[Senate Hearing 107-19]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-19
UNITED STATES POLICY TOWARD IRAQ
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN AND
SOUTH ASIAN AFFAIRS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 1, 2001
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
senate
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
71-541 DTP WASHINGTON : 2001
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JESSE HELMS, North Carolina, Chairman
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
BILL FRIST, Tennessee RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia BARBARA BOXER, California
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
BILL NELSON, Florida
Stephen E. Biegun, Staff Director
Edwin K. Hall, Democratic Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NEAR EASTERN AND SOUTH ASIAN AFFAIRS
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas, Chairman
GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota
CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
BILL FRIST, Tennessee BARBARA BOXER, California
PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Brownback, Hon. Sam, U.S. Senator from Kansas, news release from
March 1, 2001, entitled ``Brownback Chairs Hearing on U.S.
Policy Toward Iraq.''.......................................... 3
Cordesman, Anthony H., Arleigh A. Burke Chair for Strategy,
Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC. 14
Prepared statement........................................... 17
Halperin, Dr. Morton H., senior fellow, Council on Foreign
Relations, Washington, DC...................................... 22
Prepared statement........................................... 25
Kerrey, Hon. Robert J., former U.S. Senator from Nebraska, and
president, New School University, New York, NY................. 9
Prepared statement........................................... 12
Perle, Hon. Richard N., former Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Internatioal Security, Washington, DC.......................... 28
Prepared statement........................................... 33
Wellstone, Hon. Paul, U.S. Senator from Minnesota:
Prepared statement........................................... 8
Letter to President Clinton regarding existing sanctions
regime..................................................... 4
(iii)
UNITED STATES POLICY TOWARD IRAQ
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2001
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Near Eastern and
South Asian Affairs,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:30 p.m. in
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Sam Brownback
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Senators Brownback, Thomas, and Wellstone.
Senator Brownback. The hearing will come to order. In
keeping with the new mode of doing things on time, we are going
to start this hearing on time. I am delighted to have the panel
we have to day to testify on the issue of U.S. policy toward
Iraq. This subcommittee has held a number of hearings on this
topic, but this is a new administration. I think it is a chance
for us to discuss some of the policy options that are presented
before the United States today, this being the third President
to confront Saddam Hussein, hopefully we will get a chance this
time to address the root cause of the problem, that being
Saddam Hussein himself.
Senator Kerrey, welcome back. We are delighted to have you
here. Congratulations on your wedding and new job. We are glad
to have you here with your new colleagues. Mr. Perle, delighted
to have you here again, and Dr. Halperin and Mr. Cordesman,
delighted to have both you gentlemen join us as well.
As we all know, this hearing will provide an opportunity to
discuss the future of U.S. policy toward Iraq. Allow me to pose
a question that I hope you will help us answer, and that is, is
Saddam Hussein better off today than he was 10 years ago at the
end of the gulf war? To my mind, the clear answer is yes,
Saddam Hussein is better off today than he was at the end of
the gulf war.
The evidence is piling up that Saddam has reconstituted his
illegal weapons programs. Two defectors from the regime have
told British press that Saddam has a small nuclear weapon. I
have not been able to independently verify that charge, but the
straws are in the wind.
Further, there is ample evidence, both public and
otherwise, that Saddam is using the cover of a legally allowed
missile program to work on longer range missiles that could
eventually deliver weapons of mass destruction, and of course
officials at UNSCOM were never willing to consider Saddam's
assertion that he has these chemical and biological weapons
programs. It certainly is logical to assume that in the absence
of inspectors for over 2 years he has seized the opportunity to
beef up his WMD programs.
For our part, according to press reports about Secretary
Powell's trip to the Middle East, the administration now
supports using the existing sanctions and instituting so-called
smarter sanctions, and I look forward to discussing this with
the Secretary next week.
As we listen to all this talk about smarter sanctions, I
have to wonder whether we can put the horse back in the barn at
all. The sanction regime and the international coalition
against Iraq have been completely unraveled. The steady stream
of international flights, kicked off by the Russians and the
French, have headed into Baghdad since August without
monitoring or inspection. The Chinese are working illegally in
Baghdad without fear of repercussions, and press reports
indicate that oil is once again flowing in the Iraqi-Syrian
pipeline to the tune of 150,000 barrels per day.
The profits from those illegal transfers of oil go straight
into Saddam's pockets. To top it off, U.S.-British strikes on
Iraqi air defense targets 2 weeks ago, intended to protect
allied pilots from increased Iraqi threats, drew fire, not only
from the usual suspects, but also from the Arab states we are
ostensibly protecting, and are our partners on the Security
Council.
I think we need to face it, Saddam has won a good portion
of the propaganda war. He is and remains a ruthless despot who
refuses to spend all he is allowed for his people's well-being.
Notwithstanding, the United States seems to be blamed for the
suffering of the Iraqi people.
Now, what do we do? Will we get inspectors back into Iraq?
What sacrifices on sanctions will need to be made to get them
in, and will any such inspections be worth those sacrifices? I
rather doubt it. We are going to have to bite this bullet.
After 10 years, sanctions have not achieved their intended
goal, denying Iraq weapons of mass destruction being the goal
that we intended to achieve.
If that remains our goal today, and I certainly hope it
does, then we need to ask whether any refinement to these
sanctions systems will achieve that goal, and I would certainly
like to hear our panel's opinions on that question.
I believe that any tradeoff for weakening sanctions must be
a more robust U.S. policy toward Iraq. The Republican platform
in 2000 called for the full implementation of the Iraq
Liberation Act and support for the Iraqi opposition. I, along
with many of my colleagues, have long supported that policy,
and hope the administration will work toward it. The threat
that Iraq poses to its own people and to the decent nations of
this world will remain for as long as Saddam Hussein is in
power.
To my mind, there is only one answer to solving this
problem, and the answer is, Saddam Hussein, and getting him out
of power. What do we do? Well, we make several suggestions
here, and I look forward to those from our panelists. One, I
think we can use the resources at our finger tips in the form
of a drawdown and economic support to bolster the opposition
and to fully implement the Iraq Liberation Act. We have Dr.
Chalabi here with the Iraq National Congress. I am delighted to
note your attendance in the audience as well.
Second, we should stop spending money on conferences for
the opposition and begin to train them, when necessary, even to
arm them. We unilaterally should declare the southern no-fly
zone will be a no-drive zone as well, and we should expand our
rules of engagement, including to target WMD sites and
potentially other targets as well.
Those are several policy suggestions that I would put
forward as we seek a more expanded and robust policy toward
Iraq, and we seek to deal with the root problem, which is
Saddam Hussein.
That is a start. I look forward to what our panelists have
to say, and their comments about what we should be doing toward
a new U.S. policy toward Iraq.
With that, I will turn to the ranking member, Senator
Wellstone. We are delighted to have you join us here.
[The prepared statement of Senator Brownback follows:]
[News Release--March 1, 2001]
Brownback Chairs Hearing on U.S. Policy Toward Iraq
Washington, DC.--U.S. Senator Sam Brownback chaired a Senate
Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing today on U.S. policy toward
Iraq. A portion of Senator Brownback's remarks from the hearing follow.
``This hearing provides an opportunity to discuss the future of
U.S. policy toward Iraq,'' Brownback said. ``Allow me to pose a
question that I hope you will help us answer: Is Saddam Hussein better
off today than he was ten years ago, at the end of the Gulf War?'' To
my mind, the clear answer is: ``Yes, Saddam Hussein is better off.''
``The evidence is overwhelming that Saddam is reconstituting his
illegal weapons programs. Defectors from the regime have told the
British press that Saddam actually has two small nuclear weapons. I
have not been able to independently verify that charge, but the very
possibility is alarming.
``Further, there is ample evidence, both public and otherwise, that
Saddam is using the cover of a legally allowed missile program to work
on longer range missiles that could eventually threaten those far
beyond his borders with weapons of mass destruction. And of course,
officials at UNSCOM have never believed Saddam's assertion that he had
destroyed his chemical and biological weapons programs.
``It is certainly logical to assume that in the absence of
inspectors for over two years, he has seized the opportunity to improve
his WMD programs.
``For our part, according to press reports about Secretary Powell's
trip to the Middle East, the administration now supports easing the
existing sanctions and instituting so-called `smarter sanctions.' I
look forward to discussing this proposal with Secretary Powell next
week.
``As we listen to all this talk about `smarter sanctions,' I wonder
whether we can put the horse back in the barn. The sanctions regime and
the international coalition against Iraq have completely unraveled.
Since August, a steady stream of international flights--kicked-off by
Russia and France--have landed in Baghdad, without monitoring or
inspection. The Chinese are working illegally in Baghdad without fear
of repercussions, and press reports indicate that oil is once again
flowing through the Iraqi-Syrian pipeline, at a rate of 150,000 barrels
per day. The profits from those illegal transfers of oil go straight
into Saddam's pocket.
``To top this all off, U.S.-British strikes on Iraqi air defense
targets two weeks ago, intended to protect allied pilots from
increasing Iraqi threats, drew fire, not only from the usual suspects,
but also from the Arab states we are ostensibly protecting and from our
partners on the Security Council.
``We must face it, Saddam has won the propaganda war. He is a
ruthless despot who refuses to spend all that he is allowed to for his
people's well-being. Nevertheless, the United States is blamed for the
suffering of the Iraqi people.
``What can we do in response? Will we return our inspectors to
Iraq? What sacrifices on sanctions must we make to get them in? And
will any such inspections be worth those sacrifices? I doubt it.
``We are going to have to face the fact that after ten years,
sanctions have not achieved their intended goal of denying Iraq weapons
of mass destruction. If that remains our goal today--and I certainly
hope it does--then we need to ask whether any refinement to this
sanctions system will achieve that goal. I would like to hear your
opinion on this question.
``If we weaken our sanctions we must strengthen other aspects of
U.S. policy. The 2000 Republican Platform called for the full
implementation of the Iraq Liberation Act and support for the Iraqi
opposition. I, along with many of my colleagues, have long supported
that policy and hope the administration will work to advance it.
``The threat that Iraq poses to its own people and to the decent
nations of this world will continue as long as Saddam remains in power.
To my mind, there is only one way to deal with this problem--to get rid
of Saddam. This is how I propose we start this process:
We should use our available resources (in the form of
drawdown and economic support) to bolster the opposition and
fully implement the Iraq Liberation Act.
We must stop spending money holding conferences for the
opposition and begin to train and, when necessary, arm them.
We ought to unilaterally declare that the southern no-fly
zone will be a no-drive zone as well.
We should expand our rules of engagement to include WMD
targets and potentially other targets as well.
``This is where we should begin. I look forward to hearing what you
think,'' Brownback said.
Senator Brownback is chairman of the Subcommittee on Near Eastern
and South Asian Affairs. Witnesses at the hearing included: the
Honorable Bob Kerrey, President, New School University, New York, NY;
the Honorable Richard N. Perle, Former Assistant Secretary of Defense
for International Security, Washington, DC; Dr. Morton H. Halperin,
Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, DC; Anthony H.
Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair for Strategy, Center for Strategic
and International Studies, Washington, DC.
Senator Wellstone. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to
all of our panelists, and a special hello to Senator Kerrey. It
is good to see you here, Bob.
I want to thank all of you for being here, and I think this
is a really important time to look very closely at our policy
in Iraq. The chairman and I have worked together on a variety
of different bills. I do not know how much in agreement or
disagreement we are. This is a time when we go through some
important rethinking.
Let me just say at the beginning there is one obvious point
of agreement, which is that I think Saddam Hussein truly one of
the most dangerous individuals in the world, there is no
question about that in my mind, and therefore a major, major
challenge. I am pleased that the administration is going
through a reevaluation of our policy.
A year ago, and I think Secretary Halperin might remember
this, I posed several ideas to the Clinton administration about
how we might look at the existing sanctions regime, and my idea
was that we would have a stricter monitoring on weapons-related
activity, but that maybe what we would do is look at the
economic sanctions and think about more flexibility, and I
would like to include that letter in the record if I could, Mr.
Chairman.
Senator Brownback. Without objection.
[The letter referred to follows:]
United States Senate,
Washington, DC, March 22, 2000.
President William J. Clinton
The White House,
Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. President:
As the UN Security Council continues to press to ensure Iraq's
compliance with its international inspection obligations, and officials
of your administration actively review policy options on Iraq, we are
writing to express our deep concern about the ongoing humanitarian
crisis there, and to urge greater US efforts at the United Nations to
address it.
We have been heartened by recent press reports that you are
considering ways to ease the devastating effects of the sanctions on
the Iraqi people. Although the current oil-for-food program (expanded
under Security Council Resolution 1284, adopted in December, 1999)
provides for some infrastructure repairs, as a temporary relief program
it cannot adequately provide the longer-term planning and investment
required to restore Iraq's civilian infrastructure to a level necessary
to meet even the most basic civilian necessities. Those longer-term
infrastructure improvements, coupled with expanded and accelerated
humanitarian relief, are key to addressing the ongoing crisis.
We recognize that Iraq poses a series of complex problems. On the
one hand, we are confronted with the Iraqi government's persistent
refusal to meet its international obligations with regard to Weapons of
Mass Destruction (WMD), as well as its record of wholesale human rights
abuses. On the other, the comprehensive UN sanctions regime has
contributed to a humanitarian crisis that has seriously affected the
health and well-being of millions of innocent Iraqis. It is clear that
the policies of the Iraqi government have greatly compounded and
magnified the humanitarian crisis, and that the government does not
intend to make the welfare of its civilian population its priority.
While the Iraqi government bears the lion's share of responsibility for
the unnecessary civilian suffering due to its refusal to comply with
the UN weapons inspection program--a refusal underscored by recent
widespread, though largely speculative, media reports about its
possible efforts to rebuild certain of its WMD capacities--this does
not excuse the international community from its own humanitarian
obligations.
As one distinguished international human rights monitoring group
recently observed, ``The Iraqi government's callous and manipulative
disregard for its humanitarian obligations is not something the
Security Council can reasonably expect will change. Rather, it is a
reality the Council must take into account in deciding the appropriate
means of securing the government's compliance with its disarmament
demands.''
The Iraqi government has proven indifferent to the suffering of its
own people; we cannot afford to be similarly indifferent. Thus we
believe that the administration should take urgent steps to better
reconcile enforcement of its disarmament objectives in Iraq with its
obligation to minimize harm to innocent Iraqi civilians and to ensure
protection of their most basic rights.
The Security Council's own report last year on the deteriorating
humanitarian situation; the comprehensive UNICEF survey on child
health; and reports from other relief agencies in the field, including
the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), make clear that a
public health emergency persists in many areas of the country, and that
efforts under the oil-for-food program to alleviate these conditions
have been woefully inadequate. Indeed, a senior ICRC official recently
warned that the increasingly precarious situation in the public
infrastructure posed an imminent threat to the survival of those
hospitals still functioning.
We believe it is critical that we do what we can now to address
directly this public health emergency. This requires restoring Iraq's
civilian economic infrastructure in order to bring child mortality
rates and other public health indicators back as close as possible to
the levels that existed prior to the embargo. With this in mind, we
strongly urge your administration to take the following initiatives:
First, in the Security Council and the Sanctions Committee, push to
implement immediately the recommendations of the report of the
Council's humanitarian panel last March. Many of these recommendations,
such as pre-approval of humanitarian items and using oil-for-food funds
to purchase local Iraqi products and to hire and train Iraqi workers
and professionals to undertake civilian infrastructure repairs and
maintenance, are in Resolution 1284, but are conditioned on further
steps by the Council or the Committee. We are pleased to note that the
Sanctions Committee has begun the preapproval process for humanitarian
items and urge you to take steps to ensure that these measures are
implemented without further delay.
