Posted on 03/04/2002 5:31:27 PM PST by vannrox
Sunday March 3, 2002
'Bombing Saddam is ignorance'
Robert Baer, the ex-CIA man in Iraq during the failed uprising in 1995, says the US is not in a position to strike against Iraq because it does not understand anything about the country
Robert Baer's objections to an attack on Iraq could hardly be principled. As the CIA's point man in Iraq during the failed uprising in 1995, he encouraged dissident groups to believe that the United States wanted the overthrow and death of Saddam Hussein. Yet Baer, whose memoir of life in the CIA, See No Evil, is published in Britain tomorrow, is appalled at the idea of a US strike against Iraq today. 'If the US is to bomb Saddam and his army until there is no army, what comes after that? No one is discussing the ethnic composition of Iraq or what Iran is likely to do.'
Few in America appreciate the tribal ethnic and religious faultlines that run through the Middle East as Baer does. Iraq is particularly divided. In the south there is a Shia majority which now looks to Iran for support. Occupying the geographical and political centre of the country are the followers of the Sunni sect, which includes Saddam's tribe, and in the north are the Kurds, who are split into two warring parties, the PUK and the KDU.
'The US is in no position to rejigger this because we don't understand anything about the country. If I were the Iranians, for instance, I would try to set up a state in southern Iraq and add three million barrels a day to my account. That could begin to rival Saudi Arabia. Of course, I don't know this is going to happen, but the US government doesn't know either. The heart of the debate is about taking out all Saddam's tanks in a couple of weeks.'
Baer worked for the CIA's Directorate of Operations for 25 years, with postings in Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq, Tajikistan, India and Europe. His devastating portrait of the agency's decline adds much to the understanding of why America was caught off guard on 11 September, but as important is what he has to say about American sluggishness when it comes to institutional reform.
Towards the end of his time, he searched CIA computer for files on subjects that interested him, for example, the Pasdaran (the Iranian Intelligence service), the Saudi royal family and Syria.
'You know what? There was nothing there. Nothing. They didn't have anything. That's America now, you know. It can't reform.'
After a quarter of century abroad, Baer hardly recognises the States and is appalled at the level of public ignorance.
'There is no debate,' he says. 'People will not address the question of Palestine in the context of the World Trade Centre attacks. It's not in the terms of the discussion. They simply believe that Israel has the right to defend its democracy like the US does. They don't understand that Israel gives no democratic rights to the Palestinians whatsoever. They don't see that it's not a democracy.'
An affable but watchful man in his late forties, Baer is aware that the CIA is mightily displeased with his first literary effort. It can't help that the book has been on the New York Times ' bestseller list for four weeks in a row; that Warner Brothers bought an option and hope to develop the project with the team that made Traffic ; and that Baer is never off US television, often doing three national shows in an evening.
He seems to have few regrets about leaving the CIA. 'I would rather drive a taxi than serve in the CIA,' he says convincingly over lunch at the Alistair Little restaurant in West London.
'Don't ask me how it happened, but the people who work in it just don't match up to the people who got to Silicon Valley or the people who make cruise missiles or design derivatives.'
It's in the innocuous detail that Baer's book is telling. At one point he remembers taking over from a female officer in the Paris station and being handed her list of contacts and agents. When he followed them up, he found that instead of using them to gather intelligence she had been trying to recruit them to a religious sect. The serving US ambassador to France was also involved in the sect. When the two of them were observed handing out leaflets in the street, the French security service thought some kind of operation was in progress.
With good reason he is a pessimist about the CIA and US foreign policymaking. Examples of incompetence abound in See No Evil . In 1986, he was contacted in Germany by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood who wanted a meeting. He went to Dortmund and listened to Syrian con tacts propose an intelligence alliance against President Assad. He wrote up a report (on a typewriter, whose ribbon he destroyed afterwards) and sent it to the US embassy in Bonn. A message came back that they weren't interested.
But that was not the last he heard of it. In the wake of 11 September, 16 years later, the FBI contacted Baer to say that associates of the Syrian contacts had been involved in al-Qaeda. That channel, closed down so peremptorily, might have led them to Mohamed Atta.
