President Bush's instruction to the CIA to kill or capture Saddam Hussein defies previous presidential orders banning the assassination of foreign leaders. It can also be seen as another bewildering turn in American policy towards Iraq. Policy has been characterised by drift, inconsistency and a marked indifference to the suffering of Iraqis. Bush may be determined that Saddam "needs to go," but the US record does not augur well.
The CIA is all but starting from scratch in Iraq. In 1995, President Clinton ensured the defeat of a planned uprising by announcing the withdrawal of US support on its very eve. Many of the CIA's assets were murdered. Since the departure of the UN weapons inspectorate in 1998, the sole source of information about what is happening on the ground and in Saddam's regime has been the Iraqi National Congress, a dissident group led by Dr Ahmad Chalabi in London.
The INC has helped arrange the defection of a stream of high-ranking members of the regime who have brought out crucial information. These include Adnan Saeed al-Haideri, a specialist building contractor who had documents to back his story of how his firm had built new chemical and biological weapons facilities, and Abu Zeinab al-Qurairy, an Iraqi intelligence brigadier-general, who in three days of interviews with us in Beirut, cheerfully confessed to directing massacres, torture, extra-judicial imprisonment and a training camp for terrorists near Baghdad.
The INC maintains contact through encrypted emails and satellite phones with a network of agents inside Iraq, some of whom have access to political and military secrets. The INC has the wherewithal to ask specific questions of its agents in the field and to provide swift, accurate answers.
This is an invaluable asset in planning insurgency and the administration could be expected to seek to boost the INC's information-gathering role. Unsurprisingly, given the US record in Iraq, it is trying to close it down.
The INC depends for its funding on money voted in 1998 by Congress. The purse strings are held by the State Department. Last week, driven by bitter rivalry within the US government, officials gave Dr Chalabi an ultimatum: all funding would be withdrawn unless the INC agreed to cease its information-collection programme permanently. Chalabi refused, saying the INC would be "disembowelled" and reduced to exactly the vapid, exile talking shops its Washington critics have long claimed it to be.
What makes this so hard to understand is that the US has few real alternatives on the ground in Iraq. During the past decade there has been only sporadic CIA representation in the north-east, where for a time the INC operated with the cooperation of one of the warring Kurdish factions.
Bob Baer, a former CIA officer, has described in his recent book, See No Evil, how his attempt to orchestrate armed opposition against Saddam during the mid-90s was frustrated by mixed messages from the State Department and ended when he was hauled back to Washington and investigated by the FBI on a charge of conspiracy to murder Saddam Hussein.
After the covert attempts on Fidel Castro's life in the 60s and many similar operations all over the world, the US was trying to clean up its act, at least for public consumption. Today America is shamelessly having it both ways, to the point where a Democrat such as Dick Gephardt can insist that the no-assassination policy is intact.
That is precisely the kind of confused double-think which left so many Iraqis stranded during two uprisings against Saddam and which must make them doubt Bush's word now. The defector Abu Zeinab testified that Saddam waited to see if the US would intervene with airpower in support of the insurgents in 1991. When this failed to materialise the regime took it as a sign that it could suppress the uprising with all necessary force. Tens of thousands of people were killed.
Cutting off the INC's money is a sign of the State Department's wariness of the INC's pro-democracy agenda. Since the 1995 debacle, the chief market for INC intelligence has not been the CIA, which works closely with the State Department, but the defence intelligence agency, which is run by the much more hawkish Pentagon and places a high value on information concerning the manufacture and movement of weaponry. It is this intelligence which has been used to press Bush to take action against Saddam.
Much of American foreign policy seems to owe its genesis to a turf war inside the Beltway, which is at least as complicated as anything in the Middle East. But with so much at stake in Iraq and the Middle East, it is disastrous that America appears unable to elaborate a coherent policy which goes beyond the excited rhetoric of smart bombs and covert action.
posted on June 18, 2002 11:15:07 AM new
Saddam has been on the hit list for years and nobody's been able to catch him. What makes him think he can catch him now?
posted on June 18, 2002 12:16:35 PM new
Linda, The title of this thread is Bush Tries to Kidnap Sadam Hussein. If you want to discuss other presidents, go right ahead.
posted on June 18, 2002 02:54:58 PM new
It is important to note that America has failed the Iraqii people on many occasions. We have done more to wipe out the populations over there than disease or poverty ever could. That while many of the Iraqii people hate Sadaam and his evils, they surely have no love for us.