Second, take all necessary steps to persuade the Security Council
and its Sanctions Committee to take more seriously its acknowledged
obligation to monitor the humanitarian impact of the sanctions,
especially on vulnerable sectors of the population such as children and
the elderly. If necessary, we believe you should press for an
independent monitor such as a Special UN Rapporteur to assess the
impact of the sanctions and the effectiveness of the oil-for-food
program in addressing that impact, and to scrutinize the practices of
the Iraqi government with respect to distribution of aid to its own
people. You should also insist on greater transparency in the
deliberations and decisions of the Sanctions Committee. While we
recognize there may be circumstances in which decisions of the
committee must remain internal matters, we believe its decision-making
process should be made more transparent, and thus less susceptible to
charges of politicization.
Third, we urge you to press the Security Council to establish an
international criminal tribunal mandated to investigate, indict, and
prosecute Iraqi leaders and former officials against whom credible
evidence exists of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Such an initiative will at a minimum help enforce the continued
political isolation of the government, even as steps are taken to
lessen the economic isolation that has impoverished much of the
population. It represents the kind of targeted sanction that should be
directed against those responsible for those Iraqi policies we want to
change. In addition, we believe you should press for multilateral steps
to further isolate regime officials by freezing any of their remaining
assets abroad, restricting their travel and that of their family
members, increasing political and diplomatic pressure on any nations
who may be allowing, directly or indirectly, transfers of sanctioned
materials, and taking any other similar steps you deem necessary.
Finally, we urge you to endorse a relaxation and restructuring of
the economic embargo on Iraq, while continuing and even tightening
where possible strict prohibitions on military imports. Such a
restructuring would permit import of a broader range of non-military
goods in order to allow the revival of the civilian economy. We
recognize that an important goal of the present sanctions is to block
the government's access to foreign exchange which could be used to
finance imports for military and weapons-development purposes. We
support that objective, but we do not believe the current approach is
justifiable, or even sustainable. Instead, we believe the
administration should, while maintaining current commercial and
military flight restrictions, work with its Security Council partners
to establish a new regime. Some variation of a proposal made recently
by Human Rights Watch, which would make Iraqi imports liable to
inspection at all major ports of entry, seems to us worthy of
consideration. We recognize that some new expense would be required by
such an effort, and would assume that it would be funded out of Iraq's
export revenues, just as UNSCOM expenses have been since 1991.
Rather than a system geared primarily to deciding what to allow in,
the efforts and resources of the international community under an
alternative approach like this would be redirected primarily to keeping
out of Iraq military goods and products likely to be used for military
purposes. While the current lists of prohibited items--from the Missile
Control Technology Regime, the Schedules of Chemicals of the Chemical
Weapons Convention, or the List of Dual Use Goods and Technologies and
the Munitions List of the Wassenaar Arrangement, for example--should be
maintained, relaxing import restrictions on certain categories of
civilian-use items not on such lists would be an important step.
Maintaining close yet transparent Security Council scrutiny of
contracts to import items that have dual-use applications, coupled with
a strong end-use monitoring regime, would further help. We assume such
an approach would require development of an expanded list of items
which, once the general category is licensed for import, need not be
further approved by the Sanctions Committee, but rather only by the
Secretariat under its routine review process. Of course, this would
have to be coupled with an end-use monitoring program which includes UN
monitoring teams on the ground, in order to prevent diversion of such
items for nefarious purposes.
This new approach does not represent a fail-safe means of
containing Iraq's proliferation threat, or ensuring compliance with
relevant Security Council obligations. But we must point out that
neither does the present arrangement. Baghdad still has access to
limited amounts of foreign exchange, and we understand that there are
no border inspections of goods entering the country except, ironically,
those already cleared by the Sanctions Committee. We understand further
that any such changes to the current regime would require a
considerable investment, politically as well as financially. There is
no painless or cost-free way of addressing the Iraq's government's
unwillingness to abide by its disarmament commitments. The point is
that the pain and cost should not continue to be borne primarily by
millions of ordinary innocent Iraqis.
Mr. President, you and Secretary Albright have repeatedly observed
that our quarrel is not with the Iraqi people. We agree. But
regrettably our Iraq policy has too often had its most devastating
impact on those Iraqis who bear no responsibility for the policies that
we are trying to sanction, and change. We have an obligation, under the
UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, not to
destroy or undermine the right of a people to an adequate standard of
living, freedom from hunger, and the highest attainable standards of
health. For this reason we urge you to adopt the recommendations we
have made in this letter, which in our view strike a better balance
between legitimate non-proliferation concerns and those involving our
humanitarian obligations to the people of Iraq--and may even be more
effective in securing Iraq's eventual compliance than the current
arrangement.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Paul D. Wellstone,
United States Senator.
Russell Feingold,
United States Senator.
Senator Wellstone. Secretary Powell last week I think has
raised some important questions, and his idea, as I understand
it, of a stronger international effort to block Iraqi imports
of arms and other military items, coupled with an easing of
nonmilitary items and a more flexible approach to items that
serve civilian needs I think could form the basis of a new
international consensus on Iraq sanctions, and I hope, Mr.
Chairman, that we will get into a discussion of what I think is
a very important question.
Look, first of all, I am not the expert, and second of all,
this is far from simple, and you have got a government that has
not been willing to comply with, at least for 2 years, plus
now, any arms inspection, you have got a government that is
involved in widespread and brutal human rights abuses, and
there is no question that this is a real challenge.
But I do think that there are questions that can be raised
about the sanctions regime, and I also want to just pose two
other questions as we engage in some hopefully hard thinking
about Iraq. One of them is, we have been doing this--the policy
of overflying Iraq has been in place now for years. It puts our
pilots in danger on a daily basis, but I do not think it has
changed the Government of Iraq's behavior at all, and I know
that Senator Kerrey has been outspoken, as you have, Mr.
Chairman, in support of the Iraq Liberation Act, but I think we
ought to think very carefully about whether or not we want to
provide lethal military weapons to the Iraqi opposition.
I mean, if we do so, we risk overcommitting ourselves and
leading the opposition to believe that the United States
military will intervene if its fledgling efforts should falter,
and I think the question we have got to deal with--and Senator
Kerrey is always very direct. He is known for that, but are we
prepared to rescue the Iraqi opposition--I mean, I think we
need to deal with that question in this hearing--or are we
prepared to let it die again?
Now, if the current Government of Iraq should implode, we
should be ready to move ahead with a generous assistance
package to help Iraq develop a vibrant and democratic society,
but by most informed accounts the opposition appears to be
splintered, and weak, and may have little realistic chance of
removing Saddam Hussein from power.
I welcome again Senator Kerrey, Mort Halperin, Tony
Cordesman, and Richard Perle to the hearing, and I look forward
to your views, and I think really this committee, this is very
timely, very important, and I really look forward to the
discussion we are going to have.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Senator Wellstone follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Paul Wellstone
I welcome this hearing on our policy toward Iraq as the
Administration initiates a comprehensive review that could have far-
reaching consequences for U.S. relations with the Arab world. The
beginning of a new Administration is an appropriate time to review our
policies and, where necessary, to recraft them in a way that meets the
changing political and humanitarian concerns in the Middle East. A year
ago, in the midst of the Clinton Administration's own Iraq policy
review, I posed several ideas about how to apply the existing sanctions
regime more flexibly while preserving strict monitoring of any weapons-
related activity. I would like to insert into the Committee record a
copy of the letter I wrote to the President outlining those ideas.
In this regard, Secretary Powell's trip last week to consult with
our friends and allies in the Middle East was an extremely important
initiative. The ideas that he discussed--a stronger international
effort to block Iraqi imports of arms and military-related items
coupled with an easing of non-military items and a more flexible
approach to items that serve essential civilian needs--could form the
basis of a new international consensus on Iraq sanctions. I hope that
this hearing will help us put these ideas into perspective.
Iraq poses a series of complex questions for policy makers. On the
one hand, we are confronted with the Iraqi government's persistent
refusal to meet its obligations with regard to Weapons of Mass
Destruction (WMD), as well as its record of wholesale human rights
abuses. At the same time, the comprehensive UN sanctions regime has
contributed to a longstanding humanitarian crisis that has seriously
affected the health and well-being of millions of innocent Iraqis. It
is clear that the policies of the Iraqi government have greatly
compounded and magnified the humanitarian crisis, and that the
government has not made the welfare of its civilian population a
priority. Even so, it has long seemed to me that a new approach on
sanctions which allows much greater flexibility in the sanctions regime
for obviously humanitarian goods and for certain dual use goods makes a
lot of sense.
It is true that the Iraqi government bears the lion's share of
responsibility for unnecessary civilian suffering due to its persistent
refusal to comply with the UN weapons inspection program. This refusal
is underscored by widespread media reports about Iraq's possible effort
to rebuild certain of its WMD capacities. However, the callous behavior
of the Iraqi government does not excuse the international community
from its own humanitarian obligations.
I believe that we ought to explore further Secretary Powell's
initiative, refine it, and see if constructive alternative approaches
can be developed in place of the current stalemate. We need some hard
thinking on Iraq. Our policy of overlying Iraq has been in place for
years and puts our pilots in danger on a daily basis but has not
changed the government of Iraq's behavior. I know that Senator Kerrey
has been outspoken in his support for the Iraq Liberation Act, but we
need to think carefully whether to support providing lethal military
weapons to the Iraqi opposition. We risk overcommiting ourselves and
leading the opposition to believe that the United States military will
intervene if its fledgling efforts should falter. Are we prepared to
rescue the Iraqi opposition? Are we prepared to let it die again?
If the current government in Iraq should implode, certainly we
should be prepared to move ahead with a generous assistance package to
help Iraq develop a vibrant and democratic society. But, by most
informed accounts, the opposition appears splintered and weak and may
have little realistic chance of removing Saddam Hussein from power.
I welcome Senator Kerrey, Mort Halpern, Richard Perle, and Tony
Cordesman to the hearing today and look forward to hearing their views.
Senator Brownback. Thank you, Senator Wellstone.
Senator Thomas.
Senator Thomas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will look
forward to it also. Therefore, I will pass to let the panelists
begin. Thank you.
Senator Brownback. Thank you. I think this is your first
time back to the Senate, Bob. The first witness up will be Hon.
Bob Kerrey, former Senator from the great State of Nebraska,
second best basketball team in the states between Kansas and
Nebraska, and current president of the New School University in
New York. Bob, welcome back. We are delighted to have you here.
STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT J. KERREY, PRESIDENT, NEW SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, NY
Senator Kerrey. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Senator
Wellstone, Senator Thomas, it is good to see all of you again.
It is nice to have a chance to come back, especially to talk on
this particular subject. Mr. Chairman, I have a longer
statement that is a bit mangled, but I would like to ask
unanimous consent that it be put in the record, and I will try
not to drag this out too long.
First, I would observe that on Monday we had the
opportunity to watch a very moving ceremony in Kuwait with
General Schwartzkopf and Secretary Powell and former President
Bush celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the liberation of
Kuwait. That liberation occurred on 26 February, 1991. Two days
later, on the 28th, yesterday, we celebrated the cease-fire of
that rather remarkable 208-day occupation of Kuwait by Iraq and
the driving of the Iraqi forces out of Kuwait was celebrated
quite correctly as a remarkable demonstration of power used for
good in a multilateral, multinational way.
My guess is, starting that from scratch today people would
say it cannot be done, it could not be done, et cetera, but it
was a rather remarkable accomplishment.
Well, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, a lot has
happened in the decade since, and I do think it is important to
look at that history. I am not going to go through all of the
details, but I would like to describe five important things
that have happened in the last 10 years that I think are
enormously relevant to the discussion and help frame the debate
for what we are going to do going forward.
First, after that cease-fire was declared, Iraq agreed to
allow United Nations weapons inspectors to verify that Iraq had
destroyed its capacity to manufacture biological and nuclear
weapons. Until verification was complete, the United Nations
Security Council voted to enforce external sanctions that would
permit Iraq to sell oil for food and medicine that they needed
for domestic consumption.
The time it was estimated to get this done was in months if
Saddam Hussein cooperated, and what has come to be quite common
practice, he confounded expectations by interfering, by
harassing, and in the end banning the weapons inspectors from
the territory. Now, reliable intelligence, I say to this
committee, has confirmed the reason for Iraq's behavior. It is
quite simply, they want to maintain a robust program to develop
weapons of mass destruction.
The second thing that needs to be considered over the last
10 years is that Iraq has maintained a policy so hostile to
human rights, especially for the Kurdish minority in the north
and the Shia in the south, and I would say, Senator Wellstone,
I think if you stop those no-fly operations we would have Kurds
dying in the north and Shias dying in the south, and they are
alive today as a consequence of those no-fly zones being
maintained.
No dissent is possible inside of Iraq. Thousands have been
imprisoned, tortured, and executed for opposing the current
regime. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, with or
without sanctions, the 20 million people of Iraq deserve to
have the United States of America on the side of their freedom.
Third, we have sustained a military effort to contain Iraq,
and that military effort has cost us lives. U.S. and British
pilots fly almost daily, as Senator Wellstone observed, to
enforce the no-fly zones in the north and in the south, but Mr.
Chairman, members of the committee, we have also maintained a
presence at the Dahran military installation in Saudi Arabia,
and the significance of that is that this installation, part of
our containment policy, was the target of a truck bomb attack
on 25 June, 1996, that killed 19 U.S. airmen. It was cited by
Osama bin Laden as a reason for attacking U.S. Embassies in
Africa on August 17, 1998, that killed 11 Americans and over
200 others. Our military presence was cited again when the USS
Cole was attacked on October 12, 2000 in the Port of Aden,
Yemen, killing 17 American sailors.
I point this out, Mr. Chairman, because when the debate
occurs as to whether or not military force is needed, do not
forget that we already have a very expensive military operation
in place today. The question is not, should we have a military
operation. The question is, how should that military operation
be deployed?
Fourth, when he signed the Iraq Liberation Act into law on
October 31, 1998, President Clinton began the process of
shifting away from the failed policy of using military force to
contain Iraq to supporting military force to replace the
military dictatorship of Saddam Hussein with a democratically
elected government and, although our support for opposition
forces has been uneven at best, this new policy is still
current law.
Fifth, Mr. Chairman, opponents of establishing our policy
objective as liberation of the people of Iraq use a number of
effective arguments, and I would like to cite them, because I
would like to also refute them. They say, we would never get
the support for a military operation. They say that democracy
will not work in Iraq, that Arabs are not capable of governing
themselves. They say finally that the opposition forces lacks
the legitimacy and capability and in particular the most
visible organization, the Iraq National Congress, lacks the
coherency and ability to get the job done.
Well, Mr. Chairman, I am very much aware that these
arguments gather force when they are not answered, so I would
like to answer all three. First, these arguments are little
more than excuses, in my view, designed to keep us from doing
what we know we should do, and we know what we can do if our
will is strong.
The argument against military force encourages us to ignore
the hundreds of millions that we spend every single year to
contain Iraq, and the 47 American lives that have already been
lost to enforce this containment policy.
The argument that Arabs cannot govern themselves is racist.
It encourages us to ignore a million Arab-Americans who
exercise their rights when those rights are protected by a
constitution and law, and the argument against the Iraq
National Congress [INC] is little more than a parroting of
Saddam Hussein's propaganda.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I am very much
aware that domestic and international support has been steadily
eroding for continuing sanctions against Iraq, let alone a new
military strategy to end the nightmare of this dictatorship. I
have watched with growing sadness as Iraq has exploited the
public's lack of memory, the Clinton administration's silence,
and the world's appetite for its production of 4 million
barrels of oil a day.
