Military

DATE=4/29/02

TYPE=INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

TITLE=JONATHAN ADELMAN/IRAQ

NUMBER=3-156

BYLINE=TOM CROSBY

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

INTRO: Published reports in the New York Times and Boston Globe newspapers say the United States is considering various plans including military action to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The reports suggest the Bush administration is considering a major air campaign against Iraq followed by a ground invasion. However, the White House says President Bush is considering all options but has made no decisions.

Jonathan Adelman is a Mideast analyst at the University of Denver, who tells V-O-A's Tom Crosby the United States may find itself with some unwilling allies if it pursues these options:

MR. ADELMAN:

Even without Saudi Arabia, this plan seems to rely on Turkey. Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit has been very clear that he does not want to get involved. Without this, it will be very hard to launch a ground invasion. So, I think they are presuming Turkish involvement. I have no way of knowing whether that is correct or not.

Secondly, replacing Saudi Arabia, they want to use Kuwait. Now, the Kuwaiti leaders publicly have been quite hostile to this idea. So, perhaps they know things that we do not know or they are hoping for things to develop.

And thirdly, the plan seems to rely on, according to what is written by the correspondents, cooling down the Arab-Israeli dispute. And as we have seen in the last few months -- good luck. That is going to be extremely difficult to do. Neither the Israelis, nor the Palestinians, have been terribly interested in abiding by Washington's desire to cool down this dispute.

So, I think it sounds like a plan that might work, but I think, if the United States does -- and I think we should emphasize it has not evidently made any final commitment to this, to go in that direction -- there is still a lot from an operational point of view that seems to remain, at best, still somewhat up in the air.

MR. CROSBY:

Indeed, the Defense Department says that President Bush has not committed himself one way or the other on this. But does the possibility not arise in this that the U-S, or some other governments, might aid dissident factions within Iraq, and thereby go about toppling Saddam Hussein?

MR. ADELMAN:

There is no question that that has always been the desired course not only for the Bush administration but for the Clinton administration. But what has been revealed recently in public sources is there have been no less than six coup attempts in the last few years, all of which have failed and all of which Saddam Hussein has brutally executed the people who were involved. And so I would not think that this administration would place a great deal of hope on a seventh coup attempt succeeding, although of course they would be delighted if it did.

MR. CROSBY:

Jonathan, if the effort to topple Saddam Hussein, if it indeed were to take place, and if it were a military one, is there a sense on your part that the Iraqi military might not be the same Iraqi military that the coalition forces met in the Persian Gulf war -- this one might be a little more hardened, a little more ready to stand its ground?

MR. ADELMAN:

Well, there is also the reverse thinking on several grounds. First of all, there are less than half the number of soldiers in the Iraqi military today than there were 10 years ago.

Secondly, their combat capability, the military equipment, has really atrophied. So, therefore, we estimate their overall military capability to be about one-third of what it was in 1991.

Thirdly, the American capabilities, as has been demonstrated in Kosovo and Afghanistan, have clearly increased; that if it is there on the surface, it can be acquired and eliminated. In the Persian Gulf War, we used about eight percent precision-guided munitions to destroy targets; in Afghanistan, 65 percent; now we are talking 75 percent here.

Finally, you have to ask, what is going to be the willingness of the average Iraqi soldier or commander to fight, after he has seen the Persian Gulf War, Kosovo and Afghanistan? So what we can say is, like in every campaign, there is a fog of battle; we are not clear what is going to happen. But this administration, by talking about 70,000 to 250,000 soldiers, which is just barely half what we had last time at the most, clearly is optimistic in believing it can do better than last time. So we still have to see what happens. (End of interview.)

OUTRO: Mideast analyst Jonathan Adelman was talking with VOA's Tom Crosby.

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