Iraq News, 17 August 1999
By
Laurie Mylroie
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 .
II. KANSAS CITY STAR, BACKS CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP ON IRAQ, AUG 13
III. L. MYLROIE, ISRAEL AND THE SADDAM MENACE, JERUSALEM POST, AUG 17
II. KANSAS CITY STAR, BACKS CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP ON IRAQ
Kansas City Star
Editorial
Date: 08/13/99 22:00
War toll climbs in Iraq
As the world's attention has been focused on the war in Yugoslavia
and its problematic aftermath, the United States and Britain have
remained locked in a frustrating military conflict with Saddam
Hussein's Iraq.
The Clinton administration's game plan in this conflict is a mystery.
We are fighting a tit-for-tat war in the skies over Iraq that leaves the
initiative with Hussein.
The United States claims to be responding to Iraqi threats with air
strikes, but we fail to do so in consistent fashion. We are pulling our
punches, giving Iraq plenty of time to rebuild and forcing American
pilots to attack the same targets over and over.
This week a bipartisan group of lawmakers sent a letter to President
Clinton that raises good questions about what the United States is
trying to accomplish at this point in Iraq. It offers good advice that
Clinton needs to consider carefully.
The fighting in Iraq has attracted remarkably little notice in the
United States. But American and British pilots have fired more than
1,100 missiles at more than 350 targets in the last eight months,
according to a New York Times story this week. The pilots have flown
about two-thirds as many missions as NATO pilots flew during the war
with Yugoslavia.
Yet the United States and Britain have little to show for their
efforts. Iraq remains as intransigent as ever in its refusal to abide by
the cease-fire agreements that were signed at the end of the Persian
Gulf War.
Iraq shows no interest in allowing the international arms inspections
that would be necessary to convince anyone else that it had changed its
ways.
But such diplomatic issues aside, the simple and astounding fact is
that Iraqi gunners feel free to continue firing on American and British
pilots.
These attacks are designed to challenge the "no-fly zones" that are
supposed to protect civilians in the northern and southern parts of Iraq
from Hussein's depredations.
Americans have every reason to be outraged, if not surprised, by the
Iraqi regime's behavior. Defeated in war, the country was allowed to
survive on the strength of the cease-fire commitments that it has
never fulfilled -- and now U.S. pilots are being targeted by Iraqi
forces that owe their survival to American compassion.
The world should be outraged, too, at the barbarism of Hussein and
his thugs toward their own people.
The first major survey of child mortality in Iraq since the Gulf War
has confirmed that the government is killing children by the thousands.
Despite international sanctions, the regime has money to spend. But
it refuses to purchase and distribute the food and medication that
thousands of Iraqi children -- and many adults as well --need to
survive. The infant, child and maternal mortality rates have reached
horrendous levels, according to U.N. officials.
Hussein's apologists in Baghdad and elsewhere blame these deaths on
international sanctions. This is exactly what Hussein wants to hear;
this, in fact, is why he is killing people.
International officials have in fact worked tirelessly over the
years to protect Iraqi civilians, especially children. But Hussein wants
propaganda material, not healthy children. But in northern Iraq -- where
Iraq does not have control and U.N. officials run the food and medical
programs -- the mortality rates are improving.
Members of Congress are correctly calling upon the Clinton
administration to develop a tougher policy toward the Iraqi regime. They
suggest setting a deadline for Iraq to meet some of its international
commitments and backing up the deadline with an expansion of the no-fly
zones and more punishing military strikes.
The current U.S. policy is jeopardizing American pilots while
apparently accomplishing almost nothing. The administration needs to
come up with something better.
III. L. MYLROIE, ISRAEL AND THE SADDAM MENACE
Jerusalem Post
Tuesday, August 17, 1999
Stop ignoring Saddam
By Laurie Mylroie
(August 17) - It has been nine months since UN weapons inspectors were
in Iraq. Yet the main US activity against Iraq has been bombing sites in
the no-fly zones, which even US officials admit has no impact on Saddam
Hussein's ability to reconstitute his proscribed unconventional weapons
programs.
