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October 01, 2004

Today At A Tiny Revolution, Everything Is Obeidi-licious!

Recently there's been a small upsurge of news about Mahdi Obeidi. Obeidi is a former Iraqi nuclear scientist who headed Iraq's gas centrifuge uranium enrichment process, one of several separate Iraqi programs during the late eighties to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. After the US/UK invasion, Obeidi produced blueprints for and parts of a centrifuge that had been buried in his Baghdad rose garden since 1991. Obeidi has now written a book titled The Bomb in my Garden: The Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear Mastermind, and recently contributed an op-ed to the New York Times.

Is what Obeidi saying today accurate? Hard to gauge. But Imad Khadduri -- an Iraqi nuclear scientist who escaped from Iraq in 1998, and the author of Iraq's Nuclear Mirage: Memoirs and Delusions -- believes it is not on several important points. I sometimes exchange email with Khadduri, and I'm very pleased to present his perspective here (combined with my own, of course). Both in his writing and in my interactions with him Khadduri has struck me as completely forthright and honest.

1. The title of Obeidi's book is wildly hyperbolic. Obeidi did not have a bomb in his garden. Nor was he Saddam's nuclear mastermind. A more truthful title would have been: The 12 Year-Old Things in my Garden that Could Possibly Have Reduced the Time Needed For Iraq to Recreate a Nuclear Program if Against All Odds Sanctions Had Been Dropped, Inspections Ceased, the World Again Supported Iraq's Nuclear Program as it did during the 1980s, and Saddam Remained in Power and Decided to Try Again: The Sort of Secrets of One Among Several Senior Iraqi Nuclear Scientists.

It's probably not fair to blame Obeidi for this; I doubt the publishers would have let him get away with a low key title even if he'd wanted to. And while I have yet to read the book, its contents apparently do not fit with the title and are generally not hyped. According to Kevin Drum, who writes about it here, Obeidi confirms that Iraq's nuclear weapons program was halted in 1991 and never resurrected. And Obeidi elsewhere has said the aluminum tubes so beloved by the Bush administration could not have been used for uranium enrichment.

2. One thing that seems certain about Obeidi's rose garden cache of materials is that it demonstrates Saddam's regime was purposefully concealing WMD material from the world.

But -- is it certain? When Obeidi first came forward, Scott Ritter appeared on CNN, making the claim that Obeidi hid the materials on his own without authorization from the regime (UPDATE: Ritter's argument has been confirmed by the Iraq Survery Group):

RITTER: But what I'm telling you is based upon my investigation, which went on for many months and involved dozens of hours. Obeidi did this on his own. This wasn't something that ...

BLITZER: But Scott, you know the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. You lived there, you talked to these people. Did anything happen like that of a nature like that, Obeidi doing this on his own without getting approval or someone asking him keep this quiet? That was such a brutal regime. The guy wouldn't have had the guts to do that on his own?

RITTER: Actually, again, Wolf, you're wrong. We have several cases of Iraqi scientists who were very proud of the work they did. Remember, Obeidi was competing with Dr. Diah Jaffar Al-Jaffar over, you know, who was going to be the first to enrich uranium. He was proud of this program, and when he was ordered to turn it over, I think he maintained these components and these blueprints of his own volition, in a very similar manner that Iraqi scientists responsible for designing guidance and control equipment did the exact same thing.

When I first heard this I found Ritter's claim implausible, for exactly the reasons Blitzer mentions. However, Khadduri concurs with Ritter.

This is so because after the Gulf War, Hussein Kamel (head of Iraq's WMD programs and Saddam's son-in-law) ordered Iraq's nuclear scientists, on pain of death, to turn over all nuclear documentation and equipment to him. Some of this was secretly destroyed, but some was hidden in hopes of restarting the nuclear program at a later date. (Much if not all of this was later recovered by UNSCOM after Kamel's defection to Jordan in 1995. [CORRECTION: The documents were recovered by UNSCOM and the IAEA in tandem, with the IAEA taking possession of the nuclear program documents.])