I have read the reports of Secretary Colin Powell's return
to Kuwait this week, and the difficulty that he is having
convincing our allies that we must stay the course in opposing
the Iraqi regime. I have read proposals by informed
commentators to try to get the best deal we can at this point,
including one by Mr. Tom Freidman that would offer an end to
sanctions and U.S. recognition in exchange for allowing U.S.
inspectors to verify weapons of mass destruction are not being
built in Iraq.
Mr. Chairman, members of this committee, I urge you not to
go along with the flow. This flow of public opinion in my
opinion will lead us in the wrong direction. The United States
should push back hard in the opposite direction, and the
reason, Mr. Chairman, is simple. Saddam Hussein's Iraq
represents a triple threat to us, to our allies in the region,
and to the 20 million people who have the misfortune to live in
a country where torture and killing of political opposition has
become so routine it is rarely reported.
Iraq is a threat to us because they have the wealth and the
will to build weapons of mass destruction, chemical,
biological, and nuclear. Since the end of the gulf war in 1991,
Saddam Hussein has lied and cheated his way out of the
inspection regime and has succeeded in convincing too many
world leaders to overlook the danger he opposes to them. Iraq
is a threat to allies in the region because Iraq has displayed
no remorse, and no regret for its invasion of Kuwait. Instead,
they continue to justify their illegal act and condemn the
U.S.-led effort which forced them to surrender the territory to
their neighbor after inflicting inestimable damage to Kuwait.
The Iraqi Government is a threat to their own people,
especially the Kurds in the northern provinces and the Shia in
the south. Mr. Chairman, without our willingness to maintain
no-fly zones in the north and south, thousands more innocents
would have died from Iraqi military assaults. It is by no means
clear-cut that Iraqi civilians are suffering as a consequence
of our sanctions. What is clear-cut is that the Iraqi people
are suffering as a consequence of Saddam Hussein's policy of
diverting United Nations money away from needed food and
medicine to rebuilding his palaces and his military.
So Mr. Chairman, I come here today to urge you to stay the
course, join with President Bush, and tell him to imagine
returning to Baghdad himself 10 years from now to celebrate the
liberation of Iraq. In my view, it is possible. In the view of
the Iraqi people, the people living in the region, and the
people of the United States of America, it is also desirable.
So what, specifically, can we do? Well, let me just offer
modestly, in the spirit of bipartisan foreign policy, and in
the words of a group of now senior Bush administration
officials who wrote the letter to President Clinton in 1998,
there are three things that would be the beginning of the end
of Saddam Hussein's reign of terror. First, we should recognize
a provisional Government of Iraq based on the principles and
leaders of the Iraq National Congress that is representative of
all the peoples of Iraq.
Second, Mr. Chairman, we should restore and we should
enhance the safe haven in northern Iraq that would allow a
provisional government to extend its authority there, and
establish a zone in southern Iraq from which Saddam's ground
forces would also be excluded.
Third, we should lift the sanctions in the liberated areas.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, these three moves
in my view would signal that the United States of America will
not yield ground to the world's worst and most dangerous
dictator, and we would send a signal to the people of Iraq that
we will not be satisfied until they are free to determine their
own fate.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I want to thank you
again for your invitation to hear my views.
[The prepared statement of Senator Kerrey follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Robert J. Kerrey
Mr. Chairman and members of this distinguished committee, thank you
for this invitation to testify on the question of what United States
policy should be regarding Iraq.
This week marks the tenth anniversary of the liberation of Kuwait
on February 26, 2001. On February 28, 1991, a cease fire was declared.
The world had witnessed a breath-taking exhibition of U.S. led
coalition power that ended the 208 day Iraqi invasion.
A lot has happened in the decade since. The detail of that history
is terribly important for those who want to understand what we should
do today. I will not take time to review all this detail but will
summarize five points I believe are most important:
First, following a cease fire Iraq agreed to allow United Nations
weapons inspectors to verify that Iraq had destroyed its capacity to
manufacture chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Until
verification was complete the United Nations would enforce external
sanctions that permitted Iraq to sell oil for food and medicine. The
time needed to complete this inspection would have been a few months,
if Saddam Hussein cooperated. As has come to be common practice Iraq
confounded expectations by interfering, harassing and finally banning
the weapons inspectors from its territory. Reliable intelligence has
confirmed the reason for their behavior to be simple: They want to
maintain robust programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Second, Iraq has maintained a policy so hostile to human rights--
especially for the Kurdish minority in the north and the Shia in the
south--that no dissent is possible. Thousands have been imprisoned,
tortured, and executed for opposing the current regime. With or without
sanctions the 20 million people of Iraq deserve to have the United
States on the side of their freedom.
Third, we have sustained a military effort to contain Iraq and that
military effort has cost us lives. U.S. and British pilots fly almost
daily to enforce a no-fly zone in northern Iraq that has saved the
lives of Kurds and a no-fly zone in southern Iraq that has saved the
lives of Shia. We have also maintained a presence at the Dhahran
military installation in Saudi Arabia. This installation was a target
of a truck bomb on June 25, 1996, that killed 19 U.S. airmen. It was
cited by Osama bin Laden as a reason for attacking U.S. embassies in
west Africa on August 7, 1998, that killed 11 Americans and over 200
others. Our military presence was cited again when the U.S.S. Cole was
attacked on October 12, 2000, in the port of Aden, Yemen, killing 17
American sailors. So when the issue of military force is debated do not
forget that we have an expensive military operation in place now. The
question is not should our military be used; the question is how.
Fourth, when he signed the Iraqi Liberation Act into law on October
31, 1998, President Clinton began the process of shifting away from the
failed policy of using military force to contain Iraq to supporting
military force to replace the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein with a
democratically elected government. Although our support for opposition
forces has been uneven at best this new policy is still current law.
Fifth, opponents of establishing our policy objective as liberation
of the people of Iraq have used a number of effective arguments to keep
the status quo in place. They say we would never get support for a
military operation. They also say that democracy won't work in Iraq,
that Arabs aren't capable of governing themselves. Finally, they attack
the legitimacy and capability of the most visible organization, the
Iraqi National Congress. But these arguments are little more than
excuses designed to keep us from doing what we know we should do and
can do if our will is strong. The argument against military forces
encourages us to ignore the hundreds of millions spent each year to
contain Iraq and the 47 American lives lost since containment began.
The argument that Arabs cannot govern themselves is racist and
encourages us to ignore a million Arab Americans who exercise their
rights when they are protected by constitution and law. The argument
against the I.N.C. is little more than a parroting of Saddam Hussein's
propaganda.
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee I am very much aware that
domestic and international support has been steadily eroding for
continuing sanctions against Iraq let alone a new military strategy to
end the nightmare of this dictatorship. I have watched with growing
sadness as Iraq has exploited the public's lack of memory, the Clinton
administration's silence, and the world's appetite for its production
of 4 million barrels of oil a day.
I have read the reports of Secretary of State Colin Powell's return
to Kuwait this week and the difficulty he is having convincing our
allies that we must stay the course in opposing the Iraqi regime. I
have read proposals by informed commentators to try to get the best
deal we can at this point including one by Mr. Tom Friedman that would
offer an end to sanctions and U.S. recognition in exchange for allowing
U.S. inspectors to verify that weapons of mass destruction are not
being built in Iraq.
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee I urge you not to go
along with the flow of public opinion. The United States push back hard
in the opposite direction. The reason is simple: Saddam Hussein's Iraq
represents a triple threat to us, to our allies in the region and to
the 20 million people who have the misfortune to live in a country
where torture and killing of political opposition has become so routine
it is rarely reported.
Iraq is a threat to us because they have the wealth and the will to
build weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological and nuclear.
Since the end of the Gulf War in 1991 Saddam Hussein has lied and
cheated his way out of the inspection regime and has succeeded in
convincing too many world leaders to overlook the danger he poses to
them. Iraq is a threat to allies in the region because they have
displayed no remorse or regret for their invasion of Kuwait. Instead
they continue to justify their illegal act and condemn the U.S. led
effort which forced them to surrender the territory of their neighbor
after inflicting inestimable damage to Kuwait.
The Iraqi government is a threat to their own peoples especially
the Kurds in the northern provinces and the Shia in the south. Without
our willingness to maintain no-fly zones in the north and south
thousands more innocents would have died from Iraqi military assaults.
It is by no means clear-cut that Iraqi civilians are suffering as a
consequence of sanctions. What is clear cut is that the Iraqi people
are suffering as a consequence of Saddam Hussein's policy of diverting
United Nations monies away from much needed food and medicine to
rebuilding his palaces and his military.
So, I have come here today to urge you to stay the course. Join
with President Bush and tell him to imagine returning to Baghdad ten
years from now to celebrate the liberation of Iraq. In my view it is
possible. In the view of the Iraqi people, the people living in the
region and the people of the United States of America it is also
desirable.
What specifically can we do? In the spirit of bi-partisan foreign
policy and in the words a group of now senior Bush administration
officials used in a 1998 letter to then President Clinton here are
three things that would be the beginning of the end of Saddam Hussein's
reign of terror:
1. Recognize a provisional government of Iraq based on the
principles and leaders of the Iraq National Congress (INC) that
is representative of all the peoples of Iraq;
2. Restore and enhance the safe haven in northern Iraq to
allow a provisional government to extend its authority there
and establish a zone in southern Iraq from which Saddam's
ground forces would also be excluded;
3. Lift sanctions in the liberated areas.
Mr. Chairman and members of the foreign relations committee these
three moves would signal that the United States will not yield ground
to the world's worse and most dangerous dictator. And we would signal
to the people of Iraq that we will not be satisfied until they are free
to determine their own fate.
Senator Brownback. Thank you very much. Thank you for the
powerful statement and the clarity of it, and I look forward to
having a good discussion on these points as we go on through.
Mr. Cordesman, let us hear your testimony next if we could.
Thank you for joining us.
STATEMENT OF ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN, ARLEIGH A. BURKE CHAIR FOR
STRATEGY, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES,
WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Cordesman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to
thank you and the subcommittee for the opportunity to testify
this afternoon. I do have a formal statement which I would
appreciate it if it could be incorporated into the record, but
I would make only a brief statement.
Senator Brownback. It will be included in the record.
Mr. Cordesman. I think I should preface my remarks with the
fact that you cannot have an Iraq policy that works without a
new policy in dealing with the Arab-Israeli peace issue,
without rethinking your policy toward Iran, and without
broadening our diplomacy, which has focused in the last 2 years
almost exclusively on the peace process to consider how you can
buildup a stronger basis of support in the southern gulf.
But if I may address your question, is Saddam better off
today, the answer is yes, in some ways. There is one area where
he is clearly not better off. If you look back at the rate of
arms imports that he had until the embargo in mid-1990, by now
he would have spent anywhere from $22 to $45 billion on arms
imports. He has not had any major imports of arms since mid-
1990, although there has been smuggling, and some technology
transfer.
In spite of demonstrations of prototypes, there has been no
serial production of a single major weapons system within Iraq.
There has been the assembly of some T-72 kits. I think we have
only to think what would happen in the United States if we
froze the technology base for 10 years, if we could not have
reacted to the lessons of the gulf war, and if our military
establishment consisted of worn equipment that was used in the
Iraq-Iran war, in large part, before it was certainly worn in
the gulf war.
In terms of weapons of mass destruction, it is an
unfortunate reality that during the gulf war we had only a
limited number of successful strikes on these facilities.
Nevertheless, the gulf war forced UNSCOM into Iraq, and we
should not discount what happened. Several billion dollars'
worth of manufacturing facilities, weapons, and technology, was
physically destroyed.
As you pointed out, however, his technology base remains.
It is virtually certain that he has had a decade in which to
improve that technology base. Certain key aspects of that base,
particularly the production of centrifuges and advanced
biological weapons, could never be traced by UNSCOM, which
raises further questions about UNMOVIC. He has the stockpiles
to probably create a significant break-out capability, and
rapidly deploy some of these weapons.
In economic terms, the benefits to him are clear. Since
1990 economic sanctions have eroded to the point where Iraq has
at least $1 billion worth of uncontrolled income from smuggled
petroleum exports. Its legal oil revenues in 2000 are estimated
at roughly $22 billion, which is about 90 percent higher than
they were the previous year, and 170 percent higher than the
year before that.
It is clear even from reports that focus on the hardship of
the Iraqi people that he is succeeding in controlling how these
imports of humanitarian goods and medical goods are used. They
are going to the elite. They are going to urban areas. They are
not going to the Shiites, they are not going to the center, and
they are not going to the Kurdish population that is not in the
Kurdish security zone. It is equally clear that consumer goods,
some of them luxury goods, are going to the elite around
Saddam, to senior officers in the Republican Guards, and to the
security forces.
As a result, I believe that we should refocus actions to
concentrate on long-term efforts to ensure Saddam cannot import
conventional weapons, and that technology and equipment to
produce weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, the
phrase, ``smart sanctions,'' is not by itself a policy, even in
dealing with Iraq, and there are seven areas where I believe we
are going to have to change that policy.
First, we will never have consensus that restricts the flow
of arms and military technology to Saddam Hussein. There are
too many suppliers. There are too many types of dual-use items.
There are nations, North Korea, Russia, and China, which have
cheated on every arms control agreement that they have
participated in. To make smart sanctions work at all, there are
two price tags, and they still will not ensure any kind of
leak-proof regime.
One is a massive intelligence effort to trace what is
happening on the part of supplier nations and entities. The
other is something we have not been good at in the past,
confrontational diplomacy that will really go to countries
which violate any controls and confront them and possibly
sanction them under other laws targeted to deal with these
specific imports. It is very easy to talk about intentions, but
the whole history of proliferation is that broad agreements
simply fail.
Second, I think we should come to grips with the fact that
at this point in time, even if we could get UNMOVIC back into
Iraq, and Saddam has shown no signs of the willingness to
permit this, it might well do more harm than good. The history
of similar regimes, particularly the IAEA, even when we had
inspections, was that they were willing to basically certify
Saddam was in compliance by saying they could not find evidence
he was not in compliance. We have not had aggressive
inspections since early 1997 and, quite frankly, I do not
believe a U.N. regime would get the political support to have
such inspections. Furthermore, I think it is simply too late to
find the dispersed cells and operations which have been built
up since the mid-1990's.
Where I do disagree with Senator Kerrey and, I think,
others of the panel, is I do not believe that focusing on the
Iraqi opposition is no more than a forlorn hope. It would be
nice if it could develop military capabilities. It would be
nice if it had the support of the countries in the region. It
would be nice if it had resonance inside Iraq. I do not believe
it has that support. I think the other panelists here disagree
with me, but for many of the people in the region, they are a
tool that would divide Iraq, and certainly the Saudis and the
Kuwaitis have raised issue to me at some length. The Turks fear
them as a way of dividing Iraq and creating a Kurdistan.
I wish, again, this situation was different. I recognize
that at this point in time the United States has major problems
in generating the kind of patient, systematic, covert effort to
develop internal opposition that might work. Unless we do this,
however, I think we will find ourselves legislating the funding
of a forlorn hope.
Fourth, as has been previously mentioned, I think we made a
massive foreign policy mistake in not confronting Saddam and in
not refuting the lies that he told over a 10-year period. I can
think of only two statements from the State Department that
ever systematically attempted to explain what was happening
under oil for food, and who the true cause of many of Iraq's
problems were. One was a glorified publicity release, and the
other was a page-and-a-half long.
In contrast, every day, Saddam has fought for the minds of
the Arab world. He has been able to capture the hardship issue.
