The central focus of Iraq News is the tension between the considerable, proscribed WMD capabilities that Iraq is holding on to and its increasing stridency that it has complied with UNSCR 687 and it is time to lift sanctions. If you wish to receive Iraq News by email, a service which includes full-text of news reports not archived here, send your request to Laurie Mylroie .
I. WASH TIMES EDITORS, ENDORSE CONGRESS ON IRAQ, AUG 16 II. ALEXANDER ROSE, NAT'L POST (CANADA), OVERTHROW SADDAM, AUG 19 III. US POLICY ON IRAQ IN DISARRAY, WSJ, AUG 27 IV. UN PRESSURE TO EASE IRAQI IMPORTS, AP, AUG 27 The Jerusalem Post, Aug 17, interviewed Newt Gingrich and reported that he "believes Iraq's Saddam Hussein is the most potent threat to the world today." Gingrich said, "In the case of Iraq, frankly, President Clinton should read his own speeches and [Defense] Secretary Cohen his own testimony and take whatever steps are necessary to stop Saddam Hussein from getting weapons of mass destruction. The clear goal should be replacing the regime, because as long as Saddam is there, none of us will be safe. This is a man who has shown that he is willing to starve his own people in order to hoard money to buy exotic military equipment which is only useful if you are going to be an adventurer--[equipment] that makes no sense for defensive purposes. . . If Kosovo mattered to the US, Saddam matters, literally, a thousand times as much. . . . Churchill began his History of the Second World War with a chapter entitled, "The Years the Locusts Had Eaten." We are watching Saddam eat the years while the West is confused. The president has to bear the largest responsibility for that, and I don't mean that as a partisan statement. But it is tragic--the gap between his and Cohen's absolutely correct statements and the tiny, confused effort the most powerful nation in the world has made. You measure that compared to Kosovo and it is an absolute American failure of leadership." The Wash Times editors, Aug 16, endorsed the bipartisan Congressional leadership's Aug 11 letter to Clinton on Iraq, noting, "Last October, the Clinton administration signed onto the Iraq Liberation Act. Furthermore, the president promised Nov, 15 to work with Congress to achieve Saddam Hussein's demise." The Forward, Aug 20, reprinted the Congressional letter almost in its entirety. Alexander Rose, in Canada's National Post, Aug 19, took issue with those who argued for lifting sanctions following the Aug 12 UNICEF report on the rise in child mortality in Iraq since 1991, which also included the information that child mortality in Iraqi Kurdistan declined in the same period. Rose wrote, "It is sometimes forgotten that Iraq, though severely wounded during Desert Storm, is still armed to the teeth and remains the most menacing state in the Gulf. . . . Saddam Hussein will blow his petrodollars on buying modern arms from the Russians to replace his ageing stock in the absence of sanctions. . . . The only way to lift sanctions and help the Iraqi people simultaneously is for the West and its allies in the main democratic opposition organization, the Iraq National Congress (INC,) to overthrow Saddam Hussein and destroy his whole apparatus of tyranny." The WSJ, Aug 27, asked, "Has the US lost its way in Iraq?" The WSJ report seemed to suggest the administration now considers UNSCOM, or a revived UNSCOM, more trouble than it is worth. Regarding the several UNSC draft resolutions to return weapons inspectors to Iraq (the resolutions are posted at http://www.cns.miis.edu ), the WSJ reported, "Oddly, the US fears it could lose more than it gains from the U.N. effort. 'What the administration wants above all is to keep Saddam weak and off balance,' says Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 'A U.N. resolution now could easily backfire and strengthen Saddam's position in many ways.' . . . 'Our worst nightmare is an inspection regime that allows Iraq to interfere and delay, just as it has done for years, but that also loosens the sanctions and rewards Saddam for his trickery,' says one senior administration official. . . . Meanwhile, US officials say they have no firm proof that Saddam Hussein is trying to rebuild his stash of chemical or biological weapons." But a well-informed reader told "Iraq News" that Baghdad is presently seeking to import a number of "very mischievous" dual use items through the UN Sanctions Committee. For example, Iraq has asked to import a stainless steel tank for food production. Yet the specifications for the equipment suggest another intent: double-walled jackets, stirring motors, and temperature controls. That is not a food storage tank--it is a BW fermenter. Thus, it looks very much like Iraq is misstating the end-use of equipment it seeks to import under UNSCR 986. And such suspicious requests have risen with the absence of UNSCOM/the IAEA from Iraq. That might be taken as a somewhat alarming indication of Saddam's intentions. So what is the response? As AP, Aug 27, reported, "The United States is coming under increasing pressure to allow more