• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Confronting Iraq

Friday, November 13, 1998

It is deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say - Saddam blocks UN weapons inspectors, Western diplomats leave, troops converge on the Gulf, and Israelis make a note to check on that gas mask.

The difference this time is that the White House has eliminated two options that have been discredited by past experience: "pin-prick" strikes to express displeasure and cutting a diplomatic deal that averts military action but leaves Saddam closer to being armed to the teeth with germ, gas, and nuclear weapons. During the last major crisis with Iraq in February, the US was clearly torn between using massive military force and jeopardizing the UN inspection regime.

The last-minute deal brokered by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was billed as a successful example of diplomacy backed by force. In reality, all concerned knew that the Annan agreement would lead to one of two forms of failure: Saddam's premature escape from sanctions or another military confrontation. Since Saddam's full compliance with UN resolutions was never in the cards, the good news is that his impatience has outpaced the gradual deterioration of the inspection regime.

Following Iraq's suspension of UN inspections on August 5 and all UN monitoring on October 31, it is no longer possible for the West to credibly look the other way, so a massive US-British air strike has become all but inevitable.

A military campaign would, at a minimum, task allied bombers and missiles with the job UN inspectors have been unable to accomplish - ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, UNSCOM (the UN inspectors) believes that over 31,000 chemical warfare munitions are unaccounted for. Chemical precursors sufficient to produce 200 tons of VX - one drop of which is enough to kill - are also presumed to be in Saddam's hands. To top it off, Saddam may still have some operational Scud missiles. Seven years of the most intrusive international inspection regime ever imposed on a country have failed in ridding Saddam Hussein of this arsenal, and military analysts are skeptical that a bombing campaign will succeed in this task either.

What then, should be the purpose of the allied military action against Saddam Hussein? The purpose of a bombing campaign cannot be simply restoring a gutted inspection regime which, even before it was gutted, had proven to be inadequate.

Saddam has left the West with only one way to enforce the United Nation's resolutions - removing him. In any case, the means to implementing the UN resolutions and to weakening Saddam are one and the same.

UNSCOM's great breakthrough just before it was shut down was the discovery of how Saddam played his shell game. According to former lead UNSCOM inspector William S. Ritter, the same secret services that maintain the regime are also the guardians of Saddam's secret arsenal.

Any attack that leaves this personal and weapons security system intact would be worse than useless, and cause suffering without accomplishing anything. Aside from choosing the right targets, any military action must be accompanied by a matching of Washington's real policy with its recent rhetoric.

Upon signing the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998" into law last month, Clinton said that he favored US support for the democratic opposition, but added the caveat that such support would be through "active application of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions." Hinting at the bridge between the UN mandate and ousting Saddam, Clinton noted that "the evidence is overwhelming that such [implementation] will not happen under the current Iraqi leadership." The new law authorized the president to spend almost $100 million to assist the democratic Iraqi opposition, including by providing military assistance.

Until now, the Clinton administration has seen support for the Iraqi opposition as contradicting its effort to maintain the UN inspections regime. The current crisis, whether or not it results in the final demise of UN inspections, is an opportunity to change course.

Wednesday, the day that Clinton labeled Iraq's weapons of mass destruction "a significant threat to people everywhere," was also the 80th anniversary of the end of the first World War. The "war to end all wars" produced the impotent League of Nations. The failure to confront a tyrant early enough led to World War II, which produced the United Nations.

Former US president George Bush rightly recognized Iraq's invasion of Kuwait as the first major challenge to the post-Cold War world order. Clinton now has the opportunity to show that the world has learned from the wars of this century that democracies must be willing to decisively confront aggressive dictatorships, before they become even more dangerous.