Excellent essay, Marvin. And here is the link you are referring to. Courtesy of Sabertooth.
Jet fuselage at Iraq's Salman Park facility is used to hijackers (Space Imaging) LINK.
Posted on 03/17/2003 7:15:15 PM PST by MHGinTN
Containment versus Pre-emptive Deterrence and Regime Change
Today, in The British House of Commons, an insulting little man named Cook asserted that had Al Gore been sworn in as President, the world would not now be facing the prospect of war in the Middle East.
Poor Mister Cook was defending the policy of containment through inspections. Containment without muscle on the ground to back it up, when dealing with despotic demons like Saddam Hussein, is a fool’s errand … or worse, an exercise in delayed suicide, for expedience sake. But that’s what appeasement and postponement have usually meant.
Aside from the bitter irrationality of raising the United States elections as an excuse for Saddam’s twelve-year defiance of agreed to terms in the 1991 cease-fire, and aside from the irrationality of implying different tactics of a failed politician from two previous terms in office, this alcoholic Brit points to an issue that should be addressed, immediately, before the obstructionists in America gain further traction with this foolishness.
What of containment, the Clinton administration’s chosen policy toward Iraq and terrorism? Has it worked? Would it work as a future policy in a worldwide war against terrorism by fanatical Islamicists? For Chirac and too many American politicians in and out of office, containment of terrorist sponsoring states is still the policy to follow. That’s why they so adamantly pushed the inspections regime; they calculate that leaving rogue regimes in power but containing those regimes through inspections can effectively deal with the threat posed by terrorist organization worldwide.
First, let’s be clear: abject failure at containment leads directly to such horrific tragedies as Kobar Towers, and the World Trade Center bombings, and the Bali bombing, and the USS Cole bombing, and the suicide murders on Israeli buses and in Israeli markets and restaurants, and bombings of U.S. Embassies in Africa, and … and you get the picture. Terrorists networks must have a country in which to be trained, and which under gird their finances and documents of identity.
Can failure of Iraqi containment be tied to the horror of 9/11/2001? YES! And to many other terrorist acts around the world.
While the Clinton administration pursued a policy of hit-and-miss containment, the Iraqi secret service sent officers into Afghanistan, to train al Qaeda operatives in the production and use of biological and chemical weapons. All during the Clinton administrations policy of containment and inspections in Iraq, Saddam maintained a research facility at Salman Pak, developing chemical and biological weapons. Salman Pak was also maintained as a training camp, where operatives from several terrorist organizations received training in hijacking modern airliners with no more armament than sharp knives, received training in the use of weapons of mass destruction against civilian targets, received training in forgery and robbery as a means to maintain their presence in foreign countries, and received training in assassination methods.
Containment, at least as practiced by the previous administration, didn’t work. It was a feckless diversion from the truth that this nation can no longer afford to ignore: containment without force does not work to safeguard the civilian populations of nations that terrorists choose to target. And yet, there are vocal politicians in America still trying to push this approach by various means. They will not shut up until this feckless strategy is exposed and debated into rejection.
What of pre-emptive deterrence coupled with regime change? Well, when directed at the states sponsoring terrorists in order to employ them as weapons against other nations, it is the only thing that does work … as we have begun to prove with the Taliban’s sponsorship for al Qaeda, and we are about to discover regarding Iraq.
BTW, " containment didn't stop Hitler.
Those who fear the " Arab Street ", don't understand what that is, not the mentality of said " Arab Street ", at all. You can almost hear a pin drop , the Arab Street is so hushed. Why ? Because strength means ALL to these people. It is appeasement/ so-called " containment, which is WEAKNESS to them and they find that to be innimicable to terroist attacks / yanking our chains.
Er, actually he might have a point, because if Gore had been president we would have already surrendered and al Queda would have had a place at the table (like Arafat with Bill Clinton) - to tell us what we did wrong and how we could avoid offending them so badly in the future.
It also caused the death of many innocent Iraqis!
Thanks for the thread, MHGinTN.
The clock is ticking.......
No president, no human, is perfect. I don't always agree with what President Bush the younger says / does ; however, he is an intelligent, good, HONORABLE man, whose policies, when all is said and done, are going to make him one of THE best American presidents ... EVER. That is what sticks in Dems' craws and rankles so. Little Tommy, the tree, and the co-presidents can spew to their hearts' content; it just doesn't mean anything, nor, shall it do anything FOR any of them. Look on the bright side of this. :-)
January 26, 1998
The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC
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. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.
The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein 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 Hussein 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 does or does not possess such weapons.
Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing 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 upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, 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 Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.
We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.
Sincerely,
Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W. Rodman Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey Robert B. Zoellick
Excellent essay, Marvin. And here is the link you are referring to. Courtesy of Sabertooth.
Jet fuselage at Iraq's Salman Park facility is used to hijackers (Space Imaging) LINK.
We certainly hope that history will be terribly unkind to slick Willie.
If President Bush lied through his teeth today to the American People and the world after cheating on his wife with a White House employee, the Democrats and Europe would be all for bombing Iraq.
In fact, they'd send their daughters into the White House intern program and insist on unchaperoned sleepovers while he was doing his strategic planning.
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