The Daily Star [Lebanon] November 11, 2002
Saddam 'will use entire arsenal' if cornered
Nicholas BlanfordIraqi President Saddam Hussein will resort to weapons of mass destruction and attempt to spark an Arab-Israeli war by attacking Israel if the United States carries out a plan to topple the Iraqi regime, says Joe Wilson, former US acting ambassador to Baghdad and one of the last American officials to meet Iraq's leader face to face.
Instead of a risky military drive to remove Hussein's regime, the focus should be on destroying Iraq's ability to manufacture weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), resorting, if necessary, to air strikes against WMD facilities and any Iraqi military assets that attempt to hinder the campaign, Wilson told The Daily Star in a telephone interview.
The argument in Washington to switch the emphasis from "regime change" to weapons inspections has gained ground as shown by the Bush administration's recourse to the United Nations Security Council rather than launching a direct attack against Baghdad.
But the prospect of a US-led invasion still looms high given the influence of the so-called neo-conservatives in the Bush administration for whom Iraq is the lynchpin in a grand plan to alter the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East.
"My own sense is that the president has been pinned into a corner by a small group of neo-conservatives who have long held that if you get rid of Saddam Hussein, you change the equation in the Middle East, without really specifying that the odds were good that you would change it for the better," Wilson said. While regime change as a policy objective is laudable, Wilson added, before the Sept. 11 attacks on the US no one would have considered it an excuse for military action.
"On Sept. 12, this whole band of neo-cons or neo-crazies as some people like to call them had a very coherent message which they took to the air waves," he said. "The thesis of their argument was really quite simple. It was: Sept. 11 was a bad event, Saddam Hussein is a bad man, ergo two bads equal kill Saddam Hussein."
The more moderate elements in the Bush administration have diluted the saber-rattling of the neo-cons, steering Bush toward to the UN to gain international support to squeeze Saddam.
"I think (the moderates) are winning the debate, (arguing) that in order to proceed in any action against Saddam Hussein, it has to be couched in international law and it has to enjoy the support of the international community," Wilson said. "You have seen in the president's public statements . a shift in his stance, too. Now he talks about disarmament rather than regime change."
UN Security Council Resolution 1441 adopted unanimously Friday is seen as a "last chance" for Hussein to comply with weapons inspections. Although the resolution a watered-down version of the original US draft presented to the Security Council is seen as a triumph for France and Russia, the principal opponents in the council to an attack on Iraq, the chances of a war still remain high. The New York Times reported Saturday that Bush has approved a Pentagon plan for invading Iraq which calls for a land, sea and air force of 200,000 to 250,000 troops. The buildup of US forces in the Gulf continues unabated with some 48,000 troops deployed in the US Central Command region, about double the average number for the past few years, according to the website of GlobalSecurity.org.
Wilson was deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Baghdad when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. US Ambassador April Glaspie was away at the time and Wilson stepped into the gap. He became Washington's point man in the tense six-month period between the invasion and "Operation Desert Storm," which drove Iraq out of Kuwait.
One of the key unknowns in the event of a war with Iraq is whether Saddam will use WMDs against an invasion force. From conversations with Saddam and key Iraqi leaders, Wilson said there is no question Baghdad will use whatever it has at its disposal if the regime is about to be overthrown. "Should we go into Iraq with the purpose of overthrowing the regime, then Saddam Hussein and his people will use every weapon in their arsenal and will do everything they can to drag Israel into a war which they can then categorize as an Iraqi defense of the Arab nation against a modern-day version of a Judeo-Christian crusade."
During the 1991 Gulf War, Hussein was given a clear disincentive to not deploy his WMDs. Wilson recalled that on Jan. 9, 1991, then US Secretary of State James Baker told then Iraqi Foreign Minister Tareq Aziz in Geneva that Iraq would be expelled from Kuwait and if Baghdad used chemical weapons against the coalition forces then Hussein's regime would be destroyed. At the same time, the US exerted strong pressure on Israel to stay out of the war. "Contrast that with . the president and all his minions arguing for regime change . (and) you have the president saying in the Oval Office that he would understand if Israel were to attempt to defend itself against an Iraqi attack on Israel. As a consequence, it seems to me entirely likely that, unless we change our tactics on this, the Iraqis might have greater success in tying Israel into a broader war and they have no disincentive not to use weapons of mass destruction in the event of an American ground invasion."
A tough weapons inspection regime, however, would prevent Hussein from continuing his nuclear weapons program while not backing him into a corner where he might try to resort to WMDs. "You make the case to Saddam that we are going to disarm you and we can either do it through a militarily supported inspection regime each inspector comes with a telephone number to call in a cruise missile the first time that Saddam says 'no, you can't go in the palace' or else we will simply dispense with the UN inspection and will start taking out those 700 sites that (chief UN weapons inspector) Hans Blix has already said he needs to survey just to get a baseline on what's going on in Iraq."
Even if the weapons facilities are not all destroyed or are overlooked by weapons inspectors, "if you have got scientists who are busy packing files and moving from site to site in the middle of the night, then you have got scientists unable to build the weapons that Saddam is trying to achieve."
© Copyright 2002
