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DEBATE OVER THE IRAQ LIBERATION ACT

Iraq News, OCTOBER 20, 1998

The central focus of Iraq News is the tension between the considerable, proscribed WMD capabilities that Iraq is holding on to and its increasing stridency that it has complied with UNSCR 687 and it is time to lift sanctions. If you wish to receive Iraq News by email, a service which includes full-text of news reports not archived here, send your request to Laurie Mylroie .

   This is the 76th day without weapons inspections in Iraq.
   The Wash Post, today, carried an extensive report on the recently 
passed "Iraq Liberation Act" [see "Iraq News," Oct 6 & 9] and reaction 
to it.  A senior NSC official "said the administration takes the 
legislation seriously and intends to designate one or more opposition 
groups within 90 days as eligible for military aid, as the bill 
requires. . . .  [but] before anyone in the Iraqi opposition gets even a 
spare tent, the NSC official said, 'there would have to be a serious 
[military] plan that makes sense and passes muster with allies in the 
region-that is critical.  It's Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. 
And most people are hard-pressed to imagine one of those countries being 
willing to do that.'"
  That's more Clinton spin, the "blame game," as described by JINSA 
Executive, David Steinmann [see "Iraq News," Oct 19]. It is hard to 
believe that Kuwait wouldn't support such a plan, if the administration 
were serious, and as "Iraq News," Apr 6, explained, when King Hussein 
met US officials earlier this year, he described the Iraq threat and 
asked them to develop a policy to get rid of Saddam.  But as the 
Forward, Mar 27, reported, "Clinton rebuffed King Hussein's talk of 
long-term solutions to the Saddam problem." 
   As the Wash Post explained, the Iraq Liberation Act was promoted in 
Congress by retired four-star Army Gen. Wayne A. Downing, commander of 
special operations during the Gulf war, and Duane R. Claridge, a former 
senior CIA official, familiar with US support for popular insurgencies. 
It was also supported by Paul Wolfowitz, Undersec Def during the Bush 
administration; Richard Perle, Asst Sec Def during the Reagan 
administration; and R. James Woolsey, former CIA director during the 
first Clinton administration.  
   It was opposed by Kenneth M. Pollack, a former analyst at the 
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, CIA, and NSC, and currently 
at the Nat'l Defense University, along with Anthony H. Cordesman, a 
former defense official who was national security adviser to Sen. John 
McCain, and is now co-director, with Judith Kipper, of Middle East 
studies at the Center for Strategic and Int'l Studies.  Cordesman 
somehow thought that an initial US allocation of $97 million for Saddam 
Hussein's overthrow would make Saddam stronger, while Pollack was of the 
view that the legislation was "idiotic."   
   In Jul, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy published "Iraq 
Strategy Review: Options for US Policy."  It was an unabashed apology 
for the administration's Iraq policy.  Every option had something going 
for it, save the option which the US Congress had focused on-- 
overthrowing Saddam through support for a popular insurgency.  That was 
an impossible option.  
   That chapter, "Undermine Saddam," co-authored by Pollack, included 
the assessment that "the air operations for supporting an opposition in 
Iraq would in some ways be more demanding than those of Desert Storm."  
In fact, "cracking Iraqi army units sufficiently for opposition ground 
forces to triumph would probably require greater attrition and damage 
than was inflicted in Desert Storm. . . . Several hundred sorties per 
day would be needed for months. . . On numerous occasions, the United 
States will have to increase its air operations greatly, either to pave 
the way for opposition ground offensives or to defeat regime 
counterattacks.  On such occasions, the United States will likely have 
to 'surge' 400 to 500 strike sorties per day for several days at a 
time--often with very little warning time."  
   But that seems very hard to believe.  That assessment stands in stark 
contrast to the views held by the plan's supporters.  As the Wash Post 
explained, Wolfowitz compared the plan to "Operation Provide Comfort, in 
which US forces helped the Kurdish militias expel Saddam Hussein's 
forces from a third of the country in April 1991."  Perle likened 
Saddam's situation to that of Ceausescu, while Woolsey said, "There's 
plenty of incipient opposition to Saddam . . . We've been wrong for the 
last 7 1/2 years in the way we've handled this."