- As far back as 1990, scientists working for Iraqi madman
Saddam Hussein managed to perfect a single nuclear bomb, according to the
physicist who ran Iraq's version of the Manhattan Project at the time.
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- But the device was too heavy to mount on the Iraqi missiles
and not enough nuclear material could be obtained for additional bombs,
Dr. Khidhir Hamza, who ran Saddam's nuclear weapons program from 1987 through
the early 1990's, tells U.S. News & World Report this week.
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- The former top Iraqi physicist - Hamza defected to the
U.S. in 1994 - also reveals that a few years earlier Hussein twice tested
radiological weapons, known as "dirty bombs," but was disappointed
in the results.
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- By November of 1990, Dr. Hamza's Atomic Energy Department
had nearly completed a nuclear device. But it was the size of a refrigerator
- far too big to fit into a missile warhead, he explains.
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- Iraq had been able to extract enough of the key nuclear
ingredient enriched uranium, 18 kilograms, from its Osiraq nuclear reactor,
the facility bombed into oblivion by the Isaelis in 1981, he tells the
magazine.
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- But two things stopped Hamza and his colleagues from
deploying what would have been Saddam's first nuke:
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- They knew that any such move would set off alarms at
the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitored Iraq's use of uranium.
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- And once their success had become public, the agency
would prevent Iraq from developing any more enriched uranium. Therefore,
says Hamza, Iraq would be able to build only one oversize bomb.
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- Informed of this, Saddam agreed to shift Iraq's WMD focus
to chemical and biological weaponry.
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- Prior to perfecting a genuine nuke, Hamza and his crew
were ordered to explore the potential of non-nuclear radiological weaponry
- the same sort of "dirty bombs" experts fear Osama bin Laden
may have obtained.
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- Two weapons using irradiated zirconium oxide were tested
at a site west of Baghdad in 1987 and 1988 with an eye towards using them
in Iraq's then-ongoing war against Iran.
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- "But the results were poor," Hamza tells U.S.
News. "The radioactive material did not spread far enough, and the
degree of radiation from the device was too weak to cause immediate casualties."
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- Iraq's radiological warfare program was subsequently
terminated, he says, explaining, "We wanted a nuclear yield."
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