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Iraq: The Case for Invasion
With Kenneth Pollack
Author & Former National Security Council Member
Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2002; 1 p.m. EDT
Who should be blamed for the current situation in Iraq and what, if anything, should be done about it? Is the Bush administration correct in its current push for a regime change? What is the role of the United Nations in such an engagement?
Kenneth Pollack, former National Security Council Persian Gulf Director and CIA Analyst, was online to discuss Iraq, President Bush's call for invasion and his new book "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq."
The transcript follows.
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Kenneth Pollack: In some ways I am one of the most unlikely people to be making the argument for war with Iraq because for many years I was the poster boy for containment. I spent the better part of the last 11 years trying to make containment of Iraq work and believed it was the best policy for the United States and still believe that if we had done things differently, and certainly if our allies had, containment might have worked as a policy into the future. But I have grudgingly come to the conclusion in the last few years that we have no alternative but o remove Saddam from power before he acquires nuclear weapons, and the only way to make sure we do so and with the minimum damage and loss of life is a full scale invasion employing all of our conventional military capabilities.
Silver Spring, Md.:
I haven't seen any range of estimates of casualties in the event of an invasion of Iraq. Has anyone speculated (obviously the range could be quite wide)? I gather that the U.S. position on the legal precedence of such an invasion (if done unilterally) is that the circumstances are quite unique so that other countries shouldn't (at least in theory) take a unilateral U.S. action as justification for other invasions.
Kenneth Pollack: Good questions. On casualties, the answer does vary widely based on several variables including how hared Saddam's soldiers fight for him. How able Saddam is to employ weapons of mass destruction and how able the Iraqis are to fight in their cities. I think the best estimates range from a few hundred American casualties if everything turns out as well as it could to potentially several thousand American casualties if things go badly. And while most believe U.S. military capabilities so overshadow Iraq's that we are likely to find ourselves at the low end of the casualty range we need to go into such a war with our eyes open to the possibility that we may suffer far more.
The United States can't attack Iraq unilaterally. We are going to have to have at least some allies in the region that border Iraq just to launch our forces. Beyond that I think the United States would be much better off building a larger coalition because doing so would make both the invasion and reconstruction on Iraq afterwards much easier and less costly. In addition I would like to see the administration making the case that Iraq is a unique case because Saddam Hussein's reckless pattern of decision-making and determination to acquire nuclear weapons makes him uniquely threatening. Moreover the fact that we do have 16 UN resolutions none of which Iraq has fulfilled also argues that we can make the case that Iraq is a unique problem, therefore meriting such unusual treatments. I am concerned that if we do not make such a case other countries will oppose us for fear that this will simply set a precedent either for the U.S. to use preemptive force in the future or to enable other countries to do so.
Mechancsburg, Pa.:
Why do you feel that containment will not continue to work?
Kenneth Pollack: Also a good question.
Containment of Iraq has eroded considerably over the past 5 years and will continue to do so in the future. Let me talk about the two most important elements of containment. First is the sanctions. The sanctions were always supposed to bear the lions share of the burden from keeping Saddam from reconstituting his weapons of mass destructions by preventing Saddam from being able to spend Iraq's money. The problem is that in the last 3 or 4 years Saddam has found numerous ways to evade those sanctions. Throughout the 1990s Saddam was able to smuggle $250-350 Million of oil per year. This year Saddam is expected to smuggle $3 Billion worth of oil. This is a massive increase which is only expected to grow and is more than enough for his to pursue his WMD programs. What's more the smuggling also means that Saddam is more able than ever to use that money to purchase and smuggle into the county all kinds of prohibited items for his military and WMD programs. The second element of containment are the inspections. There are many problems with the inspections - let me just name two. First we simply do not know where any of Saddam's WMD are hidden and therefore don't know where to send inspectors to find it. This was precisely the problems we had in 1996-1998. The Iraqis had gotten so good at hiding it that we didn't know where they were. Today our intelligence about it is even worse. Second, successful inspections will take a long long time - probably on the order of 4 to 6 years -- and they can only work if the international community remains united and determined to compel Saddam to comply, but all of the evidence indicates that other than the US and maybe a handful of other countries, no one else is willing to make the effort necessary to make Saddam comply. And so as I - and most of the former inspectors - believe is that new inspections might work for a year or so but at some point soon we will find ourselves right back where we were in 1998 with Saddam cheating on the inspections and no one willing to make his stop.
New York, N.Y.:
So much of what is wrong with Iraq seems based on whatever is wrong with Saddam. Is that an American misperception or the truth? Would replacing Saddam solve the problem of Iraq, or would it open a whole can of other problems worse than the ones Saddam causes? For instance, what would happen to Uday and Qusay, Saddam's sons? Would they be dangerous if they escaped? Is there a rival for Saddam's power who might be just as bad if not worse? And if all these questions are unsettling, is there a solution to the post-Saddam question that would not enable another Saddam but would empower and liberate the average Iraqi?
Kenneth Pollack: The threat from Iraq is principally Saddam's dangerous leadership and determination to acquire nuclear weapons. It is unclear whether his sons or other would be as aggressive and reckless as he has been. It is reasonable to assume that in the case of his sons and other close colleagues that they may be based on their own actions, however the problem principally is this one of the Iraqi top leadership. Which is why we tried for many years to try to get rid of the top leadership in the mid 90s. It is only that we failed repeatedly that I believe that we must get rid of Saddam and other top leaders. Certainly there is great potential for creating new problems in Iraq by solving the existing problem of Saddam's regime. This is why we need to handle the operation carefully. We need to build a large international coalition, use overwhelming force and we need to have thought through a plan to reconstruct Iraq and commit ourselves to lead an international effort to do so. One of the things I worry about is that we will handle Iraq as we have handled Afghanistan where I do not believe we have made a sufficient commitment to building a stable new polity. That could be tragic in Afghanistan, but disastrous in Iraq.
Cumberland, Md.:
Do you think that Hans Blix is capable of carrying out a tough inspection of Iraq, or should he be replaced?
Kenneth Pollack: I think Hans Blix may be capable of handling inspections properly but he has not yet been put to the test. Of far greater importance is whether the other members of the UN are up to such a task. What we found in the 1990s is that they weren't and by 1998 we and only a handful of other countries were willing to make multinational containment of Iraq to work again. What I would like to see before the US signs up for new inspections is proof that the rest of the world is going to take the seriously this time and will do so for the many years that would be required to make it work. Something I strongly doubt.
Kenneth Pollack: I sincerely wish that I could come up with another way to address the problem of Saddam Hussein and his pursuit of nuclear weapons but every time I go through this exercise I come to the same place. I recognize that a war with Iraq could be quite costly, but I think we need to balance that with the cost of a likely future war with Saddam after he acquires nuclear weapons. This is the choice that confronts us -- not if we go to war with Iraq but if we do so before or after he has nuclear weapons.
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