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06 March 2003

Transcript: Author Ken Pollack Examines Possible U.N. Role in New Iraq

(Speaks with Free Iraqis, press in Moscow, Abu Dhabi) (8870)
U.S. author on Iraq and former Clinton administration official Kenneth
Pollack reviewed the history of international efforts to prevent
Saddam Hussein from obtaining nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
with speakers in Moscow and Abu Dhabi, via digital video conference
(DVC), February 25.
Pollack also drew attention to the regime's brutal human rights
record. He said that all available evidence coming out of Iraq
indicates that the Iraqi people themselves would welcome an invasion
by the United States as the price they would now be willing to pay to
be rid of Saddam Hussein. This view was reiterated by an Iraqi
interlocutor speaking from Abu Dhabi.
Another Iraqi participant expressed concern that the United States not
abandon the Iraqi people to either Saddam Hussein's forces or to
incursions from neighboring states.
"I am convinced," Pollack said, "that the Bush administration is
determined not to make the same mistake. They will not stop at Basra
and Nasiriyah, but they will go all the way and get rid of this odious
regime forever."
"I think the administration has done a good job with the Turks, of
saying to the Turks, 'We understand what your concerns are, about
Kurdish independence. If you leave it to us, if you let us work with
the Kurds, we will get you a much better outcome than you will get
yourselves.' I think it would be a tragedy if they [the Kurds] move
beyond the immediate enclave," he added.
Pollack noted that the Bush administration has begun to clarify its
role in a future Iraq. However, in order to further dispel concerns
related to the U.S. presence inside Iraq, Pollack said he wants the
international community to lead reconstruction efforts inside Iraq.
"The United States has to be a major part of it. We have to play a
huge role in providing security for Iraq and providing resources for
the reconstruction of Iraq, but it has to be led by the United
Nations," Pollack told questioners in Moscow and Abu Dhabi.
Asked about the Bush administration's intentions in the Middle East,
Pollock spoke at length about the prospects for political and economic
change in the region and emphasized that the United States can make
positive contributions. He underscored his belief that "it has to be a
cooperative effort where we go to Arabs and we say, 'Tell us how you
would like to move; tell us in what direction you'd like to take
things; and tell us how we can help you.'"
Pollack is the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle
East Policy of the Brookings Institution. He is the author of "The
Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq." During the Clinton
administration he served on the National Security Council, where he
was director for Gulf Affairs. He previously spent seven years with
the CIA as a Persian Gulf military analyst.
Following is the complete transcript of this February 25 digital
exchange. Topics included Iraq's hidden arsenals and U.N. Security
Council debate; the future of Iraq and the region; and concerns
related to the Korean peninsula.
(begin transcript)
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION PROGRAMS
DIGITAL VIDEO CONFERENCE
Moscow, Russia
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Dr. Kenneth Pollack
The Brookings Institute
Moderator: Jody Rose Platt
February 25, 2003
MS. PLATT: Dr. Kenneth Pollack is here with us today.
Dr. Pollack is at the Brookings Institute, where he's the Director of
Research for the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. His areas of
expertise include Iraq, Iran, the Middle East, and Gulf military
issues.
Previously he did serve the administration under President Clinton at
the National Security Council. He's also been with the National
Defense University and the CIA, as well as Director of Research for
the Council on Foreign Relations.
He has also authored many articles and books, including The New York
Times bestseller, "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq,"
which is the basis of his talk today.
His degrees come from Yale University as well as the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and we are very grateful to have you to come
in. Thank you so much.
DR. POLLACK: Thank you, Jody Rose, and thank all of you for coming out
this afternoon.
I will make some brief remarks, and let me start with a caveat, which
is to say that I do not speak for the Bush administration. As you
heard Jody Rose describe, I am a former official of the Clinton
administration, although I also did work at the CIA under the first
Bush administration, but that was not in a political capacity at all.
I have my own views on this matter, and while I do agree with the Bush
administration's bottom line on Iraq, I actually have some very
significant differences with the Bush administration on a number of
issues.
If you ask me a question on which I disagree with the Bush
administration, I will try as best I can to explain to you what I
think the Bush administration believes, but I'll also then explain to
you why I believe differently.
I'll also say that I come to this conclusion that the United States
must go to war very, very reluctantly and very grudgingly. I do not
think that war is going to be the solution to all of our problems in
the region, and I am quite concerned that going to war with Iraq could
create additional problems.
I do recognize that there could be considerable problems created in
the region if the United States does not handle a war with Iraq
properly, and I am concerned about them. But as I say, I think, very
grudgingly, it is going to be necessary to go to war because I don't
think that we have any other good options.
Now, let me start with two main reasons why I think the United States
is going to have to go to war, why it is necessary and why it would be
in some senses positive to go to war.
And the first is the plight of the Iraqi people, which for so long, in
the United States, and in the international community in general, has
been almost beside the point.
You know, throughout the 1990s, when we talked about Iraq, so rarely
did we talk about what was best for the Iraqi people, what they wanted
and what could be done. And today I think that it is clear that
continuing under Saddam Hussein's tyranny would be the worst of all
possible worlds for the Iraqi people.
