I saw Face the Nation today and there were three guests: Chuck Hagel, Carl Levin and Brent Snowcroft who all seemed rather skeptical about going to war against Iraq. Snowcroft may be the most revealing; Condi Rice’s used to be his protege and she (along with Cheney) probably represents the balance of power between Powell and Rumsfeld in this White House.
A couple of days ago there was yet another article in the WaPo about skeptcisim among the military about going to war against Iraq and it is well known that the State Department and the CIA are also skeptical. What this means is that the three groups of professionals with actual expertise on the issue: the soldiers, the diplomats and the spooks are now reluctant to go to war. The main hawks are the neo-con civilian ideologues in the Pentagon (Wolfowitz, Pearle etc.) , with little professional expertise in the region, and Levin in particular appeared openly contemptuous of them.
In addition to this the NYTimes, with its massive influence, appears to be swinging against a war in Iraq.
I suspect that the US will keep its options open and keep the threat of war hanging but Saddam will back down and agree to a tough inspection regime and avoid war. But the idea of war as an option of first resort , regardless of whether Saddam accepts inspections, appears to be out.
Last week Congress had hearings on what to do about Iraq. It was a bi-partisan panel, and their conclusion was that, while war has some big-time risks, so does ‘containment’. Experts testified that Saddam could have three nuclear bombs by 2005. So the panel, which I’m sure had been hoping to throw a wrench into the President’s plans, wound up essentially saying, “It’s a tough choice. The President could reasonably decide on either course of action.”
That sounds to me like Congress will back Bush up if he decides to go to war.
It’s not a certainty, but I’d guess the chance of military action against Saddam is still over 50%.
Hmm. Who exactly was on the bi-partisan panel? All the parties mentioned in my OP seemed to leaning towards containment and they represent a pretty influential and bi-partisan bunch.
I think it was very significant that Levin was actively quoting the senior military brass. Military and CIA skepticism will give Dems the cover to oppose the war without looking like a bunch of peaceniks.
“I hope to God it isn’t.”
I am surprised your are such an Iraq hawk; what are your reasons?
The reasons against war are quite clear IMO:
Saddam has shown in the past that he can be deterred and there is no reason to believe he will launch a suicidal attack on the US. (Both Snowcroft and Levin made this point.)
2)However if he has nothing to lose, then there is no deterrence and Saddam will likely:
use WMD directly against the US troops or Israel and maybe kill tens of thousands.
2)supply terrorist groups with his WMD stocks (something he has good reason not to do now).
Even if Saddam doesn’t exercise the above options, it is quite likely that there will be chaos in Iraq after his regime falls. Who is to say that rogue groups don’t capture Iraqi WMD and sell them to terrorists? The US doesn’t have any incentive to create chaos in a country with large WMD stocks.
4)Then there are all the other issues ranging from the direct costs of the war, to the problems of Iraq splitting up in a bloody mess, and the possibility of friendly regimes throughout the Middle East being toppled.
Despite the above I don’t think war should be ruled out. I think it should be considered an option of last resort and a threat to force Saddam to accept inspections. The neo-con Iraq hawks ,however, seem to treat war as the option of first resort blithely ignoring all the dangers.
It’s really simple - once Saddam gets nuclear weapons, all bets are off. His current WMD aren’t particularly effective, at least in a strategic sense.
But once he gets the Bomb, the power shifts to Saddam. For him, the nuclear deterrent is more effective than ours is against him, because we know that he is capable of using it. This is the only person who has used WMD since WWII. This is the person who deliberately and preemptively attacked the soil of a nuclear power (Israel).
As an article I recently read argued, if Saddam had had the Bomb in 1990, Kuwait would be the 19th province of Iraq to this day.
Is the U.S. honestly going to drop the bomb to prevent Iraq from conquering Kuwait, or Jordan, or a goodly chunk of Saudi’s oil fields, using conventional forces? Almost definitely not - “no first strike” is close to dogma, and besides, politically and diplomatically, do you think it’s an option?
Once in those areas, if we try to expell him using conventional forces, will he threaten to nuke Israel? Almost definitely yes. Will he carry through with that threat? Probably not, but it’s a close-run thing, and entirely too great of a risk to run.
So, once Saddam gets the Bomb, our nuclear deterrent is effectively useless against conventional attacks by Saddam, while his nuclear deterrent would be extremely useful against conventional attacks by us.
