Posted on 10/11/2001 3:21:07 AM PDT by maquiladora
IRAQ, which yesterday shot down an unmanned American aircraft in the "no-fly zone", has been told by the United States that it will be attacked if it exploits the situation in Afghanistan to further its interests.
"There will be a military strike against you and you will be defeated," John Negroponte, the US ambassador to the United Nations, told his Iraqi counterpart, reported the Washington Post.
The meeting between Mr Negroponte and Mohammed Douri, the Iraqi envoy, was the first diplomatic encounter between their countries for several years and reflected a growing desire from elements of the Bush administration to deal with Saddam Hussein.
Iraq has emerged as the single biggest issue that could divide the United States and Britain during the war on terrorism. The question about what to do with Iraq also represents a fault line within the Bush administration.
A British government official travelling with Tony Blair said yesterday that no other country would be attacked without "absolute evidence" that it sponsored terrorism and without the widest international support for military action.
He added: "We have no evidence that links the Iraqi regime with the events of September 11."
Officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon deputy, have urged action against Iraq. They point out that Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the hijackers, met Iraqi officials in Prague last year shortly before he began training as a pilot.
Iraq is regarded by Republican hawks as the great unfinished business of President George Bush Snr's administration.
Britain has strongly backed Gen Colin Powell, the US secretary of state and an opponent of action against Iraq, against Mr Wolfowitz.
Concern about Iraq has been heightened by the cases of anthrax in Florida. UN inspectors who entered Iraq after the Gulf War found stockpiles of the poisonous gases sarin and VX as well as evidence of experimentation with anthrax and other deadly agents.
This week, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, said: "Without getting into evidence, terrorist networks have had relationships with a handful of countries. Among those handful-plus of countries are nations that have active chemical and biological programmes."
When asked if Iraq was one of those countries, he replied: "Absolutely."
Mr Negroponte arrived unannounced at the UN mission on Sunday shortly after allied military action against the Taliban had begun. After being taken into Mr Douri's office, he read from a prepared message.
On the same day, he lodged a letter at the UN that stated: "We may find that our self-defence requires further actions with respect to other organisations and states."
Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, said on Tuesday that Security Council members had expressed "anxiety" over the broadening of the conflict hinted at by Mr Negroponte.
Even if Iraq had no link with the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration fears it could take military action against its neighbours or America.
The problem the White House is grappling with is that in dividing the world between those for and against global terrorism, it might be encouraging America's enemies to band together against the US.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
AMERICAN air power may have neutralised the Afghan anti-aircraft missile threat, but the Washington political classes are already turning to a much more intriguing question: will President Bush do what his father stepped back from and eliminate Saddam Hussein.
Hawks in Washington believe that the war on terrorism triggered by the September 11 attacks has given the White House the ideal opportunity to move beyond the policy of containment of Saddam that has applied for more than a decade.
To the hawks, letting the Iraqi army retreat home to Baghdad in February 1991 was the biggest military let off since General Meade decided not to pursue Lee's forces after the Union victory at Gettysburg.
The issue is clouded because most of the prominent officials running the campaign against terrorism were intricately involved in the Gulf war, and are therefore implicated in the decision to let Saddam stay in power and continue producing weapons of mass destruction.
Vice-President Dick Cheney served Mr Bush's father as defence secretary. Colin Powell, the Gulf war chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, now oversees the diplomatic offensive from his base at the State Department.
At the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz, a hard-line undersecretary for policy during the Gulf war, is now deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, himself a leading hawk.
Mr Wolfowitz has talked of "ending" states that sponsor international terrorism, and is regarded as the leader of the "wider war" party against Iraq and, conceivably, Syria.
From a distance, Washington may seem like the vast capital of the world's lone superpower, but in truth it is a small town, where the political crowd know each other well, and sometimes too well.
When administrations change, the political appointees tend to stay around, biding their time in the think tanks, giving lectures for negotiated fees and writing memoirs. When their party regains the White House, they scramble for the plum jobs.
What are often petty rivalries and simple personal disagreements can be cast in the Washington Post as policy feuds.
For instance, despite their years working together, Mr Powell has never been close to Mr Cheney, complaining that his Gulf war political superior would go to the White House during the military build up and report nothing back to him.
Access to the president, or "face time" as it is known, is the currency of the Washington power broker.
When the end to that war came, it came very suddenly to the military commanders. With the ground war only into its fourth day and going very well, the White House grew alarmed at public reaction to television footage of a "turkey shoot" of retreating Iraqi conscripts.
The then President Bush, seeking a symbolic ending to his highly successful military campaign, decreed the ground war would be suspended after exactly 100 hours.
