Banned Weapons Not Among Targets WASHINGTON (AP) -- No matter how long the U.S.-British air offensive against Iraq lasts or how much damage it inflicts, it probably will leave untouched the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons Saddam Hussein is suspected of hiding, Clinton administration officials concede. President Clinton says the main purpose of the air campaign, which continued for the third day Friday, is to diminish Iraq's capacity for producing the lethal weaponry that Washington and London claim is a threat to the world. Why, then, are the hundreds of missiles and bombs in the attack not aimed at likely hiding places for weapons that Clinton claims Saddam, the Iraqi president, would not hesitate to use? ``That's a good question, and I don't know the answer,'' said Brent Scowcroft, who was President Bush's national security adviser when the issue of Iraq's illicit weaponry first arose in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. If these weapons are the worry, why not bomb them, he wonders. Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi deputy prime minister, said he knows why. ``The matter is not weapons of mass destruction,'' he told reporters in Baghdad on Friday. ``They know that all weapons of mass destruction have been totally destroyed.'' The bombing campaign is intended only to ``show that the United States is the sole superpower in the world,'' he contended. U.S. officials say the reasons for not targeting weapons of mass destruction are twofold: They cannot be pinpointed with certainty and bombing them might release dangerous poisons and cause additional casualties of innocent civilians. Instead, U.S. missiles and bombs are aimed at the facilities that support Iraq's weapons program -- a military research and development center, for example, a barracks for the Republic Guard military units that are responsible for weapons security and a missile repair facility. Defense Secretary William Cohen says the Iraqis cannot be believed when they claim they have no weapons of mass destruction. ``Saddam Hussein has claimed for eight years that he has no chemical weapons, that he has no biological weapons,'' Cohen said. ``Only when confronted with the facts has he retreated and admitted he had been lying.'' ``So we don't take him at his word that he has none,'' Cohen added. David Albright, a former U.N. nuclear weapons inspector and now president of the private Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, said U.S. officials strongly suspect Saddam still is manufacturing nuclear weapons components and probably has some chemical and biological materials. ``But who knows where they might be stored,'' Albright said. Even if Iraq has such weapons stashed away, the U.S. and British bombing -- if successful -- would make it harder to use them or to manufacture more. In the longer run, Saddam's ability to threaten the world with illicit weapons may depend on whether he puts out the welcome mat for the United Nations' beleaguered corps of inspectors and lets them work unhindered. If he does not, the United States will have to rely on two tools that Russia and some other countries oppose: indefinite economic sanctions and, perhaps, further military action. Scowcroft, for one, does not believe that Saddam's weapons program can be contained without inspectors on the ground. ``I don't think it can be done through sanctions alone,'' he said. ``The sanctions keep (Saddam) from building up his overall military forces, but he gets enough income to apply it toward weapons of mass destruction, especially chemical and biological.''
