Unfinished Business: Christopher, Perry Depart But Saddam Abides — Will ‘Clinton II’ Finally Put Him Out of Business?
(Washington, D.C.): Lest anyone be
tempted to mourn the departure from
office of many of the Clinton
Administration’s senior security policy
team, Washington Post columnist
Jim Hoagland has offered a
salutary reminder of the hash-up it has
made of U.S. foreign and defense policy
during Mr. Clinton’s first term.
In the attached
column appearing in today’s Post,
Mr. Hoagland provides but the latest
indictment of the strategy of
“keeping Saddam in his box”
that has been pursued by the likes of
outgoing Clinton Cabinet officers Warren
Christopher and William Perry. He cites
mounting evidence accumulated and
documented by the UN Special Commission
on Iraq (UNSCOM) that establishes Saddam
Hussein is winning his waiting game:
- He continues to retain
prohibited stocks of chemical and
biological weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) and Scud
missiles with which to
deliver them. - He has been emboldened by
the pusillanimous U.S. response
to his aggressive activities in
September in northern Iraq. - He has increasingly
defied and otherwise thwarted the
efforts of UNSCOM
personnel to ferret out his
covert WMD and ballistic missile
programs. - His foray into the “safe
haven” for the northern
Iraqi Kurds had the predictable
effect of blocking implementation
of the special oil-for-food
exemption to the UN sanctions
against Iraq. While this meant a
perpetuation of the suffering of
the Iraqi people — to which
Saddam is, as ever, utterly
indifferent — it had a more
important strategic benefit: The
permitted oil sales were supposed
to pay the $3 million-per-month
costs of the UNSCOM operation.
Absent new sources of funding,
that operation will be out of
money by January. And - He is confident that the combined
pressures being brought to bear
by such certified “Friends
of Saddam” as Russia’s
Primakov, France’s Chirac and
Turkey’s Erbekan will shortly
bring about the complete
dismantling of the Iraqi
sanctions regime — and perhaps
of U.S. air cap operations, as
well, at least in northern Iraq.
The Bottom Line
The Center for Security Policy
continues to believe that time is
not on the side of the United
States and others threatened by Saddam
Hussein’s undiminished megalomania and
malevolence. It urges the
Clinton Administration’s incoming
security policy team and the 105th
Congress to recognize that it
will not be possible over the
medium-to-long-term to contain Saddam.
Instead, as called for in the
href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-D_111at2″>attached USA
Today op.ed. article by the
Center’s director, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.,
the United States must promptly
bring to bear all necessary resources and
techniques for the purpose of disrupting
the police state apparatus that is
keeping him and his ruling clique in
power and liberating Iraq.
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