Bubba’s War
“Everybody thought” Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, even the Clinton Administration:
It was March 1997. For six years the UN inspectors had been probing the secrets of Saddam’s weapons programmes, in the process destroying huge quantities of chemical munitions and other production facilities. To enforce Saddam’s cooperation, Iraq was subject to crushing sanctions.
Now, Rolf Ekeus, the urbane Swedish
diplomat who headed the inspection effort, was ready to announce that his work was almost done. “I was getting close to certifying that Iraq was in compliance with Resolution 687,” he confirmed to me recently.
At the time, he declared that although there were some loose ends to be cleared up, “not much is unknown about Iraq’s retained proscribed weapons capabilities.”
For the Clinton administration, this was a crisis. If Ekeus was allowed to complete his mission, then the suspension of sanctions would follow almost automatically.
Saddam would be off the hook and, more
importantly for the Clintonites, the neo-conservative republicans would be howling for the president’s blood.The only hope was somehow to prevent Ekeus completing his mission.
Pretty sure I originally got the link from Blood and Treasure or A Tiny Revolution.
Comment by Thoreau —
January 28, 2008 @ 2:19 am
I don’t claim to know whether Hillary Clinton would follow the exact same policies as Bill Clinton, but there are 2 points worth noting about this episode, for those who hold hope that Hillary will pursue a sane foreign policy:
1) The article notes that Bill Clinton did this to appease neoconservatives. Democrats have this thing about “proving” that they aren’t “weak”, where “weak” is wingnutese for “sane.” A similar calculation will probably apply to Hillary Clinton. For some reason, she is perceived as ultra-left, and to whatever extent she is concerned about that perception she will protect her right flank. Given that she’s hardly been a dove in the Senate, I think that protection of her right flank is a likely strategy in office.
2) While Hillary Clinton might not bring back Madeleine Albright, she will probably bring back a lot of other people. Administrations are about more than 1 President, 1 Vice President (4th branch FTW!) and however many Cabinet Secretaries. Do we want to bring back the people who did things like this?
I don’t get the people who think that Hillary Clinton will pursue a sane course in Iraq. She might not go as batshit insane as this administration has been, but even a schizophrenic crackhead screaming at imaginary unicorns would be less batshit insane than this junta.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
January 28, 2008 @ 10:08 am
This is an interesting summary of the top 3 Democrats from a leftwing foreign policy viewpoint–
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/25/6613/
In that summary Obama is the best of a bad lot. Not that this is high praise. HRC looks pretty bad.
Comment by joe —
January 28, 2008 @ 10:41 am
This also helps explain why Saddam kicked the inspectors out in 1998, precipitating Operation Desert Fox: because he couldn’t have the UN certifying the destruction of the arsenal whose existence he believed kept him in power, and kept the Iranians from invading.
Comment by Jim Henley —
January 28, 2008 @ 10:47 am
joe: Saddam did not kick the inspectors out in 1998. Are you honestly misinformed on this point? I prefer to think you’re not knowingly retailing falsehoods for the sake of the image of the Clinton Administration.
Comment by hurf —
January 28, 2008 @ 12:02 pm
What’s interesting to me about this narrative is that this occurred during the second Clinton term – which means Clinton was worried about the political fallout even though he wasn’t up for election. I can pull a number of possible explanations for this out of my ass:
-He thought that if he took a political hit the impeachment hearings would result in
-He’s a reflexively political animal with an irrational attachment to his own popularity
-He didn’t want the political fallout to affect the rest of his faction, i.e. the presidential aspirations of Gore/Hillary
-He wasn’t actually worried about the political fallout, but had some other reason for wanting to dishonestly maintain sanctions in spite of the disappearance of their rationale
Comment by Jim Henley —
January 28, 2008 @ 12:04 pm
hurf: May I respectfully suggest that the simplest answer is, the US government has had a bipartisan policy of regime change in Iraq by fair means or foul since 1991?
Comment by joe —
January 28, 2008 @ 1:08 pm
Jim,
Kicked them out, impeded their ability to do their jobs, whatever. I don’t see why this warrants you barking like that.
Saddam put a stop to the UN’s operations, knowing it would mean taking a hit, even though he didn’t actually have anything to hide. Is there some other way you’d prefer me to phrase that, or are we ok?
Comment by joe —
January 28, 2008 @ 1:10 pm
a bipartisan policy of regime change in Iraq by fair means or foul
There was a bipartisan policy of wanting to change the regime since 1992 or so. There was not a bipartisan policy of invading the country, toppling the government, and occupying it, which is what the phrase “regime change” has come to mean since 2002.
