In 1997, UNSCOM declared that it had accounted for 817 of the 819 missiles prohibited by UN resolution 687. But the 819 referred only to the Scuds that Iraq imported from the Soviet Union, not the issue of Iraq’s indigenous missile production. The report stated:
However, priority requirements are: clarification of and accounting for Iraq’s indigenous production of proscribed missiles, including seven missiles claimed to have been for training, and conventional warheads and warheads for biological and chemical agents, and major missile parts.”
Clinton national security council official Ken Pollack explained all this in his book, The Threatening Storm:
UNSCOM discovered a secret Iraqi Scud engine plant still in operation in 1995, leading it to conclude that Iraq may have been building new missiles even as UNSCOM destroyed its old ones. Consequently, UNSCOM personnel concluded that Iraq had at least a dozen al-Husseins [Scuds] when it ceased cooperation with the inspectors in 1998…. Although virtually all the Soviet-supplied Scuds have been accounted for, because Iraq was able to produce Scud-type missiles indigenously there is no way to know just what its actual Scud inventory consisted of or how many it now has left. (169)
Here’s what UNMOVIC’s March 2003 report stated on this issue:
The lack of evidence to support Iraq’s declarations on its destruction of…indigenously produced ‘training’ engines, as well as on the key engine components, such as turbo-pumps, raises the question whether they were all destroyed as declared…. In order to address the broader question of the existence of a possible Scud-type missile force, Iraq should provide specific documentation in support of its declarations. An example would be the two reports written by the missile force commander on 30 January 1991 and in May 1991 that, on the basis of Iraq’s own declarations and outside information, are known to exist. The first report could help clarify the state of the combat missile force at the end of the Gulf War. The second report could allow clarification of the status of the missile force just after the adoption of resolution 687 (1991).
What about Saddam’s chemical and biological warheads? The same March 2003 report declared:
Although UNSCOM verified the destruction of 73 to 75 of the 75 special warheads that Iraq declared, a number of discrepancies and questions remain, which raise doubts about the accounting of the special warheads, including the total number produced: statements by some senior Iraqi officials that Iraq had possessed 75 chemical and 25 biological Scud-type warheads; the finding that, at a minimum, 16 to 30 structural rings remain unaccounted for; Iraq’s numerous changes to its declarations on these matters; Iraq’s admitted action taken to mislead UNSCOM on the location and number of special warheads; the physical evidence which conflicts with Iraq’s account of its destruction of biological warheads; and the fact that no remnants of biological warheads were found by UNSCOM until after Iraq’s admission in 1995 that it had had an offensive biological weapons programme. As a consequence of the accounting questions above, uncertainty remains concerning the types and numbers of chemical and biological agents it filled into the special warheads. The finding of degradation products related to nerve agents on some warhead remnants suggests that its declaration may not be complete.
Did the New York Times crowd print much of this or this or this? No.