He has been able to find, among people who do not understand
Iraq, many supporters that blame the United States and
sanctions for actions which are more those of Saddam than any
impact of the U.N. Unless we are willing, now, to try to
recover smart sanctions will simply be a step forward toward no
sanctions, and the question really is, can the State Department
have that kind of effort.
Fifth, and I say this in my testimony, the United States
must think now about the future of Iraq's Kurds. I was in the
U.S. Embassy in Iran in the early 1970's. I watched the United
States support the Shah of Iran in using the Kurds as a
political tool. I watched them abandoned after the Algiers
Accord. I think we must have a clear policy toward autonomy,
clear demands as to what Kurdish rights should be.
And to go back to the no-fly zones, I would absolutely
agree that if we withdrew from Turkey, we withdraw from any
protection of the Kurds, and whether the result is an immediate
occupation and slaughter, or the kind of more patient and
systematic killing which Saddam has used on other occasions,
those are the only two alternatives.
Sixth, we talk about smart sanctions, but I have not heard
anything about energy. In our projections we say, in the
Department of Energy, we want Iraq's production capacity to
increase from roughly 2.8 million barrels a day today to 6.2
million in 2020, and we see Iraq as a critical component of our
future energy strategy. It is far from clear that that makes
sense, but somebody has got to resolve the issue.
Finally, we need to revitalize the other aspects of
military containment. One key goal is to improve and maintain
the forward presence rapid-deployment capabilities and war-
fighting capability we have today.
Another goal is to stop preaching. We have got to stop
issuing strong statements and then not following them up with
decisive military action. The best description I can give of
military options under the Clinton administration was that the
President spoke stickly and carried a big soft. I wish there
were some better or nicer way to put it, but we need a formal
doctrine that states our ``red lines,'' that states quite
clearly what we demand in terms of gulf security, that we will
remain committed to military containment and close commitment
with our gulf allies as long as there is threat from Iran and
Iraq.
We need to define the kind of Iraqi action that would lead
us to launch military action and, if Iraq does take such
action, we need to strike so hard and so decisively that the
military and political costs to Saddam will outweigh the
political propaganda gains he makes from small pinprick
strikes. In short, we would be much better off if we struck
once every 2 years in ways which have a crippling impact on
some part of Saddam's military machine, than through endless,
pointless missions against air defense targets he can
reconstitute.
We also have to persist to the point where we are
successful. What we did on September 16 was to carry out half a
strike with no followup. We did not send a message of decisive
action. Our message, I suspect, to Iraq and the gulf was we may
have hit a third of our targets. That is not victory.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cordesman follows:]
Prepared Statement of Anthony H. Cordesman
iraq and america's foreign policy crisis in the middle east
A decade ago, under a different President Bush, we emerged out of a
major foreign policy crisis in the Middle East with the most
advantageous position we had had since World War II. We had led a broad
coalition to victory against Iraq. In the process, we demonstrated that
we could be a strong and reliable friend of the Arab world, and we
created many of the conditions that made a search for a comprehensive
Arab-Israeli peace process possible. We created the conditions for
military containment of both Iran and Iraq, we had the firm support of
our European allies, and we built bridges to Russia and China that
allowed us to act together in dealing with peace and security issues in
the Middle East.
We now face a foreign policy crisis in the Middle East under
another President Bush that Secretary Powell's visit can only begin to
deal with. Part of that crisis is not of our making. The Middle East is
all too correctly described as a region where nations, ``never miss an
opportunity to miss an opportunity.'' Its leaders also tend to repeat
the mistakes of the Bourbon dynasty in France, of which it was said,
``They forgot nothing and they learned nothing.'' We have, however,
made many serious mistakes of our own, and much of our present foreign
policy crisis in the region is the result of self-inflicted wounds.
iraq and the backlash from the arab-israeli peace process
Iraq is one key area where we made such mistakes, but Iraq cannot
be discussed without touching upon the Arab-Israeli conflict and our
policy towards Iran. In the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict, we face
months and probably years of backlash from the failure to create a
peace between Israel and Syria and between Israel and the Palestinians.
It may not be fair, but all sides blame the US for the failure to reach
a peace over the last two years. The Arabs feel that the US tilted far
too much towards Israel, and was not an honest broker. Many Israelis
feel that the US rushed them into concessions that simply led to more
Syrian and Palestinian demands and which could have compromised
Israel's security. Both sides give us much of the blame for the Second
Intifada, and in many Arab eyes we are almost as much to blame for each
Palestinian casualty as Israel.
Even in the eyes of some of our most sophisticated Arab allies, and
the leaders of their countries, they feel we rushed a peace process
forward as part of President Clinton's effort to redeem himself, we
failed to consult, we did not listen to warnings that we played with
fire in trying to force compromises across basic differences in goals
and values, we created false expectations, and we had no exit strategy
to deal with failure. There is a feeling that President Clinton acted
as a political opportunist, and there is broad resentment of the
tendency of senior officials like Secretary Albright to issue
moralistic pronouncements and ignore the need to consult and listen.
The end result is that Saddam Hussein has a powerful new weapon to
use against the US, as do Iran's hard-liners and every extremist in the
Middle East. Nations outside the region can play the peace and Second
lntifada cards against us, as nations like France, China, and Russia
do. In Saddam's case he attacks every moderate Arab regime as the ally
of the US, and therefore the ally of Israel. He provides cash payments
to every Palestinian casualty of the Intifada at a time no Arab
moderate regime has kept its promises of aid to the Palestinian
Authority, and he couples the hardships of the Palestinians to the
hardships of his own people.
Is this fair? Of course not! All sides in the region are far more
to blame for their problems than we are. Should we tilt towards the
Palestinians at the expense of Israel? Never! We will score no lasting
successes, and earn no enduring gratitude, by favoring one set of
allies at the expense of another and those who truly oppose us and our
values cannot be appeased.
What we can do, however, is to change the context of our policy
towards the Arab-Israeli conflict in ways that Secretary Powell may
already be attempting. First, we can get out of the middle and stop
trying to force the pace. We can actually stop and seriously listen to
our allies in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia as well as Israel. We can
pay serious attention to the views of Europe, and try to bring Russia
actively back into the peace process.
Second, we can clearly define our policy towards Israel. We can
make it clear that no amount of threats or outside pressure will block
the flow of aid and our commitment to Israel's security. At the same
time, we can make it equally clear that our commitment is to Israel and
not to the government of the day. Hopefully a unity government will
emerge in Israel that will continue to seek an end to violence and
which will act prudently and pursue peace. If, however, the Sharon
government moves towards extremes, does not sincerely support the
search to end violence and a move back towards a peace process, and
offers the Palestinians and Syria no way out, we should react
accordingly. We should clearly and openly oppose it on these issues
without reducing our strategic commitment to Israel in any way.
More broadly, the Bush Administration can provide added
humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. It can also firmly oppose the
kind of political opportunism that seeks to relocate the US embassy to
Jerusalem before there is a peace, or which tries to legislate that the
same Palestinian leaders we need in trying to end the violence should
be treated as terrorists.
iraq and us policy towards iran
Iran is another key player in this strategic game. It is a
counterweight to Iraq, and its moderates and the faction that supports
President Khatami offer some hope that Iran will evolve to the point
which it plays a constructive role in the region. This does not mean
that the US should tilt towards Iran to counter Iraq. We should,
however, realize that the same steps we should take to revise our
policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict will undercut the hard-liners
and extremists in Iran. We should not soften our diplomatic opposition
to Iran's opposition to the peace process and Israel's very existence,
support of the Hizbollah and violent Palestinian extremists, to Iran's
proliferation, and to Iran's build-up of its military capabilities to
threaten the flow of shipping and oil through the Gulf.
At the same time, we recognize that President Khatami and his-
supporters do represent a major political shift, and take every valid
opportunity to create correct diplomatic relations and a government-to-
government dialog. We should support the Saudis, other Southern Gulf
states, and Europe in trying to create relationships that encourage
moderate Iranian behavior.
We should allow the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act to sunset and revoke
the executive orders that block trade and energy investment in Iran.
These sanctions have not affected Iran's behavior in any way. They have
cut us off from Iran's moderates and business class, they have
strengthened hard-liners in demonizing us, they have encouraged Iran to
proliferate, and Iran has steadily increased its real arms imports and
military expenditures since they were passed. Strategically, they have
limited Iran's ability to maintain and expand its energy exports at a
time when an increase in world oil production capacity is critical to
limiting the rise in energy costs.
iraq and the need for new us policy options
This brings us to Iraq, and we need to recognize that there are no
easy and quick solutions. To being, we need to understand that no other
nation in the world believes that Saddam Hussein's tyranny is fragile,
or will support us in military adventures to overthrow his regime, even
if we are willing to attempt them. No regime in the region trusts
Saddam or is free from fear of him, but key allies like Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia, and Turkey regard the Iraqi opposition outside Iraq as weak,
divided, and venal. They record the support that the Congress and
Clinton Administration gave to movements like the Iraqi National
Congress as a political farce that has little real support beyond
Washington's Beltway and the lobby of the Dorchester Hotel. They fear
these games could drag them into dangerous and unpopular military
adventures, divide Iraq in ways that would favor Iran's hard-liners,
and end in a ``Bay of Kurdistan'' similar to the Bay of Pigs. Many
other Iraqis who do oppose Saddam also regard the Iraq Liberation Act
and its selective aid to part of the opposition as the kind of overt US
support that labels all outside opposition as traitors.
There is a good case for mounting a systematic covert operation to
try to overthrow Saddam's regime. There is an equal case for working
with our allies--particularly Kuwait and Saudi Arabia--to say that we
would waive reparations and debt repayments if a new regime overthrew
Saddam. We should also work with our regional allies to find some
common approach to Iraqi Kurdish autonomy that we can advocate to
protect the Kurds. The plain truth of the matter, however, is that
Saddam's regime is not fragile or unpopular with Iraq's military,
security forces, and elite. Saddam also now has enough revenue from
smuggle oil exports and his manipulation of oil for food to buy all of
the support he needs. His supporters now live in relative luxury and
economic sanctions hurt only the Iraqi people.
This says a great deal about the future of sanctions. We have
absolutely no chance of unifying the UN Security Council around
revitalizing economic sanctions or creating support for controls on
energy investment in Iraq. France, China, and Russia will oppose us and
so will every Arab state and developing nation. Regardless of what
Iran, Jordan, the Kurds, Syria, and Turkey say, they also will not
crack down on Iraqi petroleum smuggling. Here, the Clinton
Administration has also left the Bush Administration with a devastating
legacy.
The Clinton Administration never took an effective lead in trying
to really make oil for food work and to ensure that the plight of the
ordinary Iraqi was eased. It made few efforts to counter Saddam's
endless propaganda effort to exploit the hardship of his own people,
and the efforts it did make were so sporadic and lacking in depth as to
be totally unconvincing. Few in the Arab world know that nearly half of
the flow of goods under oil for food have been held up or manipulated
by Saddam's regime.
It is simply too late to win this aspect of the battle for the
minds of the Arab world, although the Bush Administration has every
incentive to carry out a systematic effort to refute Saddam's charges,
make it clear that he is the principal problem in oil for food, and
that he systematically lies about the causes and scale of Iraq's health
problems, infant mortality, and other social problems.
The US can still, however, work with its allies to make sanctions
what Secretary Powell has called ``smart,'' or ``narrow but deep.''
Many nations will join us in opposing any lifting of the sanctions on
Saddam's arms imports, and imports of dual-use items to make
conventional weapons, missiles, and weapons of mass destruction. Other
supplier and exporting nations will join in if they receive the ability
to make energy investments, can carry out wide ranging civil trade, and
can exploit other business opportunities. Arab leaders can justify such
efforts to their people both on the selfish grounds they aid their
national security and on the broader grounds they prevent Saddam from
diverting funds away from Iraq's true economic needs.
There are several key components to a new US approach to dealing
with the US foreign policy crisis in the Middle East. First, US must
redefine its military position in containing Saddam. The US must make
it clear that its military presence in the region is tailored only to
deterring military adventures against the Kurds and other states, is
the minimal force required, and works in consultation with Turkey and
our Arab allies. It must repeatedly explain the size and role of our
forces in depth, and it must explain every military action in equal
depth. The day we could simply announce air strikes as part of
enforcement of the No Fly Zones is over. So is the day we could
trivialize our military action or describe them as business as usual.
Even the best Pentagon briefings--and they have generally been horribly
vague and inadequate--are not a substitute for leadership from the
President and Secretary of State on this issue, or for detailed
consultation with our allies. Moreover, when we act, it should be for a
clear purpose and so decisively that it truly deters Saddam, and not be
at a level where any military damage we do is offset by Saddam's
ability to use it for propaganda purposes.
Second, we should not give up totally on resuming UN inspections
and bring UNMOVIC back into Iraq. However, we must not have any
illusions and continue to treat Iraqi proliferation with the Clinton
Administration's ``benign neglect.'' In the real world, it has been
three years since UNSCOM could really carry out effective inspections
and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) never really
challenge Iraq as effectively as it should. UNMOVIC may be a useful
deterrent to open, large-scale Iraqi action but it does not have the
leadership or international support to really carry out effective
inspections and find the kind of covert cells and new Iraqi efforts
developed over the last three years. If anything, UNMOVIC could simply
become the political cover for a UN effort that said it could find no
evidence of Iraqi efforts. We need to decouple the containment of
Iraq's proliferation from the issue of UN inspection. We need to
provide a comprehensive picture of what Iraq is doing and the risks
involved, and make it clear that inspection is not going to be an
answer to sustained military containment. If we do not, we will send
mixed and ineffective signals, and we may well see the UN turned into a
tool that will give Saddam a false blessing and a license to
proliferate.
Finally, we should recognize that key Gulf allies like Saudi Arabia
feel irritated and neglected. They cannot openly express their contempt
for the Clinton Administration, but they feel it deeply. They see the
last few years of President Clinton's efforts to rush forwards towards
a final Arab-Israel peace settlement as the act of an opportunist who
pressures them for his own political advantage. They feel they came
under intense pressure from his Secretary of Energy to increase
production and cut oil prices, reacted by making quiet concessions, and
were then embarrassed in public while he tried to run for Vice
President. They feel the US ignored Saudi efforts to create an
institutionalized dialogue between importers and exporters that could
help create fair and stable prices. They feel Clinton's Secretary of
State and Secretary of Defense lectured them, rather than consulted,
and never really listened. The Saudi's also feel Clinton's trade
representative deliberately ignored their efforts to join the WTO. We
do not need to sacrifice a single US interest to consult with our Gulf
allies, listen to them, and engage in a balanced diplomacy that gives
them the priority they deserve. Secretary Powell has already advocated
such a balanced diplomacy and he is all too correct in doing so.
the specific steps we should take in improving our policy towards iraq
Secretary Powell's call for ``smart sanctions'' against Iraq is
long overdue, and can help to correct a critical weakness in our
foreign policy. It was clear by the mid-1990s that broad economic
sanctions were not going to bring down Saddam Hussein, halt Iraqi
efforts to proliferate, or cripple the ability of Iraq's military and
security forces to repress the Kurds, put down Iraq's Shi'ite
opposition, and threat Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. It was equally clear
that they continued to impoverish the ordinary Iraqi, and block Iraq's
economic development.
Nearly half a decade later, sanctions have eroded to the point
where Iraq has over one billion dollars of uncontrolled income from
smuggled petroleum exports. Its ``legal'' oil revenues in 2000 are
estimated at $21.6 billion, which is 89% higher than in 1999, and more
than 170% higher than in 1988. Saddam can now use a combination of this
income and the holes in the controls on the UN oil for food program, to
buy the loyalty of his power elite, the security forces, and Republican
Guards.