That is a danger which cannot be ignored, and addressing it is far
more important than whatever Israel does with the Palestinians or Syria
in the coming months.
Indeed, last week, the Barak government publicly revealed its
concerns about the Iraqi danger. Its outspokenness stands in marked
contrast to the Netanyahu government, which was strangely reticent about
the Saddam menace.
Consequently, the Israeli public was left with the impression that
the US was taking care of the problem, while most American Jewish
organizations have said virtually nothing about Iraq.
The Gulf war is not over for Saddam. Indeed, when George Bush ended
the war with Saddam in power, the Shamir government regarded it an error
of such magnitude that it set out to assassinate the Iraqi leader. But a
tragic training accident occurred, the operation was canceled by the
Rabin government, and in the years since, the danger posed by a
resurgent Saddam faded from our consciousness.
That danger should have been recognized after the August 1995
defection of Hussein Kamil, Saddam's son-in-law, who had overseen Iraq's
unconventional weapons programs. It was learned then that Iraq had
managed to conceal and retain significant unconventional weapons
capabilities. But by then the Rabin/Peres government was heavily engaged
in the peace process and the matter scarcely received public attention.
More than any other Israeli official, Ehud Barak has pressed the US
to deal with the Iraqi menace. In December 1995, in his first trip to
Washington as foreign minister, Barak raised the issue in very strong
terms.
But the Clinton administration has consistently underestimated the
threat posed by Saddam, maintaining that it was taking care of the
matter. By that, the administration meant it would overthrow Saddam. In
June 1996, however, Saddam arrested the Iraqi officers involved with the
CIA in planning a coup.
Still, the US had another option for getting rid of Saddam, but the
Clinton administration carelessly threw it away.
The Iraqi National Congress represented the prospect of overthrowing
Saddam through a popular insurgency. Backed by the CIA, the INC never
received arms from the US; the Clinton administration didn't really want
it to fight Saddam, lest he attack the insurgents and the US become
obliged to rescue them.
In August 1996, Saddam marched some 40,000 troops northward toward
the Kurdish city of Irbil, where the INC was headquartered. The US did
nothing to stop them. It has provided the opposition with no support
-financial, political or military - since then. The Netanyahu government
said nothing about the Iraq menace, as the system of post-Gulf war
constraints further unraveled. The Clinton administration did not want
Israel to raise the issue, and Jerusalem went along.
It didn't even discuss the threat publicly at home. That's why
Israelis panicked in January 1998, when former UNSCOM chief inspector
Richard Butler said that Iraq had biological weapons that could "blow
away Tel Aviv." But nothing changed. The crisis passed and Netanyahu
reverted to deferring to the US on Iraq.
There are two ways to deal with the Saddam menace. One is to return UN
inspectors to Iraq. That seems to be the Barak government's preferred
strategy.
Others believe that will not work, and that Saddam must be
eliminated. That is the view of the US Congress, which believes the US
should support a popular insurgency against Saddam.
Last year Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act. Those who believe
the Saddam threat is acute want a significant US military component in
implementing the ILA. The US Air Force would support Iraqis fighting on
the ground, while "safe havens" for the opposition would be established
in outlying areas of Iraq.
Such regions could include Iraq's western desert. Freeing that area
from Baghdad's control would put Israel beyond the range of Iraqi Scuds.
One would think that would be of great interest to Israelis. Yet the
issue is scarcely discussed. That the Barak government has said there is
a serious Iraqi danger is a welcome first step. But there should now be
a full-fledged Israeli debate about how best to deal with that menace,
while the signal should be given to American Jews that they should press
the issue in Washington.
The writer is publisher of Iraq News, and, with Judith Miller, co-author
of Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf (Random House).
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