Hussein’s Death Leaves WMD Questions Unanswered

Questions surrounding Iraq’s one-time WMD programs might never be answered following the execution of former President Saddam Hussein, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday (see GSN, Dec. 22, 2006).

Hussein was hanged Saturday after being convicted last year of ordering the deaths of 148 people in the town of Dujail, where he survived a 1982 assassination attempt.

At the time of his death, Hussein was being tried on genocide and other charges for orchestrating the Anfal campaign, in which up to 180,000 Iraqi Kurds were killed during the late 1980s.  Witnesses have testified that Hussein’s forces used chemical weapons against their villages; their accounts have been supported by videos and government documents.

The trial will continue for Hussein’s six co-defendants, Reuters reported (Reuters/AlertNet, Dec. 30, 2006).

Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman said he had hoped that Hussein would be forced to testify about the campaign.  He expressed worry that the former dictator’s death would damage the case against his fellow defendants and the trials still to be held, the Times reported.

Othman also wanted to see Hussein testify on other crackdowns carried out by his regime, including the gas attacks on the Kurdish town of Halabja that are believed to have killed 5,000, assassinations of political opponents, and actions against towns in Southern Iraq following a 1991 Shiite uprising.

“Had these cases been brought to trial, a lot of information would have been revealed … about the bad policies of the old regime,” Othman said.

It also remains unknown why Hussein continued to indicate to his own military and to the outside world that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in the buildup to the war.  No evidence of active WMD programs has come to light in the years since the March 2003 invasion.

Another unanswered question is to what level Western governments and companies colluded with the regime in Baghdad, according to Joost Hiltermann, Middle East director for the International Crisis Group.

One example is that of Frans van Anraat, a Dutch businessman sentenced to 15 years in prison for supplying Iraq with materials used in chemical weapons (see GSN, Oct. 10, 2006).  The United States was also tracking Iraq’s chemical weapons program by 1983, even as Washington provided support for the regime when it went to war with Iran (Solomon Moore, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 1).

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