Evidence keeps piling up, even if the WMD stash hidden underground somewhere in Iraq or Syria hasn't been found yet.
British military officers have uncovered an attempt by Saddam Hussein to build a missile capable of hitting targets throughout the Middle East, including Israel, The Telegraph can reveal.Posted by Alan at May 25, 2003 12:10 PMPlans for the surface-to-surface missile were one of the regime's most closely-guarded secrets and were unknown to United Nations weapons inspectors. Its range of 600 miles would have been far greater than that of the al-Samoud rocket - which already breached the 93-mile limit imposed by the UN on any Iraqi missiles.
Saddam's masterplan for the new missile, which was being developed by Iraq's Military Industrialisation Commission (MIC), the body responsible for weapons procurement, constitutes the most serious breach uncovered so far of the tight restrictions imposed on Iraq's military capability after the 1991 Gulf war. The range of Saddam's missiles was restricted to prevent him from using them as a delivery system for weapons of mass destruction.
David Kay, the former United Nations weapons inspector responsible for dismantling Iraq's nuclear weapons programme in the 1990s, said the British discovery proved that Saddam had no intention of complying with UN requirements.
"This is the smoking gun we have been looking for," he said.