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The Observer
Deember 2, 2001
SECRET US PLAN FOR IRAQ WAR
Bush orders backing for rebels to topple Saddam
Peter Beaumont, Ed Vulliamy and Paul Beaver
America intends to depose Saddam Hussein by giving armed support to Iraqi
opposition forces across the country, The Observer has learnt.
President George W. Bush has ordered the CIA and his senior military
commanders to draw up detailed plans for a military operation that could
begin within months.
The plan, opposed by Tony Blair and other European Union leaders, threatens
to blow apart the increasingly shaky international consensus behind the
US-led 'war on terrorism'.
It envisages a combined operation with US bombers targeting key military
installations while US forces assist opposition groups in the North and
South of the country in a stage-managed uprising. One version of the plan
would have US forces fighting on the ground.
Despite US suspicions of Iraqi involvement in the 11 September attacks, the
trigger for any attack, sources say, would be the anticipated refusal of
Iraq to resubmit to inspections for weapons of mass destruction under the
United Nations sanctions imposed after the Gulf war.
According to the sources, the planning is being undertaken under the
auspices of a the US Central Command at McDill air force base in Tampa,
Florida, commanded by General Tommy Franks, who is leading the war against
Afghanistan.
Another key player is understood to be former CIA director James Woolsey.
Sources say Woolsey was sent to London by the hawkish Deputy Defence
Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, soon after 11 September to ask Iraqi opposition
groups if they would participate in an uprising if there was US military
support.
The New York Times yesterday quoted a senior administration official who
admitted that Bush's aides were looking at options that involved
strengthening groups that opposed Saddam. Richard Armitage, the Deputy
Secretary of State, said that action against Iraq was not imminent, but
would come at a 'place and time of our choosing'.
Washington has been told by its allies that evidence it has presented of an
Iraqi link to 11 September is at best circumstantial. However, US proponents
of extending the war believe they can make the case for hitting Saddam's
regime over its plan to produce weapons of mass destruction.
A European diplomat said last week: 'In the past week the Americans have
shut up about Iraqi links to 11 September and have been talking a lot more
about their weapons programme.'
The US is believed to be planning to exploit existing UN resolutions on
Iraqi weapons programmes to set the action off.
Under the pre-existing 'red lines' for military action against Iraq - set
down by Washington and London after the Gulf War - evidence of any credible
threat from weapons of mass destruction would be regarded as sufficient to
launch military strikes along the lines of Operation Desert Fox in 1998,
when allied planes made large-scale strikes against suspected Iraqi weapons
complexes.
Opposition by Blair and French President Jacques Chirac may not be enough to
dissuade the Americans. One European military source who recently returned
from General Franks's headquarters in Florida said: 'The Americans are
walking on water. They think they can do anything at the moment and there is
bloody nothing Tony [Blair] can do about it.'
Bush is said to have issued instructions about the proposals, which are now
at a detailed stage, to his Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, three weeks
ago. But Pentagon sources say that a plan for attacking Iraq was developed
by the time Bush's order was sent to the Pentagon, drawn up by Rumsfeld,
Paul Wolfowitz, chairman of the joint chiefs General Richard Myers, and
Franks.
The plan is to work with a combination of three political forces: Kurdish
rebels in the north of Iraq, radical Sunni Muslim groups in and around
Baghdad, and, most controversially, the Shia opposition in the south.
The most adventurous ingredient in the anti-Iraqi proposal is the use of US
ground troops, Pentagon sources say. 'Significant numbers' of ground troops
could also be called on in the early stages of any rebellion to guard oil
fields around the Shia port of Basra in southern Iraq.
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