Without going into too much detail, Saddam Hussein is one of the worst
tyrants of the last 100 years. The United Nations Special Rapporteur
for Human Rights in Iraq has repeatedly stated that the condition of
human rights in Iraq, the civil liberties of the Iraqi people, the
status of the Iraqi people is so grave that it can only be compared to
the World War II dictatorships of Stalin and Hitler.
Saddam Hussein, since coming to power in 1979, has probably been
responsible for the death of as many as one million Iraqis, many of
them in the most horrific circumstances imaginable -- as a result of
chemical warfare or the most inhumane forms of torture that the world
has seen over the last 100 years.
In addition, all of the evidence that we have, all of the information
that is coming out of Iraq, from people who are going to Iraq and from
Iraqis who are fleeing the country, is that the Iraqi people
themselves are so desperate to be rid of Saddam Hussein's tyranny that
while they are quite concerned about what a war would entail, they are
quite nervous about the potential risks of a war, they prefer war, and
they would welcome a U.S.-led war to liberate Iraq over living under
Saddam Hussein's tyranny for many more years.
And I think that is an important reason, something that we need to
take into account, something that we've neglected for too long, I
think, in the world.
For me, the second reason is the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction and our inability to deal with it in any other manner. And
here I think it's important to go back to 1991 and remember the
history of what happened.
In 1991, a remarkable thing happened, unique in history. The entire
international community, 180 nations, expressing itself through the
vehicle of the Security Council, decided, for the first time ever,
that a particular ruler was so dangerous that he could not be allowed
to possess an entire range of weapons.
This, of course, was Saddam Hussein.
We've never seen this before. There are plenty of arms control
agreements out there, but they were all voluntary. We have never seen
the United Nations all come together and say, this man, this ruler is
so dangerous that he simply cannot be allowed to possess this entire
range of weapons.
And so it was that the United Nations -- not the United States, the
United Nations, put in place the policy of containment, which was
designed to prevent Saddam from reconstituting his weapons of mass
destruction.
The problem that we had with containment was that while it worked for
a brief period of time, it began to come apart fairly quickly after
that, and by the mid-1990s we realized that containment was in a
tremendous amount of trouble. And it was in a tremendous amount of
trouble for a whole variety of reasons, but I will simply mention the
two most important of them.
And those are, first, that the Iraqis became so good at hiding their
weapons of mass destruction that neither we, in the United States, nor
any of the other western intelligence services, nor the inspectors
themselves, could find any of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
And it wasn't that we didn't know that the Iraqis had them. We knew
the Iraqis had them. We had mountains of evidence that the Iraqis had
them. And, in fact, there was no country in the Security Council who
doesn't believe that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction.
In fact, I would commend you to go back and look very carefully at the
statements of Mr. Ivanov and Mr. de Villepin and all of the statements
by Russia and China and France over the last 10 or 12 years, and
particularly over the last few months. They have never suggested that
the Iraqis do not have weapons of mass destruction.
In fact, every conversation I have ever had with a French or Russian
or Chinese or German official, for that matter, they all believe that
the Iraqis do have weapons of mass destruction.
The only area of disagreement with them, ever, is over how best to
handle the issue, how best to handle the problem, what to do about it.
But there's never been any dispute over that.
The second problem that we ran into was that the rest of the world
simply stopped caring about the problem of Iraq, and simply stopped
caring about trying to make containment work. And that is why,
throughout the 1990s, we did get on any number of occasions "smoking
gun" evidence, irrefutable evidence that the Iraqis were continuing to
cheat. And yet the Security Council did nothing whenever we did so.
People say now what we need is a defector to come out, someone to come
out of Iraq who will tell us what the Iraqis are doing. Well, we've
had tons of defectors over the years.
In 1995, we got Hussein Kamel Omajit (phonetic), Saddam Hussein's
son-in-law, the second most powerful man in Iraq, the head of Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction program, the "mother of all defectors." He
came out of Iraq, he fled to Jordan, and he told us all about the
extent of Iraq's cheating.
You may remember that in 1994, before Hussein Kamel came out, the
inspectors had been duped into believing that the Iraqis were
disarmed. Rolf Ekeus and UNSCOM wanted to transition from aggressive
inspections to passive monitoring, because they thought they had
gotten all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
And it was only when Hussein Kamel came out, and also, to a certain
extent, Wafik Al Samauri and Khadir Hamza and a number of other
important defectors, but, most important, Hussein Kamel himself, who
revealed the extent of Iraq's deception, who said Iraq has a massive
biological warfare agent program that they have not admitted to you.
They have a massive nuclear weapons program that you have not yet
found.
And it was Hussein Kamel's defection that convinced Rolf Ekeus to
never again trust the Iraqi regime, because he then knew how they had
been duplicitous.
But, of course, when Hussein Kamel came out, the Security Council did
nothing. No new resolutions were passed, no new conditions imposed on
Iraq. Iraq was not punished in any way, shape, or form. There was no
payment for this cheating.
