A Policy That Gave Iraq a Complex : A growing scandal of foreign-policy judgment

The good news was that 3 1/2 tons of dynamite blew Saddam Hussein’s main nuclear complex sky-high. The bad news, it turns out, is that a crucial part of the complex was not just American-built but built with the tacit approval of the Bush Administration.

After the Gulf War, U.N. inspectors found that Iraq’s nuclear effort was centered at a complex southwest of Baghdad; and, enforcing the terms of the peace treaty, they proceeded to destroy it. But a scandal remains, a scandal of foreign-policy judgment.

BAD JUDGMENT: Government investigators--sent by the CIA, the Customs Service, the Agriculture Department--did their job. And William H. Muscarella, president of XYZ Options Inc. of Tuscaloosa, Ala., cooperated with them when they asked him about the carbide tool manufacturing facility his firm was building for Iraq.

High-precision carbide tools have abundant peacetime uses; but when controlled by a computer, they can be used in the manufacture of valves for nuclear weapons. The investigators clearly knew this already. Muscarella completed their knowledge with particulars about the plant to be constructed: “I gave them blueprints and told them everything about the plant. They knew everything.” Later, two CIA agents dropped in as Muscarella trained the Iraqis who would run the plant.

And then what? Times reporters Douglas Frantz and Murray Waas quote Peter D. Zimmerman of the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington: “The Bush Administration supplied hardware and equipment to Iraq by applying the least-stringent-possible evaluation of whether the real purpose was military instead of civilian.”

This lack of judgment had a doubly negative impact. First, it permitted Hussein to take a major step toward becoming a nuclear power. Second, it encouraged him in his view that the United States would not resist--if, indeed, it did not actively favor--Iraq’s emergence as a regional superpower.

Frantz and Waas also report that an internal White House document prepared for Brent Scowcroft, the President’s national security adviser, blames the technology transfers on Democrats in Congress rather than on the Administration. Inconveniently, however, for an Administration that has rested so much on the claim that it can be trusted with the grave responsibilities of foreign policy, this is a buck that will not pass. Zimmerman makes the crucial point: The laws on the books were more than adequate to block weapons technology export; what was lacking was enforcement.

WORSE JUDGMENT: Fotunately for the world, Saddam Hussein blew his own cover. His carbide tool plant was nearing completion in August, 1990, when he invaded Kuwait. More than 100 American and allied lives later, his invasion would be thrown back and his tool plant destroyed. But the fact that the Iraqi tyrant’s judgment was even worse than that of the Bush Administration is cold comfort as one contemplates the challenges that may lie ahead. In the end, no foreign policy skill is more basic than the ability to tell friend from foe.