Imad Khadduri, Iraq’s Nuclear Mirage, Memoirs And Delusions, Springhead Publishers, 2003

Khadduri, Imad, Iraq’s Nuclear Mirage, Memoirs And Delusions, Springhead Publishers, 2003

 

Imad Khadduri worked on Iraq’s nuclear program amongst other government duties. His Iraq’s Nuclear Mirage is a memoir of his life in Iraq and eventual escape to Canada.

 

Khadduri’s book can be divided into three broad sections. The first is about his work on building an atomic bomb for Saddam Hussein. Iraq’s nuclear program started in the 1970s when it got two reactors from France. They were bombed by Israel in 1981. Ironically that led Baghdad to refocus its efforts to get a bomb.

 

Khadduri started at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center. He worked on the reactors, a nuclear electric power plant and finding articles and patents to further the work. That included discovering all the documents on America’s Manhattan Project which created the first atomic bombs and became the basis for Iraq’s program. He also created a network for all the different facilities to access this information. This gave him intimate knowledge of all the working groups in the effort.

 

In 1991 Iraq gave up trying to make a bomb and had to focus upon United Nations weapons inspections. Khadduri thought Iraq had only accomplished 10-20% of what it needed to build a bomb and was still years away. Saddam’s son in law Hussein Kamal who was in charge of the main weapons program decided that some information about the work would be divulged to the inspectors but most of it would be hidden. This started a large concealment effort some of which was discovered by the U.N. The author took part in this process by hiding copies of many of the reports from the bomb program.

 

The second part of the book is about Khadduri’s attempt to get out of Iraq. The author ran afoul of a security chief which doomed his career. The problem was Khadduri wanted to legally immigrate from Iraq even though that involved bribes and other illegal efforts through friends in the government bureaucracy. He could’ve been smuggled out of the country several times but refused. In 1998 he finally made his way to Jordan after many failed attempts which he documents in the book. This was part of a larger exodus of professionals out of the country which was collapsing under the weight of United Nations sanctions. Many of the author’s friends also left in the 90s.

 

The last part of Iraq’s Nuclear Mirage is about the author’s frustration with the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He knew Iraq did not have a nuclear bomb program and tried to let the world know. He was especially critical of Khidir Hamza who fled Iraq and spread stories about Saddam being very close to getting a bomb which was false. The author attempted to go to the media about his work but most outlets believed the stories coming out of Washington and London which frustrated him to no avail.

 

At the same time his account of the war also had flaws. For one he held a common belief to blame neoconservatives in the Bush administration for the war. They played a role but it was ultimately the President’s decision not theirs. Second, he talks about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction file being as cut and dry as the nuclear one. He believed that the U.N. inspectors just needed to interview those involved and go through the documents and everything would be revealed. In fact, Iraq destroyed its WMD stocks without documenting them and therefore could never satisfy the U.N. Most importantly the U.S. and U.K. weren’t relying upon the inspectors to find the truth about Iraq’s work but rather were looking at them as an excuse to go to war. If they found the weapons it would justify the war and if they didn’t it would prove that Baghdad was hiding them and lead to the war.

 

Khadduri’s book is more of a personal journal than a detailed record of Iraq’s attempt to build a nuclear bomb. There are insights into the program but there is much more on the rest of his life especially attempting to get out of Iraq in the 1990s. If one wants a more in depth look at Iraq’s effort to get a bomb Khadduri co-wrote Unrevealed Milestones in the Iraqi National Nuclear Program 1981-1991 which is much better.

 

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