Dec. 12, 2002
NEW YORK - So far, the Bush Administration hasn't been having much luck finding a credible pretext to invade Iraq. But last week, Administration hawks thought they finally found the smoking gun.
A mysterious, unflagged North Korea freighter that had been monitored by US intelligence since it left North Asian waters was seized off the Yemen coast by Spanish Navy frigates. Concealed beneath piles of cement, Spanish naval commandos and US military intelligence discovered 15 Scud missiles.
To White House's chagrin, the missiles were consigned not to Iraq, but to Yemen, a reluctant US ally. The Bush Administration for once observed international law by admitting it had no right to seize the cargo, no matter how eager it was to shut down North Korea's exports of missiles and associated technology to Iran, Egypt, Libya, Syria - and, claims US and Israelis intelligence - to Pakistan. It's all right for nations like Britain, France, China, Russia, India, and Israel to have powerful missile forces and nuclear weapons, but not, according to Washington, for Muslim nations to acquire modern strategic weapons. Any that do, like Pakistan, will be severely punished.
Much has been made about the notorious Scuds. These Soviet 1960's technology missiles based on the World War II German V-2 missile were designed to carry a small, 100 kiloton nuclear warhead. In non-nuclear roles, the wildly inaccurate Scud is almost worthless and probably the most cost-ineffective weapon anywhere. Conventionally-armed Scuds differ little from hulking medieval siege engines called trebuchets that hurled boulders over city walls. But the Scuds make a lot of noise and are useful for scaring people.
North Korea is one of only a few nations still producing Scuds, mostly for export. The North still uses upgraded Scud-C's and D's, and now, a son of Scud, the 1,300km No-dong, which can reach Japan. Always desperate for cash, North Korea has two principal sources of hard currency aside from just terminated bribes from the US to be good: pachinko gambling in Japan run by North Korean gangsters, and missile exports.
Iraq and Iran produced modified Scuds during their eight-year war by reducing the 1,000kg warhead to 250kg and increasing fuel load, giving the missile a 650km range. But the modified versions proved feeble, unstable and unreliable, often breaking up in flight. Iraq tinkered with a longer-range missile by strapping Scud-B's around a larger missile core, but the project never matured and was demolished during the Gulf War. Today, Iraq is allowed tactical missiles with a maximum range of only 100 kms.
Iraq fired 39 modified Scud-B's s at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War. The results were a lot of frightened people but minimal damage. Iraq's range-extended Scuds would have been unable to carry a crude, heavy nuclear warhead even if Iraq had been able to develop one - which it was not. However, armed with chemicals or germs, damage would have been more extensive, though hardly devastating.
While there is a huge outcry about weapons of mass destruction, it's important to understand their limitations. Miniaturizing nuclear warheads and making them able to withstand heavy g-forces and re-entry stress is well beyond the current capabilities of any Arab nation or Iran.
Delivering chemical weapons by missile has serious drawbacks. Blistering and choking agents like mustard gas, Lewisite, and hydrogen cyanide, must be released in large quantity to be effective, requiring bulky tanks and hoses. They depend on wind direction and humidity. World War I experience showed them to be less effective in killing troops wearing protective gear than massed heavy artillery.
Nerve gases are extremely deadly and persistent - insecticides for humans - but to be effective, they must be properly dispersed by aerosols and, again, depend on favorable meteorological conditions. In modern warfare, nerve and blistering agents would best used to degrade operations at key airbases, supply depots, command headquarters and vehicle parks.
Germ weapons are extremely deadly and perhaps untraceable. But they are very tricky to store, transport, dispense and spread, and require high-tech aerosol dispersion. In the 1980's, the Soviets combined a 10 megaton city-buster warhead with an anti-biotic resistant strain of modified anthrax and/or smallpox- a true doomsday terror weapon.
But for terrorist attacks, germ weapons would likely be most effective in enclosed spaces, like office buildings and subways. The sole example of such a terror attack was the 1995 release of a home-made version of the nerve gas Sarin into the Tokyo subway system by a murderous Japanese cult, that killed 12 and injured thousands, 600 seriously.
The best way to kill large amounts of people remains nuclear weapons, followed by heavy artillery, rocket batteries, mortars (which kill more soldiers than any other weapons), mines, and, of course, aerial bombing, an art which the United States has made all its own.
New fuel air and thermobaric weapons being deployed by the US and Russia, and a new, 30,000 lb US `bunker buster' mega-bomb, are almost mini-nukes. Napalm, a favored US weapon, is just as hideous and deadly as mustard gas. Compared to such devastating weapons, the old Scuds held by the Arabs and Iran look pretty pathetic.
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Foreign Correspondent