Accept No Substitutes: Clinton Address On Iraq Signals Continuing Failure To Grasp Need For Toppling Saddam

(Washington, D.C.): In his remarks to a Pentagon audience and the Nation today, President
Clinton made a persuasive case — up to a point.

He described authoritatively the malevolent character of the Iraqi leadership, its determination
to
pursue weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs and its attendant, repeated violation of
Iraq’s obligations under various cease-fire accords and UN resolutions. The President
impressively asserted his Administration’s determination to prevent Saddam Hussein from once
again wielding such deadly weapons.

Unfortunately, Mr. Clinton rendered his address ludicrous — if not contemptible —
by
repeatedly emphasizing that if only Saddam would make new promises, the crisis
would
pass. No serious observer can believe that any future commitment from Saddam’s
government to
allow “free, fair and unfettered access” to all locations in Iraq, as demanded by President Clinton
today, will be worth more than the earlier, repeatedly violated ones.

What is Wrong With This Picture?

Holding out the prospect of a “diplomatic solution” in circumstances like these — where
diplomacy can only postpone the day of reckoning, not prevent its occurrence — signals to friend
and foe alike that the United States lacks the strategic vision, will and/or military power to use
force effectively. Matters are made worse by the repeated contention that such power as the U.S.
does command is going to be sent on a fool’s errand: “We want to seriously diminish the threat
posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program. We want to seriously reduce his capacity
to threaten his neighbors.”

The truth is that such an objective, even if it could be made less nebulous and more
achievable,
would be utterly ephemeral as long as Saddam Hussein and his ilk rule Iraq. It is in
the nature of
chemical and particularly biological weapons programs that within weeks — if not within days
or
hours — of an attack that “seriously diminished” Iraq’s WMD program, new dual-use and
covertly
stockpiled dedicated military equipment can resume production of lethal agents, toxins or viruses.

Far from bringing Saddam to heel, military action with this limited purpose will only
embolden the
Iraqi despot and his ruling clique. This is not conjecture; it is a forecast born of hard experience.
As syndicated columnist Tony Snow recalled in an article published in yesterday’s
Washington
Times: “Intelligence officers report that in the waning hours of the Gulf War,
Hussein asked
two questions: ‘Will they kill me?’ and ‘Will they cross the Euphrates?’ Upon hearing
that the answer to both queries was ‘no,’ he reportedly smiled and said, ‘Then I
win.‘“
(Emphasis added.)

Key Congressional Figures Get It, Why Not Mr. Clinton?

This reality is increasingly understood by leading Members of Congress. As the Center has
noted
in recent weeks, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and Senate
Majority Leader Trent
Lott (R-MS) have made clear their view that Saddam is the problem. href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾ On 12 February,
Republican Representatives Dan Burton (IN), Chris Smith
(NJ), Dana Rohrabacher (CA)
and Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham (CA) added their influential voices in a letter
President Clinton.
It said, in part:

“…In order to be effective, any military action must not target the innocent
people of Iraq, but instead must be aimed at Saddam and the underpinnings of
his blood-stained regime….A critical objective…must be to get rid of Saddam. And
how we do that is to assist the Iraqi people so they will have the freedom to select
leadership that is not threatening to their neighbors and their own well being.

“To this end, and consistent with the national objective that you articulated in
your State of the Union address, there are three fundamental pillars of
Saddam’s strength and his ability to destabilize the region: 1) weapons of
mass destruction; 2) the Special Security and Special Republican Guard
security forces; and 3) a close circle of political and military decision-makers.

“These three components of Saddam’s power pyramid can be put at risk
using a combination of TLAMs, stealth F-117 and B-2⁽²⁾
bombers using their
most capable weapons, and B-52s with stand-off cruise missiles. We are
concerned that relying on non-stealth, non-standoff systems is a recipe for U.S.
and allied airmen being sacrificed and potential hostages to be paraded before the
media by Saddam. To risk mass casualties by blowing up chemical and biological
weapons bunkers, which would put at risk civilians, Iraq’s neighbors and
American troops stationed in the region, while leaving Saddam in power is
foolhardy. This would turn public opinion against the operation and threaten the
stability of our regional allies.

