How dangerous is Iraq's arsenal?

Ritter estimates that by 1998, Iraq could have reconstituted small mustard-chemical agents in eight weeks to two months. It could also produce "small-scale" Sarin nerve agent within four months and have lab-scale VX nerve agent in six to eight months – all undetectable at that scale. On the biological side, weaponizing to kill many people was out of reach. "What Iraq had in 1991 wasn't a [biological] weapon, it was a large chunk of metal with some sludge in it," Ritter says. "The only way it was going to kill you was if it landed on your head."

Iraq is capable of breaking out of the 93-mile missile range – the limit imposed by the Gulf War cease-fire agreement – but would not be able to test without detection. As for nuclear capabilities, Ritter says: "Forget it. That was where Iraq was most thoroughly disarmed."

Some former UNSCOM officials are alarmed, however. Terry Taylor, a British senior UNSCOM inspector from 1993 to 1997, says the figure of 95 percent disarmament is "complete nonsense because inspectors never learned what 100 percent was. UNSCOM found a great deal and destroyed a great deal, but we knew [Iraq's] work was continuing while we were there, and I'm sure it continues," says Mr. Taylor, now head of the Washington office of the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies. In 1995, Iraq was caught importing missile parts via Jordan, for example, and hiding them on the bottom of the Tigris River.

Though the nuclear file is usually the first to be dismissed as virtually "closed," Taylor says dismantlement efforts were incomplete. Iraq was working to master simultaneous timing of explosions, "and even at its most intrusive, UNSCOM could never have found that." The nuclear program was Iraq's "most prized, and given the nature of the regime, I don't think they have given up on that objective ... I think they could have nuclear weapons very, very quickly, if they got hold of fissile material – it could be a matter of a few months." The Iraqis "are the greatest [people] in the world at hiding these things from inspectors," he adds. "My view is, we don't need any more evidence [before taking action]."

But Toby Dodge, an Iraq specialist at the Royal Institute for Strategic Studies in London, says little solid evidence has emerged that Iraq had been on any recent "shopping spree" such as the one that took place in the 1980s, when the US and UK helped arm Iraq against Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran.

Underlining the dearth of current evidence on Iraq, a dossier of alleged Iraqi violations, collated by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's office last spring, has not been made public. Sources familiar with its charges, Mr. Dodge says, indicate that it was "not convincing at the time" and was based largely on unreliable accounts from defectors. Iraq's main procurement network, Dodge adds, has also been "rolled up."

"Nobody has shown a red flag to us yet," says Amin Tarzi, an Iraq specialist at the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., which runs a project to chart all public information about Iraq's illicit programs. "The scariest thing about Iraq is that they have the know-how. But the point is: We don't know what is happening."

New weapons inspection teams to replace UNSCOM, led by former UN atomic energy agency chief Hans Blix, have yet to set foot in Iraq. Ensuring that those inspectors are effective would "require that the US put all its effort into it, and line up Russia, France, and China" on the UN Security Council, Ekeus says.

"Saddam Hussein is married to these weapons, which will make him a major player of regional and even global significance," Ekeus says. "Without them, he is, at most, a local thug."

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