Weapons of Mass Destruction

[StlSluggers]

I'm confused. This is a quote from "IAEA director and Nobel Peace laureate, Mohamed ElBaradei" about his disapproval of last month's bombing of a suspected Syrian nuclear site by the Israelis...

"When the Israelis destroyed Saddam Hussein's research nuclear reactor in 1981, the consequence was that Saddam Hussein pursued his program secretly. He began to establish a huge military nuclear program underground," he said.

Was this issue resolved before either of the Gulf Wars?

[AcidRock23]

By 'underground' they mean like clandestine research in laboratories or directed study of nuclear physics with an eye on producing weapons, rather than an underground complex like the Nordhausen camp where the V-2 was produced by the Nazis. I think that they had people working on it but were missing the vital parts one needs to put nuclear bombs together. Richard Rhodes' Pulitzer Prize winning book The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a fascinating account of the challenges they faced with the first bomb which also suggests why every douchebag terrorist or dictator can't just pull one out of their wazoo.