It makes good, and long overdue, sense to refocus the sanctions
effort to ensuring Saddam cannot import conventional arms and the
technology and equipment to produce weapons of mass destruction. At the
same time, it is equally clear that ``smart sanctions'' are not enough
and that the Bush Administration could easily repeat some of the most
chronic failures of the Clinton Administration. The US needs more of a
strategy than can fit on a bumper sticker, and more thought than can
fit in a fortune cookie. To be specific, ``smart sanctions'' can only
work if they are part of the following seven major changes in US policy
towards Iraq:
First, the US must be prepared to confront potential and
actual suppliers. It is uncertain that the US can get even pro
forma Security Council agreement to refocusing sanctions in
ways that give them real teeth. The waters and borders of Iran,
Jordan, Syria, and Turkey are not going to be sealed, and dual-
use items and military spare parts are notoriously hard to
police. It will take a massive intelligence effort and
confrontational diplomacy with suppliers, and the nations on
Iraq's borders, to make ``smart sanctions'' work. Talk and good
intentions are cheap; effective action is difficult and costly.
Second, the US must come to grips with the failure of the UN
inspection effort and the fact UNMOVIC might do more harm if it
did return to Iraq than good. Effective UN inspection really
halted in late 1997, and Desert Fox did virtually nothing to
really inhibit Iraq's effort to proliferate. Iraq has had years
to create an effective network of cells and dual use efforts to
develop a break out capability in chemical and biological
weapons, improve its nuclear weapons designs, and develop a
missile program. UNMOVIC is still banned from Iraq, but if it
did return, it might well operate under so many political
constraints that it would end up certifying Iraqi compliance,
rather than act as an effective deterrent to Iraqi action. The
Clinton Administration dodged this issue for its last two years
in office, but ``smart sanctions'' require a clear and detailed
plan of action.
Third, the US must face the reality of the ineffectiveness
of the Iraqi opposition, shift to a long-term covert operations
effort, and focus on the continuing need for military
containment. The Bush Administration threatens to repeat the
mistakes of the Clinton Administration and Congress, and go on
backing weak and unpopular elements of the Iraqi opposition
like the Iraqi National Congress. These movements have no
meaningful support from any friendly government in the region,
and they have no military potential beyond dragging the US into
a ``Bay of Kuwait'' or ``Bay of Kurdistan'' disaster. The Turks
fear them as a way of dividing Iraq and creating a Kurdistan,
and the Arabs fear them as a way of bringing Iraq under Shi'ite
control and/or Iranian influence. Worse, they are no substitute
for a major covert effort to overthrow Saddam from within, and
overt US funding of such movement tends to label the Iraqi
opposition as US sponsored traitors. We need to understand that
containing Iraq is far more important than legislating the
funding of a forlorn hope.
Fourth. the US must launch an actite truth campaign to
confront Saddam on oil for food and all of the other issues
where he relies on lies and exploitation of tensions in the
region. The Clinton Administration committed a massive foreign
policy mistake by failing to engage Saddam over his lies and
propaganda. Aside from some sporadic and truly inept press
efforts, it allowed him to capture Arab and world opinion in
lying about the problems in oil for food and the true causes of
the suffering of the Iraq people. It did not engage him
actively on human rights inside Iraq, his attacks on Iraq's
Shi'ites, his continuing claims to Kuwait, or his threats to
Iraq's Kurds. It postured about palaces to the American media,
and allowed Saddam to turn UN reporting into a propaganda
defeat. ``Smart sanctions'' will not work without a massive and
continued truth campaign to fully explain the true character of
the Iraqi regime that is tailored to Gulf, Arab, and world
audiences.
Fifth, the US must think now about the ultimate future of
Iraq's Kurds. The erosion of sanctions poses immediate threats
to Iraq's Kurds. While the Clinton Administration chose to
ignore it, Iraq has been ``cleansing'' oil-rich areas in
Northern Iraq of Kurds and forcing them into other areas or the
Kurdish security zone. It is not clear we can prevent this, but
getting support for ``smart sanctions'' and protecting the
Kurds means we need a clear US policy on the future of the
Kurdish security zone and a definition of Kurdish autonomy that
will set policy goals to protect the Kurds while defusing fears
Iraq will divide or break up.
Sixth, the US must have a clear energy policy towards Iraq.
Iraq is a nation that has some 11% of all the world's oil
reserves and that has not had any coherent energy development
efforts since the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980. US
government projections call for Iraqi oil production capacity
to more than double from around 2.8 million barrels a day to
6.2 million barrels in 2020. These increases in Iraq's oil
exports are also critical to any hope of its economic
development. Massive energy investments are required, and take
years to a decade to pay off. They also can provide the Iraqi
regime with major new resources. ``Smart sanctions'' must be
coupled to a clear energy development policy.
Finally, the US must revitalize the other aspects of
military containment. The true subtext of a ``smart sanctions''
policy is that we will need a major forward military presence,
rapid deployment capability, and war fighting ability to check
an Iraqi attack on Kuwait or threat to use weapons of mass
destruction indefinitely into the future. The Clinton
Administration spoke stickly and carried a big soft. It
``nickel and dimed'' its use of force to contain Iraq, issued a
series of abortive threats over UN inspections, launched Desert
Fox, and then halted it before it could be effective. Two years
of pin-prick strikes over the ``No Fly Zones'' have done as
much to give Saddam a propaganda victory as they have to hurt
his air defenses.
We need a formal Bush Doctrine that states our redlines, that says
quite clearly that Gulf security and the continued flow of oil is a
vital US national security interest, and that we will remain committed
to military containment and close cooperation with our Gulf allies as
long as there is a threat from either Iraq or Iran. We need to define
the kind of Iraqi action that will lead us to launch military action,
and if Iraq takes such action, we need to strike so hard and so
decisively that the military and personal cost to Saddam is so
unaffordable that any political propaganda gains he makes are minor in
comparison. The one round of half-successful strikes the Bush
Administration launched on February 16th is Clintonesque at best.
``Smart Sanctions'' require a clear Bush Doctrine and a clearly defined
commitment to decisive force.
Senator Brownback. Thank you for that strong statement. I
will look forward to further discussion with you.
Dr. Halperin, thank you for joining the committee. We look
forward to your testimony.
STATEMENT OF DR. MORTON H. HALPERIN, SENIOR FELLOW, COUNCIL ON
FOREIGN RELATIONS, WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. Halperin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a great
pleasure for me to be here. I have a written statement that I
would like to ask to be made a part of the record, and I would
like to summarize it and try to particularly talk about points
where I either disagree or have an additional element to bring
to bear than what we have heard so far.
Senator Brownback. If you agree with some of them, too, you
can mention that.
Dr. Halperin. I start, I think, where all of the witnesses
are, and where I think all of you are as well. That is to say,
Iraq is a serious threat. Its leadership is committed to
conventional aggression and conventional pressure. Its
leadership remains committed to developing weapons of mass
destruction and if we fail to contain that, it poses not only a
direct threat, but a threat to our containment of nuclear
weapons policy as a whole. We cannot succeed in the
nonproliferation policy if we do not succeed in stopping the
Iraqi program.
Third, I think our other policies in the Middle East are at
risk as long as we do not have an Iraqi policy that has the
support of the Arab countries, and inevitably interacts with
their dislike of our policy in the Middle East peace process
and, I think, undermines our effectiveness in both areas.
Finally, an area that has not been mentioned, but to me is
of great concern, is if the Iraqi sanctions are seen to fail it
will undercut one of the most important instruments of policy
in the police cold war period, and that has been our ability to
persuade the Security Council to impose sanctions in situations
where we thought that was in our interests.
We were able to do that in Libya, for example, and finally
get the trial of the terrorists who we believe blew up the
airplane. We were able to get it against Serbia and Yugoslavia,
and it played an important role in the change of regime there,
and we have been able to get it in other situations as well.
My fear is that, as these sanctions erode, people are
coming to understand that there is no legal mechanism to
enforce these sanctions, and that if other countries choose
simply not to obey them, that they can, in fact, get away with
it. My fear is that not only will we wake up one day and
discover that the Iraqi sanctions are gone, with, I think, very
serious implications for Iraq policy, but that it will become
increasingly difficult in the future to persuade countries to
honor other sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council.
These sanctions are often dangerous for the countries in
the region. They are always expensive for the countries in the
region, because they lose trade and they lose income. They have
nevertheless felt a legal obligation to do so, and I think the
undercutting of that would have very serious repercussions for
American policy. So I think whatever we do as we move forward,
we need to keep in mind the broader implications of what is at
stake if we allow these sanctions to fail.
I think that the differences that we have in this panel and
in general in the country about Iraq policy is not about how
dangerous Saddam Hussein is, it is not about the threat that he
poses, it is not about the importance of containing him, but it
is about what we should do about that. I think that turns on
different assessments of what is feasible, and those
assessments do not turn on any secret information.
My sense is that inside the government and inside the
intelligence community there is as much disagreement about the
feasibility, for example, of getting rid of Saddam Hussein by
supporting the opposition, as there is in the public as a
whole. This seems to turn as much on people's temperament and
what they would like to believe than it does on any concrete
facts.
Now, as I detail in my prepared statement, and I will not
go into here in detail, I think the most dangerous option is
one of continuing to drift, of continuing to allow the
sanctions to slowly erode while we try to keep them together,
of continuing efforts to bring back the inspectors, which I
think simply will not lead to the inspectors being brought back
in, of continuing military operations, which has already been
suggested does not do very much--it is one thing to maintain
the principle firmly of the no-fly zones and to make it clear
that we will not permit military operations. It is another to
continue to fly in ways that do not seem to send any clear
message, clearly does not have any impact on Iraqi military
capability.
And yet this both undercuts support for the policy in the
region and runs the risk that American lives will be taken for
no precisely clear purpose. So I think we need to look at
alternatives, and I think that there are two basic options.
One is to try to get agreement within the Security Council,
particularly among the P-5, and with the countries in the
region, on a new regime that would remain in place until there
was a fundamental change in the Government of Iraq, and that, I
think, would have several elements.
First, I think it would require that we drastically reduce
the list of items that Iraq is prohibited from importing only
to weapons themselves and to real dual-use items. In return,
seek agreement, which I believe we could get, that the control
over Iraqi revenues for the oil they are permitted to sell, to
make sure that these expenditures do not go for the
unauthorized items, comes in place and remains in place until
there is a fundamental change in policy.
Second, I believe we need to recognize that a return of
U.N. inspectors is very unlikely and, as has already been
suggested, even if it occurred, it is not clear that it would
do very much good, given that they clearly will not have the
freedom that we want, and also that they have had time to hide
their weapons programs some place else.
Instead, I think we need simply to in effect say to the
Iraqi Government that these sanctions will continue until you
find a way to persuade the international community that you
have abandoned your efforts to develop weapons of mass
destruction.
I do not believe that Iraq could do that absent a
fundamental change in the regime and a putting in place of a
very different kind of government. So my view is that this set
of sanctions needs to remain in place until there is a change
in government, but that we ought to put the onus on Iraq,
rather than continuing these ineffective efforts and, I think,
ultimately futile efforts to bring back inspectors.
In the case of the no-fly zone, what I think we need to do
is maintain clearly our assertion of the right to do it, but
also to make clear what our red lines are, that we will not
permit the Iraqis to move north, that we will not permit them
to move against the people in the southern part of their
country, or to mobilize against Kuwait or any other country. If
they do that, we will respond not with the kind of very limited
military action we have done regularly, or even the kind of
stepped-up military action that we saw a week or so ago, but
with serious and decisive military action of a kind that would,
in fact, materially affect the capability of the Iraqi military
forces.
I think we should try, and I think we could succeed in
getting agreement from the countries whose bases we would need
for those operations, that this changed posture would have the
support and their agreement that decisive military action would
take place if any of these red lines were crossed.
Finally, as part of this I think we need to try to cut down
on the smuggling, which puts in the hands of the Iraqi
leadership funds that they could use for their own purposes,
and which is the most dangerous trend that is now developing.
We saw in the press that Secretary Powell has raised this
issue with the Syrians and, I believe, is part of the kind of
change in policy that I have suggested here, that we could get
agreement from the countries that have been running pipelines
outside the embargo, to bring those sales within the U.N.
system so that we control what Iraq does with the money.
In order to get the support of other key countries,
including the Russians and the French for this, I think we also
ought to consider whether some of the funds that Iraq brings in
is used to pay off their very large debts to foreign countries,
including in particular, France and Russia. I think it is no
accident that the French and the Russians have been pressing
for a relaxing, if not elimination of the embargo, and that
these countries are very countries to which Iraq owes a great
deal of money.
I think it is not inconsistent with the embargo to begin to
divert some of the funds to pay off those debts, not only to
those countries, but to many other countries, as part of the
set of things that the U.N.-impounded money is used for.
As everybody has said, I think there can be no doubt to
anybody who looks at it objectively that the embargo plays no
significant role in the humanitarian crisis in Iraq. Iraq has
enough money from the U.N. food for peace program, it has
enough money from the illegal smuggling program, to deal with
those problems. It is clear that the leadership prefers to
spend its money on statues, on palaces, and on weapons, and
that you could give them a lot more money and the problem would
not change.
Nevertheless, it is also the case that we have paid a
significant price because people believe that somehow that we
are at fault, I do not believe more clever public diplomacy
will solve this problem. I think that a clear willingness to
let Iraq spend money on many other things is the key to
beginning to turn this problem around.
Now, as we have heard before, and I am certain we will hear
from the last panelist, there is an alternative policy, and
that is to arm the opposition and to try to get rid of the
current regime quickly. I think there is no doubt that it would
be in our interest to do so. I think one can raise serious
questions about whether we should have done it when we had the
chance to do so, when we had an overwhelming army in the field,
and we had defeated the Iraqi military force, but I do not
think we should allow ourselves the luxury of believing that
somehow this can be done on the cheap.
If we arm people and put them in the country, if we declare
and support the creation of safe zones in the north or in the
south, we have to mean it, and that means we have to be
prepared to commit as much military force as it will take to
hold those zones against an attack, and it means we cannot wait
until they are attacked.
We do not have forces now in the region that can deal with
that. We twice now encouraged people to act and then stood
there while they were attacked, and I believe we should not
have done it either of those times, and I believe we should not
do it again.
If we are serious about this, it means a buildup of
American military forces, maybe not to the level of the Persian
Gulf war, but significantly more than we now have, and it means
that we have to decide in advance that an attack on those
forces is the equivalent of an attack on the United States and
we are ready to go back to war against Iraq.
Now, I do not believe the American people are ready to
support that. I do not believe the Congress is ready to support
that, but if the administration is persuaded that that is the
route to go, I think before we start arming people who are
going to need our military support, we need to have that
debate. We need to make that decision. Since I continue to
believe that the Constitution requires the Congress to
authorize us to go to war, I think we need a Resolution of the
Congress that says that we are prepared to protect these people
and to go to war to defend them.
I would welcome that debate. I think people would at the
end of the day say that the American interests are not such
that we ought to do that, but the policy of containment that I
have outlined is more prudent and more consistent with our
interest, but what I think would be a disaster would be to once
more encourage people to rise up and then to stand there and
watch them be slaughtered.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Halperin follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Morton H. Halperin
Mr. Chairman: It is a great privilege and a pleasure for me to
testify once again before this very distinguished committee. I first
had the opportunity to appear before this committee when it conducted
far ranging hearings on China in 1966. I believe that we are as
urgently in need now of a serious debate on Iraq, as we were then on
China, and I commend this committee for holding these hearings.