And afterwards we saw the same thing again and again and again.
In 1995, the U.N. inspectors found Russian ballistic missile
gyroscopes hidden at the bottom of the Tigris River, gyroscopes that
the Iraqis had imported after the Gulf War was over and had hidden,
and it was a U.S. intelligence tip that told the inspectors go look
for them. And they dredged the river, and they found the gyroscopes,
and they brought the gyroscopes to the Security Council, and the
Security Council again did nothing.
And in 1997, the inspectors found traces of VX nerve gas on Iraqi scud
missile warheads. Now, the Iraqis have claimed that they have never
done anything with VX. Initially they claimed they had never even
experimented with VX, but then they claimed they never produced it,
they never weaponized it, they never loaded it into missile warheads.
And the inspectors found proof that they had done all of these things,
and they brought it to the Security Council, and, again, the Security
Council did nothing.
And this was the problem that we ran into all through the 1990s, was
that, first, the Iraqis were getting too good at hiding what they had,
and, second, even when we did catch them "red-handed," the rest of the
world simply didn't care, and there was nothing that the U.N. was
willing to do about it.
And you'll remember that is why, in 1998, it was the Clinton
administration that first embraced the policy of regime change in
Iraq. It was the Clinton administration that said, if we can't make
containment work -- and it is clear that none of the other countries
of the world, with the possible exception of the British and the
Japanese and just a few other countries, are willing to do anything to
make containment work -- we must move to regime change.
But the problem that the Clinton administration had in 1998 was that
there was no American anywhere who was willing to countenance a
full-scale war against Saddam Hussein.
And, of course, this was deeply problematic for us, and so many of our
friends throughout the Arab world came to us and said, "Look, if
you're willing to go to war with Saddam, if you're willing to go the
'full nine yards' and mount a full-scale invasion, we will be with
you, because we know that Saddam Hussein is a terrible threat to us,
and we know that he is a tragedy for his own people.
"But if you're not willing to invade, we're not willing to fight some
low-level, meaningless war. We're not willing to just mount constant
air strikes against Iraq, because that will help no one. It will not
help us remove the threat, and it will not help the Iraqi people in
removing Saddam Hussein's tyranny."
And so, instead, the United States looked for other ways to deal with
Saddam Hussein -- covert action, dealing with the Iraqi opposition,
propaganda, diplomatic pressure, all of the things that you saw all
through the 1990s, and they all failed.
And they all failed, because there's one thing in this world that
Saddam Hussein is good at, and that is keeping himself alive and in
power in Baghdad.
And, of course, we're not the only ones who have tried to remove
Saddam Hussein from power and failed. The Syrians, the Israelis, the
Iranians, other Arab states have all tried to get rid of Saddam
Hussein at different points in time, and they have all failed, too.
And so it is for these reasons that I come to the very reluctant
conclusion that I think a war is justified and is necessary -- because
we have come to the end of our tether, because we have tried every
other possible alternative, and none of them have worked.
Containment has not worked, inspections have not worked, diplomatic
pressure has not worked, limited military operations against Iraq have
not worked, covert action has not worked, nothing has worked.
The only solution that is left out there is a full-scale war. And if
we do not go to war, I think the only the alternative is that we'll
find ourselves in a very few years with Saddam Hussein once again in
full possession of the full range of weapons of mass destruction, and,
worst of all, at some point he will acquire a nuclear weapon.
All of the Western intelligence agencies are now agreed that it is
simply a matter of time before Saddam acquires a nuclear weapon, and
most of the estimates are somewhere between three and six years.
And knowing what we know about Saddam Hussein, about his willingness
to slaughter his own people, slaughter other people, his willingness
to use force, his incredible aggressiveness, and his gambling nature,
and also what we know about why he wants nuclear weapons -- and this
is a very important point.
He wants nuclear weapons, as we understand it -- and he's told many of
his closest associates this -- because he believes that once he has
acquired nuclear weapons, it is the United States that will be
deterred. He believes that once he's acquired nuclear weapons, the
United States will not dare to try to stop him should he attack any of
the countries of the region or blackmail them or threaten them in any
way, shape, or form.
And that is simply a world that none of us can afford to live in. That
is a recipe, not just for instability in the region, but for outright
catastrophe.
MS. PLATT: Thank you very much, Dr. Pollack, for your opening remarks.
As I said, we will take our first question from Moscow. Again, please
identify yourself, sir.
A PARTICIPANT: I'm (inaudible) and I work for (inaudible), and my
question is -- first question is, you gave very wise and very
convincing evidence about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction.
If this evidence is as convincing as you put it, then why, in your
estimation, do France, Germany, Russia continue to say that the
inspectors haven't found any traces of weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq?
DR. POLLACK: It's a good question, and I will give the good reason,
and then I'll also give what I think may be a more realistic reason.
I think the good reason is -- Your word -- what you said is very
important. What the Russians and French and Chinese are saying is, the
inspectors have not found any weapons of mass destruction. They're not
saying they're not there.