Well many experts believe that Saddam is about 5-10 years from acquiring a bomb. And a tough inspection regime is capable of detecting and destroying nuclear weapons. After all that’s what the inspectors did after the last Gulf war. Like I said the neo-cons don’t want to use war as a threat to get inspectors back; they just want war.
“This is the only person who has used WMD since WWII. This is the person who deliberately and preemptively attacked the soil of a nuclear power (Israel).”
Well he has only used WMD against his people who had no way of hitting back at him. Note that although he fired Scuds at Israel, IIRC he didn’t use WMD and there were relatively few casualties. He was also deterred from using WMD against US troops by a threat of nuclear retaliation.
“Is the U.S. honestly going to drop the bomb to prevent Iraq from conquering Kuwait, or Jordan, or a goodly chunk of Saudi’s oil fields, using conventional forces?”
The US will likely threaten nuclear retaliation as it has done numerous times in the last 50 years. The threats were sufficient to deter Saddam during the Gulf War so I am not sure why they wouldn’t be sufficient next time round.
If Iraq actually uses nuclear weapons there will be nuclear retaliation by either Israel or the US and I don’t think diplomatic opinion will matter much. So while a nuclear Saddam is very worrying, I don’t see it as necessarily catastrophic not least because he already has bio/chem weapons which can probably do serious damage.
I don’t really buy the argument that because Saddam is a murderous maniac, that makes him uniquely dangerous with nuclear weapons. Stalin was a mass-murdering maniac on a far larger scale than Saddam, that didn’t mean he couldn’t be deterred. Like Stalin, Saddam is above all a survivor.
Anyway the main point is that nuclear weapons can be limited by a tough inspections regime and I support the use of war if Saddam refuses one. The hawks,however, want war regardless.
The other important point is that a war against Iraq might lead to terrorists obtaining WMD in large quantities and that is far more scary than Saddam getting nuclear weapons.
I agree with Sua about the urgency of overthrowing Saddam before he acquires nuclear weapons.
A defector who testified at the recent hearings put Iraq’a nuclear bomb only a couple of years out IIRC. Prudence demands that our policy reflect the earliest possible estimate. Once Saddam has the bomb, it’s too late.
This is wishful thinking. “Tough inspection regime” was the very policy of the UN after the Gulf War, and it failed miserably. CP, why do you think it would work now?
Aside from the name-calling, this statement does describe my position. I do not believe that inspections can be effective, so I see them as a dangerous delay.
Also, I think overthrowing Saddam would benefit people throughout the Middle East, particularly Iranians.
Anything might lead to anything. However, I think that if we let Saddam develop nuclear weapons, he might provide them to terrorists. If he’s out of power, he can’t do this. In fact, there have been unconfirmed reports that he is providing chemical WMDs to terrorists right now.
CP, what is your scenario whereby our attacking Saddam leads to terrorists obtaining WMD in large quantities?
“Tough inspection regime” was the very policy of the UN after the Gulf War, and it failed miserably"
Eh? Iraq was quite close to building a bomb at the time of the Gulf war. The inspectors succeeded in destroying most of its nuclear program before they were kicked out. If the inspectors were so impotent why did Saddam kick them out and face international sanctions?
, “what is your scenario whereby our attacking Saddam leads to terrorists obtaining WMD in large quantities?”
I have already given two reasons which I will repeat:
a) When Saddam has nothing to lose, he will do everything he can to hurt the US. This includes using WMD directly and also supplying terrorists with WMD. At present he has two good reasons not to do this; his fear of US retaliation if detected and his fear of Islamic terrorists themselves. Neither will apply if he faces certain destruction.
b)After his regime is destroyed, there will probably be a period of chaos which rogue elements will be able to use to steal Iraqi WMD either for personal use or to sell in the black market.
The bottom line is that Osama with bio/chem weapons is scarier than Saddam with nuclear weapons and there are other ways of preventing the latter (like inspections) short of “regime change”.
OK, then, we have to attack within the next 5-10 years. Why not now?
The post-Gulf success on the nuclear inspection front (and only the nuclear front) is not predictive of future inspective success. Prior to the Gulf War, Iraq wasn’t attempting to hide its nuclear weapons programme from intrusive inspection. He’s now had five years to rebuild it in such a way to evade future possible inspections.
This is incorrect. He also used chemical WMD against Iran, which also had (at least) chemical WMD.
The point is that neither Israel nor the rest of the world knew that the Scuds weren’t equipped with WMD until after they landed. Israel was handing out gas masks to its citizens as fast as they could get them. It would not have been unreasonable for Israel to launch nukes against Iraq as soon as the Scuds appeared on radar screens.