There can be no doubt that what happens in Iraq and how we manage
the process of developing a consensus in the international community on
Iraq is of enormous importance to American and international security.
This is so for at least four reasons.
First, as we learned dramatically a decade ago, Iraq has both the
intention and the capability to threaten its neighbors. There is no
reason to think this has changed. If Iraq were to conclude that the
United States were no longer willing to use force to protect its
interests in the Gulf, it would be sorely tempted to press its
neighbors. Preventing conventional aggression by Iraq and maintaining
the military relations necessary for us to respond effectively if
deterrence fails, must be a high priority for the United States.
Second, Iraq poses a direct and immediate threat to our non-
proliferation policy. An Iraq with missiles and nuclear or biological
weapons would pose a threat to all nations within its reach, including
Israel. Moreover, our efforts to extend the principles of
nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction to the arc of states in
this area would be fatally undercut, if we are unable to prevent Iraq
from developing such weapons in the face of very explicit United
Nations Security Council resolutions.
Third, our efforts to maintain support for the Middle East Peace
Process among the states of the region and to have their assistance on
other critical issues, including the price and supply of oil,
critically depends on our securing the support of the nation's of the
region for our Iraq policy. It is not only that the embargo will
continue to erode if it lacks support in the region, but it is also the
case that our ability to continue to have the support that we need on
other issues will be jeopardized if we pursue a policy towards Iraq
which lacks support in the region.
Finally, if we permit the Iraqi sanctions to continue to erode in
the face of a clear Security Council mandate, we run the grave risk of
undermining the respect for Security Council sanctions, which have
served American interests well in many parts of the world.
One of the most important and positive developments of the post-
cold war period, was the willingness of the Security Council to use its
powers under Chapter VII to impose economic sanctions on states for a
variety of infractions of the basic norms of international law and the
willingness of almost all states to abide by these rules. We need to
remember, however, that there are no effective means to force states to
comply with such embargoes and that they often do so at significant
economic cost. If the Iraq sanctions simply fail it will be much harder
to get the Security Council in the future to impose such sanctions and
to get states to obey them.
I start with these points, Mr. Chairman, to underline two basic
themes. There can be no question that the stakes are high in how we
deal with Iraq. Where there are differences of view, and surely there
are, regards how to accomplish these specific goals in ways which are
compatible with other world-wide interests. The differences of opinion
about what the United States should do in regard to Iraq reflect much
less disagreements about the threat posed by Iraq, than differences
about how effective different courses of action might be. This reflects
the genuine difficulty in ferreting out the facts and interpreting
them. I do not believe that disagreements result from differing access
to classified information. People with full access disagree with each
other as much as they do with those who rely entirely on unclassified
information.
I believe that there are three options that are likely to compete
for adoption as the Bush Administration reconsiders Iraq policy. The
first would be a continuation of the recent trends. The second would
involve a refocusing of the sanctions. The third will give higher
priority to attempting to replace the current regime. In short, I
believe that the first option will inevitably end in disaster, and the
third simply cannot be implemented successfully. This leads me to
support the second option of focusing on the Iraqi program to develop
weapons of mass destruction and its capacity to threaten its neighbors.
Over the past several years there has been a steady erosion in the
key elements of our current Iraq policy:
We have gone from demanding sweeping changes in Iraq, beyond
the end of the program to develop weapons of mass destruction,
before we would agree to end the embargo, to making ending the
weapons of mass destruction program essentially the sole
criteria.
We have gone from demanding the right of UN inspectors to go
everywhere to having no inspectors.
We have gone from severely limiting how much oil Iraq could
sell to permitting Iraq to sell as much oil as it can pump.
We have gone from severely limiting what Iraq can buy with
the funds that it gains from its oil sales to permitting it to
purchase a much larger--but still very limited--range of items.
And at the same time, as President Bush has noted, the embargo is
becoming less and less effective as more oil is sold outside the
proscribed UN sanctioned scheme. While the changes that have been made
move us closer to what other countries, especially France, Russia and
our allies in the region want, there has not been a corresponding
increase in support for our Iraqi policy. On the contrary, support
continues to decline. Incremental changes simply erode our position
without gaining more support for what remains in place.
If we continue down this path Iraq will be able to buy more and
more goods within the sanction system, and will have more and more
funds from sales conducted in violation of the UN Security Council
embargo. One day we will wake up and the whole world will know that the
sanctions are no longer working and many more states will feel free to
ignore them. The results will be disastrous not only for our Iraq
policy, but for our ability to employ UN sanctions in other situations
and to have states feel that they have an obligation to act consistent
with UNSC resolutions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
Despite these clear dangers, the pressures within the government to
make only incremental changes in policy are so strong that it will take
an act of will with substantial Congressional and public support to
move decisively.
Part of the task is to illuminate what the real options are. That
is why these hearings are so important and why I very much welcome this
opportunity to lay out the option which I believe is most consistent
with American interests.
Our concerns about Iraq relate primarily to its effort to develop
weapons of mass destruction and to threaten the use of force against
its neighbors. If we are to have any chance of keeping the alliance
against the current Iraqi regime together we must focus on these
concerns. In order to do that we should do the following:
Drastically reduce the list of items which Iraq is
prohibited from purchasing only to weapons themselves and to
real dual use items which would directly contribute to
development of weapons of mass destruction. In return seek UNSC
agreement to have the UN sanctions committee continue to
control the revenue Iraq receives for its oil sales so that it
can prevent expenditures on these few unauthorized items.
Recognize that efforts to persuade Iraq to permit effective
UN inspections on its territory are very unlikely to succeed.
Instead, focus on securing an agreement among the P-5 that the
controls on expenditures will remain in place until Iraq either
permits full inspection or finds some other affirmative means
to persuade the UNSC that it has abandoned its effort to
develop weapons of mass destruction or to threaten its
neighbors with conventional aggression.
Without abandoning our claimed right to enforce no fly zones
in the north and the south, curtail routine flights while
restating our red lines in a clear and unambiguous manner, so
that Iraq does not venture into the north, mobilize against
Kuwait or the population in the south of the country, or
threaten any other country in the region. Seek firm assurances
from our friends and allies in the region that bases would be
available for military operations, should we determine that
Iraq is resuming its efforts to develop and deploy weapons of
mass destruction or is mounting military operations.
In light of these changes, seek support from states in the
region for efforts to curtail the embargo-violating oil exports
and to help curtail illegal smuggling in and out of Iraq. We
would be able to argue that these can no longer be justified on
humanitarian grounds since the UN would now be permitting Iraq
to spend funds on all activities that might alleviate the
current suffering of the Iraqi people.
In order to increase the attractiveness of this package to Russia
and France we should consider permitting, or even requiring, that Iraq
use some of its revenue from the sale of oil, to pay its existing debts
to other nations including these two members of the UNSC. Our friends
and allies in the region should find it easy to support this package
since it will be clear that the embargo cannot be responsible for the
continued suffering of the Iraqi people. Of course, that is the case
now, since the Iraqi regime has at its disposal sufficient resources,
both from the authorized sales and from the illegal sales, to do
whatever is necessary to deal with the humanitarian tragedy in that
country. The leadership prefers instead to use the funds for its own
pleasures and for weapons. However, this new approach should reduce the
criticism that the embargo is responsible for the humanitarian crisis.
I believe this approach would gain the needed support of states in
the region and of the UNSC and that it could be sustained over a long
period of time until there is a change in the Iraqi regime.
Of course, many believe that we should not wait for such change to
occur on its own, and that we should instead implement the stated
policy and goal of regime change by vastly increased support to the
Iraq opposition.
There can be no doubt that American and, indeed, international
security interests, would be advanced if the current regime in Iraq
were to be replaced by one which was more committed to meeting the
obligations which Iraq undertook at the end of the Persian Gulf War.
The question is only whether there are means to do that which are
consistent with other American interests and priorities and which could
get the necessary support from the American people and from other
nations. I do not believe that there are such means.
Certainly we have the conventional military power to defeat the
Iraqi Army and occupy that country. There was a fleeting moment at the
end of the Gulf War when it was plausible that the United States would
use its military power to change the Iraqi regime. There is no longer
any such possibility. Unless Iraq threatens a new act of aggression,
the American people would not, and should not, support such an effort,
nor would our allies and friends provide the necessary bases and
support.
Thus, those who want to remove the current regime advocate not an
American military operation, but rather a ``covert operation.'' I do
not believe there is any real option that involves only a covert
operation. As in many previous situations, the real aim of the covert
operation would be to try to compel the United States to use military
force to rescue an operation which was failing. Indeed, most of the
Iraqi opposition groups which seek the weapons to launch operations
inside of Iraq warn us that they will expect American military support.
Anyone advocating a serious and determined effort to change this
regime in the short run by covert force, bears a very heavy burden of
demonstrating that such an effort has a real chance of success without
massive American military action. Otherwise we run a grave risk of once
again abandoning brave Iraqis, who rise up in the mistaken belief that
we will defend them, or find ourselves dragged into a war that we
cannot sustain.
Mr. Chairman, I very much appreciate this opportunity to present my
views and stand ready to answer the questions of the committee.
Senator Brownback. Thank you, Dr. Halperin, for your
comments.
Secretary Perle, we are delighted to have you before the
committee.
STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD N. PERLE, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY
OF DEFENSE FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Perle. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for
inviting me to participate. I had prepared a list of issues
that I thought, taken together, would help in an orderly
discussion of what American policy toward Iraq should be. One
of the consequences of speaking last after three intelligent
presentations is, one is bound to be repetitive or
disagreeable, and I intend to be both.
The question has been posed and answered already: Is Saddam
stronger now than he was 10 years ago? I think everybody agrees
that he is. I think he is stronger than he was at this time 2
years ago, and I am almost afraid to ask the question whether
he is stronger than he was 2 days ago, but I feel bound to say,
he probably is stronger than he was 2 days ago, because what
has been presented in recent diplomatic efforts is not an
indication of American strength but an indication of American
weakness.
That is to say, the clear impression has been created that
the United States intends to relax the sanctions on Saddam. We
can call them smart sanctions if we like, but what they will
look like to the people of the region and, I think, the world,
is a weakening of American resolve in the face of pressure on
those sanctions, which is evident to everyone.
Does Saddam now have weapons of mass destruction? Sure he
does. We know he has chemical weapons. We know he has
biological weapons. We have been unable to ferret them out and
find them. We could not do it when we had inspectors on the
ground. We will not be able to do it if the inspectors return.
How far he has gone on the nuclear weapons side, I do not
think we really know. My guess is it is further than we think.
It is always further than we think, because we limit ourselves,
as we think about this, to what we are able to prove and
demonstrate and, unless you believe that we have uncovered
everything, you have to assume there is more than we are able
to report, and that is the history of these things, so I am
sure Tony Cordesman would agree that every time you eventually
get behind the lines you discover there was more there than you
thought.
How can we end his program to deliver weapons of mass
destruction, to develop them and the means of delivering them?
Well, I do not think we can, as long as Saddam is there. As
long as he is in control of the territory and has sufficient
financial and technical resources, he will continue to work at
the development of those weapons.
We cannot learn much, in my view, in the absence of U.N.
inspectors. I do not think we would learn much if the U.N.
inspectors were there. Even if the U.N. inspectors were there
and free to operate in an effective manner, and the history
suggests and the arrangements previously agreed to suggest that
if inspectors were permitted to return, they would be under
such constraints that their likelihood of their finding
anything at all is very slim.
After all, Saddam has had plenty of time to destroy the
data base on which we once depended and, without intelligence
of a kind that we can get independent of the inspectors, there
is really very little that inspectors could do on the ground,
so I do not think we would get any additional confidence if
inspectors returned.
I mention that because the suggestion has been made that we
would welcome Saddam back into the community of civilized
nations if he only agreed to U.N. resolutions providing for
inspections. I think that would be a great mistake. Any
agreement to inspections would be tactical and disingenuous,
and the ticket to civilization should not be as cheap as that.
Needless to say, the return of inspectors would hardly
justify the normalization of relations with a man like Saddam.
In fact, I do not believe we ought to even aspire to normal
relations with a man who rules the way Saddam Hussein rules.
There is nothing wrong with distinguishing between those
national leaders with whom we wish to have normal relations and
those who are beneath that minimal standard.
Beyond the weapons of mass destruction, which I think we
all agree is proceeding to develop, how should we regard the
view that Saddam has been contained all these years during
which we all agree the situation has gotten worse? Well,
containment became a slogan rather than a policy some years
ago. Contained maybe in the sense that Tony Cordesman referred
to.
He has been unable to buy weapons on the scale that he
might have been able to buy weapons otherwise, but there was a
parade, a military parade in Baghdad just a few days ago, and
he demonstrated a thousand tanks, which I think is roughly
double the number he had at the end of Desert Storm, so he has
managed to double his tank force despite the constraints.
Clearly, he would have done more if he had been able to do
more, so in that rather narrow sense you could say that his
military ambitions, at least for conventional forces, has been
contained, but that is about all you can say.
The sanctions I think everyone agrees are not working in
the sense that they have not produced a significant change or,
indeed, any change in Saddam's policy, in his ambition to
acquire weapons of mass destruction, in his defiance of U.N.
resolutions and the United Nations itself. They have been
portrayed as damaging to the people of Iraq. I think everyone
on this panel agrees that the suffering of the Iraqi people is
being inflicted directly by Saddam Hussein himself. The food
that could be dispersed under the existing program is not being
dispersed. The same thing is true of medicine. Money is piling
up in Saddam's bank. He is using the privation of his own
people as a means of propaganda.
Now, the point has been made this morning, and I think the
Secretary of State has been attempting to argue this on his
recent mission abroad, that we should organize the sanctions
differently in order to make them more effective, and one of
the things that he means by that is that smuggling activities
should be legalized. We are not doing a very good job of
controlling drugs, so let us legalize the drugs. That is rather
analogous to that. But there is oil moving through a pipeline
from Syria. That is smuggling, and Saddam has access to the
money, so let us make it legal.
The problem first of all is not money. Saddam has the money
that I believe he needs to do what he is doing clandestinely,
and since nobody envisions allowing him to spend that money
openly on weapons, you have got to ask, what difference is it
going to make to his program if the amount of money available
to him is reduced? It is far from obvious, but the fact is that
putting money into the U.N. program is no guarantee that it is
kept from Saddam.
Saddam has a variety of means that I have not heard
discussed by which he siphons money out of the United Nations
programs. It includes everything from front companies that do
business with the United Nations that are, in fact, Iraqi
proprietary companies, to the standard techniques that are used
all over the world to evade restrictions on capital movements
and the like, where imports are approved by the United Nations,
invoices paid, and significant fractions of the money come back
secretly to the regime.
So Saddam, even within the United Nations program, is able
to acquire all the money that he can usefully spend, in my
view, on his clandestine program to achieve weapons of mass
destruction, so at the end of the day you have to ask yourself,
what is smarter or better about smarter sanctions? They are
weaker sanctions, to be sure. They are intended to reshape
opinion in the Arab world, by which I think we should mean the
street, because Arab leaders are a good deal more sophisticated
than we sometimes give them credit for, and they understand
perfectly well what is going on, but we want to reshape the
image in the street of the United States as punishing the
innocent civilians in Iraq.
Mr. Chairman, I come to the conclusion after all of this
that we do not have an effective policy now. The changes that
are being talked about will be no more effective than we have
had in the past, that we will not be safe from the eventual
development of the means of delivering weapons of mass
destruction against us, against our friends and allies in the
region, against our troops in the field, as long as Saddam
Hussein is in power. The risk will continue until the day he is
removed from office.