goods into Iraq, not only from Baghdad, but from top UN officials and Security Council members as well." I. WASH TIMES EDITORS, ENDORSE CONGRESS ON IRAQ August 16, 1999 Washington Times Don't Ignore Iraq Lead Editorial While the attention of the State and Defense departments has been focused on Kosovo since our glorious war this spring, a remarkable silence has descended on another front--Iraq. Not so long ago, toppling Saddam Hussein and eliminating his weapons of mass destruction was a national security priority to the point of obsession. Now, we hear nary a peep about the Middle East dictator and his dark plots. This is all the more remarkable given that last October, the Clinton administration signed onto the Iraq Liberation Act. Furthermore, the president promised Nov 15 to work with Congress to achieve Saddam Hussein's demise, finishing the unfinished business of the Gulf War. It all sounded quite promising. Then, of course, we had the bombing of Iraq on the eve of the House impeachment vote. Operation Desert Fox, as it was called, was a worthy military action, though the timing was extraordinary and highly suspect. It effectively ended any Iraqi cooperation with the U.N. arms inspections regime, which is now a thing of the past. Whatever else one might think of our policy at the time, at least someone was paying attention to the problem. Since the beginning of this year, however, Iraq has fallen off the political radar. Preoccupied with bringing another dictator to heel, this time in the Balkans, the administration has clearly allowed our poli-cy to drift even further out to sea. Rather startlingly, an article in Friday's New York Times put the number of American and British missile strikes against Iraqi targets over the past eight months at a stunning 1,100 and reports that pilots have flown two-thirds of the number of sorties flown in the Kosovo war to much greater fanfare. It could, of course, be that the bombing raids are no more successful than they were in destroying the Serbian army and that this accounts for the lack of publicity. At least, it seems that the Iraqis are shooting back at our planes undaunted by return fire. On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of prominent senators, including Majority Leader Trent Lott, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Jesse Helms, Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Sen. Bob Kerrey, dispatched a letter to President Clinton to confront him about the drift in U.S. policy towards Iraq. "In particular we are dismayed by the following," the senators wrote: · "International Inspections no longer constrain Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs . . . . there is considerable evidence that Iraq continues to seek to develop and acquire weapons of mass destruction. The whole point of Operation Desert was that we could not wait until Saddam reconstituted his WMD capabilities." · "The Administration is not giving the Iraqi opposition the political support it needs to seriously challenge Saddam. While Administration spokesmen sometimes have expressed support for the Iraq Liberation Act, all too often they have distanced themselves from, if not ridiculed, the policy you endorsed on Nov. 15th." · "The Administration is not giving the Iraqi opposition the material support it needs to seriously challenge Saddam . . . To date, of the $8 million appropriated in last year's omnibus appropriations act to assist the opposition, less than $500,000 has been used to support activities carried out by the opposition." · "The Administration is not willing to deliver assistance to the opposition inside Iraq. In addition to withholding from the opposition the most useful forms of assistance, the Administration has ruled out delivering assistance to the opposition inside Iraq. Delivering such assistance inside Iraq might violate U.N. sanctions, we are told." · "The Administration is not willing to give appropriate security assurances to anti-Saddam Iraqis, including the Kurds and the Shi'a." "We are dismayed by these developments," the senators write, and they should be. The senators propose immediate steps to remedy the situation, which ought to be heeded. These include instituting a new weapons-inspections regime, providing security for anti-Saddam forces, such as the Iraqi National Congress, as well as training and materiel for them. As the senators note, we have a lot of lost ground to make up for. II. ALEXANDER ROSE, NAT'L POST (CANADA), OVERTHROW SADDAM Thursday, August 19, 1999 Why lifting sanctions won't help Iraqis Alexander Rose National Post Eight years after the imposition of sanctions, Iraq is a rusting, battered hulk whose defenceless population has lost 600,000 children to starvation. Or so we've been led to believe by well-meaning charities, government agencies, and, rather incongruously, the Russians (who, because sanctions prohibit money transfers, are owed billions for arms sales). A UNICEF report released last week paints a haunting picture of the situation: Children under five are dying at more than twice