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Turkish intelligence says that it believes Saddam Hussein has successfully produced a uranium fueled nuclear device. According to U.S. intelligence officials the new intelligence on Iraq’s nuclear weapons efforts was obtained in early March and adds to a growing body of intelligence on Saddam’s efforts to produce nuclear arms.

A senior defense official quoted in GeoStrategy Direct said the threat from Saddam’s chemical, biological and nuclear programs continues to grow, and the most worrying is his “energetic nuclear weapons program.”

Intelligence officials don’t know much about the device, apart from its uranium core. But an Iraqi nuclear weapons engineer, Khidir Hamza defected to the United States in 1996.

Since then, he has disclosed that Iraqi switched from a plutonium based nuclear arms program to one based on enriched uranium, which can be produced from natural uranium mined in Iraq.



According to Hamza, Iraq has some 400 locations where it's producing nuclear weapons and related material. That is why UN weapons inspectors have been unable to find them.

The International Atomic Energy Agency dismantled 40 nuclear-research facilities before the U.N. inspectors left Iraq, including three uranium-enrichment sites.

Prior to the inspections, Saddam's stealthiness had been so effective that none of the 40 were known to the outside world. So there is reason to take the intelligence reports seriously.

The nuclear program is being carried out in schools, mosques, hospitals and warehouses. “The possibility of finding them and destroying them is negligent,” the defense official said. “We can’t say when [Saddam] will cross that threshold but he will. It could be tomorrow; it could be a year from now. If he successfully buys weapons-grade uranium, he may already have a nuclear device. But he certainly, if he doesn’t have one now, is going to get one. And when he does the whole geopolitics of the region will be changed fundamentally.”

Secretary of State Colin Powell noted in a speech last week that Saddam is ‘working feverishly’ on his nuclear weapons program, but didn’t mention that Saddam had made any breakthrough.

Is it true, or just more of the disinformation campaign that has been part and parcel of warfare since men tried to kill each other with rocks and spears?

Interviews with recent defectors and surveys of suppliers Baghdad has contacted seeking parts suggest that Iraq's nuclear program is back in full swing.

"Iraq's known nuclear scientists are gravitating to the country's five nuclear research sites," says Charles Duelfer, who was the second-ranking official on the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) on Iraq until it was disbanded in 1999. "That doesn't appear to be coincidental."

Experts including Duelfer and Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, believe Saddam has the sophisticated triggers, weapon housings and everything else he needs to build a nuclear device.

The only thing he lacked was a sufficient supply of weapons grade uranium. And it is entirely possible, given his resources and effort, that he has obtained it, either by mining it secretly or buying it on the black market.

Saddam’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction was formidable even before specter of a working nuclear bomb in Iraq’s arsenal raised its ugly head.

CIA Director George Tenet told Congress in February, "Baghdad is expanding its civilian chemical industry in ways that could be diverted quickly to chemical weapons production." Procedurally there is not much difference between making pesticides and making chemical weapons.

According to former UNSCOM chief Richard Butler, Iraq takes advantage of the similarities and eludes sanctions by using Jordanian front companies to import lathes and machine tools, which, once inside Iraq, are easily adapted to the production of chemical weapons.

The Iraqis consistently deny violating the sanctions or the cease-fire deal.

Prior to the Gulf War, according to the Iraqi government, Baghdad produced 8,400 liters of anthrax, 19,000 liters of botulinum and 2,000 liters each of aflatoxin and clostridium.

A single gram of anthrax--roughly 1/30 oz.--contains 1 trillion spores, or enough for 100 million fatal doses if properly dispersed. "In terms of where it went," says Duelfer of the Iraqi bio cache, "we could never nail it all down."

Even if inspectors had found all the materials before they left the country, Iraq has almost certainly made more in the past three years.

Intelligence sources unanimously agree on one thing concerning Iraq’s potential threat; Saddam still has the best biological expertise in the region.

Chemical and biological agents can wipe out entire populations, but first they must be placed in an effective delivery system, such as a bomb or warhead fitted with an aerosol diffuser that will spread its plagues or poisons before the weapon explodes. Iraq is believed to be working to perfect such delivery systems.

Last year Iraq began testing a new line of short-range ballistic missiles, which could potentially be loaded with viruses or gases and hit targets as far away as 93 miles.

The opposition Iraqi National Congress reported that during a televised procession at Baghdad's military parade ground last year, new missiles were displayed, including ones that appeared to violate the U.N. ban on long-range missiles that is meant to prevent Iraq from threatening Europe. A chemical weapons unit marched with the missiles that day.

Saddam was sending the world a message.

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