Family Atomics

Slowly, the world is waking up to find that the petty states that make up the Middle East have been clandestinely developing nuclear weapons for some time now. Not just Pakistan or Iran, but Libya, Iraq and now Eqypt. Here are some excerpts from MSNBC:

In the last several weeks, both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have disclosed secret Egyptian operations in both areas — experiments in the development of plutonium and uranium fuel cycles as well as evidence of sophisticated chemical weapons help that was given to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Neither report suggests that Egypt is going to deploy nuclear or chemical weapons, but the revelations once again raise concerns that the U.S. ally has its own superweapons programs.

So low and behold we find that indeed Saddam Hussein of Iraq was developing the capability for Weapons of Mass Destruction given to them not only by some nefarious mad scientist in Pakistan in the person of A.Q. Khan, but by our very own ally in North Africa, the glorious Egyptians.

In February, the IAEA quietly criticized Egypt for failing to report a variety of nuclear experiments for more than 20 years. The agency noted that Egypt had used “small amounts” of nuclear material to conduct experiments related to producing plutonium and enriched uranium, both of which can be used to make nuclear weapons. While the uranium experiments appear to have been 20 or more years old, the plutonium experiments were much recent. According to the report, between 1990 and 2003 Egypt used its two research reactors at Inshas in the Nile Delta to irradiate “small amounts of natural uranium,” conducting a total of 16 experiments. According to the IAEA, none of the experiments fully succeeded; but in each case, they should have been reported to the agency under terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act.

So, the Iraqis had a Nuclear Power Plant in 1982 that would eventually be destroyed by the Israelis then Egypt in turn would develop their own nuke capability shortly thereafter. Usually, countries are pretty tight-lipped about their nuclear capablities until at the most propitious moment to advertise its "abilities":

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, in fact, has on occasion been willing to raise the possibility of a nuclear Egypt. In October 1998, Mubarak said that Egypt could, if need be, develop nuclear weapons, or even buy the technology. But then, as always, he dismissed the idea.

Now we know, the idea wasn't so easily dismissed.

The United States now believes that Mubarak’s reference to being able to buy nuclear technology was not just an off-hand remark. The statement seems to coincide with a secret offer by Pakistan’s best-known nuclear scientist, A. Q. Khan, to help Egypt. Khan made similar offers to North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya, with North Korea, Iran and Libya accepting his help.

Egypt was at one time the leader of the Pan-Arab movement in the Middle East until after the Yom-Kippur War of 1973. After losing 3 separate wars to wipe Israel off the map, Egypt shrank from the political scene as the engine of a Unified Arabic block. However, many opportunities would arise that would provide ways to make up for their losses:

In the meantime, the CIA report on chemical weapons' support to Iraq indicates that the Egyptian arms industry was sophisticated enough to allow Cairo to help Baghdad to make “technological leaps” in the 1980s, as Arab Iraq was battling Persian Iran. The report is the first that publicly describes the extent of the support. In the early 1990s, Egypt declined to help the U.N. inspectors.

In fact, say inspectors from the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), Egypt was the only major Iraqi arms supplier not to cooperate with the United Nations. Some U.S. officials believe that if the Egyptians had turned over data about what they supplied to Saddam Hussein, it would show the advanced technical level of the Egyptian programs. Now with the Iraqi archives open to the CIA, the extent of the Egyptian help, as well as Egypt’s own capabilities, have become public.

The report, little noticed until the Associated Press wrote about it last week, stated that in 1981, after the outbreak of war with Iran, the Iraqi government paid Egypt $12 million "in return for assistance with production and storage of chemical weapons agents." The information was contained in a little-noticed annex of their Comprehensive Report, a 350,000-word document issued last October.

I think its safe to say all the left-wingers out there, including Scott Ritter, were wrong about Iraq:

Specifically, the CIA noted that, “During the early years, Egyptian scientists provided consultation, technology, and oversight allowing rapid advances and technological leaps in weaponization. With the Iran-Iraq war well under way, Egypt assisted Iraq in CW production,” making modifications to rocket systems to permit the warheads to store chemical agents, sending Iraq specially modified rockets with plastic inserts ideal for chemical weapons disbursal, and even sending its own chemical weapons experts to assist in developing sarin munitions. The final point is the best indicator of the Egyptian chemical weapons development, according to military experts.

And so my friends, the Middle East is awash in secret weapons programs and only time will tell if our money will continue to keep our enemies at bay. Egypt has received nearly 50 billion dollars since 1975 from the United States as a way to "pacify" their warlike ambitions, but alas, I'm not so sure it has worked:

Sarin is a nerve agent, one of the more advanced military chemicals in the world. Prior to the mid-1980s, Iraq's arsenal was limited to mustard gas and other disfiguring agents. Sarin was used extensively by Iraq to kill Kurdish dissidents in the north as well as Iranian soldiers in the south.

And not long after the Egyptian scientists arrived in Iraq, sarin production soared. From five tons in 1984, Iraqi sarin production rose to 209 tons in 1987 and 394 tons in 1988, the report says. "We were aware from back in 1991 that there was a link between Iraq and Egypt on chemical weapons," Ron G. Manley of Britain, a former senior U.N. adviser on chemical weapons, told the Associated Press. He said the warhead inserts, an Egyptian design, were an early clue.

And as military historians note, Egypt has been willing to use chemical weapons, being along with Iraq and Iran the only nations in recent memory to employ them. In its intervention in the 1960s Yemen civil war, Egypt repeatedly used mustard gas bombs on royalist forces in the Arabian kingdom.

Many things have been uncovered with the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Perhaps all is not what it seems in the Holy Land.