Who is to Judge?

Abstract

In March 1998 evidence emerged that the United States regarded Iraq’s alleged ‘weapons of mass destruction’ as ‘very ineffective’. Jim Larocco, the US ambassador to Kuwait, reportedly declared at an embassy meeting in early February that, considering the possibility of an Iraqi attack on Kuwait, there was no requirement for gas masks: ‘No one at the American embassy has gas masks and the American embassy does not recommend any.’ A principal reason for this attitude was that Iraq’s ‘biological and chemical warheads are very ineffective’ – a judgement suggesting, according to Dr Julian Perry-Robinson, a senior fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit and an expert on Iraqi weapons, that the United States did not believe that Iraq was in a position to deliver its weapons.¹