The point is that Saddam demonstrated that he would take such a huge risk, despite the purported deterrent of the Israeli nuclear armory.
Because back then, Saddam didn’t have the Bomb. All he had were chemical and biological WMD, and it appears that his biological WMD weren’t really “weaponized.” Chemical and biological WMD aren’t particularly effective strategically.
Bush’s threats would have been nowhere near as effective had Saddam had the Bomb.
Bush: If you use WMD against our troops, we’ll drop the Bomb on you.
Saddam: If you drop the Bomb on me, I’ll drop the Bomb on Israel.
Stalemate.
No, my point was that the US cannot use nukes to stop an Iraqi conventional attack. And once Saddam conquers whatever neighbor he wants to conquer, he can use the threat of his own Bomb to deter an American conventional attack to liberate whatever neighbor was conquered.
First of all, who says Stalin was ever deterred? America’s sole possession of the nuclear bomb didn’t deter Stalin from reneging on his agreements with the U.S. and subjugating all of Eastern Europe. He had his troops on the ground, and the US wasn’t going to use nuclear weapons against him.
As for the fact that Stalin never used the Bomb, again it means little. The Soviets only got the bomb 4 years before Stalin’s death, and the H-Bomb only 1 year. Add to that, the Soviets were still recuperating from WWII.
Who knows whether Stalin would have been deterred had he lived.
In ant event, even if deterrence worked with Stalin, the key difference here is that Saddam has used WMD against a WMD-equipped for (Iran). Deterrence didn’t work there.
Supposition on your part. The only experience with a nuclear inspections regime ever was in post-Gulf Iraq, and, as I noted before, Saddam had not taken any special precautions to evade inspections before the war. Now he has.
Six or a half-dozen. The sentence “The other important point is that no war against Iraq might lead to terrorists obtaining WMD,” is just as valid.
“Prior to the Gulf War, Iraq wasn’t attempting to hide its nuclear weapons programme from intrusive inspection. He’s now had five years to rebuild it in such a way to evade future possible inspections.”
. What makes you so sure that he could hide an entire nuclear programme from inspectors? Many experts including Snowcroft today believe otherwise.
"This is incorrect. He also used chemical WMD against Iran, which also had (at least) chemical WMD. "
OK but did he use or threaten to use chemicals against cities or did he just use them against soldiers? How serious was Iran’s deterrence capacity with WMD anyway? Besides the difference between Iran and Israel/US is that the latter have nuclear weapons.
“It would not have been unreasonable for Israel to launch nukes against Iraq as soon as the Scuds appeared on radar screens”
Considering the enormous diplomatic fallout of nuking another country this is not particularly plausible and Israel didn’t do this.
“The point is that Saddam demonstrated that he would take such a huge risk, despite the purported deterrent of the Israeli nuclear armory.”
Actually the point is that Saddam showed that he was deterred into not attacking either Israel or US troops with WMD.
"No, my point was that the US cannot use nukes to stop an Iraqi conventional attack. "
I disagree. During the cold war the US managed fine with deterring the Soviet Union from launching conventional attacks on Western Europe even when the SU had conventional superiority nuclear weapons.
"The Soviets only got the bomb 4 years before Stalin’s death, and the H-Bomb only 1 year. Add to that, the Soviets were still recuperating from WWII. "
4 years is actually quite a long time. I believe despite the “recuperation” that the Soviets possessed conventional superiority in Western Europe in the early 50’s. Why didn’t they attack say West Berlin ?
And of course Stalin’s successors were not boy scouts either but they were all deterred from attacking W. Europe.
"the key difference here is that Saddam has used WMD against a WMD-equipped for (Iran). Deterrence didn’t work there. "
As I said that example doesn’t mean much since Israel/US possess far greater deterrent capacity compared to Iran. His refusal to use WMD against either Israel or the US during the Gulf War seems to me more relevant.
“Saddam had not taken any special precautions to evade inspections before the war. Now he has.”
Well do you have a cite for this which also shows that inspectors won’t be able to get round those “special precautions”? I have already cited Snowcroft who believes otherswise.
“The other important point is that no war against Iraq might lead to terrorists obtaining WMD,” is just as valid. "
Hardly. No one has found any evidence that Saddam is supplying terrorists with WMD and he has good reasons not to do so now which won’t apply if he is under attack.