“There is no guarantee that air strikes will eliminate Saddam’s chemical and
biological stockpile or prevent him from replenishing his arsenal. A sounder
objective would be to disable Saddam. To this end, an intensive psychological
operation should be integral with military action. A psy-ops campaign may
include overriding Iraq’s national radio and television signals with programming
to assure that Iraqi people understand that we are trying to help them….

“…We now understand that we will never resolve the weapons of mass
destruction issue so long as Saddam remains in power. We will support
strong action. But it must be strategically sound and decisive, with the
ultimate goal to free the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.“
(Emphasis added.)

The Military Gets It, Why Doesn’t Bill Clinton?

Today’s Washington Post reports that such an assessment is shared by senior
military leaders, if
not by all the President’s political appointees⁽³⁾:

“Defense and foreign policy officials said the President’s national security team
remains divided over the aims and expectations of the intended bombardment, and
frustrated senior officers said the target lists accumulating in the converted Bedouin
village of Eskan in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Central Command’s forward air
headquarters, are still subject to daily revision….

“As bombing plans have expanded to encompass what one senior flag officer
described as ‘thousands of aim points’ in Iraq, a large share of the intended
violence is now directed at the apparatus maintaining Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein in power, from networks of secret police to Baath Party
organs. Apart from the long-shot hope of a change of government, officials said,
the aim is to crush Saddam Hussein’s defiance by threatening his most
valued assets of internal control.

“The 1991 Persian Gulf War featured a similar but largely abortive effort to
target Saddam Hussein’s power base. But the objectives of that war’s six-week
air campaign were largely elsewhere, and target planners then devoted less than
1 percent of their bombing missions — 260 of 36,046 ‘strike sorties’ — to the
category they designated ‘L’ for leadership.

“‘The emphasis is not just on chemical and biological [weapons],’ a top flag
officer said. ‘The emphasis is on, you’re going to make it hurt, and the best
way to hurt him is his core infrastructure. We’re not going to leave that alone
as we have in the past….If he feels threatened enough with his regime’s stability,
then he has no choice but to acquiesce. It’s typical dictator mentality that the
biggest thing that drives him is holding onto power.'”

The Military Bridles at Administration Disingenuousness

It is ironic that, according to the Post, “The administration does
not wish to advertise
this intention, according to several accounts, because it fears the plan may not work. ‘In
our
public discourse of this we need to focus on an achievable
objective,’ said one senior
administration official.”

Like the growing chorus in Congress, the U.S. military understands that “seriously
diminishing”
Saddam’s WMD program is, if anything, less achievable — and certainly less
efficacious — than
disrupting his “core infrastructure” or security apparatus. As the Post put it:

“But President Clinton’s stated intention — to damage forbidden weapons stocks from
the air, rather than compel Iraq to give full access to United Nations inspectors charged
with discovering them on the ground — has been challenged by some in Congress and
elsewhere as too limited. When critics in and out of government noted that Iraq could
quickly reconstitute its biological and chemical weapons programs, Secretary of State
Madeleine K. Albright declared last week that, ‘We reserve the right for a follow-up
strike.’

“There is broad dissatisfaction with that strategy in the military
establishment, several senior officials said. ‘We pay such a huge price
politically that we have fewer friends next time and even fewer the time after
that,’ said one military planner. ‘Every six months doing maintenance strikes on
Iraq for the next 10 years doesn’t seem to be good foreign policy or military
strategy.'”⁽⁴⁾

Another Presidential Blind Spot: Russia is No ‘Partner for
Peace’

In his remarks today, President Clinton glossed over one other natty problem with his Iraq
policy:
His continuing confidence that, as he put it, “the international community does have the wisdom
and the will and the way to protect peace and security in a new era.” This formula ignores the
fact that three out of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — Russia, China
and France — are actively running interference for Saddam Hussein, or worse. href=”#N_5_”>⁽⁵⁾

Take, for example, the case of Russia. Even before Boris Yeltsin started warning that
U.S.-led
military action against Iraq could precipitate “World War III,” the Russians were materially
contributing to the problem posed by Iraq. According to the 12 February 1998 Washington
Post,⁽⁶⁾ “United Nations inspectors in Iraq last fall
uncovered what they considered highly
unsettling evidence of a 1995 agreement by the Russian government to sell Iraq
sophisticated
fermentation equipment that could be used to develop biological weapons, according to
sources.” What is more:

“The evidence of an illicit deal is [but] one element of a close collaboration
between Moscow and Baghdad on matters of interest to the United Nations
Special Commission on Iraq….U.S. intelligence agencies have privately warned U.N.
officials that Russian intelligence operatives are spying on the commission and its
personnel in New York and overseas, the sources said. They have further warned
that the Russian spy agency, which was formerly headed by Foreign Minister
Yevgeny Primakov, may have passed some of the information it collects directly
to Iraq.