And, in fact, if you go back and look at all the statements by Mr. de
Villepin, by Mr. Lavrov, by all of the permanent representatives,
there is none of them -- none of them have ever suggested that the
Iraqis don't have weapons of mass destruction.
In fact, the French and Russian statements at the time of the passage
of Resolution 1441 were indicating very strongly that they do believe
that the Iraqis possess weapons of mass destruction.
And as I said before, in my conversations with French and Russian and
Chinese and, for that matter, German officials, I have never heard one
of them suggest that the Iraqis don't have weapons of mass
destruction.
In fact, I've consistently heard them admit that the Iraqis clearly do
have weapons of mass destruction. The only difference has been over
how best to handle Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Now, here let me talk a little bit about what I think may be going on
realistically. Because I think it's important to remember the change
in the French, Russian, and Chinese position from the 1990s to today.
In the 1990s we had the same problem. The French, the Russians, and
the Chinese agreed with us that the Iraqis did have the weapons, but,
again, they disagreed with us over the best course of action. And at
that point in time it was the United States that was arguing for very
robust containment.
It was the United States that was saying, we've got to give the
inspectors a chance, we've got to find ways to make it better for them
to do their jobs. We've got to be aggressive with the Iraqis and put
pressure on them to comply with the inspections.
And all through the 1990s, it was the French and the Russians and the
Chinese who were arguing against that position, the very position
which they are now espousing. And their argument was, look, the Iraqis
are never going to give this stuff up unless we buy them off, unless
we appease them, is effectively what they were saying.
What they wanted to do was to make concessions to Saddam Hussein. They
wanted to give one carrot after another to the Iraqis. And all
throughout that period of time, we mostly fought it.
But you'll remember that in December of 1999, we did pass Resolution
1284, and Resolution 1284 included enormous carrots for the Iraqis. We
finally gave in to the French and the Russians, and we said, "All
right. We will try it your way. We will try making concessions to the
Iraqis."
And I'll tell you, I personally hated Resolution 1284. I didn't think
it was a good idea, because I didn't think it would ever get Saddam
Hussein to do anything differently. But, nevertheless, it was the
decision of my government that we will try the French and Russian
approach, and we made a massive concession to Iraq.
We put down that if the Iraqis simply cooperated with the inspections
-- not complied, not gave up all their weapons of mass destruction,
all they had to do was cooperate with the inspectors -- if they did
that, we would suspend all of the economic sanctions.
And, by the way, everyone knew that suspension of the economic
sanctions meant lifting all of the economic sanctions, which is what
Saddam had been asking for for so many years. We said, "Fine. You
want, you get it. All you have to do is cooperate."
And not only did the Iraqis not do it, but the French and the
Russians, at the last minute, jumped ship, and instead of voting for
it, they simply abstained.
And so now the idea that the French and Russians have suddenly
discovered that, yes, robust containment, aggressive containment,
helping the inspectors is the right way to go, suggests to me that
there are other things at work here.
And for my own part, I think that part of it is certainly commercial
interests. I think that the French and the Russians have been very
well rewarded by the Iraqis over the years. The Iraqis have given them
tremendous amounts of money in the form of "oil for food" contracts,
and even illicit contracts under the table.
I think they know that they are mostly likely to get the best
treatment from Saddam Hussein's regime than from any potential
successor regime, which is probably going to try as hard as it can to
make nice with the Americans, and not necessarily with Saddam's old
friends.
But, to some extent, I also think that there is a certain degree of
anti-Americanism or, to put it a different way, anti-Bushism in the
French and the Russian positions.
And here I fault the Bush administration. While I agree with them on
their bottom line, I think that the Bush administration, in selling
their policy on Iraq and explaining to people why a war with Saddam
Hussein is important, have not done a very good job. And I think that
many of the actions of the Bush administration -- or put it a
different way. Much of the rhetoric of the Bush administration has
made many countries, France and Russia, in particular, deeply
concerned.
And, in fact, what I hear oftentimes from French and Russian and other
European officials is, they don't oppose a war against Iraq, because
they know Saddam Hussein is pure evil, and they know that he is
cheating, and they know that the world would be a much better place
without him, but they oppose George Bush, and they oppose the Bush
administration because they don't like the Bush administration's
policies. And that is why they're opposing the United States on the
question of Iraq.
Those are only my personal opinions.
MS. PLATT: Thank you very much. We turn now to Abu Dhabi for the first
question. Please go ahead.
A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible) from Al-Itihad newspaper in Abu Dhabi. Mr.
Pollock, it appears the Bush Administration is at a point of no return
regarding a decision to invade Iraq. We would like you to shed light
on what's the future of Iraq? How do you see? And what about Secretary
Powell's statement that the United States will be engaged in
re-designing the whole region after Saddam?
DR. POLLACK: This is a very important question, and I'll tell you that
when I speak to friends from the region, from the Middle East, when I
was out there -- I'm often out there in the region -- what I
consistently hear is exactly that question come back to me from so
many Arabs.