the rate they were 10 years ago. To be exact, the figure is 131 deaths per 1,000 live births, placing Iraq neatly between Haiti (132) and Pakistan (136). This is, of course, a tragically high mortality rate, but even in the boomtime before the Gulf War, when oil dollars bestowed immense riches, Iraq's mortality rate was 56 per 1,000--a figure roughly the same as Guyana and Namibia nowadays. Not terrific, in other words. Moreover, the oft-heard "statistic" that sanctions have killed 600,000 children is a myth. It all began in 1995, when two researchers from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), whose report had heavily relied on Iraqi government figures, asserted in The Lancet that 567,000 children had died, a story quickly picked up by The New York Times and CBS's 60 Minutes. Virtually overnight, an FAO extrapolation based on nothing more than a sampling of 36 infant deaths and 245 child deaths (as skeptical Canadian academics revealed), had turned into Gospel truth. Peace groups, as usual, inflated even these inflated figures, and somehow arrived at a total of one million dead. Yet, what is left unmentioned is that the Iraqi population has exploded by 29% (!) over the past seven years, from 17.9 million to 23.1 million, and that the crude death rate per 1,000 has stayed unchanged at nine in both pre-sanctions 1990 and 1996. Undeniably, Iraqis have suffered grievously since 1991--mostly from unbalanced diets--but they are not "starving," as newspapers so heatedly write. According to the latest UN Secretary-General's Report, the oil-for-food program (which includes spare parts, medicine, power facilities, water/sanitation installations and the like) is close to achieving a food basket of 2,200 kilocalories per adult per day. By way of comparison, Health & Welfare Canada (1990) recommends a daily average of 2,500 kilocalories for men between 25 and 74, and 1,850 for women in the same age range. This works out to be an average of 2,175 kilocalories per adult per day. The problem of malnutrition and material privation, therefore, stems from Saddam Hussein's control over its distribution. Sanctions, unfortunately, are blunt instruments that punish the innocent but fall lightly upon the guilty--Saddam Hussein is estimated by Forbes magazine to be worth $5-billion (US), the source of which is delicately explained as "oil, investments," rather than "bleeding country dry." Nevertheless, so long as he, or his gruesome family and functionaries, remain in charge of Iraq--without divesting themselves of its illegal chemical/biological stockpiles and desisting from the quest for nuclear weaponry--it would be foolhardy to lift sanctions for the illusory goal of alleviating the Iraqis' plight. Besides rewarding Saddam for cheating UN weapons inspectors, permitting the Iraqi dictator to export his old daily quota of three million barrels of oil would generate, even at the current depressed price of crude, tens of billions of dollars in revenues. Certainly, if the Iraqi regime was a stable, rational one, the resulting windfall could be turned to good use for the people's benefit. But it isn't, and it won't. It is sometimes forgotten that Iraq, though severely wounded during Desert Storm, is still armed to the teeth, and remains the most menacing state in the Gulf. Traditionally, military spending has occupied prime place in the Iraqi leadership's affections: Even in 1998, 17% of Iraq's gross domestic product was devoted to military expenditures, compared with sanctionless Iran's 1.3%. Moreover, Saddam Hussein's arms imports in the years before the Gulf War were enormous relative to total imports and GDP. Saddam Hussein will blow his petrodollars on buying modern arms from the Russians to replace his ageing stock. In the absence of sanctions, could there be any easier way for Saddam Hussein to acquire the final pieces of technology and material he needs to build the Bomb? Could there be any more obvious way of destabilizing the entire Middle East as allowing Iraq to rearm aggressively? The only way to lift sanctions and help the Iraqi people simultaneously is for the West and its allies in the main democratic opposition organization, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), to overthrow Saddam Hussein and destroy his whole apparatus of tyranny. Unfortunately, Bill Clinton, the U.S. president, has lately been toning down his support of the INC to ensure a quiet final year in office. Wish him well, but who's paying for it? III. US POLICY ON IRAQ IN DISARRAY Wall Street Journal August 27, 1999 U.S. Faces Some Pressure To Reassess Its Iraq Policy By Neil King Jr., Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal WASHINGTON -- Has the U.S. lost its way in Iraq? That's the question being raised in Congress and in numerous foreign capitals these days. What was once a fairly clear strategy of arms inspections backed by economic sanctions has dwindled, critics say, into routine British and U.S. air attacks over northern and southern Iraq. The Clinton administration disputes that contention, but senior