“In some cases, Moscow has made little effort to conceal efforts to learn what
the commission is doing and to influence the scope and timing of certain sensitive
inspections, according to sources….In the summer of 1996, for example, a team of
inspectors retreated to a remote English town for a training exercise to prepare
for a surprise visit to a highly sensitive Iraqi site. After checking into a local
hotel, an inspector recognized a Russian official later identified as the London
resident for the Russian foreign intelligence service, according to three sources.
Each night, the official was observed attempting to debrief Russian
members of the inspection team, the sources said. When inspectors
eventually tried to reach the site targeted by the commission, they were
blocked by Iraqi military forces.

“In another incident cited by several sources, commission officials in charge of
another highly sensitive inspection in March 1996 deliberately disseminated false
information to members of their own team about which Iraqi site they had
targeted. Shortly afterward, a Russian political counselor in New York, Gennadi
Gatilov, who is now Moscow’s chief expert in New York on commission
matters, approached a senior commission official to complain that inspecting that
site would be highly disruptive.

“Gatilov further threatened that if the inspection went forward, Moscow would
oppose implementation of a U.N. plan for long-term routine monitoring of
imports and exports to Iraq related to weapons of mass destruction — a threat that
commission officials ignored, sources said.” (Emphasis added throughout.)

These are the sorts of problems that must be expected to intensify
if the Clinton
Administration allows a new “diplomatic solution” to be brokered by UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan that will permit representatives of the “Perm Five” (read, Russians,
Chinese
and French “diplomats”) to accompany UNSCOM inspectors on some or all of their future on-site
visits in Iraq.

The Bottom Line

The American people, their elected representatives and those who have volunteered to put
their
lives on the line for their country will readily support President Clinton in his bid to end the
danger posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction — provided he addresses that
danger systemically, and not in a symptomatic, if not completely phony, fashion.

Should he chose, once again, to do otherwise, however, Mr. Clinton should be under no
illusion:
He will secure for himself no real, let alone durable, diminution in the threat from
Iraq. Instead,
he will likely secure a place in that circle of the Inferno reserved for those who recklessly sacrifice
their country’s interests and servicemen by compromising with, rather than effectively resisting,
unappeasable tyrants.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Clinton’s Huffing-And-Puffing On Iraq — But Lack
of a Coherent Strategy — Looks Like a Formula for Disaster ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_22″>No. 98-D 22, 4 February 1998).

2. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
What’s Wrong With This Picture? Clinton Doesn’t
Get the Need for Strategic Air Strikes — Or the Right Tool for Conducting Them
(No. 98-D
26, 9 February 1998).

3. See “Raids May Strike At Power Structure,” Barton Gellman,
Washington Post, 17 February 1998, p. A1.

4. A good policy in this area requires in addition to the military
strikes and psychological warfare
campaigns described above, what Richard Perle has called a “serious political program.” As
described in a Washington Post op.ed. article by former Assistant Secretary of
Defense Perle (See
No. 98-D 26) such a program would involve a concerted effort to
foster, empower and legitimate
a provisional government of Free Iraq and to delegitimate Saddam Hussein and his ruling clique.

5. A.M. Rosenthal’s syndicated column in today’s New York
Times brilliantly describes the double
travesty of so-called allies who subvert efforts to stop Saddam on the one hand and that of
an
American government that tries to conceal this practice: “Our real difference with Russia, China
and France [is] their decision to put lust for Mideast influence and Saddam’s trade above concern
about his chemical and biological weapons. The decision besmirches all countries who take it.
Prettifying it besmirches us.”

6. See “Did Russia Sell Iraq Germ Warfare Equipment?” by R.
Jeffrey Smith, p. A1.