It's we know Saddam is evil, we know the Iraqi people would be better
off without him. But we are deeply concerned about what the United
States plans to do in Iraq afterwards.
I think that the Bush administration has done something in terms of
talking about what it intends for Iraq, but I think they need to do
much more. I think that people don't give them enough credit for what
they had said about the future of Iraq, but I also do agree that they
could say much more.
All I can tell you is what I would envision, my ideas. Because here,
as I said, I don't think the Bush administration has really spelled
out its own ideas.
For me, I think that Iraq must be rebuilt by the international
community, not the United States. The United States has to be a major
part of it. We have to play a huge role in providing security for Iraq
and providing resources for the reconstruction of Iraq, but it has to
be led by the United Nations.
Because I know that so many Iraqis and so many Arabs are very
concerned that the United States is simply intending to set up a new
empire, that we are planning to take over Iraq, and take over its oil
wealth and use it for ourselves.
And I think that the only way that we will be able to reassure other
people that we are not intending to do that is by allowing the United
Nations to lead the effort overall.
And there are all kinds of different ways that you could set things
up, with the United States in charge, and the U.S. playing a major
role within that U.N. system, but I think the U.N. has to be in
charge.
As for Iraq itself, I think that Iraq needs a free market economy, and
it needs a stable and pluralist form of government. But I would never
try to suggest that I know what the best government for Iraq should
look like.
And I would also say that I think it would be a terrible mistake for
the United States to tell the Iraqi people what the best form of
government for them is.
I think what the United States has to do is, working with the United
Nations, we have to create a process, a process by which the Iraqi
people can determine for themselves what the new form of their
government should be.
And I think that is what is critical. It is why I get so concerned
when you hear Iraqi exiles talk about how the United States should
appoint a government in exile. There are many people among the Iraqi
exiles who are perfectly wonderful and smart and good-natured people.
But I don't know for a fact, me, as an American, that those are the
people who the Iraqi people would choose to be in charge, or that they
would choose these people to design their own government.
So I think what is critical, as I said, is that you create a process
where the United Nations comes in and helps the Iraqi people to decide
for themselves what the form of their future government should be.
MS. PLATT: Thank you very much. We will turn back to Moscow now for
your question.
A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.) (Inaudible) this question that you already
answered in response to one of your remarks that the Iraqi people are
so desperate to get rid of the present regime.
What do you base your conclusions on and -- well, as far as I know,
there has been no psychological researches concerning the Iraqi
sentiment and officially it's 99.99 and so on supporting Saddam
Hussein and all that.
Are you saying that anybody comes and not appointing, but just helping
Iraqi people (inaudible)?
DR. POLLACK: Also good questions. First, with regard to the basis of
the information, I will caveat that I made, which is, these are not
scientific surveys. You know, we've got to take all of these with
grains of salt.
What I said was simply all of the evidence we have -- which is a true
statement -- all of the evidence we have points in this one direction.
And I can give you some pieces of information.
There is the International Crisis Group. The International Crisis
Group is an international organization which writes on global affairs
and which wildly opposes the war. Their head, Gareth Evans, writes
another op-ed every day talking about how awful the war with Iraq
would be.
The International Crisis Group, though, also periodically sends people
into Iraq. They've been doing this for years now, sending people into
Iraq and conducting informal surveys of Iraqi public opinion. And
while they're not scientific, we have found them to be very accurate
over the years. And the most recent one which they conducted in
December, just two months ago, the report was incredible.
They said, "We don't favor the war, but we have to admit that what we
found in Iraq was that the Iraqis do." And they said there were three
conclusions, which I found really remarkable. They said there were
three incredible things that they found.
One, they never found Iraqis more willing to say what they really
believed. Two, they found that Iraqis were unanimous in saying that
their own political situation was so terrible that they would actually
prefer a war to the continuation of Saddam Hussein's regime.
And, third, and, for me, the most remarkable conclusion of all, was
that they said they found unanimously that the Iraqi people were
saying that they recognized it would be necessary to have a long-term
occupation -- their word, not mine -- occupation of Iraq to build a
stable and prosperous new Iraqi society, because Saddam Hussein had so
horribly traumatized Iraqi society that it would take years to build a
new government there.
That's one piece of evidence.
There's other evidence along the lines of journalists. In fact, just
last week The New York Times had another piece by another journalist,
this is when he was sitting in Jordan. He went out to the eastern
border of Jordan and was talking to all of the Iraqi refugees coming
across the border from Iraq. He was --
MS. PLATT:  Oh, we lost Abu Dhabi.
DR. POLLACK: He was helping all of the Iraqi refugees coming across
the Jordanian border, and what they were saying to him, again,
unanimously, was they are desperate to be rid of Saddam Hussein, and
they welcomed a U.S. war.
And they were concerned. None of these people are saying they think a
war is going to be quick and easy and painless, and no one will die.
They were all saying, "We are nervous that there will be Republican
Guards who will fight hard for Saddam, and we are nervous that people
will die."
