The WMD War

The following is set on a parallel earth.



Excerpted from the Modern Earth Encyclopedia - American Tricentennial Edition

Desert Storm II

Desert Storm II is also known as the WMD War.

After the United States invaded Afghanistan following the 9/11 attack President Calvin Gorman resisted the call to confront Iraq on the issue of its Weapons of Mass Destruction programs. He said that there was no convincing evidence that Iraq still had WMD’s and thus no need to bring up the issue.

In fact, Iraq did not have any WMD “ready to use” at the time. However, Iraq’s WMD programs were still intact. Saddam Hussein didn’t want actual weapons available unless he was ready to use them. He feared someone would use them against him.

A coup attempt in July, 2003, killed Saddam Hussein. His son Uday squashed the coup and took control of the government. Some intelligence agencies believed that Uday learned of the coup in advance, but decided to allow it to take place anyway so he could take power if it succeeded.

Uday decided that the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan provided an opportunity for him to invade Kuwait without a U.S. response. President Gorman’s decision not to oppose the construction on an insecticide plant in early 2003 meant that Uday could begin producing nerve agents.

He felt that he could launch a preemptive attack against American bases in the region which would prevent the U.S. from retaliating. Saddam had kept a supply of nerve gas shells and secretly manufactured rockets capable of delivering nerve agents to American bases. Saddam also had retained the necessary materials to produce botulism and anthrax weapons.

Uday launched his attack in late May, 2004, because weather conditions would preclude a U.S. invasion until late in the year, if the U.S. considered one. The surprise nerve agent attack killed 2,574 American troops at bases in Saudi Arabia and Turkey as well as on ships in the Persian Gulf. It is believed that the biological weapons attack on Kuwait relied in part on releasing botulism and anthrax into a dust storm as it entered Kuwait.

President Gorman launched cruise missiles with conventional explosives against Iraq military targets, but Uday had anticipated the attacks and they accomplished little. Gorman stated that he wouldn’t use nuclear weapons because the U. S. wouldn’t be the first to use nuclear weapons in a war. His attempt to put together a coalition to attack Iraq was hampered by fears among Muslim states that Iraq would use nerve or biological agents against them.
By election day, Gorman still was attempting to persuade other nations to take part in a coalition. Republican Julius “Julie” Rudman easily defeated Gorman in the presidential election.

Uday made a fatal error in late January, 2005. He launched a rocket with a nerve agent against Israel that landed in a Palestinian area. Palestinians claimed that the Israelis shot it down so that it would land there, but the Israelis denied the charge.

At noon eastern time the next day President Rudman requested air time on the broadcast networks. He began by stating that after using WMD during WWII, the U.S. had adopted a policy of not using WMD unless an enemy used them first. Iraq’s use of WMD the previous year and the previous day in Israel meant that it had used WMD first and the U.S. was free to use them against Iraq. Rudman then stated that 15 minutes earlier the U.S. had used tactical nuclear weapons against two suspected WMD facilities. In the future if Iraq used WMD against a military target, the United States would use a nuclear weapon against an Iraqi military base. If Iraq used WMD against a city or other civilian target, the U.S. would destroy an Iraqi city.

The statement effectively ended the war. Mass desertions, except among elite units, virtually destroyed the Iraqi military. Most Baghdad residents, including government employees, left the city in a panic fearing it would be the first city to be destroyed. The government soon collapsed. Uday disappeared from public view. According to rumors he fled Iraq into exile with a “truck full of money.”

The Kurds quickly declared independence and set up a new government. The United States recognized the government the next day. Ten years later Turkey reluctantly agreed to sell the Kurdish area of eastern Turkey to the Kurdish Republic for a 30% share of Kurdish oil revenue.

The Shiites attempted to become the government of the remainder of Iraq, but soon began a civil war with the Sunnis in which over a million people may have died. Although the facilities to manufacture chemical and biological weapons had been destroyed, a few weapons remained with both sides finding and using some of them.

The Shittes abandoned efforts to control the Sunni dominated area after three years and it became an independent state. An investment group later convinced the Sunni state to allow construction of solar and wind electrical generation facilities which provided significant economic benefits to the new nation.

Saudi Arabia and western nations were concerned that Shiite Iraq would become part of Iraq. However, Iraqi Shiite leaders preferred to not take orders from the Persians and the area remained a separate country.