Posted on 07/12/2002 8:36:07 PM PDT by Don Myers
British spies in Iraq to incite revolt
By Toby Harnden in Washington
(Filed: 12/07/2002)
British and American agents are on the ground in Iraq fomenting revolt among opposition groups and potential traitors in Saddam Hussein's inner circle as part of a covert campaign to topple him, senior officials disclosed last night.
The admission, on the eve of a conference of Iraqi opposition figures in London, is powerful evidence of a renewed determination in Washington and London to overthrow the Iraqi dictator.
Although the officials conceded that the CIA and MI6 operations were unlikely to succeed without direct military action, a senior source in the Bush administration said that the world should not be misled by the lack of overt military activity.
"American personnel are supporting the Iraqi opposition and working with dissatisfied elements within Saddam's regime, even though he has killed quite a few of these people. Britain is involved too," the official told The Telegraph.
"We could wake up one morning and find regime change in Baghdad has happened completely unexpectedly. It would be hard to do but it's not impossible."
British officials sought to play down the significance of the operations, saying they were no different in character from what had been happening in Iraq since 1991. One diplomat said: "We could get lucky and Saddam could be killed or overthrown. But do I think it will happen? No."
Military plans to overthrow Saddam are being drawn up by US central command in Florida and should be on President George W Bush's desk this summer. A full-scale invasion could take place as early as the end of the year.
Senior aides have said that the outside time limit for removing Saddam is 2004, the end of Mr Bush's first term of office, but action is likely to be taken much earlier.
One said that next January or February was the optimum time to strike.
The plan gaining most support within the Bush administration involves the use of 250,000 troops invading Iraq from Turkey in the north and Kuwait and Qatar in the south.
Such an operation could comprise two US Marine Corps divisions and 15 wings of US fighters and bombers in addition to as many as 25,000 British troops. But the Bush administration official said: "The thing people need to remember is in addition to the possibility of another Desert Storm there are less visible things we can do."
He said that there were grave fears about how Saddam would react to a major attack. "Saddam could well respond with a Hitler's bunker type of mentality and hit Israel and Turkey with chemical or biological weapons.
"That is one reason why planning for this has to take fundamental account of the prospect of Saddam doing something completely irrational. It's also another reason to see if we can do it in a way other than conventional military operation."
Saddam did not use weapons of mass destruction during the 1991 Gulf war because he was explicitly told that if he did so he would be removed from power. "This time it's different as regime change is the only aim. He already has strategic warning so he's not going to just sit there."
The danger of large numbers of casualties was a primary factor in the military planning, which was going on "24 hours a day", he said. "If the choice is between doing it too quickly and losing troops and allies and taking the time to do it right then the question answers itself."
The official said there was "no disagreement" between the US and Britain over the war on terrorism despite festering disputes over other areas of policy such as steel tariffs, the Middle East and the International Criminal Court. "On weapons of mass destruction, we share the same data therefore we share common assessment of threat.
"The debate is only over tactics. A lot of other European countries don't see the same threat because we don't share intelligence with them."
He rejected the idea that the Palestinian issue should be dealt with before Saddam was tackled, stating that the Iraqis and some Arab states were trying to aggravate the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel as a deliberate tactic.
"That's always their alternative - getting people diverted and saying you can't do anything about Iraq until you've sorted out the Palestinian question. But we could be waiting 30 years. The answer is you have to do both at the same time."
Tony Blair has urged Mr Bush to wait for calm in the Middle East before acting against Iraq. Britain has also stressed that European and Arab allies will be needed, although a coalition on the scale of 1991 is not envisaged.
The Bush administration has agreed that all diplomatic avenues should be seen to have been explored and is awaiting the outcome of talks with Iraq about the return of United Nations weapons inspectors.
But one senior British diplomat conceded that it was extremely unlikely that Saddam could satisfy the Americans. "The bar is somewhere between extremely high and impossibly high," he said.
Talks about inspectors ended without agreement last week but Naji Sabri, the Iraqi foreign minister, said yesterday that his country was ready to resume discussions with the UN.
Mr Bush hinted last week that military action against Iraq could be drawing nearer. "I'm involved in the military planning, diplomatic planning, financial planning . . . reviewing all the tools at my disposal," he said.
After a summit at Mr Bush's ranch in Texas in April, Mr Blair, in a passage of a speech he had drafted himself, said: "We must be prepared to act where terrorism or weapons of mass destruction threaten us.
"If necessary, the action should be military and again, if necessary and justified, it should involve regime change."
They will have to understand that we are in this thing now, and there is no turning back.
Umm...Johnson......What are you saying here?
LBJ's problem was he didn't really want to fight that war, but didn't want to appear to be soft on the commies. So as a consequence we got all those escalations in the war and so gave the NVA time to adjust. Instead of coming in and bouncing the rubble, or keeping it small.
"Moderation in war is imbecility." Admiral John Fisher, predicting unrestricted submarine warfare in WW-I.
As Ho would say, "Keep it small as you want, we ain't going away."
Iraq delenda est.
The strategy that has worked so successfully in Cuba, for over 40 years now.
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