But what they were saying is, our lives have become so miserable that
we would prefer the risks and the costs of a potential war to simply
living under Saddam Hussein's tyranny for another 10 or 20 years.
And I find all of this absolutely remarkable.
MS. PLATT: We will move to United Arab Emirates for your next
question, please.
A PARTICIPANT: Hello. My name is Dr. (inaudible) Tamimi. I have a
degree in electrical engineering and I am Iraqi. I am not politician;
I am just a normal Iraqi.
As an Iraqi, I have two questions. At the end of the second Gulf War
in 1991, President Bush asked the Iraqis to raise their weapons to rid
themselves of Saddam. And after that, we had a very bad experience,
because the Iraqi army hit the civilian people while American troops
were there.
It was a very bad experience, and we hope that in any future war in
Iraq, the Iraqi people understand from the first moment that you will
not let them starve, as you were saying, which is really very
important to know as Iraqi.
Secondly, We have heard of some talks between America and Turkey last
week. We heard that there were some promises from the United States to
Turkey that said that Turkish army will stay in north of Iraq, not
just during the war, but maybe permanently.
I hope that the United States-- as a great power and a great
democracy, which represents maybe the only chance to get rid of Saddam
Hussein-will do its job well and not repeat some bad experience. Thank
you very much.
DR. POLLACK: Thank you so much for your comments, and I could not
agree with them more. I think it was a disgrace, what the United
States did at the end of the second Gulf War.
I was at C.I.A. at the time. I was one of the Iran-Iraq military
analysts. And I can tell you, in particular, some of the most -- some
of the worst things that I ever saw when I was at C.I.A. were the
satellite images that we took of Karbala and Najaf after the
Republican Guard and the Special Republican Guard drove back in and
destroyed the Shi'ites who had risen up against Saddam and all the
freedom fights who had risen up on George Bush's plea.
And I'll never forget the images from the satellite imagery of the
bodies that we saw strewn about, the mosques, the shrines of Hussein
and Ali in those satellite imagery of the bodies that we saw strewn
about the mosques, the shrines of Hussein and Ali - and we can never
let that happen again.
I tell you, I am convinced that the Bush administration is determined
not to make the same mistake. They will not stop at Basra and
Nasiriyah, but they will go all the way and get rid of this odious
regime forever.
As far as Turkey is concerned, I agree with you. I will give the Bush
administration credit. I think the administration has done a good job
with the Turks, of saying to the Turks, "We understand what your
concerns are, about Kurdish independence. If you leave it to us, if
you let us work with the Kurds, we will get you a much better outcome
than you will get yourselves." I think it would be a tragedy if they
move beyond the immediate enclave. What I think the Turks are saying
is they are afraid of refugees pouring into southeastern Turkey.
And that is a fair point on the Turk's behalf. What the Turks are
saying is that they're afraid of refugees pouring into southeastern
Turkey. And I think it's one thing to say that's fine if you'd like to
set up camps along the Turkish boarder to handle Iraqi refugees so
that you can feed them, so that you can provide for them on the Iraqi
side of the border. That, I think, is acceptable.
What I think would be unacceptable would be for the Turkish army to
drive on Mosul, to drive on Kirkuk, to try to create facts on the
ground and to try to impose their own will on northern Iraq.
That I would find absolutely unacceptable. And I know that -- again,
here I am in agreement with the Bush administration. I give them
credit. I think they are working hard to try to keep the Kurds from
driving too far into north Iraq. Keep them just at the very border;
and, hopefully, to say to them, once the invasion is over, all right,
"We, the United States, working with the new Iraqi government, we have
the situation under control and now Turkish troops can pull back out
of Iraq and go back into Turkey, secure that the new Iraqi government
and the United States has the situation under full control."
I think that that is also a critical outcome. And I'm very concerned
that this be a part of U.S. policy, because, of course, as you were
suggesting, and as I believe too, winning a war against Iraq is not
just about removing Saddam Hussein -- it is about creating a stable,
and prosperous, and whole Iraq afterwards.
MS. PLATT: Thank you very much. We'll return now back to Moscow for a
question. Go ahead, sir.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND NORTH KOREA
PARTICIPANT: My question will be concerning your remark in your
opening statement that Saddam Hussein wants nuclear weapons because,
in that case, that will be the United States that will be the
deterrent, as you said, if I quoted correctly. Well, turning a little
bit outside Iraq, isn't the case with North Korea that you turned your
attention to Iraq and you don't notice the nuclear programs that go on
in North Korea? And maybe it is already the process of deterrence
(inaudible).
DR. POLLACK: I'm really glad that you asked it. You're absolutely
right. There are -- I mean, there are three important issues with
North Korea, three important differences between U.S. policies toward
Iraq, or what U.S. policy toward Iraq should be, and what U.S. policy
toward North Korea should be.
The first problem is a simple and obvious one: North Korea has nuclear
weapons. The U.S. intelligence community believes that North Korea has
at least one, and probably several, nuclear weapons.