officials also concede that the little-noticed but steady bombing of Iraq since December is much to their liking. It keeps Saddam Hussein pinned down while raising only muted protest from usual critics such as France and Russia. Nor has it allowed the Iraqi leader much room for diplomatic theatrics, as was the case throughout last year. Lose More Than Gain But in coming weeks this curious situation is set to change as diplomats at the United Nations try to hammer out a resolution that would get arms inspectors back into Iraq. And oddly, the U.S. fears it could lose more than it gains from the U.N. effort. "What the administration wants above all else is to keep Saddam weak and off balance," says Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "A U.N. resolution now could easily backfire and strengthen Saddam's position in many ways." Administration officials insist their Iraqi strategy doesn't end with F-16s and laser-guided bombs. For all its chinks and ambiguities, they say, the policy can be summed up in these words: containment plus regime equals change. They want to keep Saddam Hussein militarily weak and financially strapped while working, however possible, to force him from power. 'Worst Nightmare' Less clear is whether the efforts now afoot in New York will help on either count. The White House has little choice but to support a British and Dutch plan to recreate a U.N. inspection team similar to the one that pulled out of Iraq late last year. After all, President Clinton has long insisted that only a tough disarmament effort can keep Saddam Hussein from developing weapons of mass destruction. Yet the drive to get inspectors back in appears just as perilous. U.S. diplomats fear the effort is sure to give Iraq the diplomatic foothold it now lacks while strengthening the hand of those who want to go a little softer on Saddam Hussein. Worse still in the eyes of Washington is that it could replicate the cat-and-mouse inspections that made Saddam Hussein appear as a victim to many in the Arab world. "Our worse nightmare is an inspection regime that allows Iraq to interfere and delay, just as it has done for years, but that also loosens the sanctions and rewards Saddam for his trickery," says one senior administration official. The U.N. Security Council is now split between the U.S. and Britain, who want to keep the heat on Saddam Hussein, and France, Russia and China, who say the time has come to ease the sanctions against Iraq in exchange for a more limited inspections system. Raise Oil-Sale Ceiling The French in particular want what they call a "more constructive policy" that would reward Baghdad for good behavior. If Saddam Hussein allows an inspection team back in, the U.N. would then move to raise the ceiling on Iraqi oil sales and the purchase of goods abroad. Foreign oil companies would be allowed back in under supervision, and Iraq would gain more control over its own revenue. Continued cooperation from the Iraqis would be rewarded by lifting the sanctions altogether. None of this is bound to fly in full, but the British say their tougher resolution probably won't prevail without French support. The British and the U.S. are willing to boost the money available for humanitarian supplies such as food and medicine, as well as for equipment to rebuild Iraq's shattered infrastructure. Nor are they adverse to more Iraqi oil exports, which are already near their pre-Gulf War levels. What Washington says it won't accept is any effort to loosen U.N. control over Baghdad's pocketbook. Iraq can now sell $10.4 billion of oil a year, but all of the money goes into a special U.N. account to pay for war damages and purchases abroad. Keeping Saddam Hussein Weak The U.S. wants to avoid anything that might strengthen the Iraqi government. Inspections would be nice, administration officials say, but only if they keep Saddam Hussein weak--and thus more likely to fall from power. At the same time, a tough U.N. resolution that showed international resolve but forced Iraq to balk would at least serve to justify further U.S. military action. The French contend their position is rooted in simple reality: It is useless, they say, to craft a resolution that Iraq will never accept, and inspections without sanctions are better than no inspections at all. Meanwhile, U.S. officials say they have no firm proof that Saddam Hussein is trying to rebuild his stash of chemical or biological weapons. If they did, one official says, "we would strike back with the same force we used in Operation Desert Fox last year." A Long Way from 1991 The looming spat in the U.N. underlines much deeper divisions that show how far the world has come since the brief glory days of Operation Desert Storm in early 1991, when a 28-country coalition drove Iraqi troops from Kuwait. While working toward consensus in the U.N., Washington is increasingly willing to go it alone, if necessary. In this case, even Washington's closest ally, the British, say they are weary of the air campaign against Iraq and want desperately to hammer out a compromise acceptable to