Shades of Supergun Evoke Hussein’s Thirst for Arms

ISKANDARIYA, Iraq — Sabah al-Khafaji remembers when the pieces started arriving here at the height of Iraq’s weapons program in the late 1980’s, each menacing section of the gun barrel so huge it had to be carried on a separate flatbed truck.

Now, Mr. Khafaji fumbles with the lock on a metal gate near his bus factory 30 miles south of Baghdad and swings it open to a trashy asphalt lot. There lie the rusting steel sections of what may have been Saddam Hussein’s wildest reach: the supergun, an artillery piece so powerful that it could not only shell his enemies in Tel Aviv and Tehran but also fire a projectile into orbit.

Most of Mr. Hussein’s vast network of military complexes and the weapons they contained have been looted, often to the last bolt and window frame. But as weapons experts continue to see and gauge what is left — weapons held within protected enclaves or hulking metal relics even the most ambitious looters were unable to cart away — they are getting a concentrated picture of the obsessive martial mind that ran this country for 25 years.

Read the rest at the NY Times

Related Link:
Frontline: The Man Who Made The Supergun