Nix to Blix: Man Who Certified Iraq as Non-Nuclear is Unlikely to Find — or Even to Seek — Saddam’s Hidden Weapons

(Washington, D.C.): In a hugely disappointing decision yesterday to fill a
senior UN
bureaucratic post, the Security Council spoke volumes about its depleted appetite for further
confrontations with — to say nothing of additional efforts to punish — Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein. The Security Council formally endorsed Secretary General Kofi
Annan’s
recommendation to appoint Hans Blix. a Swedish diplomat with a checkered
record, to become
the first head of the successor to the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM).

Blix was the lowest-common-denominator choice for the job after Russia, China and
France
vetoed his much more conscientious compatriot, Rolf Ekeus. He is a natural choice to run the
sort of Potemkin inspection operation that those three countries clearly have in mind for their
once-and-future client, Iraq. Given Blix’s dismal sixteen-year performance as director general
of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — an organization that had
an uncanny
track-record during his tenure of not finding evidence of nuclear weapons activities prohibited
by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Thus not only Iraq, but Iran, North Korea, Brazil,
Argentina and South Africa were among the nations that succeeded in largely concealing
indigenous or collaborative nuclear weapons programs from Blix’s IAEA.

Unfortunately, as the following, recently published editorials make clear, the Blix
appointment is
only the latest in a litany of serious mistakes made by the Clinton-Gore Administration with
respect to Iraq. If not immediately reversed, these mistakes will have the effect of empowering
and emboldening Saddam — and set the stage for serious grief for the United States and its
regional allies down the road.

Wall Street Journal, 20 January 2000

Saddam Is Reversing Gulf War Defeat

By Andrew J. Bacevich

The wrangling between Secretary General Kofi Annan and members of the United Nations
Security Council over the appointment of someone to head the United Nations
Monitoring,
Verification, and Inspection Commission may yet result in the revival of some
attenuated form
of weapons inspections in Iraq. If it does, spokesmen for the Clinton administration will no doubt
proclaim this yet another triumph of American statecraft. Doing so just might distract Americans
from the real story–namely, how during his seven years of jousting with President
Clinton,
Saddam Hussein has thwarted the U.S. at every turn. The only question is whether to
credit
the outcome to Iraqi cunning or to unvarnished American ineptitude.

U.S. efforts to subvert the Iraqi dictator’s hold on power from within have gone precisely
nowhere. In 1996, Saddam uncovered and proceeded to smash CIA operations based in northern
Iraq aimed at organizing a domestic opposition. Since that debacle–and despite congressional
prodding in the form of the Iraq Liberation Act–administration efforts to galvanize the Iraqi
opposition have been largely confined to hosting taxpayer-supported conferences in pricey
midtown Manhattan hotels.

Administration expectations that international sanctions might put the squeeze on
Saddam
have likewise produced little. Since 1993, the once robust coalition built by George
Bush has
all but evaporated. Today erstwhile American partners jockey for position to cut the best possible
deal with Iraq at the first available opportunity. Iraqi petroleum exports under the guise of
food-for-oil have now reached a post-Desert Storm high, with only the most naïve
believing that the
proceeds serve exclusively humanitarian purposes.

Most significantly, the administration has frittered away America’s dominant
position in
the Persian Gulf through its cavalier expenditure of U.S. military power. When, in the
fall of
1998, Saddam sent U.N. weapons inspectors packing, President Clinton subjected Baghdad to a
modest four-day air campaign. Advertised as a powerful setback to Saddam’s efforts to rebuild
his military machine, Operation Desert Fox amounted to little more than a pyrotechnic display
that covered a stinging diplomatic defeat for the U.S.

In the 13 months since, all but unnoticed by the American public, the U.S. has continued to
bomb
Iraq, unloading some 2,000 missiles and precision-guided bombs against several hundred targets
scattered throughout the Iraqi outback. The targets demolished with impressive skill by
American aviators are devoid of larger military significance. The likelihood that this
haphazard campaign will produce a politically meaningful result approaches zero.
Indeed,
it is not at all clear that the campaign has an identifiable political purpose.