"Kuwait is liberated, Iraq's army is defeated, our military objectives are met," he told the nation from the Oval Office. With fewer that 150 American dead, there was a sense the Pentagon should not push its luck.
Few voices were raised against the president's decision then, though Gen Norman Schwarzkopf caused consternation a month later when he said, contrary to others' recollections, that he would have preferred to "continue the march" to Baghdad.
Gen Powell has ridiculed the Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld view of the need to eliminate Saddam, as expressed in an open letter they both signed to President Clinton in January 1998, and re-printed in yesterday's Daily Telegraph.
That letter talked of the need to show "a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing", although that falls far short of specifying the sort of ground invasion that would be necessary to achieve the writers' long-term objective of "removing Saddam and his regime from power".
Mr Bush would appear to be biding his time. By instructing his United Nations ambassador this week to deliver a warning to the Iraqi regime that it would become a target if Baghdad intervenes in any way on the side of the Taliban forces, he is keeping his options open. But the Gulf war showed Saddam to be a master of pulling back just in time from the brink of oblivion.
I dislike sporting metaphors, but in this case I'll make an exception.
Stop looking at next week's game!
GWB hasn't won this weeks yet. Far from it. He has stones but are they big enough to order the fight until the Taliban are wiped from the face of the Earth? We'll see. And then we can talk about Iraq.
January 26, 1998
Dear Mr President
"We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. We urge you to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the US and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power.
"The policy of 'containment' of Saddam has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf war coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq's chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam's secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq possesses such weapons.
"Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilising effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that, if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.
"Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success on the steadfastness of our coalition partners and on the cooperation of Saddam, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy."
[Signed] Donald Rumsfeld [now Secretary of Defence], Paul Wolfowitz [now Deputy Secretary of Defence], Robert Zoellick [now US Trade Representative], Richard Armitage [now Deputy Secretary of State], John Bolton [now Under Secretary of State], Paula Dobriansky [now Under Secretary of State], Peter Rodman [now Assistant Secretary of Defence], Elliott Abrams [now a senior NSC official], Zalmay Khalilzad [now a senior NSC official], Richard Perle [now a key Bush adviser]
www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
Can Tony Blair guarantee to us that Iraq will not develop terrorist weapons?
While all the time hiding behind American military power.
Nothing is said about this because the West needs cheap Saudi Oil to meet its energy needs.
For Saudi Arabia there is only one needle in its Islamic haystack, Saddam Hussian.
Saddam Hussian is a blood thirsty Dictator buy he is also a secular dictator, more interested in make Iraq a major power than making Iraq a fundamentalist Islamic state.
The Saudi Arabian Royal family are afraid of Saddam.
This is a major leverage for America in keeping her military power in the region.
This leverage they use on Saudi Intelligence who in turn use leverage to make sure that Hamas and Islamic Jihad don’t rock the boat to much.
In other words both Israel and the terrorist have what amounts to a damage and kill quota, this is managed by America and Saudi Arabia.
America did not remove Saddam when they had the chance, because without the threat of Saddam, America would lose its leverage over Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia would then be free to increase its already considerable power in the Islamic world, and its aim to create a Islamic Super State
Tony One of the biggest silent sponsors of Islamic Terrorism throughout the world is Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is a major sponsor of Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
Both Israeli and American Intelligence know this but Saudi Arabia is too important to America to rock the boat.
Tony
They are going to try to ignore Iraq if they can and I don't think Saddam is stupid enough to provoke the Bush administration, just needle them. Descretion is the better part of valour, and however much I hate to say it I think we shall see a thaw in the relationship rather than an increase in the heat.
Why did United States put Saddam Hussian in power in 1975?
And why didn 't we finish the job in the gulf war?
According to another post on FR giving the response of Iraq to the mandate, you are right. Good call.
We already have thousands of our murdered citizens. What more is it going to take?
The military leaders are taking care of today's business. It is the job of the government to take care of tomorrow's as well.
I pray he's a man of his word.
Are you kidding? We aren't the field commanders. We are news analysts. If someone wants to talk about Iraq, perhaps there is a good reason.
I think this is a very important topic to discuss. Every passing month makes Iraq stronger. In time, Saddam will impliment his master plan. He never has been satisfied with owning Iraq. Saddam attacked Iran AND Kuwait.
During Desert Storm, Saddam sent missiles into Israel. He even turned the Persian Gulf into a giant oil slick just for spite. He enjoys experimenting with terror weapons on his political opponents.
One day, Saddam will make Bin Laden look like a boy scout. But Powell has his dang EGO, which is more important than world safety. And Tony Blair, being a diehard liberal, buys the spin that people are starving in Iraq when their top two reasons for death are related to overeating. One is diabetes, I forget the other.
Perhaps we can get help from Russia to attack Iraq, if not from Blair.
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