Terry Everett, February 9, 2004

By now, most of us have seen the national TV reports about how former weapons inspector Dr. David Kay found no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction while he was in Iraq. What you've read and heard is only part of the story, however. This week, we'll look at the more complicated picture our inspectors have encountered on the ground.

Though no chemical or nuclear bombs have yet been found in Iraq, the truth is that the U.S.-led search team has undeniable evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime maintained an ambitious WMD program. According to Dr. Kay's recent testimony , his most important finding was that Iraq, which "was in clear and material violation of 1441"-the United Nations Security Council resolution that gave Baghdad one last chance to admit its weapons program -maintained activities "that would allow them to restart the program as soon as they got rid of us."

Saddam Hussein's weapons makers designed his secret WMD program "to allow future production at some time." Iraq maintained research sites, documents, equipment and, most importantly, a cadre of experienced weapons scientists that could reestablish and run production lines once the U.N. tired of sanctions. Dr. Kay reckons Iraq stockpiled these soft assets instead because international inspectors are "not particularly good at unmasking" such ambiguous and small-scale resources. Once Iraq regained a delivery capability-for example, through its "very large unmanned aerial vehicle program"-providing the weapon agents would be "a relatively short order."

Dr. Kay's group found evidence that Iraq intended to restart its chemical and biological weapons program. Included among hundreds of pieces of evidence are a prison laboratory complex-possibly used in human testing of biological weapon agents-that regime officials were explicitly ordered not to declare to the U.N., and strains used to produce biological warfare agents. In fact, Iraqi scientists had "moved ahead their anthrax capability," and had conducted unsanctioned work on weapons-applicable agents, such as ricin and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever, a rare and deadly virus that causes internal bleeding.

Dr. Kay also testified that after 2000 Iraq began the process of reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, renovating a research center at Al Tuwaitha, building new buildings, hiring more staff, and running physics experiments. "Fortunately," the chief inspector said, "Operation Iraqi Freedom intervened and we don't know how or how fast…the emerging program…would have gone ahead."

More proof of an ongoing WMD program might have been transported to Syria, now home to hundreds of Saddam Hussein's relatives and former henchmen. Dr. Kay told The London Telegraph that former Iraqi officials admitted that "a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD program," assertions supported by intelligence showing containers were moved across the border. It is noteworthy that the 8,500 liters of anthrax the U.N. said Iraq had could fit into the kind of trailer you pull with your sport utility vehicle, and that Iraq shares a 375-mile border with its western neighbor.

It will take some time for investigators to get the full picture of the final status of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction program. As Dr. Kay noted, Iraq had a robust WMD capability, only it looked different than what he expected. He observed that Iraq "was even more dangerous than we thought" and the "world is far safer with the disappearance and the removal of Saddam Hussein." These assessments for some reason didn't make the evening news headlines.

Congressman Terry Everett represents the 2nd Congressional District of Alabama in the U.S. House of Representatives.