Khadduri wrote to me that he sees no reason Kamel would have granted Obeidi an exemption:

... the reason for [Obeidi] hiding the documents in his garden is very suspect... I can only assume that Mahdi did so either (1) to garner favor if ever the program was resurrected or (2) to barter it later for safe conduit to the US. He is well known for his connivance.

3. In Obeidi's New York Times piece, he claims "Iraq's nuclear weapons program was on the threshold of success before the 1991 invasion of Kuwait -- there is no doubt in my mind that we could have produced dozens of nuclear weapons within a few years." By contrast, in Iraq's Nuclear Mirage Khadduri writes that before the Gulf War, Iraqi scientists

had managed to collect, at most, about 5 grams of weapon grade uranium 235... The core of the bomb, along with its casting, would have required 18-20 kilograms. The actual design of the bomb... was still under consideration and by no means frozen on any final design... In total, we were, in my estimate, about 10-20 percent of where we should have been had Iraq had a nuclear weapon.

Khadduri does judge that Iraq might have been able to produce one untested weapon within "several years," but that Obeidi's claim of dozens is "thoroughly unscientific and false."

4. Also in Obeidi's editorial, he states "our nuclear program could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein's fingers." Khadduri responds:

Even if Saddam "snapped his fingers", with the dismal state of economic affairs of the scientists and engineers, the lack of the scientific leadership and management, the embargo on any vital imports for required goods and equipment, etc.. would not guarantee any resurrection of that program under Saddam, as disingeniously claimed by Mahdi.

Khadduri further points out that Americans should long ago have learned to be skeptical of claims made by Iraqis dependent on the US. For instance, before the war an Iraqi scientist named Khidihr Hamza appeared constantly in the US media declaiming on the imminent Iraqi nuclear threat. He wrote a book called Saddam's Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda. And he was constantly cited by people like Dick Cheney and Kenneth Pollack, among others.

However, Hamza was a fraud. He'd played little role in the Iraqi nuclear program, had no knowledge of it at all after 1989, and was so unimportant to Iraq's government they happily left him leave. After Hussein Kamel fled Iraq, Kamel referred to Hamza as "a professional liar" who tried to pass off forged documents about the Iraqi nuclear program. (Perhaps that sounds familiar.)

My favorite thing about Hamza is that he's cited in the famous White House pre-war indictment of Iraq, "Apparatus of Lies." What an apt title.

In any case, Khadduri writes that:

Mahdi is simply paying back the Americans for their refuge. Ditto Hamza, whom I assume is having tea with Mahdi. Both seem to advocate the emptying of Iraq of its nuclear scientists and engineers by raising the scary potential of a rejuvenated program, even at this stage, and advising the US to bring them to the US for a better life.

This strikes me as too harsh about Obeidi, since even if he's lying about some things he'd have a long way to go before reaching the heights achieved by Hamza. But obviously Khadduri knows one million times more about this subject than I do.

5. If you're interested in more of Khadduri's writing -- and I highly recommend it -- you should check out Iraq's Nuclear Mirage. Also interesting are his articles for Yellow Times, one of which can be found here with links to the others.

6. Tomorrow, we go back to the jokes.

Posted at October 1, 2004 02:09 PM | TrackBack
Comments

The Iraqi war was based on so many lies,history will reveal all the lies that were intentionaly given, or provoked to justify the growth of a new form of imperialism. Dr Khadduri is an honest person, I read his book and his articles in the yellow times. I will trust him more than with any other person

Posted by: Lutuf Ghantous at October 3, 2004 09:38 AM

Lutuf,

In a certain sense, I believe we should be encouraged by the amount of lying that took place. In the past, governments have been able to attack other countries based on one or two lies, which often were not exposed until decades later if ever. But with the internet, etc. the lies of the Bush administration were exposed much more quickly, which meant they had to generate new lies all the time. Hence the enormous profusion of mendacity we saw.

Posted by: Jonathan Schwarz at October 3, 2004 01:58 PM