Therefore, it seems to me worth concentrating our efforts
on the one policy that could actually work, and that is the
removal of Saddam from power. Now, it is not easy. I concede,
it is not easy, but neither is it reasonable to characterize it
as hopeless.
For one thing, before characterizing any ambitious program,
one ought to look at it carefully, and I have been struck by
how much of the comment about the prospects for success is
based not on any serious study, not on any serious analysis,
not on sitting down with the opposition to Saddam, who are
prepared to risk their lives by returning to Iraq and be
mobilized within Iraq, but on pure assumption, pure
speculation.
I keep hearing about Iraqi opposition sitting around hotels
in Mayfair. Who are we talking about? It is not true. It is
simply false. I spent the last 15 years getting to know the
Iraqi opposition, and when people in the comfort of their homes
and offices in Washington, DC deride the Iraqi opposition for
sitting around hotels in Mayfair, when they have been in Iraq,
when they are eager to return to Iraq, when they have seen
their closest friends and associates and family murdered in
Iraq, seems to me unfair to them and an unreasonable conjecture
about their motives.
So the question remains of their abilities. What can they
do? You know, I suspect if the sort of derision that is heaped
on the opposition today had been around in the early days of
our history, we would still be a British colony. I am sure
there were people who said, those Americans are never going to
get organized. They are divided. The people in Virginia cannot
agree with the people in Massachusetts.
I do not mean to oversimplify this, but the fact is that
when you spend the time to understand the opposition, and when
you look at plausible opposition strategies, the picture that
emerges is very different from the dismissive view that we have
heard out of the Clinton administration for the last 8 years.
It is an opposition that has pulled itself together, that
has a structure within which it meets and takes decisions. It
is an opposition that has made clear its intention to abandon
weapons of mass destruction and embrace democratic principles.
It is an opposition that is eager to return to Iraq and, most
of all, it is an opposition that in the past was able to
organize itself in a major part of the country that was beyond
the control of Saddam Hussein. Over a third of the country was,
until 1996, outside Saddam Hussein's control.
Now, Mort Halperin has repeated the specter that if we want
to do anything at all for the opposition we have to be prepared
to mount a military operation. I think he said it might be less
than Desert Storm, 1/2 million men, and I do not know what
strategy he is looking at, but I can tell you what strategy I
think it makes sense at least to consider, and that is this:
That is, to support the Iraqi opposition, to support the
Iraqi National Congress in reestablishing its presence in parts
of Iraq that are not under Saddam's control. That can be done,
and it can be done quickly. It requires some agreements with
the two Kurdish groups in the north, and it requires some work
in the south, but it can be done quickly. It can be done before
the next hearing of this subcommittee on this subject, of that
I am absolutely certain, and if they cannot do it, then we will
know very quickly that they cannot do it, but I believe they
can.
That political presence is a direct challenge to the
legitimacy of Saddam's rule, and every change in situations
like this begins with that. It happened to Ceaucescu, it
happened to Milosevic, and it will happen here, too. The moment
people see there is an alternative, the moment that that veil
of invincibility is pierced, there is a political dynamic that
takes place, and anyone who has ever run for office knows how
quickly things change, the moment it looks as though you can
stand up and oppose the power that dominates.
So the establishment of a political presence, coupled with
broadcasting and publishing so that Saddam would lose his
monopoly over the flow of information could lead again, as it
did in 1995, in 1996, to a situation in which Saddam would be
politically challenged very fundamentally and, at that point,
if he wished to take military action, he would have to move his
forces in a way that would present us with very attractive
targets.
I have heard it said today that we ought to go after
serious targets. Mort Halperin said we should go after serious
targets. I cannot imagine a more serious target than a column
of tanks attempting to root out dissidents in the south who are
clamoring for a change of regime.
Do we always have to abandon our friends? Of course we do
not. They were abandoned in his administration. He did not have
anything to do with it, I understand that, but there is nothing
inevitable about abandoning your friends and allies, and to say
we will not even try because the last lot did not have the guts
to stick with it seems to me a recipe for defeatism. It is
defeatism.
So I think there is a great deal that can be done with the
opposition. I think those of us who have been privileged to
know the opposition have come to appreciate and understand that
potential.
The Congress clearly has recognized it in the action it has
taken before, and I hope that you will encourage the new
administration to take a new look, to sit down with the
opposition and talk about the ways in which, beginning with the
establishment of a political presence and leading ultimately to
a political challenge to Saddam Hussein, to which, if he makes
a military response, we have available assets in the air to
protect that opposition, I hope you will urge the
administration to consider that course, because none of the
other things that are under consideration, no matter how hard
we try to persuade ourselves about improved sanctions or
smarter sanctions, none of them are going to end the threat
from Saddam Hussein.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Perle follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Richard N. Perle
Mr. Chairman: Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today. I do not have a prepared statement. For the convenience of the
subcommittee I have listed on this page the key issues which, in my
view, must shape any American policy toward Iraq. I will try to cover
each of them in a short opening statement.
1. Does the regime of Saddam Hussein pose a threat to the
interests of the United States and its allies? How does the
magnitude of that threat today compare with what it was a
decade ago at the end of Desert Storm? What about this time two
years ago? How about last year?
2. Does Saddam Hussein now possess weapons of mass
destruction? How much do we know about his programs with
respect to chemical, biological and nuclear weapons? Are any
such programs proceeding?
3. How can we end Saddam's programs to obtain weapons of mass
destruction and the means to deliver them?
4. In the absence of U.N. inspectors, how much can we expect
to learn about these programs?
5. Would a return of U.N. inspectors give us confidence that
Saddam's programs would be terminated and that any weapons of
mass destruction he may now have would be surrendered?
6. Would a return of inspectors justify the normalization of
relations with Saddam?
7. Beyond weapons of mass destruction, what should we think
of the claim that Saddam is ``contained?''
8. Are the present sanctions working? Can they be made more
effective?
9. Can we--should we--rebuild the coalition that opposed
Saddam following the invasion of Kuwait?
10. Can we have confidence in the U.N. administration of
programs affecting Iraq?
11. Can we secure ourselves, our forces in the field and our
friends and allies in the region as long as Saddam is in power?
12. What are the prospects for removing Saddam's regime from
power?
13. How can we work with the INC to bring about a change in
the Iraqi regime?
Senator Brownback. This is an excellent discussion, and a
good starting point. Let us run the clock here 10 minutes, and
then we can bounce back and forth in a couple of rounds.
One of my frustrations with what it seems like has taken
place at least the last 5 years in U.S. policy toward Iraq has
been this lack of resolve, this kind of drift, just, well, we
would like to have him out of there, but we are not really sure
how we would do that, nor are we willing to really take the
steps to get Saddam Hussein out of office.
You each are talking about some different steps, and I
think all of you expressed frustration with where we are today
in our policy toward Saddam Hussein, and I want to use this
policy toward Saddam Hussein rather than Iraq. I think that is
a different issue.
All of you appear to support changing somewhat the rules of
engagement on our air targets, if I am hearing you each
correctly. You are being critical of, or several of you are
being critical of the targeting we have done to date, and all
of you would support a more robust rules of engagement on air,
on our targets for our air, our airplanes and the British
airplanes. Is that a correct reading of each of your positions?
Mr. Cordesman.
Mr. Cordesman. Senator, I think it would not be mine. I
think you have to be very careful about saying rules of
engagement for aircraft. What you would then mean is the daily
aircraft we fly would presumably do even more, every time they
were illuminated, or they saw a movement in ground-based
radars, to engage individual systems or find some daily proxy
to attack. We backed away from that last summer. Let me note
that the rules of engagement have already changed.
But the problem is, these changes do not really do
anything. At the end, virtually the entire Iraq air defense
system remains. Saddam can provoke an attack at the time and
place of his choosing. He can often do it in an area which
produces collateral damage, or serves his own political
purposes.
I think the real issue has to be that if you are going to
attack at all, you must attack with sufficient force so you do
him real damage. That does not mean daily, or new rules of
engagement. It means that you allow a cumulative process of
Iraqi action to buildup. You use this as a reason, and then you
strike to the point where you take out a significant percentage
of his air defense assets, or you strike at your targets like
Republican Guards headquarters. I do not think you can fix any
aspect of the no-fly zone patrols by simply saying, this is
strengthening day-by-day rules of engagement.
Senator Brownback. I do not think I am quarreling with you
on this point. You are saying, though, that we should, when we
respond, respond much stronger and on much clearer, bigger
targets, is that correct?
Mr. Cordesman. Much more selectively and much more rarely.
Go in hard, take the political cost, which is roughly the same
as if you conducted a minor strike, wait, and then hit him
again if he reconstitutes. But, do not do this in some sort of
rigid game where he can pick the way in which we respond and
when we do it.
Senator Kerrey. Mr. Chairman, I think it is extremely
important--and it may be some modification of the no-fly
protocols can be changed, but I think it is extremely important
that we not enter into a process where it basically is the
equivalent of a mission creep.
I think what is needed is not only a fundamental
reassessment, but hopefully a bipartisan declaration from
Congress, and that is why I very much appreciate, Mr. Chairman,
both you and Senator Wellstone have stayed and listened to us
yak on as we have done, because what is needed is a bipartisan
force that says, we want to have the same experience we had
when Kim Dae Jung, Nelson Mandela, Vaclev Havel, and Lech
Walesa came to a joint session of Congress and said, ``thank
you for liberating us.''
All four of them came to the American people and said--and
I agree with what Mort is saying, and I also agree with what
Tony is saying, you cannot do this on the cheap, and if you
just let this creep along because we think, well, we want to
use more force with our pilots, we may lose a few pilots, and
then the American people will say, what is this all about, I
did not realize the mission had changed.
I think it is very important for us to say, we believe in
the liberation of Iraq, and if we believe in the liberation of
Iraq, in my view, our will equals feasibility. I completely
agree with Morton. By the way, it was not just in the Clinton
administration. The first time we called them up to arms was
during the Bush administration, and we did not provide them
with cover, and they died as a consequence.
We call on them to be courageous, and then we do not back
them up, and it happened in two administrations. That cannot be
allowed to happen this time, and I hope that you can get to a
point--I believe that if we recognize the provisional
government and protect that provisional government in the
north, and we lift the sanctions in the area we are protecting,
I have absolutely no doubt that the various factions are going
to be able to work together, that if they will see that the
United States of America is open, sincere, and is going to stay
the course, I have no doubt that our will will equal
feasibility and will produce a liberation, and will produce a
celebration in Baghdad that is comparable to others that we
have celebrated in the latter part of the 20th century.
Dr. Halperin. Let me make two comments. First, I think when
we look at these comparisons we need to understand that this is
a regime that is much more ruthless than the ones that
ultimately we helped to liberate. This is a regime that still
lives on absolute terror, in which there is no space at all for
any kind of not only opposition, but civil society of any kind,
in the areas that Saddam Hussein controls, so I think the
process of getting rid of this kind of regime is very different
than the South African Government that ultimately was displaced
and the Central European Government.
Senator Brownback. What about Milosevic?
Dr. Halperin. Milosevic I think was as dangerous to our
interest, but life in Belgrade under Milosevic was nothing like
life--I mean, there were independent radio stations. They tried
to close them down and they went on the Internet.
Senator Kerrey. That does not tell us anything.
Dr. Halperin. It tells us it is going to be much harder.
Senator Kerrey. But it does not tell us it is not feasible.
The question is, do we want to get the job done, and if we want
to get the job done, it becomes feasible.
Dr. Halperin. I agree.
Senator Brownback. Actually, my point here, and if I could
ask you----
Senator Wellstone. Would you tell this witness here to
please behave himself?
Senator Brownback. It seemed like toward Milosevic we
decided we do not want this guy in power, and that was
projected, and that was projected around the world. It seems
like, toward Saddam Hussein we are kind of going, we do not
like this man in power, but we are not willing to then go ahead
and, OK, here is the steps, then, you take to show the will
that the United States needs to.
Dr. Halperin. I think the rhetoric has been the same about
both of them. I think the difference was, it was a lot easier
to get rid of Milosevic than it is Saddam Hussein, and I think
it comes to the question of military force.
Now, Richard says that if we encourage these areas and the
tanks start moving, that is a very tempting military target,
and one that we can attack. That is true, but I think the
history of air power is that you do not completely stop tank
operations, or other ground operations, with military power.
We saw that with Milosevic. The destruction in Kosovo
continued and was brought to an end only because Milosevic
finally was forced to give up, not because our bombing raids
stopped him from killing people, and I simply do not think we
can count on either the threat of air power or the actual
implementation of air power.
I am not suggesting we not do it. I think we ought to have
that debate, but the debate I think has to accept that if he
moves, we bomb, and if the bombing does not work, we intervene
with ground forces, and that means having the ground forces
there before he moves, because if we wait to start sending in
the ground forces after we discover again that bombing does not
stop tanks, you destroy a lot of tanks but you do not stop them
from killing people, it is going to be too late for the people
who are being killed.
Senator Brownback. I understand, and we have been down that
road before.
Richard.
Mr. Perle. Mort wants smart sanctions, I want smart
weapons. We have both been in the Pentagon, but he was there
before me.
With the really smart weapons we now have the capability,
in situations like the military situation that would exist in
Iraq, to do really quite extraordinary things with air power,
to hit the targets at which we aim almost all the time, and to
do so without significant risk to our own pilots, particularly
in a situation where we control the air, and so there is no
comparison between the air operation that we faced in Kosovo,
in my view, and the kinds of air operations that would be
required in the Iraqi desert, dealing with columns of armor
moving over a very thin road network and through narrow defiles
and passes in the north.
This is ideal territory for air warfare, as we saw during
Desert Storm. You saw the roads and the highways, so the
potential for air power is vastly greater. I am not saying you
will never need any ground force, but we are not talking about
a Desert Storm scale of activity.
Senator Brownback. Senator Wellstone.
Senator Wellstone. Let us continue with this discussion. I
want to get back maybe at the end of my time to sanctions.
Mort, I just want to quote from part of your testimony, then
bounce this off of everyone, starting with you. You say,
``anyone advocating a serious''--and this is the issue we are
focused on--``a serious and determined effort to change this
regime in the short run by a covert force bears a very heavy
burden of demonstrating that such an effort has a real chance
of success without massive American military action.''
Now, for each of you, starting with you, Mort, do you think
that the Iraqi opposition can undertake a major successful
operation without the United States being a part of this, or
being dragged in, or however you want to put it, and do you
think the American people would support such an effort? That
is, I guess, my question initially for each of you.
Dr. Halperin. I do not believe that they could sustain the
safe havens without substantial American military force, and I
guess I am less optimistic than Richard is, that if they were
left in these safe havens, which they occupied, as I said, a
substantial portion of the country earlier on, I do not believe
it has the same kind of impact as we see in political
elections, or even as we saw in politics in Eastern Europe
because of the nature of this regime.
I believe it is a pure totalitarian regime that remains in
power based on the worst kinds of terrorism, and therefore I
think, while a miracle can always happen, that if we go into
this, we have to go into it with the notion that there is going
to have to be a substantial American military involvement, and
that air power alone is not likely to be enough, and whether it
is a smaller land force, as Richard suggests, or a bigger one
that I suggest, at least some of the people in this
administration would want to be sure that it succeeded. I think
we have to assume that.
I would also have to say that while I think one should
never rely entirely on experts, it is not true that this
administration--I mean, the past administration and, I assume,
the one before that, did not look at the hard question of
whether you get rid of Saddam Hussein by supporting the
opposition, and the people who get paid to do that in various
agencies of the government reached the conclusion that you
could not. Now, they may be wrong, but it is not the case that
people just dismissed it without taking a look at it.
