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.