BTW one more question:
We know that Iraq was very close to building a bomb at the time of the Gulf war. Now if the bomb would have so completely alterered strategic calculations to his advantage, wouldn’t he have waited and attacked Kuwait after he got the bomb?
I did a little bit of surfing and I found that while chemical weapons were used in the Iran-Iraq war by both sides it was on a relatively small scale at a tactical level. In particular Iran did not appear to have a real deterrent capacity in this period. http://fas.org/nuke/guide/iran/cw/index.html
“Since the early 1990s, it has put a high priority on its chemical weapons program because of its inability to respond in kind to Iraq’s chemical attacks and the discovery of substantial Iraqi efforts with advanced agents, such as the highly persistent nerve agent VX.”
(emphasis mine)
So the Iran-Iraq war isn’t at all a good example of Saddam using WMD against a power with serious deterrent capacity. Quite simply no such example exists.
Directly on the OP, Senator Joe Biden, a Democrat who is chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says that war with Iraq is likely.
As for inspections, I have ZERO confidence in the ability of inspectors to find and destroy Saddam’s WMD. He has had 10 years to hide his programs, and from all accounts he’s been feverishly doing just that. Nuclear labs are in the backs of trucks, which move around the country. Some facilities are hidden underground. Other facilities are ‘mobile’ in the sense that they can be completely torn down and trucked away with a few hours’ notice.
Iraq is a huge country. Inspecting for weapons there is kind of like saying the U.N. is going to inspect France to make sure there aren’t any drug labs, when those drug labs have the resources of a state for hiding. Good luck.
Thanks for the Biden quote. He seems a lot more hawkish than either Levin or Daschle (who are at least as important as he is). Let’s see what happens.
I think nuclear facilities , which everyone seems to agree are the most important , tend to be quite difficult to hide from a tough inspection regime. Once again if the inspectors were so useless why is Saddam still so reluctant to let them back in ?
Besides if these facilities are so difficult to find how do you know the US will find them after the war? How does the US know that the next government won’t start making WMD? Do you envisage some kind of permanent puppet government run directly by the US?
More importantly when the inevitable chaos occurs after the fall of the regime how do you know that rogue elements won’t get their hands on WMD? You go from a situation where the WMD are under the control of one identifiable man who can be deterred to a situation where they are under the control of different unknown Iraqi factions who can’t really be identified or deterred.
No one has ever attempted to uncover a nuclear weapons programme through an inspection regime where the programme was set up in anticipation of a tough inspections regime with the intent to evade that regime. With all due respect to Mr. Scowcroft, his belief has no evidentiary basis - what you propose has simply never been attempted before.
I fully acknowledge that Saddam would not be able to hide “an entire nuclear programme from inspectors.” I think, however, that it is exceedingly likely that Saddam would be able to hide at least some of his nuclear programme. Reducing the number of bombs he would be able to manufacture from 50 a year to as little as 5 a year (whenever he actually is capable of building them) is wonderful, but it doesn’t change the fact that 5 a year would be built.
At least some historians believe that Stalin was indeed laying the groundwork for such an attack when he died.
Your argument is based on a premise that the post-Stalin Soviet leaders had a desire to attack the West, and were only deterred by the existence of nuclear weapons. There is no evidence of that. OTOH, Saddam was not deterred from attacking a nuclear-armed country by that country’s nukes.
And you are still missing my point (my bad, I didn’t say it well). The US cannot plausibly say that it will use nukes to prevent a conventional attack on Kuwait, say. Politically and diplomatically, it is untenable. Since we can’t use them to stop such a conventional attack, they aren’t a deterrent.
However, once Saddam has control of Kuwait (and we can’t stop that - we can only take it back) he can use his nukes as a deterrent to prevent us from taking it back. “Oh, he won’t really use them,” is not a sufficient answer. We can’t know that, and while I agree it is unlikely, if anyone in the world would actually use nukes, it is Saddam.
What percentage of risk that he will actually nuke somebody is acceptable? 5%? 10%? Personally, I think any risk above .0000001% is unacceptably dangerous, and action should be taken to prevent that possibility from becoming real. And I think that, if Saddam is allowed to acquire nukes, the odds are above .0000001%.
I don’t disagree that Sadam should come out of power. What I do disagree with is the urgency of war strikes against Iraq. Thankfully, Senators Biden, and Daschle, along with others, are actually THINKING about what couse(s) of action to take.