both Washington and Paris. "The position now is not a sustainable one," says one British diplomat in New York. "We have no desire to simply continue bombing Iraq day after day." At heart, all of Washington's partners agree on the need to contain Iraq and to prevent Baghdad from building weapons of mass destruction. It's on the question of ousting Saddam Hussein that many countries part company with the U.S. After all, they argue, how can one seek Iraqi compliance on arms inspections and at the same time plot to overthrow the government? The Hot Topic "The two tracks eventually collide," says Kenneth Katzman, the senior Middle East expert at the Congressional Research Service. "Regime change is by definition a hostile act, while arms inspections demand at least some degree of cooperation." When it comes to Iraq, no topic is hotter on Capitol Hill than the need to oust Saddam Hussein. And on that front, many in Congress say President Clinton isn't doing nearly enough. In a letter this month, eight prominent senators from both parties expressed their "dismay over the continued drift in U.S. policy toward Iraq." Their prescription? To use the $97 million made available under the Iraq Liberation Act last year to train and equip the Iraqi opposition, which would then try to bring the government down by force. Administration officials say it is premature and irresponsible to think about arming the country's splintered opposition. The best that can be done now, they say, is to try to nurture and unify Saddam Hussein's opponents. "The administration now faces a grim choice," says Mr. Katzman. "Getting inspectors back into Iraq will arguably make the world a safer place. But the compromises needed to make that happen could make life easier for Saddam, and that's the last thing the White House wants to see happen." IV. UN PRESSURE TO EASE IRAQI IMPORTS August 27, 1999 Pressure for U.S. in Iraqi Aid Filed at 5:49 a.m. EDT By The Associated Press UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The United States is coming under increasing pressure to allow more goods into Iraq, not only from Baghdad but from top U.N. officials and Security Council members as well. The head of the U.N.'s humanitarian program, France and other members of the Security Council have expressed desperation with the United States for placing on hold hundreds of aid contracts worth millions of dollars. The United States is wary Iraq will somehow use equipment that could be purchased under the contracts to help rebuild its weapons programs. Iraq appears to be taking advantage of the situation by stepping up its campaign to have sanctions lifted and pointing to the conduct of the United States in the U.N. Sanctions Committee, which reviews what food, medicine and other aid can be purchased by Iraq through U.N.-supervised oil sales. Iraqi Ambassador Saeed Hasan on Thursday accused the United States and its main ally on the committee, Britain, of essentially paralyzing the U.N. oil-for-food program by placing so many contracts on hold. In the committee, the United States has placed holds on more than 450 of the 500 contracts that haven't been approved. Britain has the rest. ``To leave the matter as it is means permitting the United States and the United Kingdom to destroy the last remaining modicum of humanitarian content in the program,'' Hasan wrote to the Security Council. The head of the U.N.'s humanitarian program, Benon Sevan, wasn't quite as blunt, but he did tell the Security Council on Thursday that the ``excessive'' number of contracts placed on hold were having serious implications for the program. Even Secretary-General Kofi Annan has gotten involved, calling this week for an ``all out effort'' to expedite approval of contracts. Iraq has been barred from selling its oil on the open market since the Security Council imposed sanctions following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Concerned that the Iraqi people were suffering the brunt of the sanctions, the council in 1996 began allowing Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil provided the proceeds went to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods. Iraq is also allowed to buy spare parts and equipment for its oil industry and machinery to improve its electrical and telecommunications sectors. But the United States has kept a close eye on contracts for those items, fearing Saddam Hussein's government will direct the equipment towards weapons. No contract for telecommunications goods, for example, has been approved. The absence of U.N. inspectors in Iraq has only increased U.S. concerns, said the deputy U.S. ambassador, Peter Burleigh. But diplomats say other council members--with the exception of Britain and the Netherlands, which chairs the sanctions committee--are also frustrated with the United States' position. France, which is highly critical of the way the United States has politicized the committee's work, has placed one hold on a contract submitted by a U.S. company. But the move was widely seen as a "revenge hold," Western diplomats said.