And what that means is we do not have a military option against North
Korea. It's simply unthinkable. We are not going to invade North Korea
and risk the obliteration of Seoul or Tokyo. We're just not going to.
In fact, one of the reasons to go to war with Iraq sooner, rather than
later, is so that we never find ourselves in that position where
Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons and we have to risk the
obliteration of Riyadh, or Kuwait, and the Saudi oil fields, or Amman,
or any of the other capitals of the region that we would worry so much
about. Or, for that matter, New York. If the Iraqi's decided to put a
nuclear weapon on a freighter, they could just drive it into New York
Harbor and have the same effect there.
The second important difference between Iraq and North Korea is that
North Korea is surrounded by very powerful countries that are fully
capable of deterring North Korea all by themselves. China, Russia,
Japan, and South Korea all have extremely formidable militaries. All
of them are fully capability of deterring North Korea all by
themselves.
In the case of Iraq, Iraq is surrounded by mostly weaker nations. Only
Turkey has the military power to effectively defeat Iraqi armed forces
-- certainly, after they begin to recover and now that the sanctions
are being lifted already. Iran, maybe on a good day, might be able to
defeat the Iraqi armed forces, but Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria
-- they cannot do so.
But the final and, I think, the most important point, the most
important difference between Iraq and North Korea, lies in this realm
of intentions. What is so striking to me about North Korea, and I am
not a North Korea expert -- but what all of the Korea experts say --
in the United States, in the region, everywhere -- what all the Korea
experts agree on is North Koreans want nuclear weapons for defense
purposes.
They want nuclear weapons to deter an attack on North Korea by China,
by Russia, by the United States. And the worst that anyone can suggest
that the North Koreans might do with nuclear weapons is that once
they've got enough of them, they might sell them to another country.
Who's on the top of that list but Iraq? In the case of Iraq, what we
know about Saddam Hussein's thinking is fundamentally different. In
fact, it is unique. As I think I said earlier, there is no other
country -- no other ruler that we have ever encountered in the world
-- that thinks about nuclear weapons the way that Saddam Hussein does.
Saddam Hussein sees nuclear weapons, as best we understand it, as
offensive weapons, as weapons that will enable aggression; because he
believes that once he has them, we, the United States, will be so
terrified of getting into any kind of a nuclear exchange with him that
we would not dare to intervene if he attacked Kuwait again, if he
attacked Saudi Arabia again, if he attacked Jordan, or Syria, or any
of these other countries. For that matter, even if he attacked Turkey,
that the Turks themselves might be deterrent for fear of having a
nuclear weapon dropped on Ankara.
You know, Saddam -- actually, let me start with his brother. Barzan
Tikriti, Saddam's half brother, who was then the head of the Iraqi
intelligence service, once very famously said that Saddam Hussein
wants nuclear weapons because he wants a strong hand in redrawing the
map of the Middle East.
Saddam himself has apparently told any number of his senior-level
officials, after the Gulf War, that he believes that his biggest
mistake during the Gulf War, the second Gulf War, was not that he
should never have invaded Kuwait, but that he should have waited
another year or two until after he had a nuclear weapon -- because
once he had a nuclear weapon, the United States wouldn't have dared to
attack him.
And, as I said, what we have heard from other sources is that Saddam
believes once he has a nuclear weapon, he can once again do whatever
he wants to in the region. He can attack whomever he wants, blackmail
whomever he wants, and threaten whomever he wants.
This is unique.  We've never seen another leader like this.
You know, all through the cold war we Americans used to worry that
Russian leaders thought this way. Our greatest nightmare was that the
Russians would believe that once they had achieved strategic parity
with the United States, that they would then be free to attack whoever
they wanted to in Europe.
And of course, what we found out after the cold war was that the
Russian leadership never believed that. Not even Khrushchev, perhaps
the most adventurous of all the Russian leaders -- never believed
that, because the Russian leadership was simply too realistic and too
conservative.
Saddam Hussein is not realistic; he is not conservative. He is a
wild-eyed, reckless gambler who has a bizarre and incredibly dangerous
set of ideas about nuclear weapons. And I think that, at the end of
the day, is the most important difference between Iraq and North Korea
-- why we have to handle Iraq differently than we do North Korea.
MS. PLATT: Thank you. We will take our last question of the day from
Abu Dhabi.
A PARTICIPANT: My name is Dr. Nizam (phonetic). I'm a physician; I'm a
surgeon working in Abu Dhabi. I'm an Iraqi citizen. First of all,
really, I want to thank Dr. Pollack for what he mentioned about Iraq.
I want to say that he is 100 percent right goal what he mentioned
about Iraq.
I want to tell my friends in Moscow, 99 percent -- I repeat, 99
percent of Iraqi people are praying to God that Bush not change his
mind about liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein.
Every single Iraqi, every -- I repeat -- every single Iraqi is
waiting. Even they are praying. And I want to mention that story that
recently I heard it from a friend of mine.
He came from the Haj [Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca] that concluded in
Saudi Arabia just a few days back. They were in the near the Kabba
[holy site in Mecca], where an old lady, an Iraqi, was praying to God
that Saddam be gone.