Over lunch we circled the problem of Iraq. He mentioned that it is easily within Saddam's power to forestall the long-announced air attacks from US bases in Diego Garcia. He could, says Baer, 'simply move his tanks into Syria and proclaim that he was going to liberate the Palestinians', thus pitching Israel into a war with an Arab state.
If there is a fault in Baer's analysis of the Iraqi problem, it is that while he acknowledges Saddam's willingness to use force against civilians he does not believe that the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction is anything but defensive.
Baer says we should look at it through Saddam's regional mentality and that his chief concern is, as it always has been, Iran.
·See No Evil, by Robert Baer, Crown Publications £12.99.
Did you ever wonder why some former CIA say all the OTHER agents were idiots EXCEPT them?
I say this one was disgruntled and his opinion isnt worth the time of day.
That the US has changed almost beyond recognition and that the American public on the whole is appallingly ignorant is an observation shared by many of us who have spent considerable time observing the US through "outsiders' eyes."
Whats to understand? Drop bomb, kill lots of people to a point where surviors quit! Wonder if this idiot was the main reason that the uprising in 95 failed?
Did you ever wonder why some former CIA say all the OTHER agents were idiots EXCEPT them? I say this one was disgruntled and his opinion isnt worth the time of day.
I still don't understand why so many people are so worried about Iraq (given that it's China that has thermonuclear weapons and ICBMs). Even if Iraq has managed to cobble together a nuclear warhead, it has no missiles capable of reaching the U.S. And, as you say, if Saddam were foolish enough to use a nuclear weapon against Israel, the Israeli counterattack would make his country "glow like the Blob." In the Gulf War we told Saddam that we'd use nuclear weapons if he used poison gas or biological weapons against us or Israel. And he didn't. His SCUDS were armed with conventional warheads. He may be a tyrant, but he's not a stupid one.
Works for me.
How would You Feel without FR??? Suppose one day you tried to log on and Free Republic wasn’t there?
Where would you get your up to the minute news? How about the live threads as things are happening?
How would you know about the latest Demorat scams, anti-second amendment schemes and all the other liberal, anti-American ploys that are tried every single day?
Insight into world affairs, brilliant wit, sharp retorts, instant information gratification are a few of the things that make FR so vital.
How would you keep on top of things without FR?
How would you know who to contact to complain about the lying politicians, Media Bias, Hollyweirds latest mouth off, sponsors of these idiots, company policies that are unfair and all the other things we need to know to counteract the liberal mindset and the evil plans of liberals?
How would you be part of a Freep?
What would you do without FR????
Freedom isn’t free.
If you enjoy the site and find it a place of like minded Americans to sound off, to get together,
to fight back, to have your voice heard and make a difference, PLEASE CONTRIBUTE NOW! Jim can’t do this alone.
The liberals are sure we won’t be able to keep FR up & running. Prove them wrong. Show them we are indeed united Freepers.
Whether it is $5.00, $50.00 or more, it all adds up. Please send a donation now to Free Republic.
Only dimwits blame America for what tyrant Arabs do to their own people.
Baer is jealous that he's no longer in the loop. In his public appearances, he's reduced to conjecture because he no longer has a clue as to what is happening.
Like Scott Ritter.
I would never claim that nothing escapes me but I never heard that before. I thought Iraq was a protégé of Russia, not China. Iran buys missle motors from North Korea. Is that the China connection you were talking about?
Iraq / Iran have a need for military and technical equipment. China has a need for hard currency. China's strategic interest is bogging down the American foreign policy and military in a conflict with Arab states to distract it from addressing a Chinese threat. That threat is their development of a nuclear offensive capability, a blue water navy, and their expansionist plans in the Spratly Islands, Taiwan, and the waters off Japan.
I can't speak to specific technology transfers, but you should not be surprised if one surfaces.
China is encouraging the Islamic fundamentalists to distract us while they re-take Taiwan? I hadn't thought of that. I was thinking the instant we go to war with Iraq they'll have a free hand to do whatever they want in the far east.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.