Comment by hurf —
January 28, 2008 @ 1:12 pm
That could fall under option D I suppose. Upon a second reading, the assertion by the article that Clinton acted due to fear of political fallout is charitable and unsupported.
I suppose this is a manifestation of confirmation bias. The thought of a Democrat capitulating to Republican pressure, or of Clinton doing something with pure political motivation, fits more neatly in the mainstream worldview than “The Democrats also lied to secure support for a war they couldn’t justify otherwise.”
Comment by joe —
January 28, 2008 @ 1:21 pm
I think Clinton took a lot of things off the table that he felt would anger people in the Middle East, in an effort to keep the Israel-Palestinian Peace Process on track. He really made that priority.
If you believe Clinton did intend to invade Iraq but changed his mind, that might be a plausible explaination.
Comment by Thoreau —
January 28, 2008 @ 1:43 pm
joe-
There has been a bipartisan policy of trying to accomplish a goal that has to be handled in a very particular manner to avoid turning into a clusterfuck. If you have a bipartisan policy of achieving that goal, and somebody attempts it and the most likely outcome obtains, well, maybe we shouldn’t have made that our goal, you know?
Comment by joe —
January 28, 2008 @ 1:57 pm
No. That’s nonsensical. It’s an excuse for the people who f*cked up, and an effort to smear the people who didn’t f*ck up by association.
Efforts to effect regime change in Iraq based on encouraging internal dissent and staging demonstration’s of Saddam’s weakness, in an effort to encourage the Iraqis to change the regime themselves, had nothing whatsoever to do with the unfoldind disaster brought about Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Comment by joe —
January 28, 2008 @ 1:59 pm
the most likely outcome obtains
What we’re seeing if the most likely outcome of invading and occupying the country, and attempting to install a client regime while maintaining a permanet military presence.
It is not the most likely outcome of what the Clinton adminstration actually did in their efforts to bring about regime change.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
January 28, 2008 @ 2:40 pm
“Efforts to effect regime change in Iraq based on encouraging internal dissent and staging demonstration’s of Saddam’s weakness, in an effort to encourage the Iraqis to change the regime themselves”
In practice that meant making them miserable under the sanctions, in hopes that they’d rebel against Saddam. Hamas was elected and Saddam wasn’t, but otherwise this has been the way the US and Israel have treated the people of Gaza.
Comment by Thoreau —
January 28, 2008 @ 3:07 pm
joe-
Invasion and occupation isn’t the only method that the US has used to achieve regime change abroad during its history. Most of the other methods have either failed to change the regime (see: Cuba) or else brought about a client state that was problematic in its own right (see: well, just about any US-backed coup).
When something keeps failing, no matter how it’s attempted, maybe the task just isn’t worth attempting, and the goal shouldn’t be added to our roster of official policies.
FWIW, I wouldn’t smear you with association with the policy that was actually implemented. To your credit, you didn’t support this method of regime change. However, I suggest that you examine the roads that your good intentions might take you down.
When somebody picks the worst possible method to achieve a goal, that doesn’t mean that the goal gets spared criticism so that we can focus all our fire on the method.
Comment by Thoreau —
January 28, 2008 @ 3:08 pm
Oh, and as to encouraging internal dissent: The Ayatollahs still run Iran.
Face it: We just don’t have a good record with regime change. Either we don’t change the regime, or we back a nasty coup, or we invade and occupy and make a big mess even worse.
Comment by joe —
January 28, 2008 @ 4:19 pm
Donald Johnson,
The economy-crippling sanctions were one facet of the policy, and one I certainly wouldn’t repeat. If Gaza shows us anything, it’s that such blockades only drive people furher into the arms of the men with the guns.
But there were other aspects – the UN Inspection/Disarmament teams being one, the safe haven in Kurdistan being another.
Comment by joe —
January 28, 2008 @ 4:24 pm
Oh, and as to encouraging internal dissent: The Ayatollahs still run Iran.
There were protests so large and widespread in Iran before Bush that they Ayotollahs had to jail some of their own “security” personnel who were implicated in killing demonstrators.
And were not Ronald Reagan’s and John F. Kennedy’s Berlin speeches efforts at regime change in their own right? Did not the American/French support for the Lebanese uprising help in changing that regime from a Syrian puppet to an independent government?
There is a great deal of room between Ron Paul and Bill Kristol when it comes to supporting freedom around the world.
Comment by Thoreau —
January 28, 2008 @ 4:47 pm
There is a great deal of room between Ron Paul and Bill Kristol when it comes to supporting freedom around the world.
