WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Two former United Nations weapons inspectors warned a House committee Tuesday that restarting inspections in Iraq would not provide any certainty about the country's weapons of mass destruction as long as Saddam Hussein remains in charge.
"The reintroduction of U.N. inspectors into Iraq may well result not in constraining Iraq's weapons capabilities, but freeing them of all restraint," said David Kay, a former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq.
"We might end up with Iraq being declared free of weapons of mass destruction, when in fact all that would be certain is that U.N. inspectors could not find any evidence of them."
"If you have a government determined to deceive and deny, the inspectors don't have a chance," said Richard Spertzel, the former head of biological inspectors on the U.N. team, which was active in Iraq from 1991 to 1998.
The testimony of the former inspectors before the House Armed Services Committee comes as lawmakers weigh the evidence for and against a military strike to depose Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. President George W. Bush has said he will ask Congress for a vote in advance of a potential invasion, and Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday the administration would like lawmakers to vote on the issue before they leave Washington in October.
Both former U.N. inspectors Tuesday urged lawmakers to take Saddam's weapons of mass destruction capabilities very seriously. They said they had no doubt that he was actively building his biological and chemical weapons arsenals, and Kay stressed that he believed Saddam was well on his way to having a nuclear weapon.
Echoing recent intelligence reports, Kay said a shortage of fissionable material for fuel was the only thing standing between Iraq and a nuclear device. Kay said that he believed there was a serious risk that Saddam could buy enriched uranium from former Soviet or other sources to create a crude bomb within months.
"What we're talking about here is 20 to 40 pounds of material, an amount the size of a football," said Kay, who added that such a device, detonated in America, could kill "tens of thousands of people."
"I am not convinced that our intelligence could detect that kind of transfer," he said.
Kay added there were many signs that Saddam has continued to procure equipment for weapons of mass destruction programs from foreign sources, though he did not detail them.
"Time is not on our side," Kay said, echoing Bush's opinion that the United States should act before Saddam's capabilities increase.
Spertzel said he has "no doubt" that Iraq's biological weapons program is stronger than in 1995, when it was discovered by U.N. inspection teams.
In the early 1990s, Iraq's biological weapons program was in a stage of active development, he said, and Iraq had perfected a number of bacterial agents.
With continued progress in technical expertise in the area, and evidence that its scientists had sought to procure additional materials from abroad, Iraq could now also be in possession of weaponized viral agents, he said.
"It has had 12 years to advance its viral capability, and as I have cited elsewhere, this almost certainly includes smallpox as an agent," Spertzel said.
Both inspectors spoke at length about Saddam's "world-class" efforts to deceive weapons inspectors throughout the 1990s by hiding and moving evidence. Iraqi officials, they said, often lied about their weapons capabilities. Both men said there would be no reason to expect a change of behavior this time around.
Kay said the administration would likely not have the luxury of being certain of Saddam's capabilities before an invasion. The U.S. intelligence community knew very little about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities before the Gulf War, he said.
"If we learned one thing from our previous experiences, it's that from the outside, it's impossible to know what Iraq has. But the absence of evidence does not mean the absence of something there," Kay said.
"If there is nothing to his weapons program, why would Saddam have forgone $120 billion in oil revenues over the past 11 years to protect it?" Kay asked the lawmakers.
