19 March 2003
Nuclear Threat, Rights Abuses Justify War on Iraq, Pollack Says
(Emphasis on terror links a mistake, former U.S. official thinks) (1470) By Ralph Dannheiser Washington File Special Correspondent Washington -- As war with Iraq looms possibly only hours or days ahead, a former U.S. intelligence official says an invasion is fully justified on two key grounds: Saddam Hussein's avid pursuit of nuclear weapons that he plans to use offensively, and Iraq's uniquely appalling human rights record under his leadership. The former official, Kenneth Pollack, largely dismissed the Bush administration's third rationale for military action -- the link between Iraq and terrorist groups. Indeed, Pollack said, many other countries -- Syria and Iran high among them -- have far stronger terrorist connections than does Iraq, and emphasis on the supposed terrorist link actually has weakened the administration's case. Pollack, who served as director for Near East and South Asian Affairs, and then director for Persian Gulf Affairs, in the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, outlined his case for invading Iraq in a March 19 briefing to reporters at Washington's Foreign Press Center. Now a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution and director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Pollack also served as an Iran-Iraq military analyst during the administration of former President Bush. Pollack stressed that he has no governmental role in the current Bush administration. But, he said, "That said, I do agree with them on the necessity for fighting this war. I do believe that there is no other way to deal with the problems that Saddam Hussein poses for his own people, for the Middle East, for the United States and for, in fact, the entire world." He argued that all approaches short of war have now been tried, and failed. With regard to the human rights issue, Pollack countered the argument that Hussein's is merely one of many repressive regimes around the world. "Saddam Hussein is not your garden variety dictator," he said. "Saddam Hussein is one of the most terrible dictators of the last 50 years," and compared him with Hitler and Stalin in brutality. He observed that in comparison with Kosovo, where some 8,000 persons had been killed in Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing campaign by the time NATO intervened, "as many as a million Iraqis have died at the hands of Saddam Hussein over the last 25 years, and they've died in horrific fashion." War can be justified by the need "to rid the world of this degree of inhumanity" alone, Pollack argued. But even more persuasive, he said, is the issue of Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction and, in particular, his determination to develop a nuclear arsenal. While many nations around the world possess such weapons, Pollack argued, what sets Iraq apart is that "Saddam Hussein thinks about nuclear weapons in a way we have never seen other countries, other leaders think about nuclear weapons. "Saddam is inherently expansionist...He wants to dominate the Middle East, control its oil flows, destroy the state of Israel, seek his revenge on Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and drive the United States out of the region," and he believes that "nuclear weapons will serve an offensive purpose for him" toward these ends, Pollack said. This contrasts, for example, with North Korea, he said, noting that while that country also poses a real danger, it appears to seek nuclear weapons largely "for defensive purposes, to deter an attack by the U.S., by China, by Russia or some other country." Pollack drew a contrast, too, with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, contending that -- despite fears at the time -- "the Soviets were much too conservative to ever think about" an offensive use of their nuclear weapons. "Saddam Hussein is not [conservative]. Saddam Hussein is an aggressive, risk-taking miscalculator. We have seen this time and again. He takes wild foreign policy risks" that even his closest advisors consider reckless and possibly suicidal, Pollack declared. And, he said, "We have tried every other way to deal with this problem." Pollack noted that, during the 1990s, he was "one of the leading advocates in the U.S. government of containment" to rein in the threat posed by Hussein. "Unfortunately, I was wrong," he said. Containment failed for the dual reasons that, after some early success after the Persian Gulf War, "the Iraqis got so good at hiding their weapons of mass destruction that we couldn't find any of them," and that, soon, "the rest of the world simply lost interest," said Pollack. And while the new U.N. inspection regime currently has a high level of international support, he indicated, neither that support nor the U.S. troop presence that is making it work could be sustained for the long time it would be needed. "Inspections will take years, if not decades, to work. The inspections are not just about finding out whether or not Saddam has weapons now, they are about preventing him from ever getting them in the future," he said. Moreover, Pollack said, "The only reason that the Iraqis are cooperating right now is because there are 250,000 American troops in the desert. As long as those troops are there, I think Saddam will be on his best behavior. ... But the problem is, we can't keep those troops there for very long. We could probably do it for another three, four, maybe six months, but we can't keep them there for the lifetime of this regime, and the moment that they are gone, Saddam will go back to his own ways." Nor can the world simply wait for the still-vital Hussein to die, he said. And even when he does, he noted, his most likely successors will be his sons, who Pollack described as "possibly the only people in Iraq I can think of who would actually be worse than Saddam Hussein." Thus Pollack's conclusion: "War is going to be the only way of preventing Saddam Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons, from rebuilding his weapons of mass destruction, also from rebuilding his other conventional forces and once again setting out on his path of trying to dominate the Middle East, destroy his enemies, and continue to oppress his people." Dismissing Iraq's link to terrorism -- one that he said surely exists -- as a sufficient reason for going to war, Pollack said there would be "a lot of other countries that ought to come before Iraq" if that was the motivation. Asked to name some of the countries whose links with terrorism he believes to be greater, he replied, "Iran and Syria, for starters." Pollack criticized the Bush administration for, in his view, exaggerating Iraq's terrorist links. "By focusing on ... that particular element, that particular pillar of the argument, in point of fact the administration has weakened their own arguments," he said. Leaks of information that the threat is less severe "really undercuts the administration's efforts" in the broader context, he said. Asked whether Hussein's forces are likely to use chemical and biological weapons against a U.S.-led attack, Pollack said his worries on this count were limited, partly because the invading forces would have better protective gear than the Iraqi troops themselves, and partly because commanders fearful of war crimes prosecution might be reticent to order their use. But, he said, Hussein has proven himself to be "capable of doing things that make no sense to anyone but himself." And, he said, "My biggest concern is that the Iraqis will start using it on their own population." In response to another question, Pollack said there is no doubt that "the United States and its allies contributed in a significant way to the rise of Saddam Hussein" at a time in the 1980s when Iraq was fighting the much more immediate threat of the Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran. "What I find it much harder to justify is allowing the Iraqis to build up these massive weapons of mass destruction capabilities. I think we could have provided lots of assistance to the Iraqis without having sold them anthrax, without having turned a blind eye to them procuring VX and sarin and tabin (nerve gases) and all these other nasty things and allowing them to make progress on a nuclear program as well," he said. But, Pollack emphasized, "I don't think that having made mistakes in the past should somehow disqualify you from taking actions in the future to right those wrongs." "Often times the most positive results have come about in international politics when those people who did make the mistakes will stand up and say, 'You know what, we made a mistake, and it's now time for us to correct that mistake,'" he said. (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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