Nominally, the administration remains committed to removing Saddam from power. In
reality,
the lack of resolve shown in the face of Iraqi defiance and the frivolousness of
American
military action tell a different story, namely that the U.S. is learning to accommodate itself
to a Persian Gulf that includes Saddam Hussein. Other nations in the region, or with
interests there, respond accordingly.

Saddam himself can hardly fail to appreciate that events are heading in his direction. Back in
January 1993, when Mr. Clinton became president, observers noted the irony that the victor in
the Gulf War had been ousted from power while the loser had managed to survive. Now it seems
all but certain that Saddam will outlast a second American president as well.

Whereas Saddam emerged from his confrontation with Mr. Bush weakened and
vulnerable, after eight years of Mr. Clinton his position grows stronger by the day. As
the
end of Bill Clinton’s two terms in office approaches, Saddam Hussein can take justifiable
satisfaction at having made significant progress toward his ultimate objective: reversing the
results of the Persian Gulf War.

Andrew J. Bacevich is director of the Center for International Relations at Boston
University.

Jerusalem Post Editorial, 23 January 2000

Iraq Quietly Consolidates

A five-member team from the International Atomic Energy Agency has arrived in Iraq, but
it
would be an illusion to think that close control over Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass
destruction is being reinstated.

The team, led by Ahmed Abuzahra of Egypt, is the first visit to Iraq by monitors from the
Vienna-based IAEA since UN weapons inspectors left the country in late 1998, never to return.
The new inspection is not connected to those mandated by the UN after Iraq’s defeat in the Gulf
War – it is a routine inventory check for nuclear material and is part of the monitoring
procedures required of all signatories to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.

The issue of restoring the regime of the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection
Commission remains mired in a dispute between Secretary- General Kofi Annan and members
of the Security Council over who should head it. Russia, China, and France joined in successful
ignominious agreement to reject Rolf Ekeus, who was Annan’s choice for the job. Much
mockery was spent on Saddam’s pompous claims to have won the Gulf War in 1991, but it is by
no means clear that the murderous dictator will not have the last laugh on the issue.

He has held on to power, rebuilt his palaces, and restocked his coffers, and he has
steadily
whittled away the power and credibility of both the UN and the US. Weathering the
ineffective strikes on radar units that paint allied aircraft in the designated no-fly zones, Saddam
has reimposed his will on the outside world just by being cantankerous and devious. He has
been aided magnificently by the incompetent handling of the Iraq desk in Washington and by
misguided states scrabbling to regain commercial influence in Iraq at any cost.

It is easy to forget that while the world public and the media may have grown bored with the
tedium of stories from Iraq, Saddam has been quietly but relentless consolidating his
power
and rebuilding his strength, out of the limelight. It will be no surprise if the Middle
East and
the world gets some other nasty surprise from Iraq, which it should have been expecting but
wasn’t.

What is as puzzling as it is worrying is the apparent invisibility of any Washington
policy
on Iraq — or indeed any attempt to implement whatever shreds of policy ever existed.
Yet,
in the last 12 months, the Americans have managed to drop more than 2,000 bombs and missiles
on Iraq in those no-fly zone confrontations. The best word so far used to describe this military
campaign is “haphazard,” and it would defy the skills of any military analyst to come up with a
coherent explanation of what it is all about.

There have been two main indicators that the failed Western policy to contain
Saddam must
be blamed on American incompetence rather than Iraqi cunning. The first was the
disastrous CIA operation in Kurdish northern Iraq in 1996, which Saddam routed. The second
has been the failure to implement Congress’s Iraq Liberation Act – which was supposed to fund
the overthrow of the dictator by native opposition groups.

President Bill Clinton signed the 1998 act which was supposed to invest $97 million in this
project. Apparently only $20,000 has been disbursed to the opposition groups – enough to buy
some basic office supplies. The London office of the Iraqi National Congress, the main
democratic opposition group, shut down at the end of last year. All this dithering and
incompetence has enabled Saddam to replace his bombast after the Gulf War with a credible
claim to have rolled back allied achievements then. If anyone still thinks Saddam will be content
just with that, they will be deluding themselves.