allison, currently head of the Belfer Center at Harvard�s Kennedy School and a former assistant secretary of defense in the first Clinton administration, relates in a recent article in the Washington Post how, in the mid 1990s, 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium -- enough for some 20 terrorist bombs -- lay unprotected in Kazakhstan, essentially available to the highest bidder. More through luck than good planning, the U.S. managed to purchase the material, which is now stored at its nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. But there is still a lot more out there -- more than 30,000 nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union, concentrated in Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine, and over 70,000 nuclear-weapon-equivalents (packages of nuclear material) stored in some 100 sites in these areas, only one third of which are considered safely guarded. And according to various open, official reports, there are at least 100 nuclear suitcase bombs in the former Soviet Union, as many as 30 of which are considered to be ill-protected.

A nuclear device capable of incinerating tens of thousands in seconds need be no larger than a soccer ball. Given the length and porous nature of America�s borders -- as proven by the huge drug trade and flow of illegal immigrants into the country -- the smuggling of such a device into the country is entirely possible. So the knowledge to make a weapon is there, the materials for it are potentially there, and the ability to get such a weapon into the U.S. (or, for that matter, England or anywhere else) is there. Allison claims that such an act happening within the next five years is not a possibility but a probability. Scary stuff.

The immense dimensions of the Bin Laden network as exposed since September 11, the fact that these people are capable of anything, and the tremendous resources needed to keep track of them -- all coupled with the very real threat of mega-nuclear terrorism -- make it necessary that the United States not get diverted in its primary fight against the possibility that a terrorist nuclear attack could be next on the menu of Bin Laden or his successors. America cannot risk its newly-warm relations with Russia, its intelligence-sharing with the Arab world, Pakistan and other Muslim states, and its relations with the Europeans -- who are key to policing nuclear seepage from the former Soviet Union -- by attacking Iraq. Saddam is not the issue right now, and Bin Laden�s next trick is. After September 11, it�s terrifying to envision what that might be.