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A L S O+T O D A Y
Life of the party? Clinton tries to carry on...and on A plague on all their houses The war at home? Going through the motions Home for Ramadan? And now, back to impeachment House of adulterers Rep. Bob Livingston's remarks T A B L E+T A L K Do you agree or disagree with President Clinton's decision to bomb Iraq? Join the debate in Table Talk's International Issues area
R E C E N T L Y The few, the proud, the relieved Baghdad bombing: The right move, the wrong time Reaping the whirlwind The whole world is watching -- again Peace, the movie - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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THE IMPEACHMENT WAR: WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON? | PAGE 1, 2
James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute, the political and policy arm of the Arab-American community We oppose the bombing. Sanctions have gone on now for eight years and the Iraqi people have paid the price but their regime has not. The bombing is not designed to create positive change in the country, but to inflict more punishment. I do not support the Iraqi regime, but periodic bombing or sanctions do not constitute a real policy of change -- it perpetuates the policy of punishing the people. The United States and Britain have broken from the world consensus. We stand today virtually alone. I'm terribly distressed that the president, having gained so much in the way of credibility, public acceptance and support for his leadership after his speech in Gaza, has squandered that only two days later by bombing Iraq. I spoke to someone in West Bank who said how tragic it is that two days ago people were waving American flags and today some are burning them. We've asked for a policy of engagement with the people of Iraq that delinks economic from military sanctions. People do not rise up and rebel when they are in despair and starving. We've never seen that happen anywhere else in the world. We've only seen change when they can feed their children and have a modest standard of living. Even though they mouth concern all the time, I don't think anyone cares about the people of Iraq. There are some real dangers ahead. By isolating ourselves from our allies -- the Russians and the Chinese -- we run the risk of reigniting a conflict from which we have just escaped. The most dangerous country in the world is not Iraq -- it's the country that still has tens of thousands of nuclear warheads. More of an effort to achieve consensus with Russia is absolutely essential if we're to have successful foreign policy. We have inflamed nationalist passions and created a situation where they feel terribly alienated from us. Jonathan B. Tucker, former United Nations weapons inspector and current director of the Chemical and Biological
Weapons Nonproliferation Project at the Monterey Institute's Center for
Nonproliferation Studies
There were no good options in this situation and the bombing was probably justified, but it remains to be seen whether the benefits will outweigh the costs. A key variable will be the number of casualties -- if the costs to the Iraqi people are very high, it would be a major setback for U.S. policy in the Middle East. As long as Saddam Hussein or someone like him is in power, there will be continual conflict with Iraq. [Saddam] no longer has any reason to cooperate with the United States, and the U.S. government has written off reinitiating United Nations weapons inspections after the military action. There definitely will be costs -- particularly in our ability to continue the monitoring and verification of dual-capable facilities in Iraq, something that UNSCOM was doing effectively. There were two inspection regimes in Iraq. In the so-called surprise inspections, they were trying to find concealed weapons and documents. But whenever they had a hot lead, there was no way the Iraqis were going to let them in and find a smoking gun, so they would just destroy the evidence or prevent them from getting into the facility. That became a stalemate. Less well known is that the inspectors were also monitoring a number of dual-capable facilities throughout the country potentially capable of producing chemical and biological weapons but also engaged in legitimate activities. Some of these plants were involved in legitimate activities, like producing vaccines, but could be converted within a matter of days or weeks to the production of anthrax or other biological weapons. The same fermentation tanks used to make vaccines against anthrax could be used to grow anthrax as a weapon. It wouldn't be ethical for the United States to bomb all of the vaccine plants in Iraq and deprive Iraqi children of vaccines. But as long as dual-use facilities exist in Iraq it will have the capability to produce these weapons. How long could ongoing monitoring and verification have lasted? The United States made the calculation that Saddam was not going to permit that to happen in perpetuity and they thought the costs of military action were outweighed by the potential benefits. Without UNSCOM, we will now be dependent on limited intelligence. You can't determine from the air or from a satellite image whether a vaccine plant is producing anthrax or a legitimate vaccine. You have to have some way of looking at that facility and getting on site. We must rely on human agents and defectors, but that is unsystematic and fortuitous, and it will be impossible to sustain coverage of these facilities.
It's very unfortunate, but the attack was probably inevitable. I don't have great expectations that it will enable us to fulfill the UNSCOM mission. It's really important to observe connections between what is happening in Iraq and a number of other challenges to nonproliferation. To not have acted would have undermined the nonproliferation regime. Both national governments and international organizations must fulfill their nonproliferation obligations -- fulfill U.N. Security Council Resolution 687, respond in South Asia to the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests and proliferation developments on the Korean Peninsula, address the challenge posed by the difficult economic situation in Russia and observe disarmament obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty. The nonproliferation regime is under siege and it was necessary for the credibility of the United Nations, UNSCOM and the United States to respond to Iraq's clear violations of U.N. Security Council agreements. I'm not very optimistic that we're going to be able to substantially degrade Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. UNSCOM has worked very hard over the past seven years with some success, but there are many unanswered questions. After our inability over many years to eradicate weapons of mass destruction on the ground, it would be presumptuous to assume we could do so in a few days of missile strikes. Saddam Hussein has demonstrated -- both by his tremendous investment in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program and neglecting his own populace by foregoing oil sales he could have had if he had cooperated with the United Nations and UNSCOM -- that he's prepared to do anything to maintain an active weapons program. It will be exceptionally difficult to make a dent in his program, certainly to eradicate it, short of a much more massive military action, which the United States is unprepared to undertake. It's not just about weapons, there's also a human dimension here: There are personnel, scientists and engineers who remain in Iraq and retain the technical know-how to, in a short period of time, reconstitute their program. The military action is designed to make that reconstitution effort more difficult. This has been targeted not just at weapons or military sites but also those security sites that provide support for Saddam. It is very important for the United States to invest more in multilateral diplomacy -- at a minimum that means paying our U.N. dues. It's difficult to make a case for broader support of the United Nations when the U.S. is delinquent. It also means recognizing that nuclear weapons states, including the United States, have nonproliferation obligations that they have not adequately filled. An unfortunate side development is the erosion of what had
been very close U.S.-Russian cooperation for nuclear nonproliferation. In
part because of economic difficulties Russia has been experiencing, they
have been increasingly inclined to put shorter term economic
considerations above longer-term nonproliferation objectives.
Lori Leibovich and Daryl Lindsey conducted the interviews for this story.
The
few, the proud, the relieved President Clinton risked a revolt
within the military if he pulled back from the brink with Iraq once
again.
Baghdad bombing: The right move, the wrong time A foreign
policy expert says Clinton should have struck Baghdad sooner -- and
argues that U.S. sanctions should be lifted.
Reaping the whirlwind Clinton's move against Iraq raises the
stakes for both parties in the impeachment debate.
Toppling
Saddam Clinton wants a new government in Baghdad, but he and the
Iraqi opposition are unlikely to be up to the task.
Target:
Saddam The goal is to bring him down this time, says David Kay, who
led the first U.N. inspection team in Iraq.
Did
Bill wag the dog? After Clinton called out the warplanes (in
Afghanistan and Sudan) Beltway skeptics said they'd already seen the
movie. "Worse than
useless" The life of a weapons inspector was hard enough. Kofi Annan
has now made it impossible. |
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