Senator Wellstone. The other part of my question for you,
and each of you, is, I asked you whether or not you thought
this could be done without major American involvement, both air
and ground, and you said you would need that. Would you
advocate such a policy?
Dr. Halperin. I do not advocate it, because I think the
cost to the United States and the cost to our relationships
with other countries, and the cost to our ability to use the
Security Council for other purposes, would outweigh the value.
I would like to get rid of this man, but I think that cost is
not worth it.
Senator Wellstone. Senator Kerrey.
Senator Kerrey. I would answer unequivocally yes, it is
worth it. It is worth the price, and by the way, the opposition
forces are not asking for the kind of American intervention
that Mort is advocating. I do think he is quite right that we
have to make certain that we are not going to start and then
stop again. We have to understand, we have got to go the
distance.
Senator Wellstone. But my question was whether or not you
think this opposition can undertake this effort without, in
fact, major involvement by us.
Senator Kerrey. We have a major involvement. Nineteen
Americans were killed at Khobar Towers in June 1996. Why? They
were killed because we are in Saudi Arabia. Why are we in Saudi
Arabia? To contain Iraq.
In 1998, 11 more Americans were killed in West African
Embassies. Why? Because Osama bin Laden wants us out of Saudi
Arabia. And 17 more were killed--what I am saying, Senator, is,
we have a significant military operation in place right now,
and we are taking casualties.
The question is not, are we going to have a military
operation. The question is, what is the mission, what is the
objective, and I am saying with great respect that I believe
the mission should change from containment to replacement to
liberate the people of Iraq, and I believe it is entirely
feasible for us to do it, and I think the payoff is enormous,
20 million people of Iraq liberated.
Senator Wellstone. So your position is, you go from
containment to replacement, and it would be Iraqi opposition
forces, but it would also necessitate major involvement by us
militarily, and we should do that? I am just trying to be
clear.
Senator Kerrey. I think it would take a continuation of
military involvement. It is not new military involvement. The
point I am making is, we are taking casualties today, Senator.
We have at least--we have several hundred million dollars of
expenditures right now on the line to try to contain, so I am
saying it is a false choice to say that what I am talking about
to liberate Iraq would require new military operation. It would
require a different kind of planning and a different military
operation than the one we have right now, but it is not a
military operation versus none today.
Senator Wellstone. You know how you can do this--the last
word I get and that is not fair to you, and then move on to
others, but just so you respond to this, and then I promise to
move on, but really, it certainly--I mean, if we are talking
about air strikes and ground troops, that seems to me to be
rather different. Yes, we have a military presence. This seems
to be a rather different order from where we are right now,
yes?
Senator Kerrey. It certainly--if you say that my current
mission is to contain, we have taken 47 casualties and we have
spent several billion dollars in order to contain over the last
10 years and, as Tony says, we have gotten benefit out of it,
and if you want to liberate, it is going to take a different
military operation than the one we have in place right now.
But Senator, if we end up with a bipartisan effort coming
out of Congress, go to the opposition and ask them, what is the
definition of will? What is the definition of what they want
out of the American people?
They will not say that they need a massive military
intervention in order to be able to carry this off. They are
asking for much different. They are asking for recognition of a
provisional government. They are asking that we protect that
provisional government in the north. They are asking we lift
the sanctions in those liberated areas, and they believe, and
in fact they came relatively close in the past once before
during the Clinton administration, when we pulled back. We did
not provide the follow-on support because of the very reason
you are saying.
Mr. Perle. Senator, I do not want to propel us into an
argument about the advice that led to the policies of the past,
but let me just say that one of the documents that purports to
be definitive with respect to the quality of the opposition,
prepared by an organization I will not identify, is short on
facts, but one of the facts it purports to relate to the reader
is that the head of the Iraqi National Congress travels with 26
bodyguards.
Now, he happens to be in the room, and he is surrounded by
no bodyguards at all. That is the quality of the expert advice
that we have been given for years, and if this committee wants
a really interesting and challenging assignment, it would be to
review the last 30 years of expert advice on the gulf from the
institutions on which we have come to rely.
There is some history here, and the history important. In
1995, the Iraqi opposition in the north of Iraq planned a
military operation from which United States support was
withdrawn at the last minute. They thought it was too late to
terminate the operation altogether, and it was initiated. It
resulted very quickly in the destruction of two Iraqi
divisions. This was with very little support from the United
States, and none at all at the crucial moment.
In 1996, when Saddam Hussein moved into the north, only
after securing the agreement of one of the Kurdish factions,
and without that agreement they could not have moved unopposed
into the north, when Saddam Hussein did that, he did it because
the defections from his own military forces were mounting in
such numbers that he understood he had to act.
Now, unhappily, at that moment we did not have the will, we
did not have the resolve, we did not have the determination to
exercise the air power we had which in modest application would
have, I believe would have ended Saddam's regime then and
there.
This is not as daunting a prospect as people say it is, and
it is true Saddam is brutal beyond imagination. It is also true
that men who rule like that earn enemies in the millions, and
when things begin to turn, they can and do turn very fast.
This war, if it happens, this liberation of Iraq, if it
happens, will be conducted principally by Iraqis both from the
armed forces joining the political opposition in the north and
south, with a little bit of help from American air power.
Senator Wellstone. Thank you very much.
Mr. Cordesman.
Mr. Cordesman. The problem is that we often end up
attacking the opposition when we should be noting that Saddam
is a strong and competent tyranny with a core of very effective
military forces which are heavy, well-armored, which have
fought well against much better organized opponents at the
regional level.
I think we sometimes forget how different the gulf war was
relative to what happened in the Iran-Iraq war. Because of
that, I do not believe that you can create an effective
military opposition without massive American participation. I
think you would have to have forces based in Turkey and
defensive forces in terms of their ability to operate really
out of Saudi Arabia. Kuwait does not have the basing capability
that would approach several wings.
You would need a massive battle management support. It
would not be an extension of what exists today in the no-fly
zones. You would have to be prepared, frankly, to deal with the
consequences of what happens if the opposition should lose, and
I strongly suspect they would lose. I have heard many reports
of defections and weaknesses and assassination attempts and
coup d'etat attempts, and I have listed quite a number of them
in my books, but the fact is, he is still there, and at least
some of those coup d'etat attempts never happened.
The other thing that we have not talked about and has to be
borne in mind is, are we really talking about unilateral war?
Are we going to bring Turkey along into this equation? Is Saudi
Arabia going to play, in spite of its stated fear of division?
What is Kuwait really going to do?
The last time I was in Kuwait talking to the opposition--
and I am afraid the history of that conference was not a happy
one--I was talking to someone who claimed to be a commander in
the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. In
listening to his call for American air support--and coming from
an Iranian-backed opposition this was interesting--it was quite
clear he may have been well able to launch small attacks inside
southern Iraq, and carry out pinprick attacks on the regime.
But, he had absolutely no idea whatsoever about what it meant
to actually confront a modern force and to deal with air power.
And let me note, there has to be an aftermath to military
action. We have found out the hard way that unless you have an
almost unified opposition arise, you have a massive exercise in
nation-building, so when you begin with the military dimension
you had better be prepared to go on with all of the economic
and other aid required, something we have not done in Bosnia,
and something we certainly have not done in Kosovo, and if we
are going to set a precedent, so be it, but it will be the
first one.
Senator Brownback. It is troubling to me that we are
sitting here saying, I wish we could do this, I wish we had
done that, but if we continue on the current course we are on
right now, if we go into smart sanctions, which a couple of you
have noted you deem as a start toward no sanctions, toward just
loosening up what is taking place, we are further eroding the
sort of resolve, and we are probably just a few more years down
the road from just saying, oh, what the heck, let us just kind
of dribble out of the region and Saddam stays, which is what I
think most of our Arab allies in the region have concluded is
actually what is going to take place anyway.
U.S. resolve loosens, weakens over time, we are here in the
neighborhood, we have to take the brunt of any fight, and if
you guys are not going to show resolve with this, then we are
certainly not going to poke a stick into Saddam Hussein's eye.
That is why I think right now is really such a key time for
us. We have got a new administration, and one that has to make
this choice, and I think the choice they make now determines
where things end up within a couple of years, and we could make
choices now on policy toward Iraq, U.S. policy toward Iraq that
may take a couple of years in their implementation to be
successful, but they could ultimately, I believe, put us in a
position where Saddam is out of there.
It is not a 6-month strategy. I think it is a multiple-year
strategy, but it is one of those forks in the road where, OK,
we are going to take a much more aggressive, robust position
now, knowing that it is not going to produce the solution we
want in 6 months, but it will, we hope, in 3 years, or we could
stay on this one we are on right now which just kind of
dribbles down until we get occupied with something else, and
eventually we start pulling people, aircraft out of Saudi
Arabia and we start focusing in different areas, and we just do
not go anywhere further forward.
I would hope all of you would actually work with us at this
point that we take the more robust approach now, where we have
a new administration in, and that we would all conclude
together, as we, I believe, have at the panel, that Saddam
Hussein is the problem, the regime that is currently in control
is the problem, and now is the time for us to take a different
approach.
I would welcome your input at our offices, I am certain
that Paul would as well, of what that different approach would
be, but more importantly input toward the administration of
saying, we will need to come together on this as a country if
we are going to implement this policy.
And I think, Dr. Halperin, what you note is correct, there
are costs associated with this, or difficulties associated with
this. I think long term there are far more difficulties
associated with the route we are currently on than picking a
new one, that we can fill a cavity now or we can pull a tooth
later, that this is the time to act and it will be much less
costly on that.
That will be my final comment. I do not know, Paul, if you
had anything further you wanted to add, or the witnesses would
care to state.
Dr. Halperin. Senator, I agree with you that we cannot
afford to continue to drift. I think there are two disastrous
policies. One is to continue to drift, and the other is to
start support for the opposition that we are not prepared to
carry forward, but I think there are two real policies, one is
the one of deciding we are going to get rid of him and support
the opposition to the degree that that is necessary. I do not
see how you do that over 3 years, because I do not think this
can be a slow process.
Richard is right, you have got to do something decisive and
be prepared to back it up. I do not see a sort of gradualism
here that does any good, but I do think there is an
alternative.
I do not believe that moving to a different set of
sanctions of the kind that I have outlined inevitably means we
are getting out. What I think it means is that we establish
something that is permanent and something that will have the
necessary support both in the region and with the U.N. Security
Council, not to stop everything, but to put Saddam Hussein in a
position where he cannot engage in conventional military
operations either in his country or beyond it, and where his
ability to expand his weapons of mass destruction program is
not eliminated, but contained, and that we then confront them
with a classic containment situation, which I think we could
sustain as long as we have to.
I think, in other words, we can go to a new form of
containment which is sustainable.
Senator Wellstone. Mort, I gather that--and I do not want
to take time away from Secretary Perle or Mr. Cordesman, but I
gather in some ways what you just said goes back to the
distinction that Senator Kerrey was trying to draw between
containment--you are talking about a different policy of
containment. You do not want to go with drift versus what he
called replacement, am I correct?
You are saying, as unhappy a prospect as it is, the
containment, a different kind of containment is a policy that
you think is workable and sustainable, and I think Secretary
Perle has a different--I mean, let me try and just take 5 more
minutes and draw out your perspective. I do not want to
preclude you.
Mr. Perle. I think the distinctions will be lost on most
observers between containment and containment mark 2. It is
bound to be viewed----
Senator Wellstone. I knew he would say something like that,
Mort.
Mr. Perle. We may not be as far apart as Mort thinks. I
think Mort has not looked at--and correct me if I am wrong--at
ways in which a policy of support to the opposition could
entail containment of risk, so that one would begin--I mean,
Mort referred to arming the opposition. He did not hear
anything about arming the opposition from me, that the usual
perception is we are going to start issuing weapons to the
opposition and invite them to march toward Baghdad. That
certainly is not my concept. It is not General Downing's
concept. It is not the concept of the opposition figures that I
have consulted with.
Our views differ, but my own view is that you start with a
return of the opposition to the north, to the north and parts
of the south that are not under Saddam's control. I do not
think there is a lot he can do about that in the near term, and
he might not even be motivated to do a lot about it in the near
term.
As they begin to gather political strength, eventually they
become a political challenge of some importance. We could talk
then about what you would need in terms of military resources
from outside and from inside, and what you could expect to get
from defections from the Iraqi forces, what might even be
there, latent now, underground because there is no external
support of any kind, not even financial external support, but I
think you could contain the risk in the sense that if the
political operation did not appear to be succeeding, then you
would not necessarily take the next step.
One of the things that I think has discouraged people from
looking at options in this area is the sense that a decision to
support an opposition strategy is the decision to launch an
attack against Baghdad, and that looks pretty daunting under
current circumstances. I certainly would not recommend that.
But the opposition themselves are prepared to risk their
lives. They make judgments, have to make judgments every day
about how much protection they require and how much risk they
are prepared to take, and they believe there are feasible
options in which they can engage, and I think we do not have to
accept a 2 or 3-year scenario to take those first steps.
Senator Wellstone. You know, Mr. Chairman, I want to hear
from Mr. Cordesman before we finish, but I was thinking about
this testimony, which I think has been very important, but it
is not as important as it should be if it is just a hearing and
that is it.
One of the things we might do, because we have been apart
on this, is we might--the staffs get together and see exactly
what area of common ground we have. We should go through the
same exercise as this discussion, and I will tell you, this
committee, I think we should.
The other thing is, I really believe we should, this
committee, we should put together a whole set of hearings on
this issue, the whole question.
Mr. Cordesman started out earlier saying ``I do not think
you can decontextualize this from what is happening with Israel
and in the Middle East, and what was once the peace process,
and where are we heading.'' I think we ought to do a whole set
of hearings and just stay with it, and I am committed to doing
that, and we could work together on it. I think it is really
important to do.
By the way, I would like to thank all of you in advance.
Thank you.
Mr. Cordesman. Senator, a very few quick points. One thing
I think we all agree on is that people really need to
understand that smart sanctions will at best only work if you
have strong and decisive military containment. Strong and
decisive military containment means military action, and the
willingness and demonstrated ability to protect Kuwait, the
Kurds, and halt any major deployment of weapons of mass
destruction.
If we do not have that commitment, smart sanctions are,
indeed, a road to no sanctions. I do not believe the Bush
administration would make that choice, but it is a point to
remember.
I do not believe the opposition today can be made strong or
popular enough to overthrow Saddam. I do not necessarily
disagree with what Richard has said, but any effort to support
the opposition has to be very well contained, without military
adventures, without creating the equivalent of a Bay of Pigs. I
do not believe you can create a Contra movement, which was not
universally popular, as I remember it, in Congress on a
bipartisan basis.
But more than that, we have forgotten the fact we cannot
act in a vacuum. This is not some game board. What about
Turkey? What about Saudi Arabia? What about Jordan? What about
Syria? What kind of structure of alliances does it take to
really make this work, as distinguished from having Saddam use
it to discredit the opposition as tools of America, and use it
to gain popularity in the Arab world, and you had better answer
all of those questions before you start anything that you may
not be able to finish.
Senator Brownback. Thank you. That is all well-put. We will
work together, and let us see if there are things we cannot
come up with together. I do not detect the disagreements that I
guess I thought I would coming in here. Maybe there is on
tactics or thoughtfulness, maybe, of when you go in you cannot
move one piece of this chessboard without impacting four or
five other chess games you have got going on at the same time,
and those have to all be considered.
It has been an excellent discussion, particularly at an
important time for the country, and in looking at a new policy
position here. We appreciate very much your attendance.
The record will remain open for the requisite number of
days to make changes, if you desire, in your testimony. Thank
you very much. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:15 p.m., the subcommittee adjourned.]
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