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Why Did Saddam Want The Bomb? - Analysis

By Hal Brands and David Palkki

On March 27, 1979, Saddam Hussein, the de facto ruler and soon-to-be president of Iraq, laid out his vision for a long, grinding war against Israel in a private meeting of high-level Baathist officials. Iraq, he explained, would seek to obtain a nuclear weapon from “our Soviet friends,” use the resulting deterrent power to counteract Israeli threats of nuclear retaliation, and thereby enable a “patient war”—a war of attrition—that would reclaim Arab lands lost in the Six Day War of 1967. As Saddam put it, nuclear weapons would allow Iraq to “guarantee the long war that is destructive to our enemy, and take at our leisure each meter of land and drown the enemy with rivers of blood.” [1]

Until recently, scholars seeking to divine the inner workings of the Baathist regime were forced to resort to a sort of Kremlinology, relying heavily on published sources as well as the occasional memoir or defector’s account. This is no longer the case. The transcript of the March 1979 meeting is one of millions of Baathist state records captured during and after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. These records, many of which are now being made available to scholars, include everything from routine correspondence to recordings and transcripts of top-level meetings between Saddam and his advisers. These records illustrate the logic (and illogic) of Saddam’s statecraft to an unprecedented degree. They also shed light on one of the most crucial questions pertaining to Iraqi foreign policy: Why did Saddam want the bomb?

The Iraqi nuclear program commenced in the late 1950s, with the purchase of a Soviet-made research reactor. The program lagged amid chronic political instability for much of the next fifteen years, but accelerated when Saddam became head of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Committee in 1973.

Saddam recruited Iraqi scientists to work on the program and concluded nuclear cooperation accords with France, Italy, the Soviet Union, and other countries. The deal with France provided Iraq with the 40-megawatt Osirak research reactor and highly enriched uranium. The agreement with Italy allowed Iraq to obtain fuel fabrication and plutonium reprocessing tools, as well as “hot cells” that could yield plutonium from the uranium processed by the Osirak reactor. At the outset of the 1980s, Iraq was reportedly within a few years of being able to manufacture a simple nuclear device.

bmw data » DCi Announces New Website Content Service For Auto ...

Des Moines, Iowa (PRWEB) July 24, 2009

Direct Communications, Inc. (DCi) has automotive aftermarket product data and enhanced content, covering nearly 1.4 million part numbers from over 200 leading performance and accessory brands from the SEMA specialty parts marketplace, ready to populate ecommerce websites. These part numbers are linked to over 54 million combinations of vehicle year/make/model/engine plus universal fit products.

“Enhanced product content is missing from so many ecommerce websites that sell automotive parts and accessories,” said Rob Eberhart, DCi’s Director of Internet Solutions. “There is a direct link between increased sales and enhanced content on a website. DCi provides the opportunity for ecommerce retailers to increase sales when they use our enhanced product content, exclusive to the automotive aftermarket. It is vital to a consumer-friendly site, as well as providing keywords for search engine optimization.”

As evidence of a direct link between product data, content, and sales, Eberhart points to numerous successes with DCi customers.

“We’ve seen an immediate 700% sales increase on a single part number when the correct photo, year make and model, and product description were used,” continued Eberhart. “One automotive website that began using product content from DCi went from selling less than $ 2,000/month for one brand to nearly $ 20,000 the next month. Three months later they sold over $ 30,000 in that one brand alone.”

A free white paper is available from DCi that shows how to grow online sales using enhanced product content.

One challenge ecommerce retailers have always had is to create their own product data and content to populate their websites. Unfortunately that requires a huge labor investment and a long time, as well as an ongoing maintenance problem. Manufacturers change product information on thousands of part numbers each month, not to mention new product releases and changes to thousands of year/make/model/engine applications.

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