And why not? They have been betrayed over and over again by the USA. One President after another since Iraq and Iran made peace with each other has done some betrayal, and along the way, is the real culprit for the mass murders of many tens of thousands of people there.
The Iraqi people Hate us and don't trust us a bit - get over it! They DON'T see Bush as a great Hero about to come rescue them, but as a Western-style Dictator to replace the Dictator that they already have. If we go into that country, I think that the Iraqi people would rally to the side of Sadaam, rather than have us breath a single breath of Iraqi air or feel a single footstep of Iraq soil beneath our feet.
And Bush doesn't "get it."
There won't be the remnants of a people who have been brutilized by a government made up of foreign powers and that they are glad to help us out to take them out. Nope. Some may cooperate with us, but it will be few and the chances are that if Sadaam is removed, a hard-line Islamic government is certain to take his place - not a USA puppet ruler like Bush envisions.
So, when we go into conflict with Iraq in the new year just ahead, keep in mind these things when you see reporters showing grateful Iraqiis who Love the USA as their Heros!
posted on June 18, 2002 04:00:59 PM new
I was wondering how the Iraqis feel about the U.S.'s plan. Don't they hate the U.S. because they've been taught to Borillar? I'm sure if they felt safe to speak freely, not many of them wouldn't wish Saddam dead.
So.... that's Osama & Saddam....any bets on the year one of them might be caught?
posted on June 18, 2002 06:01:36 PM new
Guys you have to admit Nixon was funny. remember him standing there with jowls shaking ohhhhh there have been some people calling the President of the United States a Crook! Welllll I want you to know the President is not a Crook ! I mean there he was all of the kids were laughing and pointing at the tv my parents were looking at the thing the way sargent carter looked at gomer pyle. Where are we ever going to get entertainment like that ? and he wasn't guilty of half of what these last three goofballs are guilty of.
and where are we ever going to find a guy with hair like that My god, Clinton looks like he was blow dried out in frisco and bush looks like someone ran a mower over a bowl on his head. and what the hell for a while there Gore looked like he was mutating into Riker.
posted on June 18, 2002 06:42:01 PM new
Yes that beard did not work. Gore should have DONE something during those eight years; instead he looked like a weak sister that allowed Bush to steal the election. But martial law is doubtful as Bush barely has a mandate.
Interesting how things turned out. I expected Bush to gut the economy (and he started to), but instead we get Enron and 9-11. Bush is no leader. I don't know what I might do if I hear "the cause is just" again.
Bush has also made it unpatriotic to criticize him.
That's an unfair statement as most people feel it is wrong to criticize ANY president during war, and that was the mood after the World Trade Center attack. When American servicemen are in harm's way there is the morale of our troops to consider and a lot of people are sensitive to that.
Really I don't see how Bush could have handled it differently, and if he's trying to grab power now that's no big surprise. But he can't get around Congress. There's Enron to consider and that will keep Bush in line. There's a lot more to fear from nuclear proliferation. I believe the solution is not to wait until WW3 comes home to the U.S.
There is a limit to how far Bush can extend his powers. For example, I read today about Homeland Security and increased drug searches on public buses. That is an abuse of power. It really has nothing to do with terrorism.
The order to capture Saddam makes sense and I hope they actually DO take him out, and parade his head around on a stick so everyone can see.
posted on June 18, 2002 07:42:45 PM new
The danger in going after foreign leaders is that turn-about is fair play.
It has always been acknowledged that it is not impossible to kill the President - just almost impossible to do it AND escape. Now we are dealing with people that don't CARE if they escape. They fly planes into buildings and blow themselves up on buses.
How would you like to have the Secret Services job of keeping him safe against THAT?
posted on June 18, 2002 11:06:26 PM newThat's an unfair statement as most people feel it is wrong to criticize ANY president during war, and that was the mood after the World Trade Center attack. When American servicemen are in harm's way there is the morale of our troops to consider and a lot of people are sensitive to that.
Agreed. An appearance of 'united we stand' against those who wish to destroy our country. And support for our troops who are there to defend and protect.
