This time, get Saddam: Cut this cancer out now, before the Butcher of Baghdad becomes even deadlier

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
USA Today, September 4, 1996

The proverbial handwriting is now clearly on the wall. The
decision to allow Saddam Hussein to survive the Persian Gulf war
was one of recent history’s more serious miscalculations.

He did not “learn his lesson” from Operation Desert
Storm, as some had naively hoped. He has, instead, simply bided
his time, periodically probing U.S. resolve and awaiting a moment
when he might exact revenge upon the United States, its allies
and/or others closer at hand.

Let’s face it: A thug like Saddam is a cancer on the
international body politic. He has survived for decades through
sheer ruthlessness and by acts of aggression in the face of
others’ weakness.

And he is sure to have interpreted Washington’s latest bout
of “signal-sending” as evidence of President Clinton’s
perennial preoccupation with domestic issues, his
administration’s discomfort with the effective use of U.S.
military power, and the United States’ declining influence in the
region.

Such an interpretation is certain to provoke greater
malevolence on Saddam’s part in the future — even if he backs
down temporarily in the near term.

And the critical response from most former partners in the
U.S.-led gulf war coalition is an ominous indication that this
interpretation is widely shared.

In other words, the cancer is sure to continue to metastasize
— unless cut out.

And cutting it out is certain to be more easily accomplished now,
when Saddam is still relatively weak and preoccupied with killing
his own people, rather than later, when Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction and other lethal capabilities are greater and their
targets are further afield.

This is not to suggest that helping end Saddam’s reign of
terror will be as straightforward a matter as it probably would
have been after Desert Storm. If anything, successive failed coup
attempts against the Butcher of Baghdad demonstrate that his
police-state apparatus is sufficient to preserve Saddam in power,
absent a concerted effort by a nation with the resources and
reach of the United States.

What Saddam’s latest gambit and its geopolitical aftermath
demonstrates, though, is that as a practical matter the United
States simply no longer has a choice but to mount such a
concerted effort — ideally in league with like-minded countries,
but alone if necessary.

U.S. intelligence, covert and overt capabilities, financial
levers and information-warfare technology should be brought to
bear immediately for the purpose of disrupting Saddam’s police
state and liberating Iraq. There’s not a moment to lose.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. was assistant secretary of Defense
and held other senior positions in the Defense Department of
President Ronald Reagan. He is now director of the private Center
for Security Policy in Washington.