President Bush and his administration seem to me, quite eager to pounce on Sadam. There’s no harm to that point of view. As I stated earlier, I also believe that Sadam should go, but there is no reason that we can’t think things out, as to what to do.
One flaw that I’ve seen, is that the administration seems to be overlooking the fact that most of the world seems a bit antsy about it all. They haven’t explicitly said it, but that’s the message that Bush and his supporters are conveying, to me, anyways. The British have already said, in simple terms, “don’t rush into this”. Even scarier, is that France and Russia have taken the offer from Bhagdad to sit down at the negotiations table. (MSNBC)
I fear Sadam and the capabilities that he posseses. And I think that the people in Washington are doing all that they can, but I just hope that they don’t get ahead of themselves. This needs to be thought out, researched, and planned as flawlessly as possible. Because this time, we can’t leave the snake wounded. We need to kill it. And this time, we may be doing it alone. There is a lot at stake.
Regarding the OP: I tend to agree with CP that the war may be fizzling out. (although I think that’s bad.) Bush has committed not to go to war before elections. I had thought we’d be ready by this summer. What I see is delay, delay, delay.
Regarding inspections for nuclear programs: What are we inspecting for?
– At least one nuclear or other WMD program, which would prove that Saddam had failed to keep his committment?
– All nuclear sites.
The latter is clearly hopeless. The former might be possible. Finding just one nuclear site would prove that he’s working on WMD – thus violating his agreement at the end of the Gulf War. That would justify a new war against Saddam (or, if you like, a renewal of the Gulf War.) But, we’re going in circles. We already know he’s violating his agreements. The question is, will we let him do that or will we go to war? There’s no third way.
The reason Saddam doesn’t want to let inspectors back in to the country is partly because he doesn’t want them finding his WMD programs, but also because of the loss of face that entails. Saddam made a lot of hay with his people when the inspectors left, grandstanding about how he kicked them all out of the country. Letting them back in now would not look good for him.
I think we’re all just making guesses as to how hard it is to hide a nuclear program. This isn’t the Manhattan project we’re talking about. Designing nuclear weapons nowadays is more about building the right kind of detonators and explosives. That kind of work can be hidden in small labs. And I’ve read reports that that is exactly what Saddam has done - his WMD program is largely carried out in extremely well equipped trucks that move around the country in a continual shell game. There are entire underground warrens inside some of the cities, and materials can be moved a long way without observation.
Another big risk (perhaps THE biggest) is that Saddam will release smallpox on Israel or the U.S. It’s no coincidence that the U.S. is frantically ramping up its ability to vaccinate the population. It’s also no coincidence that the U.S. ‘discovered’ an ‘unknown’ cache of smallpox vaccine that just happened to be enough to vaccinate the country. I don’t know if this stuff exists or not, but I’m sure the announcement was intended as a deterrant to prevent terrorists from using it. Smallpox can be contained in the U.S., but the blowback into the 3rd world and the middle east (including Arab nations) would be horrendous to contemplate.
I also think some people are not characterizing this debate well. NO ONE in government is trying to say that Saddam isn’t a risk. They’re not even saying he’s a mild risk. They all agree that letting Saddam continue in power is extremely hazardous to us. The problem is that an invasion could potentially be very, very difficult, and could also help precipitate some of the very things we’re worried about.
So if you’re trying to claim that Saddam really isn’t all that dangerous, you’re taking an extreme position that almost no one accepts.
But here’s the nightmare scenario for an invasion: Saddam seems to be preparing for urban guerilla warfare. Reports are that he is fortifying the cities, building machine gun nests with overlapping fields of fire in main streets, building tunnels beneath the cities for soldiers to move through, armoring buildings, etc.
So here’s the way it could go down: The U.S. invades, and meets token resistance. The Iraqis rapidly fall back into the cities. And now the U.S. is faced with a battle that is guaranteed to create high profile civilian casualties. Think about that bomb Israel dropped on that building last week. Think about the world reaction. What are they going to say when the U.S. has to go in and do the same thing a thousand times over?
And Saddam is ruthless enough to use women and children as human shields. You watch - a missile will come flying out of a building, the U.S. will flatten it, and it’ll turn out to be full of children.
Saddam knows he can’t win an all-out war. So instead, he’ll try for a siege war played out in the media, and try to get world opinion on his side. And if that doesn’t work, he can always launch his extant WMD inventory at Israel.
No matter what the ultimate decision on Iraq is, I suspect we’re all heading into a very dangerous time.