Time to Face the Super-Thug Alone

Memo to the president: Forget Barzan. It is Barzani you want to enlist. And watch your back
at
the United Nations. Kofi Annan’s staff is out to knife American policy on Iraq and “rehabilitate”
Saddam Hussein.

This is the way 1999 starts for Bill Clinton in his long, expensive and inconclusive battle with
Saddam. But the three resolutions proposed above — which require Clinton to force the hand of
other players in this drama — could bring a blessedly unhappy New Year for the Iraqi dictator.

Barzan is Barzan al-Takriti, Saddam’s half-brother. During a diplomatic posting in Geneva,
Barzan conducted an elaborate covert dialogue for five years with the United States, which
provided visas and medical treatment in the United States for his wife, Ahlam, and other members
of his family.

These blandishments were offered in a forlorn attempt to persuade Barzan to mount a palace
coup
against a murderous sibling he had no intention of crossing. A CIA officer using the code name
Abu Eric who came to know Barzan and other Iraqi officials in Baghdad in the 1980s traveled
regularly from his Middle East post to meet with Barzan in Europe.

Barzan returned to Baghdad in November shortly after his wife died and was buried in
Switzerland. The CIA’s misguided palace coup effort produced no return on its investment and
inhibited other, more promising anti-Saddam operations. It is the kind of quick-fix operation that
the Clintonites will avoid if they are to get serious about the long-term campaign to overthrow
Saddam they have belatedly promised.

U.S. energy and funds should instead be focused on Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, whose
Pesh
Merga warriors and real estate are needed to mount an effective challenge to Baghdad. Barzani
must be made to understand that he will get serious U.S. support and protection — but only if he
breaks out of the working alliance he has maintained with Saddam since 1996 and joins a new
U.S.-supported resistance coalition.

Washington needs to take the same “It is time to choose” approach with U.N. Secretary
General
Kofi Annan, whose assistants this week used the media to try to decapitate the U.N. Special
Commission (UNSCOM) that runs arms inspections in Iraq and to make these inspections more
Saddam-friendly.

Annan’s staff aired anonymous complaints in The Washington Post that UNSCOM chief
inspector
Richard Butler had permitted the organization to be used by U.S. intelligence for spying on
Saddam. The secretary general’s assistants seemed shocked — yes, shocked — that an anti-Saddam
bias had crept into U.N. actions on Iraq.

Leave aside the bum information: Out of professional rivalry, the Central Intelligence Agency
has
done more to hinder effective intelligence gathering by UNSCOM than to help. More shocking is
the pretense by Annan’s aides that they are unaware that the international community is at war
with Saddam’s regime. Iraq was granted a cease-fire in the Gulf War on condition that it give up
its weapons of mass destruction and missiles. Iraq’s refusal to let UNSCOM verify its claims puts
Baghdad in active breach of the cease-fire contained in U.N. resolutions.

This is not a technical matter or a legalism. Saddam forced the United States to spend billions
of
dollars and stretch thin its armed forces in 1998, all without seriously weakening his dictatorship
or his store of terror weapons. His new burst of belligerence is intended to show that he survived
December’s 70-hour bombing spree conducted by the world’s only remaining superpower.
Super-Thug lives.

Annan’s people misjudge the temper of Washington on this issue. “Their undermining of
UNSCOM and economic sanctions will drive people who want to clear up the problem of U.S.
back dues and other problems into the confrontation camp and provoke a serious U.S.-U.N.
crisis,” a senior administration official said to me two weeks ago. This official accurately predicted
then that Butler’s head would soon be on the block.

The White House, already miffed with Annan over his handling of Iraq, will fight to protect
Butler, a senior official told me this week.

The sneak attack on Butler and the CIA should be a wake-up call: Washington now will have
to
rely less on multilateral efforts to contain and combat Saddam and act unilaterally more often to
protect U.S. vital interests abroad in 1999.

Clinton should treat this development as a liberation from bothersome restraints on U.S.
freedom
of action. He is considering appointing a high-level coordinator to handle Iraq, a step in the right,
unilateralist direction.

The need now is to lead, not to persuade. Other nations will follow an American president
who
makes clear he will protect U.S. national interests in the gulf or elsewhere by any means
necessary. This is what George Bush did in 1991.

Kofi Annan, Kurdish guerrillas and Saddam’s relatives will join in pushing the dictator out
only
when they are convinced that Saddam’s fate is sealed and that continuing to keep a foot in his
camp will do significant damage to them. They should no longer be given the choice of seeming
not to choose.

This does not mean the end of multilateralism or of hopes for a more effective United Nations
in
the future. Those goals can and should be attained. But they can be attained only under the
influence of strong U.S. leadership. The place to begin is Iraq, the time is now.