August 16, 2002SADDAM HAS NUKES, OPTS FOR PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE [AGAINST U.S.]
The latest intelligence assessments reaching DEBKA-Net-Weekly agree that Saddam Hussein has decided to take pre-emptive military action rather than wait for the US hammer to drop. They also detail the horrific arsenal at his disposal for such action. It includes more than 40 nuclear weapons, six to eight of them bombs and nuclear warheads that can be delivered by missile or plane.
In particular, the Iraqi leader has set his sights on hitting US military forces in the Middle East as well as Turkey, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan and Israel. He is also determined to reach into the United States itself through proxy terrorists run by Iraqi military intelligence. This latest intelligence consensus supersedes the basic presumption previously held by US and Israeli strategists that Saddam would not launch a counter-strike with unconventional weapons unless attacked first - and then only if he felt his life and regime were in jeopardy.
As for the scope of Iraq’s unconventional weaponry, the revised evaluation is the first official confirmation that Saddam possesses up to 40 nuclear devices, probably half of them radiological, or “dirty”, bombs with a limited-radius contamination capability; but also apparently six to eight - and perhaps as many as 10 - nuclear bombs and warheads that can be delivered by fighter-bombers or surface-to-surface missiles.
Iraqi experts are said to have been instructed in payload assembly and delivery technology by Russian and Eastern European technicians who manpower companies in Belarus and Croatia and whose services Iraq bought with multi-million dollar fees. Furthermore, says the updated intelligence assessment, Iraq has laid hands on enough enriched Uranium-235 to build another 20 to 30 nuclear devices. - DEBKA-Net-Weekly