Yes, but decades of bad experience with regime change suggests that anything other than inspiring speeches is likely to be a bad idea. The gap between the libertarian approach and the “bipartisan consensus” is quite large, and the “bipartisan consensus” seems to have a poor track record.
Comment by Happy Jack —
January 28, 2008 @ 6:53 pm
Are you honestly misinformed on this point?
Possibly. I see that Fred Hiatt was one of the leading purveyors. Heh. That, I didn’t know.
Comment by Jonathan Schwarz —
January 28, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
joe:
This also helps explain why Saddam kicked the inspectors out in 1998, precipitating Operation Desert Fox: because he couldn’t have the UN certifying the destruction of the arsenal whose existence he believed kept him in power, and kept the Iranians from invading.
Iraq would have desperately loved to have the UN certify them as disarmed. They prevented the inspectors from returning after the 1998 bombing because (1) they believed the US would never allow the UN to do so and (2) the inspectors had been infiltrated by US & UK personnel attempting to overthrow Saddam. So their presence had no upside for the regime.
They did make attempts to restart the inspection process between 1999 and 2002. However, they insisted there had to be a clear path to certification they were disarmed (and thus the lifting of sanctions). The US would never agree to this.
The problem with the Clinton administration policy was the same one, in less virulent form, as with Bush: dishonesty. We pretended our goal was the one required by international law; disarmament. In realty, our goal was regime change, whether the regime had disarmed or not.
In both cases we couldn’t allow them to certified as disarmed, because that (it was believed) would make regime change more difficult. The actual issue of WMD was never important to us, not in the eighties, nineties, or now.
Comment by Thoreau —
January 28, 2008 @ 7:41 pm
If you declare that your goal is to get rid of somebody, he has no reason to cooperate with you. Even if your policy is bipartisan, and you get all sorts of other countries on board with whatever multi-lateral multi-national cooperative framework for dialog on timetables for negotiated goodness with ice cream and ponies, if you hold the important cards in your hands and you declare that you’re going to get rid of somebody, he won’t play the game.
Comment by joe —
January 29, 2008 @ 10:16 am
Iraq would have desperately loved to have the UN certify them as disarmed.
I don’t think that’s true, Jonathan. If the Iraqi government wanted to be certified, why would they demolish WMDs stocks in secret? Why would Saddam keep making statements about having them?
He wanted his country, and the world, to believe they still had that capability, to entrench his own power at home and to project the image of fearsome military might abroad.
The FBI interrogator who worked with Saddam for the months after his capture described Saddam exlaining all of this to him on 60 Minutes Sunday night.
Comment by Jim Henley —
January 29, 2008 @ 10:27 am
joe: When did Saddam make statements about having WMD? And in what fora?
Comment by Jonathan Schwarz —
January 29, 2008 @ 1:40 pm
joe:
If the Iraqi government wanted to be certified, why would they demolish WMDs stocks in secret?
Because they were worried about international condemnation for their biological and nuclear weapons programs. Everyone knew they’d used chemical weapons, so they admitted to that and turned over huge quantities of them.
The non-turned over weapons were secretly destroyed in 1991. Iraq thought the UN would never figure out they’d been produced in the first place, but they did. Iraq then said they’d destroyed them. After that their public position–including in public speeches and interviews with Saddam–was always the same, and turns out to have been true.
Why would Saddam keep making statements about having them?
He didn’t. You’ve likely heard about a 2000 speech that was characterized like that by people such as Kenneth Pollack. In fact, what Saddam said was that Iraq should be allowed to have weapons that others in the region had, but if everyone’s weapons were taken away down to sticks, Iraq would keep only sticks.
And in fact, the UN resolution demanding Iraq disarm said that was merely the first step in the creation of a WMD-free region in the mideast. We now know thanks to the Duelfer report that Saddam was saying to underlings in private the same thing he said in the 2000 speech: that it was unfair for Iraq to be singled out, but that Iraq had no ambitions to produce WMD again if there were region-wide disarmament.
The FBI interrogator who worked with Saddam for the months after his capture described Saddam exlaining all of this to him on 60 Minutes Sunday night.
Taking 60 Minutes’ word for anything is not a good idea. They have a long history of atrocious reporting on this subject, such as this notorious piece.
Note that in the piece Sunday there was no use of the interview videotapes, nor did the interrogator quote Saddam directly. But compare this:
With the account in the Duelfer report, based on Piro’s interrogation:
Which characterization is more accurate? Who knows? But let me go out on a limb here and guess that if the US government had videotape of Saddam saying what Piro claims, we would have seen it long ago.
Note this, also from the Duelfer Report, was not part of the 60 Minutes piece: