The Prewar Evidence (or Lack Thereof): Saddam Hussein’s Collaboration with Terrorists and His Deterrability

7/27/2019 The Prewar Evidence (or Lack Thereof): Saddam Husseins Collaboration with Terrorists and His Deterrability

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The Prewar Evidence (or Lack

Thereof)Saddam Husseins Collaboration with Terrorists

and His Deterrability

by Jonathan Rick

Government 550May 2005


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Table of Contents

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 3

Collaboration with Terrorists .......................................................................................................... 4

Collaboration with al Qaeda on 9/11 .................................................................................. 4

Collaboration with al Qaeda Outside 9/11 .......................................................................... 7

Collaboration with Terrorists Outside al Qaeda ............................................................... 11

Deterrence ..................................................................................................................................... 12

The Iran-Iraq War ............................................................................................................. 13

U.S. Tilt ................................................................................................................. 15

The Gulf War .................................................................................................................... 16

Causes ................................................................................................................... 16

Mixed Signals ....................................................................................................... 18

Prewar Deterrence ................................................................................................. 23

Prewar Compellence ............................................................................................. 25

Intrawar Deterrence .............................................................................................. 31

Past Use of Unconventional Weapons .............................................................................. 33

Was Saddam Deterrable? .................................................................................................. 34

Coda .............................................................................................................................................. 37

Works Cited .................................................................................................................................. 38


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Introduction

To justify the Iraq war two years ago, you had your pick of reasons. Since 1979 SaddamHussein had unremittingly brutalized the Iraqi people, sprayed poison gas on his enemies,foreign and domestic, and waged an arguably genocidal1campaign against Iraqi Kurdswhom,

since 1975, the United States had repeatedly betrayed.

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By continually harassing and eventuallyejecting international weapons inspectors in 1998, he had violated both the 1991 cease-fire hesigned with the U.S. and myriad U.N. resolutions. With 10 percent of the worlds oil reserves,and 600 miles from Saudi Arabias 25 percent, he sat astride the chokepoint of the globaleconomy. He had invaded Iran in 1980, raped Kuwait in 1990, fired missiles at Saudi Arabia andIsrael in 1991, and shot at American and British aircraft patrolling Iraqs no -fly zones since1992. He also held an incorrigible craving for a nuclear weaponhis progress toward which theworld drastically underestimated before the Gulf Waruntold petrodollars to buy one, scientistsand engineers with the know-how to build it, and a peerless police state to conceal it all.

Yet the casus belli I find most compelling are Saddams collaboration with terrorists,past, present and potential, and the question of his deterrability. Specifically: Was Iraq involved

in the attacks of September 11, 2001? To what extent did it have a relationship with al Qaeda?Of what significance was its relationship with non-Qaeda terrorists? And what does Saddamspast aggressionin his wars against Iran and Kuwait; his assaults on the Kurds, Israelis andSaudis; and his response to American actions from the Gulf War to the start of the present onereveal about his susceptibility to deterrence? I believe these questions form the most importantcriteria to assess the threat Iraq posed to the United States as of March 2003.

Although answers may now appear inconsequential, as the jailed tyrant awaits trial forwar crimes and a democratic Iraqi government organizes itself, the answers herein arehistorically significant because they derive exclusively from material publicly available beforethe war began. Of course, some may see such use of 20-20 vision more as a handicap than abenefit. To this end, I have footnoted extensively and structured my analyses aroundcounterarguments.


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Collaboration with Terrorists

Collaboration with al Qaeda on 9/11

Two days after September 11, 2001, James Woolsey, a C.I.A. director under PresidentClinton, and Laurie Mylroie, coauthor of Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf (1990),

separately suggested that the attacks were, in Woolseys words, sponsored, supported, andperhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein.3 Five days later, a U.S. official leaked to theAssociated Press that the United States has received information from a foreign intelligenceservice that Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 gang, met earlier this year in Europewith an Iraqi intelligence agent.4As the story unfolded over the next month,5the world learnedthat in early April 2001,6Atta had allegedly rendezvoused with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, a vice consul in Iraqs embassy in Prague but actually a spymaster. (Less than two weeksfollowing the alleged meeting, after surveillance cameras caught Ani casing the downtownheadquarters of Radio Free Liberty/Radio Liberty, the Czech Republic expelled him foractivities incompatible with his diplomatic status, a euphemism for espionage.7According tothe Czech Deputy Foreign Minister Hynek Kmonicek, who ordered Anis expulsion, I told the

Iraqi chief of mission [in Prague] that [Ani] was involved in activities which endanger thesecurity of the Czech Republic.8) The meeting would have been Attas second9 time in theCzech capital in less than a year, having passed through the citys airport en route from Germanyto New Jersey in June 2000, and was the sole evidence tying Saddam to 9/11.

Accordingly, the so-called Prague connection underwent storied scrutiny. On October 12,Stanislav Gross, the Czech Interior Minister, announced that he could not confirm the meeting. 10But in an interview two days later with Frontline and the New York Times, Sabah Khodada, aformer Iraqi army captain, said that 9/11 was conducted by people who were trained bySaddam.11In his column in the Chicago Sun-Times on October 15, Republican confidant RobertNovak wrote that his intelligence sources agreed with what Lord Robertson, NATOs SecretaryGeneral, had told U.S. senators the previous week: there was not a scintilla of evidenceimplicating Baghdad in 9/11.12On October 20, the Times reported that some of those making theallegation were small businessmen accusing their competitors of doing business with terrorists.13

On October 26, Gross called a news conference to assert that Atta had, in fact, been inPrague in early April,14a corrective shared by U.S. federal law enforcement officials. 15In earlyNovember, the Czech Prime Minister, Milos Zeman, qualified Grosss statement, telling C.N.N.that Atta contacted some Iraqi agent, not to plot attacks on America, but on the building inPrague that houses Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.16 (The international communicationsservice incurred Baghdads wrath when it began broadcasting anti-Saddam programs into Iraqthat year.) Back in Prague, however, Gross; Jiri Kolar, the chief of the B.I.S., the Czech domesticintelligence service; and a government spokeswoman promptly added that Zeman was merelysuggesting one of multiple hypotheses.17Three weeks later the Czech president, Vaclav Havel,told C.N.N.s Larry King that his government was 70 percent sure the meeting occurred.18

None of this fazed classified-information virtuoso William Safire, who in one hisNovember New York Timescolumns proclaimed the meeting an undisputed fact.19Likewise,first on 60 Minutes IItwo days later, then onMeet the Press with Tim Russertin December,VicePresident Richard Cheney declared that the meeting was pretty well confirmed.20Yet a weeklater, several theories developed that indicated a case of mistaken identity. Some believed thatAni was a low-ranking diplomat with the same name as a more important Iraqi intelligenceagent; others thought Atta strongly resembled a used car dealer from NurembergAtta went to


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college in Hamburgwith whom Ani often met. Still others conjectured that the MohammedAtta who sojourned to Prague in April was not the hijacker but a Pakistani of the same name.Interviews with Iraqi defectors, Czech officials, and people who knew the Iraqi diplomat, theTimes wrote, have only deepened the mystery surrounding Mr. Attas travels through centralEurope.21

On December 17, Jiri Kolar announced that there were no documents showing Atta hadvisited Prague in 2001.22In February, despite misgivings from some of their colleagues, seniorAmerican intelligence officials concluded otherwise.23 Then, at least among the mainstreammedia, a consensus emerged. In his Washington Postcolumn in March, David Ignatius referredto senior European officials who believed the Saddam-Osama relationship was somewherebetween slim and none.24 Four days later, C.I.A. Director George Tenet told the SenateArmed Services Committee that the jurys out.25In a speech on April 19 to the CommonwealthClub of California, F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller outlined the extent of his agencys fruitlessinvestigation: We ran down literally hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every record we could get our hands on, from flight reservations to car rentals to bank accounts. 26A weeklater, Newsweek reported that a few months ago, the Czechs quietly acknowledged that they

may have been mistaken about the whole thing. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officialsnow believe that Atta wasnt even in Prague at the time the Czechs claimed. 27 In May, Timemagazine labeled the meeting discredited,28 and the Post and Times quoted a senior Bushadministration official who concurred.29In August, theLos Angeles Times noted that the C.I.A.and F.B.I. concluded months ago that they had no hard evidence.30

In September, a month before Congress would vote to authorize the war, Dick Cheneytold Tim Russert, I want to be very careful about how I say th is. . . . I think a way to put itwould be its unconfirmed at this point.31 The same day, National Security AdviserCondoleezza Rice told C.N.N.s Wolf Blitzer, We continue to look at [the] evidence.32 InOctober, the congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11 unclassified testimony George Tenet had givenon June 18.33While the C.I.A. was still working to confirm or deny this allegation, Tenet said,We have been unable to establish that Atta left the U.S. or entered Europe in April 2001 underhis true name or any known aliases.34

Three days later, United Press International quoted [s]enior Czech intelligenceofficials, who now have no confidence in their earlier report validating the meeting. Wecan find no corroborative evidence . . . and the source has real credibility problems, said ahigh-ranking source close to Czech intelligence.35 The New York Times added that Czechofficials who have investigated the case now say that Mr. Zeman and Mr. Gross spoke withoutadequately vetting the information or waiting for the Czech internal security service tosubstantiate the initial reports.36 Indeed, the Times reported, President Havel had advisedWashington earlier in the year to disregard the meeting. (He did so discreetly, to avoid publiclyembarrassing other prominent officials who had vouched for the meeting.37)

Of course, two days later, the Timesquoted Havels spokesman that the president neverspoke with any American government official about Atta, not with Bush, not with anyoneelse.38Meanwhile, Ministers Gross and Kmonicek (who had since become ambassador to theUnited Nations) continued to insist that the meeting occurred.39 I do not have the slightestinformation that anything is wrong in the details I obtained from the B.I.S counterintelligence. Itrust the B.I.S. more than journalists, Gross sniffed.40 This too remained the position of theWhite House, Pentagon and National Security Council.41


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* * *

So, on one hand, the B.I.S., who by virtue of proximity had the best data, held that therendezvous happened. It was certainly plausible, since before communist Czechoslovakia splitinto the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, Iraq had been a major buyer of Czechoslovak

arms.

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Additionally, according to Richard Perle, then the chair of the Defense Policy Board, aninfluential advisory group to the Pentagon, operations like 9/11 are not planned in caves;theyre planned in offices by people who have secretaries and support staffs and research andcommunications and technology.43Espionage analyst Edward Jay Epstein concurs. Only stateshave embassies protected by diplomatic immunity, by which they can transfer weapons viacourier planes, which by treaty cannot be searched. Only states have consulates to issue traveldocuments underhandedly. Only states have banks via which they can transfer money virtuallyuntraceably. And only states have internal security services to threaten relatives of prospectiveagents.44Finally, as James Woolsey, who visited England to investigate the case on behalf of theJustice Department, contends, even with all the ambiguity, the evidence was about as clear asthese things get.45

On the other hand, counters Daniel Benjamin, the director for counterterrorism at theNational Security Council from 1998-1999, it is very difficult to hide serious ties between aregime and a terrorist client. For in collaborating, they negotiate over targets, finances, materiel,and tactics.46Similarly, the apparatuses of bureaucracyincluding employees who will swapsecrets for cashafford ample opportunity for spying on governments. This is why statesponsors, like Libya vis--vis the 1998 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and Iran vis--vis the1996 attack on the Khobar Towers, have historically left ample trails.

And yet the onlyIraqi trail pertaining to 9/11 was one meeting in Prague, during a monthfor which neither the F.B.I. nor C.I.A. could uncover any visa, airline or financial recordsshowing that Mohamed Atta had left or reentered the U.S. (Their research placed him in Floridatwo days before the meeting.)47Second, all the evidence rested on the uncorroborated allegationof a single informant,48who could produce neither any audio nor visual recordings. Third, no onecould verify what Atta and Ani had discussedfor instance, whether Atta requested help orupdated Ani on his progress. Accordingly, as Secretary Rumsfeld admitted to Bob Novak in May2002, I just dont know whether there was a meeting or not.49

But circumstantiality is not a basisor even a partial basis, reallyfor taking a countryto war. After all, the burden of proof always falls on he who asserts a positive. In the 16 monthsbetween 9/11 and the Iraq war, despite considerable efforts,50hawks failed to meet this burden.Consequently, neither of the administrations two most publicized arguments for the wartheState of the Union address (1/28/03) and Secretary of State Colin Powells presentation to theU.N. Security Council (2/5/03)even mentioned Prague.51And lest we misconstrue the subtext,on January 31seven weeks before the war beganNewsweek asked the President specificallyabout a 9/11 connection to Iraq, to which Bush replied, I cannot make that claim.52


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Collaboration with al Qaeda Outside 9/11

Of course, because al Qaeda and Iraq did not collaborate on something as risky as the9/11 spectacle does not mean they did not do so elsewhere. To the contrary, we often forget thatnumerous Clinton-administration officials53 linked Iraqi nerve gas experts to the Al Shifa

pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, in which Osama bin Laden had a large financialinterest54 and which, in 1998, the U.S. bombed in retaliation for al Qaedas attacks on ourembassies in Kenya and Tanzania.55 Indeed, the C.I.A. had solid reporting of senior levelcontacts between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade, as White House spokesman AriFleischer announced in September 200256and C.I.A. Director George Tenet wrote to the chair ofthe Senate Select Intelligence Committee in October.57 In his U.N. presentation, Colin Powellconfirmed that members of both organizations . . . met at least eight times at very senior levelssince the early 1990s.58

The strongest of these links derived from a murky group of about 150 jihadists known asAnsar al-Islam.59Though it existed in various forms since the 1990s, when its founder launcheda rebellion against the two feuding secular factions that divvy up Iraqi Kurdistan, 60only recently

had Ansar become the nexus between al Qaeda and Iraq. That nexus focused on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Ansars boss and a senior bin Laden associate.61After suffering wounds from the U.S.military campaign in Afghanistan, where he had run a poisons training camp, Zarqawi fled toBaghdad, where he arrived in the spring of 2002. While recovering, a number of his cohortsconverged on the capitol to establish a base of operations. 62 When healthy, Zarqawi helpedestablish another poisons camp in an enclave of northern Iraq that Ansar controlled.63

Since Iraqs intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, purportedly maintained a mole inAnsars most senior levels,64Ansar would not have harbored Zarqawi without Saddams implicitimprimatur. As Donald Rumsfeld explained, In a vicious, repressive dictatorship that exercisesnear-total control over its population, its very hard to imagine that the government is not awareof whats taking place in the country.65 The columnist Christopher Hitchens elaborates: Tobelieve that Zarqawi was innocent of al Qaeda and Baathist ties, or to believe that he does not infact represent such a tie, you must believe that a low-level Iraqi official decided to admit a much-hunted Jordaniana refugee from the invasion of Afghanistan, after September 11, 2001wheneven the most conservative forces in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were keeping their distance fromsuch people and even assisting in rounding them up.66

To be sure, dozens of Qaeda refugees did slip into northern Iraq. But they were holed up,not in Iraq proper, but in Iraqi Kurdistan, which for most of Ansar was native land. 67Moreover,under the no-fly zones imposed after the Gulf War and patrolled 24 hours a day since by the U.S.and U.K., Kurdistan stood outside Baghdads grip. Thus, though Saddam was aware of Ansarsactivities, his influence over them was at best circuitous and most likely inoperative.68Accordingto the C.I.A. and British intelligence, he regarded Zarqawi and his ilk more as a threat than anally.69

Likewise, although Ansar certainly had ties to al Qaeda, it was not under its thumb. 70Forwhile Zarqawi and bin Laden cut their teeth together against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the1980s, their mutual presence there in the 90s merely cohered with the postbellum status: host tomyriadjihadist groups, from Uzbeks to Chechens to Pakistani fighters for Kashmir.71With theirown camps and agendas, and amid a civil war, terrorists both worked with and against oneanother. As George Tenet told the Senate Select Intelligence Committee in February 2003,Zarqawi conceive[d] of himself as being quite independent of al Qaeda.72


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Second, as George Tenet acknowledged in his aforesaid letter, Our understanding of therelationship between Iraq and al Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varyingreliability.73This was because the evidence came not from spies on the ground, the fields goldstandard, but from defectors and exiles. As Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt explain in SilentWarfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence (2002), while the latter can provide unique

insight, they have a strong incentive to tell interviewers what they want to hear. They also mayhave been gone so long from their country of origin that their knowledge is obsolete;74they maybe greedy; they may be somewhat unbalanced people who wish to bring some excitement intotheir lives; they may desire to avenge what they see as ill treatment by their government; or theymay be subject to blackmail.75Newsweek elaborates: Historically, with a few noble exceptions,intelligence peddlers have been a pack of liars and swindlers. That was true during the Cold War,when double and triple agents in spy Meccas like Berlin and Vienna sold made-up secrets to thehighest bidder, and it has been especially true in the Middle East, where conspiracy is a way oflife.76

In Iraq, such stories began in 1998, when the United Nations Special Commissionevacuated. When these weapons inspectors suddenly left, writes Kenneth Pollack, a former

director for gulf affairs at the National Security Council, Western intelligence agencies werecaught psychologically and organizationally off balance. Desperate for information . . . theybegan to trust sources that they would previously have had UNSCOM vet.77The main suppliersoon became become the Iraqi National Congress, a London-based umbrella group of anti-Saddam activists, led by the controversial businessman Ahmad Chalabi. With the backing ofsuch principals as Cheney, Rumsfeld and Richard Perle, the I.N.C. put its members withcompelling tales in touch with reporters. The resulting articles spun dramatic accounts about theBaghdad-bin Laden axis, among other things. Crucially missing, however, in keeping with theI.N.C.s history of coloring facts to suit its agenda, was independent corroboration. A typicalresult was that reports of Iraqis training Qaeda operatives in chemical and biological agents78came from but one informant.79

Third, whereas in his presentation Powell sought to persuade laymen to pass a secondresolution authorizing war, the State Departments annual Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002report logged the less dramatic facts informatively for specialists. For instance, that al Qaeda hadestablished a base of operations in Baghdad, as Powell alleged, indicates far more Iraqicomplicity than if small numbers of highly placed al Qaeda militants were present there, 80inthe description of the State report. (George Tenets letter likewise used the word presence.)Sponsorship is not tolerance. This is not to say that Saddam was not harboring senior Qaedaleadershe wasbut to append the needed niceties to declarations, like that of DonaldRumsfeld, that the evidence was bulletproof.81

Fourth, and most important, the 2002 N.I.E. indicated that if Saddam struck an Americantarget, he would very likely rely on his own operatives rather than outsource.82 To be sure,consider the Palestinians, his cause clbre in recent years. The media regularly aired storiesabout checks from Iraq to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. If Saddam were willing toencourage with terrorists this blatantly, wouldnt he do the sameor worsewith al Qaeda?

On one hand, while divergent ideologies and ambitions would have circumscribed anyIraqi-Qaeda relationship, mutual antipathy toward the great and little Satan (America andIsrael), as toward the House of Saud, indicates they would have suspended their differences fortactical and temporary synergy. As the pacts between such sworn archenemies as the Soviets andNazis, and, later, the Soviets and Americans, show, expediency, not affinity, often governs


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such partnerships, as one analyst observes.83 This is why even the Prophet Muhammadcooperated with outright pagans, in the Treaty of Hudaibiyah (628 AD); why Afghanmujahedeen took handouts from the U.S. in their jihad against the Soviets; and why, a monthbefore the Iraq war began, in an audiotape released by Al-Jazeera, bin Laden assured hisfollowers that there will be no harm if the interests of Muslims converge with the interests of

the socialists [like Saddam] in the fight against the crusaders.

84

Likewise, following EgyptsGamal Abdel Nasser, Saddam was not principled but Machiavellian, and so harnessed thepotency of religious extremism to thrust against his adversaries.85

On the other hand, in a post-9/11 world, in the event of another attack against the U.S.,Saddam had every reason to believe that, at a minimum, he would be a top suspect. Whether hewas involved or not wouldnt initially matter; given the Bush administrations zealous pursuit ofcasus belli against himin 2002 the president called the tyrant the guy who tried to kill mydad86Iraq would certainly suffer guilt by association. This is why, during the anthrax scares inNew York, Washington and Florida in October 2001, early suspicions fell on Baghdad.87

Moreover, Saddam received great utility from publicly awarding his $25,00088checks. Itwas a way to swashbuckle onto the world stage, to present himself as spitting in the face of the

invincible Zionists, thereby gaining prestige on the Arab street and moving himself closer torealizing his dream as uniter and overload of the Arab world. His goal was symbolic, notstrategic; as the Mideast scholar Fouad Ajami observes, The norm has been for Iraq, the frontierArab land far away from the Mediterranean, to stoke the fires of anti-Zionism knowing thatothers closer to the fireJordanians, Palestinians, Egyptians, Syrians, and Lebanesewould bethe ones consumed.89

It is equally unlikely that once he attained a nuclear weapon, Saddams megalomaniawould have allowed him to fork over what he had spent billions of dollars on and workeddecades for. Just as the U.S. did not share all its nuclear expertise with its allies, so the SovietUnion balked at giving nukes to China, despite repeated Chinese requests and ideologicalsympathies. A handoff of conventional weapons, including biological or chemical ones, wouldhave been likelier, but still unlikely, since despite 20-plus years of collaboration with thePalestinianswho reciprocated rhetorically in spades for their avuncular heroSaddam neveronce gave them any weaponry from his vast arsenal.

Even less likely was Saddam to have smuggled weaponry to al Qaeda, whose to-the-death avowals included toppling secular regimes like his and who might well turn on him. Afterall, Osama bin Laden had long viewed the Saudi Wahhabi theocracy as insufficiently Islamic andrepeatedly called Saddam an infidel90so much so that when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990,bin Laden offered to deploy his mujahedeen to battle the Baath and protect the land of Meccaand Medina.91 To trust such proxies with such responsibility would have been exceedinglyuncharacteristic for a Stalanist paranoid. And, as a student and admirer of the Soviet tyrant,Saddam knew how the Stalin-Hitler pact turned outwith the former double-crossed and almostdestroyed by his Nazi ally.92

And yet, Saddam need not have had a formal alliance with Osama, a la the Taliban or aswith Soviet satellites during the Cold War; operational collaboration with the group responsiblefor 9/11 would suffice as a casus belli. But this was far from the case on the road from Baghdadto Kabul, a road of dots, not of lines. We are talking about channels, contacts,communications, said one senior administration official,93 or moral rather than physicalsupport. There was nothing substantial, nothing beyond some scattered, inevitable feelers.94Granted, as Christopher Hitchens notes, Baghdad would continue to shelter some of bin Ladens


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men and to send envoys to seek accommodation and understanding . . . with the newest andmost serious anti-American force in the region. How could it be otherwise? It was theMukhabarats job to do such things.95The evidence indicates, however, that Saddam had drawna line short of arming al Qaeda, so that consequential ties between the two were at besttenuous.96


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Collaboration with Terrorists Outside al Qaeda

But what about Saddams well-known collaboration with terrorists outside al Qaeda? In1985, after Abu Abbas hijacked theAchille LauroItalian cruise ship and rolled the wheelchair-bound American, Leon Klinghoffer, off the side to his death, the Palestinian flew to Baghdad for

refuge. Ditto for Abu Nidal, who, before the emergence of Osama bin Laden, was the worldsmost prolific and hotly pursued terrorist, and who later became, as Christopher Hitchens notes,an arm of the Iraqi state, not an asylum seeker.97Nor should we forget Saddams harboring ofAbdul Rahman Yasin, whom U.S. prosecutors indicted for helping to mix the explosivechemicals in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.98

Additionally, in 1993, Saddam dispatched his goons to kill the first president Bush whenthe latter made a ceremonial visit to Kuwait. In 1998, after defecting ultimately to the U.K.,Ahmed Anis predecessor, Jabir Salim, divulged that Saddam had given Salim $150,000 to blowup the headquarters of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague.99Most recently, as discussedabove, Saddam had become an overt sugar daddy of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

Clearly, then, Baghdad was a state sponsor of terrorists who often murdered Americans.

The attempted assassination of Bush 41 might arguably have been the last straw, but in June1993, President Clinton retaliated by firing 23 Tomahawk missiles at the headquarters of theMukhabarat.100Furthermore, as deadly as Saddams network of terrorists was, it no longer p oseda threat to Americans; as of February 2002, the C.I.A. had no evidence of Iraqi-related terroristoperations against the U.S. in nearly a decade.101 (According to the State Department, for thepast several years Iraq directed its energies mostly at domestic opposition.102) This is not to saythat time exonerates criminality: once a murderer, especially a mass murderer, always amurderer. War, however, seems belatedly excessive to bring half a dozen terrorists to justice.Admittedly, anything less would never drain the swamp that Iraq was for such thugs. But thesafety of Americans does not require, as President Bush vowed days after 9/11, ridding theworld of evildoers.103


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Deterrence

A year before she became National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice described U.S.policy toward Iraq in the Foreign Affairsjournal: [T]he first line of defense should be a clearand classical statement of deterrenceif they do acquire W.M.D., their weapons will be

unusable because any attempt to use them will bring national obliteration.

104

Until 9/11, thisreasoning constituted Americas national security strategy, and kept the Cold War cold. Butdeterrence only works if the deterree is rational, that is, if he appreciates that attacking thedeterer will beget massive retaliation. Hawks argued that since Saddam was unbalanced105(Bush), we could ill afford to trust [his] motives or give him the benefit of the doubt (Rice). 106


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The Iran-Iraq War

Exhibit A: In September 1980, a year after he became president, Saddam invaded Iran.For the Third World the war reached unprecedented losses of blood and treasure: eight years cost150,000107Iraqis their lives and Iraq nearly half a trillion dollars. 108Yet, ultimately, Iraq gained

no territory. Michael Sterner, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under President Carter, thusdescribes the invasion as one of this centurys worst strategic miscalculations.109Surely such aheadstrong catastrophe shows that Saddam was too reckless to be deterrable.

A closer examination suggests otherwise. Formed by the confluence of the Euphrates andTigris rivers and stretching for 120 miles before emptying into the Gulf, the Shatt al-Arabwaterway forms the Iraq-Iran border in southern Iraq. Both countries have claimed the Shatt forcenturies, and in the early 1970s, to divert Iraqs resources, the Iranian dictator, Reza ShahPahlavi, began arming and fomenting turmoil among Iraqs sizable, separatist Kurdish minority.So devastating was this meddlingafter all, its large population (roughly three times that ofIraq), oil reserves and strong U.S. support made Iran the Persian Gulfs most powerful statethat to retain Kurdistan, Iraq acceded to Irans demand to demarcate the Shatt al -Arab along its

thalweg. This Algiers treaty of March 6, 1975, humiliated the Iraqis, but it reduced interstatetensions.That is, until February 1, 1979, when a tumultuous backlash against the shah and his

American patron swept into power the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A fanatic whosejudgments are harsh, reasoning bizarre and conclusions surreal, in the description of Timenaming him Man of that Year, Khomeini sought to export110 his theocratic order tosurrounding Islamic countries, aiding Muslims whose rulers he thought corrupt, like the Arabgulf monarchs, or secular, like Saddam. Khomeini was also a Shiite, and despised the secularSunnis who ran Iraq, marginalized Iraqs Shiite majority, and governed Iraqs six Shiite holyshrines.

Realizing his peril, Saddam strove to ingratiate himself with the Iranians, to tie Arabnationalism to Islamic fundamentalism and to preserve the status quo. By late 1979, he had madevarious public gestures of piety and invited Tehran to arbitrate their differences. Therevolutionaries, however, spurned the diplomatic notesKhomeini remained impervious111and reject[ed] resort to all means of peaceful settlement.112Instead, they goaded the Kurds andShiites to depose Saddam, as Iranian operatives tried to assassinate senior Iraqi officials. By thetime they nearly killed Tariq Aziz on April 1, 1980, border clashes, including artillerybombardments and occasional air raids, were spreading and intensifying, largely at Iransinstigation.

Furthermore, whereas Saddam was a tin-pot dictator in a region that knew onlydictatorships, Khomeini instilled singular and global fear. [H]is hooded eyes and severedemeanor, his unkempt gray beard and his black turban and robes conveyed an avengers wrath,wrote the Mideast journalist Milton Viorst.113The United States was particularly agitated, sincerabid antipathy toward it had largely fueled Khomeinis coup, which his partisans soon parlayedinto taking hostage, for 444 days, 52 Americans from the U.S. embassy in Tehran.114Summarizes one history textbook: T.V. images . . . of blindfolded hostages, anti -Americanmobs, and U.S. flags being used as garbage bags rubbed American nerves raw.115 It wasAmericas first modern encounter with . . . Islamicists, and the first time Americans heard theircountry called the Great Satan, observes Mark Bowden, a veteran military affairs journalist.


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Hundreds of thousands of gleeful Iranians celebrated in the streets around the embassy nightand day, burning [President] Carter in effigy and chanting Death to America!116

With his ear ever attuned to world opinion, Saddam recognized Tehrans isolation, aswell as its growing unemployment and rising disaffection among its professional classes andethnic minorities. Iraq also maintained significant tactical advantages: its Arab and largely Sunni

Muslim neighbors were unlikely to support Irans Persian Shiites; Iran had minimal defenses inthe Shatt al-Arab; a Western embargo had caused Iran spare part shortages and lack ofequipment maintenance; and military officers, whom the regime had purged en masse, were nowdivulging their former countrys vulnerabilities to Iraqi authorities. The gulfs once mightiestmilitary was crippled, its readiness temporarily undercut, and its leaders hegemonic ambitionsunequivocal.

Conversely, Iraqs economy was awash with money and record o il revenues. GivenEgypts suspension from the Arab League following its 1978 peace accord with Israel, itsprestige and relations in the Arab world were also at their highest and most cordial. Thus, aftersecuring the backing of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Saddam seized a long-awaited initiative andinvaded his historical foe. He aimed principally to snatch back in a quick strike a large slice of

the Shatt al-Arab.Although Saddam struck the first formal blow, What made war likelyeveninevitable, argues Shahram Chubin, coauthor of Iran and Iraq at War (1988), was Iransneglect of, and disdain for, the (traditional) military balance obtaining between the twocountries.117 In the analysis of Efraim Karsh, editor of The Iran-Iraq War (1989), Iraqsinvasion was preemptive, an offensive move motivated by a defensive strategy. 118Additionally, whereas the potential fruits of an attack were immense, the risks were minimal.119Objectively, judges the military historian John Keegan, the resort to force was a logicaloption.120 Indeed, only force would have, as it did, thwarted Khomeini and kept Saddam inpower. War with Iran, security scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt conclude, wasnot a reckless adventure; it was an opportunistic response to a significant threat.121

Moreover, while Saddam severely underestimated Khomeinis acolytes, their zealotry,not his, perpetuated the fighting. As Shahram Chubin explains, for Tehran the war came torepresent a test of the revolution, epitomizing all the themes of suffering and martyrdom whichthe leadership seemed determined to cultivate. In time, the war and the revolution merged, sothat the war, like the revolution, was to be unsullied by practical considerations. For thisreason, Iran continually snubbed the cease-fires Iraq offered throughout the years. Indeed, Iransdefinition of the absolute stakes that the war represented (which brooked no compromise)helped fuel it long after it made any sense.122 Mark Bowden elaborates: [A]rmed with onlyprayer and purity of heart, young Iranians had stormed the gates of the most evil, potentempire on the planet, booted out the American devils, and secured the success of the mullahsrevolution.123Against such heady romanticism,124the Baath was fighting for its survival.


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U.S. Tilt

That the war raged so statically also resulted from the complicity of the United States,which strove to ensure that neither country emerged victorious. For at the same time the Reaganadministration was secretly arming the ayatollahs (in violation of federal law), it also was

generously tilting toward Baghdad. After all, this was the Cold War, and under the theory thatthe friend of my friend is my enemy, U.S. foreign policy was to coddle anti-communists. AsFranklin Roosevelt reportedly said of Nicaraguas dictator Anastasio Somoza, He may be a sonof a bitch, but at least hes our son of a bitch.


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The Gulf War

Causes

Two years after its ceasefire with Iran, Iraq embarked on another adventure, savagelyoccupying and plundering Kuwait. Expressing the view of many in retrospect, Mark Bowden

argues that Saddams decision ranks as one of the great military miscalculations of modernhistory.125Again, context paints a different picture. In 1980, Iraq had $35 billion in foreign

exchange reserves. By 1990, an $80 billion foreign debtabout one and a half times thecountrys G.N.P.was saddling Saddam. Reconstruction costs were huge, unemployment wasrampant, inflation was raging; with their existing loans unpaid, creditors in Europe, Japan andthe U.S. were reluctant to extend new ones. As one journalist elucidated, Saddam was not theregional colossus of popular legend, but a bankrupt dictator fighting for survival.126Indeed, inJanuary he had narrowly escaped an assassination by army officers, who, like their war-wearycompatriots, were awaiting the promised peace dividend and anticipating democratic reforms, ala trends in Kuwait, Yemen and Jordan. Equally ominous was the popular revolution in

Romania, which in just one week in December had brought the tyrant, Nicolae Ceausescu, beforea firing squad.127The influx of Soviet Jews to Israel only exacerbated this tinderbox.With such alarms ringing in his ever-vigilant mind,128 Saddam contended that he had

thwarted Iranian expansionism on behalf of all Arabs, which entitled him to relief from the $30billion debt he had racked up with his ethnic brethren. Iraqis paid with our blood, he believed;the gulf states should pay with their dollars. The Kuwaitiswhose overseas investments,estimated at $100 billion, provided them with more than $6 billion a year, a sum roughlyequivalent to their oil revenuesdisagreed, and refused to forgive $10 to $20 billion they hadloaned Iraq.129The Sabahs, Kuwaits ruling family, also enjoyed the first Arab stock exchange,the first Arab department store comparable to any in the West, five-star hotels, superhighways,luxurious shopping malls, office towers and a $400 million conference centerall of whichmade Saddam, given his far greater population and land, look down on his pocket-sized neighborwith envy and chagrin.130

Adding insult to injury, when, via the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries,Iraq tried to raise the price of oil by production cuts, Kuwait instead continued to prime thepump, doubling its quota violation. Combined with similar incorrigible cheating, for the past twoyears, by the United Arab Emirates, the glut had depressed the average price of an OPEC barrelfrom $20.50 in early January to a mere $13.60 in June.131Since Iraq relied on oil for 95 percentof its export revenues, every $1 drop in the price of oil cost it $1 billion a year. As Saddam sawit, Time commented, the Kuwaitis might as well have been stealing from his treasury.132

Then there was the quarrel over the rich, vast Rumaila oilfield, which lies mostly in Iraqbut whose southern tip dips slightly into Kuwait. Insisting that when he was engaged againstIran, Kuwait had siphoned off oil from the Iraqi side of the field, Saddam demanded $2.4 billionin reparations.133There was also the issue of two Kuwaiti islands, Bubiyan and Warba, whichblocked most of Iraqs mere 18 miles of access to the gulf. For an oil exporter, being solandlocked was an enormous disadvantage, yet despite a coastline of 310 miles, Kuwait refusedSaddams requests to lease the islands.134 Finally, Baghdad had historically considered thesheikdom part of its second largest city, Basra, as it had been under the Ottoman Empire. In thisanalysis, British imperialists had merely drawn a line on an empty map in 1922, carving offIraqs alleged 19thprovince.


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And so, as Time concluded, There sat Kuwait . . . bulging with enormous reserves of oiland cash, boasting an excellent port on the Persian Gulfand utterly incapable of defendingitself against Iraqs proficient war machine. Saddam Hussein, hungry for money . . . knew beforethe first of his soldiers crossed the border that it would be a walkoverand it was. In 12 hours,Kuwait was his.135


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Mixed Signals

And yet, rather than invade impulsively, Saddam first put out feelers. On February 11,1990, he met with John Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East and South AsianAffairs, in Baghdad. The next five years, Saddam said, would determine whether the U.S. used

its hegemony for constructive purposes, or whether it would blindly follow Israel.

136

Kellyresponded that the tyrant was a force for moderation in the region, and the United States wishesto broaden her relations with Iraq.137

But those relations, as Saddam suggested 12 days later at a summit of the ArabCooperation Council in Amman, would now be more one-sided. For the first time in a decade,the Iraqi president called Americans imperialists, bent on dominating the Middle East. Thesolution, in order to influence U.S. foreign policy, was for the Arab world to withdraw thepetrodollars it had invested in the West and to expel American ships from the gulf. There was noplace among good Arabs, Saddam argued, for the fainthearted who would argue that . . . theUnited States will be the decisive factor, and others have no choice but to submit.138

The rhetorical ratcheting up derived from two events between the Kelly meeting and the

summit. On February 21, the State Department had released its annual human rights report,which called Iraqs record abysmal.139And on February 15, Voice of America had broadcast inArabic an editorial titled, No More Secret Police, which in its own words was reflecting theviews of the U.S. government.140Inspired by the recent overthrow of Ceausescu, the editorialsubduedly expressed hope that comparable regimes, including Iraq among seven others, wouldmeet the same fate.

Saddam received these common criticisms with great indignation. As April Glaspie, theU.S. ambassador to Iraq, cabled stateside, Baghdad read the editorial as U.S.G.- [U.S.government] sanctioned mudslinging with the intent to incite revolution.141Glaspie then penneda statement of regret, to Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, that the editorial left . . . open . . . [an]incorrect interpretation. It is absolutely not United States policy to question the legitimacy of thegovernment of Iraq nor to interfere in any way with the domestic concerns of the Iraqi peopleand government.142Back in Washington, William Safire, who via a Freedom of Informationrequest obtained Glaspies cable, reported that John Kelly excoriated those democracy-pushersat the V.O.A. who were undermining his seduction of Saddam Hussein and demanded they beslapped down. Secretary Baker agreed; he told the U.S. Information Agency to get writtenclearance from State on future commentaries regarding the sensitive subject of Saddam.143

Nor did the seduction wane when on March 16, on trumped-up charges of espionage,Baghdad summarily hanged Farzad Bazoft, a 31-year-old journalist with the London Observer. Itwas the first time a government had executed a foreign journalist in at least a decade, butwhereas Britain recalled its ambassador to Iraq and denunciated the execution as barbarismdeeply repugnant to all civilized people,144the White House went mute. [W]e dont have a lotof details on the case, said spokesman Marlin Fitzwater.145 All the State Department couldmuster was to deplore Iraqs decision.146

Saddams next public speech came on April 1; one line stood out amid his usualrambling. By God, he thundered, we will make fire eat up half of Israel if it trie[s] [anything]against Iraq.147This unprecedented reference to chemical weapons made headlines worldwide.In a rare unambiguous moment, the State Department, in line with White House, called theremarks inflammatory, irresponsible and outrageous.148


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Significantly, Saddam panicked. Turning to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, by April 5 hewas engaged in a four-hour discussion with Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the kingdoms ambassadorto the U.S. Saddam asked Bandar to assure the U.S. and the U.K. that he wanted good relationswith them and had no intention to attack Israel. Rather, he sought their guarantee that Israelwould not attack him, as it had done in 1981 by preemptively destroying a nuclear reactor in

Osirak, Iraq.

149

The White House took the tyrant at his word.The quintet of senior senatorsRobert Dole (R-KS); Alan Simpson (R-WY); HowardMetzenbaum (D-OH); James McClure (R-ID); and Frank Murkowski (R-AK)who metSaddam in Mosul on April 12, was equally unquestioning. As the soon-to-be Butcher ofBaghdad, but at the time Mr. President, carped that he was the victim of a Westernpropaganda campaign, like the V.O.A. editorial, Bob Dole asserted, falsely, that the V.O.A.commentator had paid for his mistake with his job. Indeed, Dole declared, [O]nly 12 hoursearlier President Bush . . . assured me that he wants better relations . . . with Iraq.150Ambassador Glaspie, who was also present, interjected: As the ambassador of the U.S., I amcertain that this is the policy of the U.S.151 When Saddam persisted in reprobating Israel,Senator Simpson bootlicked: I believe that your problems lie with the Western media and not

with the U.S. government. . . . [Ours] is a haughty and pampered press; they all considerthemselves political geniuses.152 Finally, after revealing that he was a Jew and a staunchsupporter of Israel, Senator Metzenbaum commended the creature who, just two weeks prior,had threatened to gas the Jewish state: I am now aware that you are a strong and intelligent manand that you want peace.153

On April 16, an interagency Deputies Committee, reviewing U.S. policy toward Iraq,reached the same verdict. Yet National Security Directive 26, which cosseted Saddam viacommerce, remained predominant and unequivocal. As John Kelly told a House subcommitteeon April 26, We believe it is important to give the government of Iraq an opportunity todemonstrate that it does, indeed, wish to reverse this deterioration in relations, and we are,therefore, opposed to legislation to impose economic sanctions.154

Kuwait was the next deer in the headlights. At a summit of Arab heads of state inBaghdad on May 28, Saddam iterated his grievances. Then he accused the Kuwaiti emir, SheikhJaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah, of waging economic war against Iraq.155 Washingtons attention,however, was elsewhere, since the same day, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had arrived inthe U.S. capital for a four-day summit meeting with Bush. Further, since Saddam made the threatin private, neither the Washington PostnorNew York Timesimmediately reported it. Yet whenthe news filtered back to official circles, as veteran journalist Don Oberdorfer later reported,it sparked only passing interest.156

July brought the crossing of a new and final threshold. In a letter, dated July 16, 1990, tothe Arab League Secretary General, Tariq Aziz charged Kuwait and the United Arab Emirateswith direct aggression.157Although the letter was not made public for several days, the gist ofSaddams Revolution Day radio address the next day had been overt since February. Proclaimingthat the neglect by unnamed gulf stateswidely known to be Kuwait and the U.A.E.toBaghdads predicament was like stabbing Iraq in the back158 with a poison dagger,159Saddam warned, If words fail to protect Iraqis, something effective must be done to returnthings to their natural course and return usurped rights to their owners. 160Iraqis will not forgetthe saying that cutting necks is better than cutting the means of living.161This was Saddamsacknowledgement that he intendedbesides having the capabilityto undertake military actionto redress his grievances. In its July 21 issue (printed, as per weekly magazine dates, a week


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earlier, and written the week before that), the Economist surmised that Iraqs vituperationssound alarmingly like a pretext for invasion.162

Appropriately enough, on July 18, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad presented Iraq withformal demands for clarification. But the demands were dropped after six days in vain. Also onthe 18th, State spokesman Richard Boucher promulgated language that would soon become rote:

the U.S. remained strongly committed to supporting the individual and collective self-defenseof our friends in the gulf with whom we have deep and longstanding ties.163Under questioning,Boucher refused to disclose whether the U.S. would provide military help to its friends in case ofan Iraqi attack.

On July 19, State cabled Glaspie both to stress friendship with Iraq and establish that theU.S. was committed to ensure the free flow of oil from the gulf and to support the sovereigntyand integrity of the gulf states. The cable added, We will continue to defend our vital interestsin the gulf, and repeated the line about being strongly committed to supporting the self-defense of our gulf friends.164More pointedly, Dick Cheney, who was then Secretary of Defense,told journalists that the U.S. commitment, made during the Iran-Iraq War, to defend Kuwait if itwere attacked remained valid.165So far, so cleareven if Cheneys spokesman soon added that

his boss was quoted with some degree of liberty.

166

By July 20 Saddam had begun deploying military vehicles southeastthough it was aforeign military attach traveling along the highway from Kuwait City to Baghdad, not U.S. spysatellites, who first reported the movement. Within hours, U.S. analysts estimated that Iraq hadfrontiered two divisions of the Republican Guard, its best troops, equal to 30,000 soldiers.Kuwaits entire army was roughly 20,000 men.167 Iraq made no effort to hide the buildup, somany experts believed that Saddam was just flexing, trying to intimidate Kuwait to comply withhis demands, rather than preparing to invade it.168

By this time, the Pentagon had dispatched its Mideast warships to positions closer toKuwait. Similarly, in an unprecedented request from an Arab country, the U.A.E. asked the U.S.to supply it with two large KC-135 aerial-refueling tankers, so it could keep patrol planesairborne around the clock to monitor any Iraqi aggression. The White House approved therequest on July 23, and on July 24 the Defense Department announced the deploymentstheU.S. militarys first notable activity in the region since the Iran-Iraq wars ceasefireas ademonstration of support to the two emirates. We also remain determined, the Pentagonstatement read, to insure the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz and to defend theprinciples of freedom of navigation and commerce.169Again, on balance, so far, so clearevenif the statement continued, Our continuing efforts . . . are not directed against any singlecountry.170

But July 24 was a busy day. In Baghdad and Kuwait, Egyptian President Hosni Mubaraktried mediation, one of a series of visits, calls and messages involving senior Arab leaders. Afterreturning to Cairo, Mubarak related that Saddam had assured him he had no intention to invadeKuwait.171According to Mubarak, the trouble was only a summer cloud, the kind in Cairo thatproduces no rain.172Accordingly, States spokeswoman, Margaret Tutwiler, pussyfooted. Thereis no place for coercion and intimidation in a civilized world,173she recited. At the same time,We do not have any defense treaties with . . . or security commitments to Kuwait. 174Asked ifthe U.S. would help Kuwait if Iraq attacked it, Tutwiler emphasized the strongly committedslogan.175Secretary Baker was less mealymouthed. Although resolving disputes by coercion wascontrary to U.N. charter principles, he enjoined American ambassadors in Arab capitals, theU.S. take[s] no position on the border delineation raised by Iraq with respect to Kuwait.176


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* * *

How a rational person would decode these mixed signals is debatable. Which is why, onJuly 25, a week before he invaded, Saddam made the extraordinary request to see Ambassador

Glaspie personally. The tyrant was earnest, stern and shrewd. [W]hat can it mean, he ripostedin reference to Tutwilers remarks and news of the naval exercises, when America says it willnow protect its friends? It can only mean prejudice against Iraq. This stance plus maneuvers andstatements which have been made has encouraged the U.A.E. and Kuwait to disregard Iraqirights.177Evidently, yesterdays words and deeds had got Saddams attentionand his goat; atthe least he suspected the U.S. might intervene.178

This was it, then, the opportunity to strengthen or to sap that impression, to crystallize allthe foregoing bureaucratese, to deter Saddam or to disregard the Sabahs. Glaspie unambiguouslychose the latter, in the spirit of friendshipnot in the spirit of confrontation, she explained.179She reminded Saddam that President Bush had rejected imposing trade sanctions on Iraq becausethe U.S. sought better and deeper relations with him.180Like Senator Simpson, she rebuked the

U.S. media as cheap and unjust,

181

and referred to an apology from the American InformationAgency. Your stance is generous, replied the megalomaniac.182Then came the selling point heard round the world, the Rubicon, the fait accompli. I

know you need funds, Glaspie affirmed. We understand that and our opinion is that you shouldhave the opportunity to rebuild your country.But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts,like your border disagreement with Kuwait. . . . James Baker has directed our official spokesmento emphasize this instruction (my italics).183

Saddam was equally forthright. Regarding Kuwait and the U.A.E., he asserted that whenplanned and deliberate policy forces the price of oil down without good commercial reasons,then that means another war against Iraq.184 Regarding the U.S., he asserted, If you usepressure, we will deploy pressure and force. We know that you can harm us although we do notthreaten you. But we too can harm you. . . . We cannot come all the way to you in the UnitedStates, but individual Arabs may reach you.185

As the meeting concluded, Saddam announced that the Kuwaiti crown prince/primeminister had agreed to meet the vice chair of Iraqs Revolutionary Command Council in SaudiArabia, and later in Baghdad, to begin defusing the crisis. The tyrant said that he had givenHosni Mubarak his word that he would not do anything until we [Iraqis] meet with theKuwaitis. If we see that there is hope, he continued, then nothing will happen. But if we areunable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death, even thoughwisdom is above everything [else].186 Like President Carter, who lamented that his Sovietcounterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, had lied to him before invading Afghanistan in 1979,187the Bushadministration embraced this verbal promise-warning188

To be sure, in March 1991, Glaspie testified for two days before the House ForeignAffairs and the Senate Foreign Relations committees. She denied her reputed obsequiousnessand maintained that the Iraqi transcript of the meeting, the only one taken, was maliciouslyedited, deleting both her warnings that the U.S. would object to military force against Kuwaitand Saddams promise not to do so.189Indeed, the transcript was officially abridged, prepared inArabic and, like all documents from a police state, doctored. In whom, therefore, do we placemore credibility: a 25-year veteran of the foreign service, one of Americas top Arabists and thefirst woman to head a U.S. embassy in the Middle East,190or Saddam Hussein?


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Regrettably, the differences are not that diametric, since in her testimony, Glaspieconceded the transcript was about 80 percent correct, and admitted to her fateful no-sidessentence.191Likewise, the cable she sent stateside after the meeting so matched the transcript thatState officials described the latter as essentially accurate.192Nor did State explain why, uponreceiving Glaspies cable, it did not direct her to deliver a tougher message. Instead, the U.S.

government refused to correct the transcript, or to release the cable for 30 years. More tellingly,three days after Glaspies meeting with Saddam, Jim Baker (who many believe scapegoated theloyal envoy) whisked her away into silenced obscurity at a desk job in Washington.

In case Saddam was obtuse, on July 28 State wired him a three-paragraph message inPresident Bushs name, which in part read: [W]e believe that differences are best resolved bypeaceful means and not by threats involving military force. . . . Let me reassure you, as myAmbassador, Senator Dole and others have done, that my administration continues to desirebetter relations with Iraq. We will also continue to support our other friends in the region withwhom we have had longstanding ties. We see no necessary inconsistency between these twoobjectives. As you know, we still have fundamental concerns about certain Iraqi policies andactivities, and we will continue to raise these concerns with you in a spirit of friendship and

candor.

193

The cable made no mention of or even hinted at vital interests, protection ofsovereignty, or the 100,000 Iraqi troops hovering over Kuwait.194With the handwriting on the wall, the last days of July saw a flurry of last-ditch meetings

and telephone calls. At its midyear meeting in Geneva, OPEC voted, and Kuwait and the U.A.E.agreed, to limit production and raise the target price of a barrel for the first time in a decade.195InWashington, in defiance of President Bush,196the Senate and House voted to impose economicsanctions, with the tougher Senate bill proposing to cut off $1.2 billion in loan guarantees to Iraqand ban the sale of weapons and sensitive technology thereto. 197 King Hussein of Jordanreassured Bush that Saddam would not resort to military force, and Hosni Mubarak and KingFahd affirmed that the greater Arab Nation was handling and would settle this Arab quarrel. Allcounseled the President to refrain from upsetting the diplomatic applecart.

By July 31, Iraqi troops along the Kuwaiti border now exceeded 100,000,198 far morethan were necessary for mere saber rattling. Asked what the U.S. would do if Iraq invadedKuwait, John Kelly told a House subcommittee, That, Mr. Chairman, is a hypothetical or acontingency question, the kind of which I cant get into. Suffice it to say we would be extremelyconcerned, but I cannot get into the realm of what if answers. Pressed if it were correct thatthe U.S had no treaties that would obligate it to intervene, Kelly replied, That is correct.199Within minutes Saddam heard the hearing on the B.B.C. World Service.200Two days later, whatif was what now?


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Prewar Deterrence

Could the world have known that Saddam would invade Kuwait? Referring to PearlHarbor, security specialist Roberta Wohlstetter found it much easierafterthe event to sort therelevant from the irrelevant signals. After the event, of course, a signal is always crystal clear;

we can now see what disaster it was signaling, since the disaster has occurred. But before theevent it is obscure and pregnant with conflicting meanings. It comes to the observer embedded inan atmosphere of noise, i.e., in the company of all sorts of information that is useless andirrelevant for predicting the particular disaster.201 This was not the case in the spring andsummer of 1990, since for six months Saddam had been sounding the tocsins of war publiclywithout apparent effect.202 As the Economist later summated, between February and April,Saddam had demanded the withdrawal of the American navy from the gulf, called on fellowArabs to reactivate the oil weapon, and threatened not just to attack Israel . . . but to burn it withchemical weapons. Add Iraqs challenge to Syria in LebanonSaddam had been funnelingarms and money to the Christian militia fighting Damascus, his main regional rival203plus arelentless arms build-up, and the evidence was plain: the bad old . . . Iraq was back again.204

It seems that the Bush administration didnt want to hear this. As Christopher Hitchensputs it, A revised border with Kuwait was self-evidently part of the price that Washington . . .agreed to pay in its long-standing effort to make a pet of Saddam Hussein.205 Nor did theadministration, with the exception of a small minority of specialists,206 suspect an invasion.Among the findings from a monograph published that year by the Army War College: For theforeseeable future, debt repayment will fully occupy the [Iraqi] regime; it will have neither thewill, nor the resources to go to war. . . . Baghdad should not be expected to deliberately provokemilitary confrontations with anyone.207

Furthermore, even after the C.I.A. realized on July 25, pace the initial consensus, thatBaghdad was not bluffing,208nobody thought the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait,209asAmbassador Glaspie recalled. Instead, the thinking went, they would just annex some contestedterritory along Kuwaits northern border. And so what if they did? The corollary consensus wasthat while military force concerned the U.S., the U.S. would not take sides in what it perceived asa no-win, thankless, inter-Arab conflict. Observed a senior U.S. administration official: I cantsee the American public supporting the deployment of troops over a dispute over 12 miles ofdesert.210

A pattern thus developed: the Iraqi regime would do or say something brash orprovocative. With several notable exceptions early on, the U.S. avoided inflammatory responses,conveying what Jeffrey Record, in Hollow Victory: A Contrary View of the Gulf War (1993),terms a combination of indifference and appeasement.211Of course, bellicosity unchallenged isbellicosity aggrandized. This is especially true in Saddams world, where, the Mideast scholarAmatzia Baram notes, when you bluster, you expect to get a counterthreat. If you dont, itmeans weakness . . . and eventually retreat.212

In this way, writes another Mideast scholar, Janice Gross Stein, U.S. policy wasinconsistent, incoherent, and unfocused in the critical two weeks preceding the invasion.213Sonegligent were we, concludes Jean Edward Smith in George Bushs War (1992), that the UnitedStates bears substantial responsibility for what happened.214 For while no one may haveintended to green light Saddams invasion, our collective winks and nodssins of omission andcommissioneffectively did just that. [H]e probably felt free to move on Kuwait, JeaneKirkpatrick, Ronald Reagans ambassador to the U.N., told a House committee in December


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1990.215Therefore, as Mearsheimer and Walt conclude, Deterrence did not fail in this case; itwas never tried.216

The second condition that facilitated Saddams aggression was Kuwaiti pertinaciousnessand superciliousness. Admittedly, as Stein notes, the U.S. strengthened Kuwaits resolve,217given the absence of impellence and our regular proclamations about deep and longstanding

ties with our friends in the gulf. At the same time, as historian Theodore Draper observes,emboldened by their immense wealth and international financial connections, the Sabahsbehaved as if they were invulnerable.218 According to the authors of Saddam Hussein: APolitical Biography (1991), they interpreted Saddams demands as a bargaining [position]rather than an ultimatum. . . . They suspected that some concessions might be necessary, butwere determined to reduce them to the barest minimum.219Kuwaitis financial minister, SheikhAli al-Khalifa al-Sabah, was blunter. Ten of OPECs 13 members were quotabusters, he told theNational Press Club in November 1990. Those who could, did. Those who couldnt,complained.220

This does not mean that defying extortion invites invasion. For one, since Baghdad hadformally recognized Kuwaits independence in 1963, its border claims derived less from history

than from opportunity.

221

Yet some of Saddams grievances were eminently fair. Besides the oilglut, many experts agreed that Kuwait was slant drilling into the Rumaila oilfield.222As Timelater opined, A payment to Baghdad for past deprivation and a guarantee of a more equitabledistribution of oil resources in the future [wa]s both doable and just.223The Sabahs, however,never gave such propositions their due; and, as political scientist Christopher Layne notes,When diplomacy fails to adjust an unacceptable status quo, an aggrieved state often uses orthreatens to use force, which remains the ultima ratio in world politics.224

Finally, as with Iran, Saddam again grievously miscalculated in plunging into war. But,again, he did so because while he was vulnerable, his victim was more so. He weighed hisoptions warily and had compelling reasons to believe his attack would not cause retaliation. Tothe contrary, he had recently been building alliances with his neighbors. In February 1989, hehad helped charter, and became the first president of, the Arab Cooperation Council, aneconomic group uniting Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and North Yemen,225which Western diplomats sawas a force for moderation.226 The next month, he had inked a nonaggression treaty with theSaudis.227And since April 1990, when he made his infamous threat to Israel, the Arab street hadshowered praise on their new Saladin, the Muslim commander who liberated Jerusalem from thecrusaders.228 Invading Kuwait, therefore, was less the impulsive irrationality of a serialaggressor229 than the bold coercion of a tyrant. Recalled a U.S. diplomat in the Mideast: If Ihad been sitting where he was sitting and getting the signals he was getting from Washington andelsewhere at the time, I would probably also have gambled on the invasion of Kuwait.230

Similarly, while invading a nonthreatening neighbor is wantonly immoral, moralitymatters little to tyrants, in whose calculus the end justifies the means. Indeed, by raping Kuwait,Saddam cut his Gordian knot. With one swift blitz, he doubled the oil under his control to 20percent of the worlds known reserves, second only to Riydahs 25 percent.231 And not onlywould Kuwaits petrodollars now flow into Iraqs coffers, the tyrant could also manipulate theemirates output to ensure a high price for Iraqi oil. Call it the Willy Sutton theory ofinternational relations: Why seize Kuwait? Because thats where the money is.


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Prewar Compellence

As Baghdad installed a puppet government in Kuwait City and its troops plundered theirnew real estate, a stunned world moved rapidly in unprecedented concert. Working through thenight until the morning of August 2, the United Nations Security Council overwhelmingly passed

Resolution 660, calling for Iraqs immediate and unconditional withdrawal from all Kuwait.Following the U.S. lead, France, England, Italy, Germany, Belgium and Japan all froze Kuwaitiand Iraqi assets in their countries. The Islamic Conference Organization, the Arab LeagueCouncil and the Gulf Cooperation Council all condemned the invasion. The European EconomicCommunity imposed a boycott on Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil, and, as China and Russia would soondo, ended all arms sales thereto.

By August 5, though he had initially told reporters he was not discussingintervention,232 President Bush declared, This will not stand, this aggression againstKuwait.233The next day was even more historic: for the first time in 23 years, the U.N. passedstrict economic sanctions, without dissent. By August 8, the same day Iraq formally annexedKuwait, Bush announced that he had deployed 210,000234 troops to Saudi Arabia.235For their

part, the Saudis invited the U.S. to stage military operations from the soil of Mecca and Medina,the two holiest sites in Islam. Cuba and Yemen, both of which abstained in the U.N. vote forsanctions, fell into line in condemning the annexation (Resolution 662). Even Switzerland,despite its decades-old policy of neutrality, joined the blockade, just as the Arab League,breaking the old taboo against colluding openly with Israels closest ally, dispatched troops tofight shoulder to shoulder with the Americans against their Arab brothers.

During the next few months, as the U.N. passed seven more resolutions, the French,Soviets and Arabs tried to initiate negotiations. Nothing significant occurred, however, untilNovember 8, when, surprising even Congress, President Bush announced that he was doublingU.S. forces in the gulf to more than 400,000.236Three weeks later, in its first authorization ofoffensive military action since the Korean war, the U.N. issued Saddam an ultimatum: disgorgeKuwait by January 15, 1991, or be evicted by all necessary means.

The last ditch came on January 9, when James Baker met Tariq Aziz in Geneva. Thepurpose of the meeting was to disabuse the Iraqis of any misperceptions and assure them of thegravitas of the crisis. To this end, Baker carried a letter from President Bush to Saddam, the mostimportant part of which read: [T]he United States will not tolerate the use of chemical orbiological weapons or the destruction of Kuwaits oil fields and installations. Further, you will beheld directly responsible for terrorist actions against any member of the coalition. The Americanpeople would demand the strongest possible response. You and your country will pay a terribleprice if you order unconscionable acts of this sort.237 Although he studied the letter as if tomemorize its key points, Aziz refused to accept it, professing that its language was inappropriatefor communication between heads of state.238Four hours later, the meeting ended in vain; threedays later, Congress voted to authorize military force; and four days after that, 19 hours after theU.N. deadline expired without effect, the Gulf War began.

* * *

In retrospect, Saddams intransigence appears mad. Seen . . . from afar, Time remarks,he comes across as a figure seldom found outside the pages of comic books or pulp fiction: thevillain who will stop at nothing. Did this Arab Dr. No 239actually believe he could fend off


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what, by January 15, was the largest deployment of the United States military since Vietnam?Add the coalition, and the troops at his doorstep totaled almost 600,000, against the 545,000 hehad deployed in and around Kuwait.240Does not such a delusion neutralize deterrence?

Lets review the delusion arguments.To borrow from the Mideast historian Daniel Pipes(albeit in a slightly different context), This mistake can best be explained as the result of

Saddam inhabiting the uniquely self-indulgent circumstance of the totalitarian autocrat, with itstwo key qualities: (1) hubris: the absolute ruler can do anything he wants, so he thinks himselfunbounded in his power; and (2) ignorance: the all-wise ruler brooks no contradiction, so hisaides, fearing for their lives, tell him only what he wants to hear. Both these incapacities worsenwith time and the tyrant becomes increasingly removed from reality. His whims, eccentricitiesand fantasies dominate state policy.241 Indeed, as Time noted, the tyrant lived in hothouseisolation, in limited contact with any ideas but his own. Except for three and a half years inEgypt . . . in 1960 . . . and brief visits abroad in the early 80s, he knew little of the world outsideIraq. During a 1990 interview, Saddam twice expressed amazement that the U.S. had no laws tojail people who insulted the American Presidentas Iraq does.242

To be sure, prematurely quitting Kuwait would have undermined Saddams honor on the

Arab street, on which the humiliation of capitulationor its perceptionis often worse thandefeat.243Likewise, to prevent domestic revolt, Saddam needed to prove to his countrymen thathis regime was still fearsome. But as Pipes notes, [T]he spin doctors in Baghdad kn[e]w how toportray retreat as victory.244 The political psychologist Jerrold Post concurs: Saddams pasthistory reveals a remarkable capacity to find face saving justification when reversing his coursein very difficult circumstances.245 He could have pointed to the financial gains the invasionenabled, the punishment of the Sabahs, or that the international coalition dared not confront Iraqiforces.

To further be sure, for the first few months of the crisis, one might have analogizedSaddams outrageous offers of negotiation to the style of Israeli-Palestinian talks: only afterbeginning with the most extreme position does one make concessions. One might also note thatin order to avoid war, Saddam eventually released foreigners he was holding as hostages;246thathe invited to Baghdad such personalities as Austrias Kurt Waldheim, Britains Edward Heathand Germanys Willy Brandt;247that to influence votes at the U.N. he offered the Third Worldfree oil;248and that he instructed his ships to submit to searches by Western vessels enforcing theembargo. Saddam was not trapped into war, writes Janice Stein.249

But it [all] seemed more public relations than reality,250 as Time put it; the tyrantsbellicose actions undercut such trial balloons. For example, the annexation of Kuwait cut off anyeasy way out, and the initial use of the hostages as human shields was gratuitous. On the militaryfront, Iraq continually reinforced its troops, and dug an elaborate defensive line along theKuwait-Saudi border. Most self-defeatingly, Saddam availed himself constructively of none ofthe various proposals to avert warespecially when a mere gesture would have greatly bolsteredthe arguments against war.

And yet, despite all this, Saddam had considerable reasons to think hanging tough wouldwork. First, the Bush administration equivocated in explaining the casus belli to the Americanpeople. For instance, during a senate debate in October, Bob Dole spelled out the one reason whythe United States was in the gulf: O-I-L.251A week later, protestors chanting No blood for oilforced President Bush to reply, The fight isnt about oil,the fight is about naked aggression.252Yet in November, in order to bring the rationale down to the level of the average Americancitizen, Jim Baker told reporters, If you want to sum it [the crisis] up in one word, its


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jobs.253Consequently, Americans were unsure whether they were fighting for their presidentsnew world order beginning to emerge in the aftermath of the Cold War,254or to make the worldsafe for gas guzzlers, as aBoston Globe cartoon in early August suggested.255

Similarly, Americans were dubious about restoring the Kuwaiti governmentanautocratic, anti-Semitic, anti-American regime that, to paraphrase Bismarcks comment about the

Balkans, was not worth the bones of a single U.S. soldier.

256

During the congressional debate toauthorize military forcewhich passed by only 52 to 47 in the Senate and 250 to 183 in theHouseDaniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) recalled his experience with the Sabahs whileambassador to the U.N. They were singularly nasty, the senator said, and conspicuouslypoisonous.257 A similar attitude prevailed at the first post-invasion meeting of the NationalSecurity Council. As one official remembered, Hey, too bad about Kuwait, but its just a gasstation, and who cares whether the sign says Sinclair or Exxon?258 Surely it not Americanpolicy to make the world safe for [monarchy], the New York Times wrote on August 12,1990.259

Third, an avid viewer of C.N.N., Saddam was listening closely to this intense debate,260which he interpreted, with reason, as evidence that such a divided country would not go to war.

Iraqi newspapers routinely quoted antiwar senators,

261

and Saddam undoubtedly took comfortfrom the parade of skeptics counseling delay before the Senate Armed Services Committee inearly December. Baghdad further construed the firing of U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff MichaelDugan (in September for disclosing details of U.S. attack plans), like the ouster of the hawkishBritish Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in November, as a sign that war was increasinglyunpopular.262

Fourth, many Western military experts estimated that with the worlds fourth largestarmy, consisting of almost one million soldiers, 500 combat aircraft and 5,500 tanks,263 Iraqwould mount a formidable defense. Its war against Iran, Secretary Cheney told the House ArmedServices Committee, had left Saddam with a warhardened militarydisciplined, organized, andtough.264[I]f he chooses to, predicted General Norman Schwarzkopf, who commanded U.S.forces in the gulf, Saddam could bring a tremendous amount of . . . might to bear in an attack onSaudi Arabia.265Moreover, until August 8, the U.S. had no troops in the region, having reliedinstead on a policy of offshore balancing, Then, as they began to pour into Saudi Arabia, thedeployment was so extraordinary that Bush needed to call-up 180,000 regular reservists266whom civilian aircraft had to ferry to the gulf267and, for first time in 20 years, to activate theIndividual Ready Reserve, the pool of weekend warriors designed for national crises.268Further, as Saddam himself recognized, the U.S. had weapons that strike from afar, but victorywould depend on a soldier who walks on the ground and comes with a hand grenade, rifle andbayonet to fight the soldier in the battle trench.269 Military historian Robert Pape agreed:Airpower alone cannot compel Baghdads retreat; we must be prepared to commit immenseground forces as well as air forces for a protracted campaign, and be ready to pay a high price inblood and treasure.270

Recent history, however, showed that Americans were distinctly unwilling to bear thisburden. By cutting and running from Beirut in 1983, after Hezbollah bombed a barracks andkilled 241 marines, and by evacuating Mogadishu 10 years later, after guerillas slaughtered 19G.I.s, the U.S. government had fostered the widespread impression that it could be chased out ofa country at the first sight of bloodshed. Our collective nonchalance to the subsequent attacks onthe World Trade Center in 1993, the Khobar Towers in 1996, and the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 onlyreinforced contempt for our resolve. The interpretation of Osama bin Laden, from an interview in


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1998, is instructive: [O]ur boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier andthey realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. . . . After a few blows, [America] .. . rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace. 271

Saddam, too, was keenly sensitive to this trend. In fact, so much did he relishBlack HawkDown (2001),the movie that dramatized the Somalian debacle, that he distributed it to his senior

command.

272

Yours is a society which cannot accept 10,000 dead, he had taunted AprilGlaspie,273whereas Iraq had proven its ability, throughout the past decade, to absorb massivecasualties. Tariq Aziz made the implication explicit: [I]f the American leader[s] think[] that thisis a vacation like they had in Panama or Grenada, they are mistaken. . . . It will be a bloodyconflict.274

Indeed, the question was never whether the coalition would defeat Iraq; it was at whatcost. It was not for nothing that coalition troops were donning gas masks, stockpiling a full rangeof inoculation kits, and deploying elaborate decontamination equipment.275 For this reason,further Baathist pronouncements about the mother of all battles,276ormost memorably, thepromise from the Minister of Information that Iraqis would eat any downed American pilots277were not simply typical Arab rhetoric but strategic. In Saddams plausible analysis, as the war

dragged on and the morale of his adversaries withered, a stalemate would ensue, thus increasingIraqs chances for a respectable draw.278He knew he would lose militarily, as he told Soviet andFrench envoys in October and early January,279so he emphasized symbolic victory, on winningin psychological terms.280To borrow the assessment of Iraq today from military historian VictorDavis Hanson, while Saddam knew that he couldnt blow up enough Abrams tanks or evenHumvees to alter the battlefield, he could certainly maim or slaughter a few hundred Westernerswith pomp, knowing that C.N.N. would magnify the trauma and savagery, and do so oftenenough to render the taxpaying citizens back home exhausted with the entire mess.281Observed columnist Mike Barnicle: War is popular for the first week or month our soldiers areengaged in combat. . . . Toss a few hundred [flag-draped coffins] into the mix, add 120 women toeach states roster of Gold Star Mothers, and popularity wanes.282This Achilles heel was notlost on President Bush, who in a news conference in late November vowed, This will not be aprotracted, drawn-out war. . . . I pledge to you: there will not be any murky ending. 283 Inannouncing the commencement of hostilities, Bush repeated, [T]his will not be anotherVietnam.284

Fifth, even those inclined to support war first favored sanctions,285which unlike the lastones the U.N. imposed, in 1977 on South Africa, were mandatory for all member states, barringthem from buying anything from or selling anything to Iraq or Kuwait, except on humanitariangrounds. In an interview in mid-September, General Schwarzkopf explained the logic: If wefigure, as has already been announced, that Iraq is losing one billion [dollars] in revenues everyday the sanctions are in effect, then its going to be interesting to see h ow much loyalty he[Saddam] has in his armed forces when hes unable to pay their salaries, feed them, and resupplythem with fuel and spare parts and ammunition.286 The flip side was that Saddam couldprobably endure the sanctions well until the middle of 1991287all the while consolidating hisgrip on Kuwait and hoping the world would insure itself to the change of an emirate to arepublic.

Sixth, as time wore on, it became increasingly thorny to hold the coalition together.Indeed, if the coalition for the Iraq war were a coalition of the bribed . . . and the extorted,288asSenator John Kerry (D-MA) called it, then the coalition for the Gulf War was its precedent: anextremely fragile united front among disparate states. Consider the votes at the United Nations;


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from the cases we know, we may infer others. After the U.N. delegate from Yemen receivedsome acclaim for casting a negative vote, Secret

Documents

The Prewar Evidence (or Lack Thereof): Saddam Hussein’s Collaboration with Terrorists and His Deterrability