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The Road to Baghdad
Ken Silverstein
In 1998, a group of 40 conservatives wrote an open letter to
President Clinton calling for the United States to overthrow Saddam
Hussein. Today many of the signers of that letter hold important
government posts, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
his chief deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle, chairman of
the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. Together with right-wing
activists in the private sector, they see the post-September 11
military campaign as the perfect opportunity to achieve their goal of
toppling the Iraqi leader. "Saddam Hussein engages in acts of
terrorism, he hates the United States and we know he has
weapons of mass destruction," says Perle. "To ignore all that is
too big a risk."
Wolfowitz and Perle, the two names most closely associated with
the Get Saddam crowd, both have hard-line Cold War pedigrees
and are close to Israeli right-wing political leaders -- including Ariel
Sharon -- who are as anxious to get rid of Hussein as they are.
They remain angry that the United States didn't finish off Saddam
after driving his troops from Kuwait. "It grates on them that Saddam
is still in power," says one retired military officer who is well
plugged into conservative circles. "One reason they want to get him
so badly is so they can set their own records straight."
During the Clinton years, conservatives saw the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an
opposition group that has received military aid from Congress, as the proper vehicle
for an assault on Hussein. With a Republican administr
ation in office and Rumsfeld running the Pentagon, they now call for the U.S. to
direct the campaign. During a CNN interview six weeks before the September 11 attacks,
Wolfowitz called Hussein a primary threat to national
security and said the U.S. should go after him as soon as "we find the right way" to
do so.
The right way presented itself with the destruction of the World Trade Center. Within
the week, Perle's Defense Policy Board had sent the Pentagon a proposal that suggested
that Iraq be targeted by U.S. forces.
The Get Saddam faction commands significant, though not necessarily majority, support
in the Bush administration. Based on interviews with conservative insiders and past
public statements of the various players, it's clea
r that the top civilian leadership at the Pentagon -- Defense Undersecretary Douglas
Feith and Assistant Secretaries J.D. Crouch and Peter Rodman -- is solidly on board.
So, too, are Air Force Secretary Jim Roach; Underse
cretary of State John Bolton, a close friend of Perle's; Gen. Wayne Downing at the
National Security Council, who during the Clinton years offered military advice to the
INC; and I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice Pre
sident Dick Cheney.
To win further administration converts, conservatives based outside of government have
been vigorously working the media and Washington political circles. One of the most
active has been ex-CIA Director James Woolsey, who
has been feeding material to journalists, writing pieces of his own for publications
like The New Republic, and appearing regularly on TV talk shows and think tank panels.
In September, Woolsey undertook a controversial
trip to London where he dug for evidence that could link Hussein to the attack on the
World Trade Center and Pentagon. His trip was reportedly paid for by Wolfowitz --
Woolsey declined to comment on this or any aspect of
his London jaunt -- which is said to have infuriated officials at the CIA, the State
Department and even annoyed Rumsfeld.
The Project for the New American Century and the American Enterprise Institute --
where Perle remains a resident scholar -- have also been hotbeds of anti-Saddam
lobbying. The Project's directors are William Kristol of Th
e Weekly Standard, Bruce Jackson, a vice president at Lockheed Martin, and Robert
Kagan, a writer and analyst who was the chief architect of the 1998 letter to Clinton,
and of a second one to Bush released last September
20. The latter, which was signed by 37 endorsers, called for the death or capture of
Osama bin Laden, an all-out attack on the Taliban, a large increase in defense
spending, and expanding the war to Iraq even if no eviden
ce emerges to link Hussein directly to the September 11 attacks. "Failure to undertake
such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on
international terrorism," the letter says.
Kagan, like others in the Get Saddam faction, is not concerned about geopolitical
fallout that could come from a strike against Iraq, such as anger in the Arab world or
the potential collapse of the shaky coalition suppor
ting the current military campaign. "If our goal is to preserve the coalition then we
should stop bombing Afghanistan," he says. "Iraq is a fundamental threat to our
national security, and that's more important than keepi
ng the coalition together." Perle takes the same sanguine view, saying that the
coalition is a means, not an end. "If it becomes an impediment to winning the war than
what good is it?" he asks. "The confusion about this i
s pathetic."
Though they consider Hussein's involvement, or lack thereof, in the attack on the
World Trade Center irrelevant, the conservatives recognize that evidence of his guilt
would hugely advance their cause. Hence, a number of
activists have been relentlessly promoting that idea, most notably Laurie Mylroie, an
adjunct fellow at American Enterprise Institute and publisher of the online newsletter
Iraq News. In addition to expressing certainty a
bout Iraqi links to September 11, she says he's lurking behind the anthrax scare as
well. "We should declare victory in Afghanistan now and take the war to Iraq," she
says. "Saddam Hussein is a far bigger threat than the
Taliban."
Yet while Hussein may be involved in the recent terrorist incidents, neither Mylroie
nor anyone else has thus far presented any clear evidence. Edward Peck, a former
ambassador to Iraq, has suggested that some of the char
ges being tossed about are reckless. Of Mylroie, Peck recently said on Crossfire, "If
she possibly could, she would accuse [Hussein] of being responsible for male pattern
baldness in the United States."
Andrew Cockburn, co-author of Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, is
equally dubious. Hussein, he points out, is the ultimate survivor and he surely knows
that if his fingerprints are found, his days are
numbered. "Until September 11 everything had been going his way," Cockburn says. "The
anti-sanctions movement was gaining ground and U.S.-Iraq policy was in shambles.
There's no coherent rationale for him to have been in
volved in this."
Despite its efforts, the Get Saddam lobby still confronts significant political
opposition. The most important source is Colin Powell at the State Department, but
perhaps more important is quiet opposition from military o
fficers, who believe it will require at least 500,000 U.S. troops to topple Hussein.
"Some day I'd love to get Saddam Hussein but right now we have bitten off more than we
can chew in Afghanistan," says the retired milita
ry man cited above. "The stupidest thing we could do right now is
add Iraq to our menu."
Perle, on the other hand, argues that a military strike on Hussein
would be a relative cakewalk, and sees it as only the first
expansion of the current war. Other possible targets on his list
include Sudan, Syria, Iran, North Korea and Hezbollah units
operating in southern Lebanon. "In some cases, the example of the
Taliban and Saddam Hussein might be enough to convince these
people not to support terrorism," he says. "In cases where
someone doesn't get the message, we would have to seek other
means."
Ken Silverstein
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