The Sunday Times [London] September 29, 2002
US ready for Thanksgiving strike
By Tony Allen-Mills and Stephen Grey
AMERICAN military commanders are being warned a US-led attack on Iraq could begin by the Thanksgiving holiday on November 28, according to military and diplomatic sources in Washington and other allied capitals.
The looming row at the UN over the proposed text of a new ultimatum to Iraq has heightened international concern US President George W. Bush may be engineering a breakdown in diplomatic negotiations ahead of an early strike on Baghdad.
European and other diplomats complained at the weekend that the British-US text for a tough new security council resolution on the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq was so aggressive that it was "designed to be rejected".
The draft resolution obliges Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to allow inspectors to go anywhere they liked at any time. It ends previously agreed restrictions on UN visits to presidential palaces and other sites that the Iraqis have claimed as off-limits.
One Washington source said: "It will be the equivalent of UN inspectors arriving at Buckingham Palace at 2am and inviting the Queen to show them her cellars."
The draft gives Baghdad up to 30 days to provide a "full, final and complete declaration" of Mr Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and authorises "all necessary means" to enforce his compliance.
It effectively grants Washington permission to go to war if Mr Hussein is found to have lied or if he attempts to obstruct inspectors.
One senior official in Washington predicted weapons inspectors would never go back to Baghdad. Either the UN Security Council would try to weaken the draft to the point where it became unacceptable to Washington, the official said, or the resolution would require a degree of co-operation Mr Hussein could never accept.
Either way, war fever has intensified at the Pentagon, where planners are fine-tuning what many military experts expect to be a high-speed, high-intensity deployment of forces ready to advance on to Iraqi soil within three weeks of an order from Mr Bush.
The diplomatic struggle to persuade France, Russia and China to endorse an aggressive resolution appears to have persuaded Mr Bush's hawkish advisers that the longer the inspections issue drags on, the harder it will be to justify an attack.
"The instinctive position that the Americans are coming from is that they don't like the UN, they don't like inspections, they think Saddam has had his chance and that you can't eliminate weapons of mass destruction without eliminating Saddam," one European diplomat said.
After a series of Pentagon leaks about US troop movements and other military preparations, US officials acknowledged last week that the stealthy build-up amounted to "prudent planning" in case the President ordered an early attack.
A growing number of military experts believes the timetable points to Thanksgiving. It may take two more weeks of intensive lobbying before the UN agrees a new resolution; by mid-October, Mr Bush also should have obtained formal approval from the US Congress for action against Iraq.
If the UN resolution is approved, Mr Hussein will have seven days to accept its terms and another 23 days to identify his weapons programs. US officials seem convinced that whether or not Mr Hussein chooses to co-operate, he is certain to lie about the status of his weapons.
If he fails to list a suspect site or to declare a banned weapon, and US intelligence can provide the evidence, Washington will have a pretext to strike.
Soon after the US's mid-term elections on November 5, Mr Bush could sign an executive order declaring war on Iraq.
According to John Pike, the head of globalsecurity.org and a respected analyst, the Pentagon needs only 10 days to ready its weapons and 10 more days to airlift a preliminary strike force to the region. "The posture is to go to war by the end of November," he said.
Copyright 2002 The Sunday Times