The people around her asked her, "Why you are doing this? Why you are
praying thus? In shallah, there will be no war" She immediately said,
"No, please, no. We want Bush to come and liberate us."
So I want to tell my friends in Russia that please tell your
administration not to stop the war, please; not to stop the war. This
is the only hope for us to get rid of Saddam Hussein -- otherwise, we
cannot to live any more, there's no more time for us. Please tell your
administration about that.
MS. PLATT: Thank you, sir. Do you still have a question that you want
to ask?
A PARTICIPANT: Dr. Kenneth did not finish my first question about
Powell's statement on bringing democracy to the region.
DEMOCRACY AND THE MIDDLE EAST
DR. POLLACK: I'm so sorry about that. You're right, I did forget to
answer that question. I think that there are many different ideas in
the United States about the region and what would be best for the
region. And I think you're hearing many different Americans suggesting
different ideas.
I think that most Americans believe -- and I would say I fall into
this category -- that there needs to be political and economic change
in the Middle East.
But I, for one, don't know exactly what that change needs to look
like. When I talk to my friends in the Arab world, I constantly hear
things along the lines of, "You know, we're not happy with our
situation; we're deeply unhappy with the situation for the region; we
feel like our economies are stagnating; we're falling behind the rest
of the world; we look at East Asia, we look at Latin America, we see
them making all kinds of economic progress; we're not in the same
league."
My friends from Egypt, in particular, who complain constantly about
the tremendous amount of unemployment -- extremely well-educated
Egyptians who talk about how their sons and daughters are graduating
from colleges, good colleges -- smart kids -- but they can't find jobs
in Egypt because the economy is not dynamic and because they feel like
the economic and the political system there has broken down.
And I think that what that says to me, and what it says to all
Americans, is we need to find ways to help bring change to the Middle
East. What you're hearing in the United States is a great deal of
differences over what that change should look like and how much it
should be the United States doing the leading.
There are certainly people in the United States who say, "We know the
right answer and we should simply go to the Middle East and impose
it." We go and we say, "You must do this; you must do that; because we
have the right system of government." And these people, they believe
that's the right way to do thing.
As you probably hear in my voice, I don't think that that's
necessarily the right way to do things. I think that it is going to be
important to help the Middle East to change, to help the Arab world to
change, but it's a change that it needs to make itself.
I don't -- this is my lesson from East Asia. When I look at East Asia,
I remember that 30 or 40 years ago East Asia was ruled by nothing but
very nasty dictators and East Asia was a backwater -- economically,
politically, in every way, shape or form.
Over time, East Asia has changed dramatically; and now most of East
Asia is democratic; and most of East Asia has very dynamic economies.
But East Asia doesn't look like Europe.
The democracies and the economies of East Asia look very different
from the democracies and the economies of Europe. And what that says
to me is that the Middle East too is probably going to need to go
through some process of political and economic change, but it
shouldn't necessarily look like Europe, or like the United States, or
even like East Asia, for that matter.
It's going to have to be a process of change by which Arabs themselves
determine what it is that they want from the modern world, what they
want a modern Arab state to look like. And I will say that I think it
is very important for the United States to play a role in that, to
help.
And here I think that what Collin Powell was saying was that this is
what the United States needs to do. We need to help.
In fact, I think that what that Collin Powell was saying was something
that many Americans -- at least in Washington -- have been saying for
some years now, which is: We made a big mistake. All through the 1970s
and '80s and '90s, the United States did not do enough to press for
political and economic reform in the Middle East.
We were content to simply say to all of the leaders of the region,
"Whatever you want to do in your own country is fine; we don't care;
we don't really care about your people, as long as you deliver for us
on foreign policy." And I think we're now recognizing that was a
mistake. It was not good for the Arabs; it was not good for the
Americans. And the result has not been a positive one. But I think
that it would also be terrible for the Untied States to go to the Arab
world and say: "We know what's best. Here's what it is."
It has to be a cooperative effort where we go to Arabs and we say,
"Tell us how you would like to move; tell us in what direction you'd
like to take things; and tell us how we can help you."
And for me, that is the right way that this should work. It should be
a partnership. And, in fact, one of the things that's out there --
that's so promising to me are some of the ideas being articulated by
Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
The Crown Prince is talking about how he wants to bring change to
Saudi Arabia; how he wants to change the education system and the
legal system; how he wants to bring greater participation for the
Saudi people in their own government and make the Saudi government
more responsive to its people.
And I think that is all wonderful. And I think what the U.S.
Government should be doing is go to Crown Prince Abdullah and say,
"Crown Prince Abdullah, what you are proposing sounds wonderful to us;
tell us how owe help you."
MS. PLATT: Thank you very much. I'd like to thank you in Moscow, as
well as you in Abu Dhabi, for taking the time this afternoon to come
in to the embassies and participate. I'd particularly like to thank
you, Dr. Pollack, for coming here this morning. I wish you a good
evening.
DR. POLLACK: Thank you all very much.
(end transcript)
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Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)