Does Iraq have, or is it developing, weapons of mass destruction?
The case for military action against Saddam Hussein stands or falls on this apparently simple factual question. President George Bush and his deputy, Dick Cheney, backed by Tony Blair, claim there is no doubt that Baghdad possesses and could use weapons of mass destruction, and so, as Mr Bush put it, “inaction is not an option”. Most analysts, however, concede that there is considerable doubt about the extent of Saddam’s weapons programme, and about how dangerous it could be to the rest of the world. What is not in doubt is that Saddam has a record of aggressively pursuing the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, and has had more than three years since the UN weapons inspectors withdrew to try to reconstitute his former nuclear, biological and chemical programmes. At the centre of the debate on Iraq’s weapons capability are the inspectors from the now-defunct United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (Unscom), who spent seven years, from 1991 to 1998, attempting to gain access t
