March 1991, Volume 47, No. 2, pp. 16-25
Iraq and the bomb: Were they even close? http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/1991/m91/m91albright1.html
By David Albright and Mark Hibbs
Just two hours after U.S. warplanes began attacking Iraq on January 16, President Bush went on national television to report the goals of the assault. "As I report to you, air attacks are under way against military targets in Iraq. We are determined to knock out Saddam Hussein's nuclear bomb potential," the president said, before ticking off other objectives.
The prominence Bush gave to Iraq's nuclear "potential" repeated a theme that the administration began pushing vigorously last November as a rationale for the use of military force against that country. But after a months-long investigation of the requirements any country would need to build nuclear weapons, and an assessment of Iraq's ability to meet those requirements, we conclude that Saddam Hussein was many years away from developing usable nuclear weapons.