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European Stars And Stripes
Sept. 1, 1999
Pg. 2

By Chuck Vinch, Washington bureau

WASHINGTON -What if they had a war and nobody cared? It may not qualify as full-scale combat, but eight years after the Persian Gulf War, U.S. fighters are still dropping bombs on Iraqi military targets an average of 15 times a month and drawing barely a flicker of reaction anymore.

These incidents, which always come in response to Iraqi provocations, usually anti-aircraft artillery fire, but occasionally surface-to- air missile launches, are followed by terse summaries out of the Pentagon that list little more than the time and location of the attack, the targets struck and the type of warplane involved. And then there's the typical Washington reaction: Uhhuh, great. Did McGwire or Sosa connect last night?

Yet the enforcement of the "no-fly" zones over broad swaths of Iraq, enacted after the 1991 Gulf War to prevent Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from attacking dissident groups in the northern and southern regions of his country and threatening his Middle Eastern neighbors, is hardly an insignificant operation.

The United States has spent more than $10 billion on efforts to contain Saddam since 1991. The Pentagon expects to spend another $3.5 billion before the end of fiscal 2000 on Operation Northern Watch, handled by the U.S. European Command, and Operation Southern Watch, which belongs to the U.S. Central Command.

And the regular rotation of several hundred ground combat troops to Kuwait for the ongoing Operation Intrinsic Action - ostensibly for "interoperability training," but more to show Saddam that the U.S. remains committed to defending the small kingdom on Iraq's southeast border - adds another $17 million to the bill.

Since Iraq began vigorously challenging allied patrols in late December, U.S. and British aircraft have flown about 10,000 attack and support sorties and dropped more than 1,000 bombs on over 400 targets, officials said. The strikes have gone exceedingly well, with no allied casualties.

"But however successful these tactical engagements, they do not add up to a broader strategy," said James Anderson, an analyst with the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank.

Yet the Pentagon insists the containment policy still is the most cost-effective - and politically acceptable - way of keeping the pressure on Saddam.

"The policy [is] to contain Saddam and the Iraqi military from attacking his own people in the south and north, and from mobilizing to launch an attack against his neighbors," Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon said at a recent news briefing.

The rapid U.S. responses to any Iraqi military provocations "are a message to Saddam that we take the no-fly zones seriously, and that we plan to patrol them as an integral part of our containment policy," Bacon said.

Along with their punitive aspects, the Pentagon says the U.S. military strikes also are slowly degrading Saddam's air defense and communications systems and wearing down what military forces he had left after the Persian Gulf War. Retaliatory attacks under the current policy are not limited to the sites or weapons that directly threaten patrols. A strike may come well after a threatening Iraqi move from the ground and may be directed at other targets miles away.

Pentagon officials acknowledge that the strikes are reactive in nature and have no long-range goal other than to keep the unpredictable Iraqi leader in a box.

"If we were in a vacuum, the ideal solution would be a full-scale assault to take Saddam out once and for all," said one official who asked not to be identified. "But that will never fly. For now, this is probably about all we can do. At the very least, he's giving our pilots valuable real-world training opportunities."

Defense analysts decry the lack of a long-term objective in the current policy toward Iraq, which they say is unlikely to change until a new administration is in the White House.

"Clinton will ride this out to the end of his term and then hand it off to someone else," said Dan Goure of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, another Washington think tank.

Goure said the current policy is flawed because "it doesn't pack enough punch to change Saddam's behavior, but it uses too much force to maintain the political credibility of the United States and the U.N. It's a mindless use of military power."

"At this point, it's almost like a child's game -'I dare you,' 'I double- dare you,' 'Don't put your toe over that line,' 'I'm putting my toe over that line.' It inhibits any progress toward political resolution," said retired Rear Adm. Eugene Carroll, deputy director of the Center for Defense Information.

A major gap in the containment policy, analysts say, is that it does little to prevent Saddam from continuing to develop chemical or biological weapons that could be crudely attached to a Scud missile and fired at Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Israel.

Although tight economic sanctions make it difficult for Saddam to import weaponry or other materiel, Bacon acknowledged that the containment policy has no major impact on the Iraqi leader's efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

Last year, an effort was made to fund internal Iraqi opposition groups in hopes they could unite to topple the Baghdad regime. Senate Republicans, tired of spending billions to contain Saddam, enacted an aid package last fall, and the State Department picked seven of about 90 dissident groups to receive the money.

But the Defense Department has never liked that idea, which has had no discernible effect within Iraq. The policy suffered another blow in January when Marine Corps Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, chief of the U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he thought it was unworkable.

"Saddam should go, there's not a doubt in my mind," said Zinni. "But these groups are fragmented. Their ability to cooperate is questionable. It is possible to create a situation that could be worse, and that's my concern."

In the end, the Defense Department sees the current containment policy as the only practical way to keep Saddam pinned down, since he has shown no signs of changing his ways after eight years of constant squeezing by the allies.

"The administration is jammed into a corner of its own making," Goure said.

Anderson agrees. "I think it will take a new administration to break the impasse by considering a wide range of stronger measures aimed at prompting changes in the regime in Baghdad," he said.

"Our approach in Iraq has been to keep the country weak until Saddam is gone, but there's no evidence he will be going anytime soon," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst for the Washington-based Lexington Institute. "The only real answer is to get rid of him once and for all. If the Iraqis are incapable of doing it, we ought to step up to the plate.

"Everyone in the Middle East would condemn us on the record, of course," he said. "But off the record, they'd be thanking us profusely."