SEND
Claim:Bombing works. Bombing the Osirak reactor stopped Saddam Hussein's nuclear program.Response:Contrary to popular myth, the Israeli bombing of Saddam Hussein's Osiraq reactor in 1981 did not stop Iraq's nuclear weapons program. In fact, it may well have started or greatly expanded it, according to Iraqi nuclear scientists who have written on that episode.Iraqi nuclear scientist Imad Khadduri claims that the Osirak reactor was designed by the French to be poorly suited for plutonium production. Moreover, bombing the reactor did not stop Saddam Hussein's A-bomb program as often believed. On the contrary, it convinced the Iraqi leadership to initiate a full fledged nuclear weapons program immediately afterwards -- and to do so covertly and on a large scale.1 Khadduri's account is independently corroborated by another Iraqi nuclear scientist, Khidir Hamza, who would become a leading supporter of the Iraqi invasion and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. He reports that the Israeli raid on Osirak had the effect of transforming what had been a relatively modest operation involving 400 scientists funded at $700 million a year -- with a capability for generating enough plutonium for less than one bomb a year -- into a large, covert enterprise involving over 7,000 scientists and technicians with a $10 billion investment dedicated to developing the underground capacity to enrich enough uranium for six nuclear bombs a year. 2 It was not the Osirak raid that stopped Saddam Hussein's nuclear program, but Operation Desert Storm (ten years later) and the inspection regime that followed that finally prompted Saddam Hussein to terminate the program. |