[HIMC] US Plans for the Middle East

[Luz Ogarrio]

In this email:

1. Beyond Regime Change: The administration doesn't simply want to oust
Saddam Hussein. It wants to redraw the Mideast map.

2. The Cheney plan for Iraq: Chop it up and give away the pieces

3. Richard Perle’s Stealth Attack on Saudi Arabia

4. Dick Cheney's song of America: Drafting a plan for global dominance

5. The CIA: Assassination, Regime Change, Mass Murder and Saddam

6. U.S. Facing Bigger Bill For Iraq War: Total Cost Could Run As High
as $200 Billion

7. U.S. Voices Doubts on Iraq Search: Bush, Aides Talk of Hussein
'Games,' Renew War Threat

###

1. Beyond Regime Change
The administration doesn't simply want to oust Saddam Hussein. It wants
to redraw the Mideast map.
By Sandy Tolan
December 1 2002

Sandy Tolan, an I.F. Stone Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism
at UC Berkeley, reports frequently on the Middle East. Jason Felch, a
student in Tolan's "Politics and Petroleum" class,
contribuhttp://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-tolan1dec01001516.story

BERKELEY -- If you want to know what the administration has in mind for
Iraq, here's a hint: It has less to do with weapons of mass destruction
than with implementing an ambitious U.S. vision to redraw the map of
the Middle East.

The new map would be drawn with an eye to two main objectives:
controlling the flow of oil and ensuring Israel's continued regional
military superiority. The plan is, in its way, as ambitious as the 1916
Sykes-Picot agreement between the empires of Britain and France, which
carved up the region at the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The
neo-imperial vision, which can be ascertained from the writings of key
administration figures and their co-visionaries in influential
conservative think tanks, includes not only regime change in Iraq but
control of Iraqi oil, a possible end to the Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries and newly compliant governments in Syria
and Iran -- either by force or internal rebellion.

For the first step -- the end of Saddam Hussein -- Sept. 11 provided
the rationale. But the seeds of regime change came far earlier.
"Removing Saddam from power," according to a 1996 report from an
Israeli think tank to then-incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
was "an important Israeli strategic objective." Now this has become
official U.S. policy, after several of the report's authors took up key
strategic and advisory roles within the Bush administration. They
include Richard Perle, now chair of the Pentagon's Defense Policy
Board; Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense; and David Wurmser,
special assistant in the State Department. In 1998, these men, joined
by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz (now the top two officials in the
Pentagon), Elliott Abrams (a senior National Security Council
director), John Bolton (undersecretary of State) and 21 others called
for "a determined program to change the regime in Baghdad."

After removing Hussein, U.S. forces are planning for an open-ended
occupation of Iraq, according to senior administration officials who
spoke to the New York Times. The invasion, said Iraqi dissident Kanan
Makiya, would be "a historic opportunity that is as large as anything
that has happened in the Middle East since the fall of the Ottoman
Empire." Makiya spoke at an October "Post-Saddam Iraq" conference
attended by Perle and sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute.

Any occupation would certainly include protecting petroleum
installations. Control of the country's vast oil reserves, the second
largest in the world and worth nearly $3 trillion at current prices,
would be a huge strategic prize. Some analysts believe that additional
production in Iraq could drive world prices down to as low as $10 a
barrel and precipitate Iraq's departure from OPEC, possibly undermining
the cartel. This, together with Russia's new willingness to become a
major U.S. oil supplier, could establish a long-sought counterweight to
Saudi Arabia, still the biggest influence by far on global oil prices.
It would be consistent with the plan released by Vice President Dick
Cheney's team in June, which underscored "energy security" as central
to U.S. foreign policy. "The Gulf will be a primary focus of U.S.
international energy policy," the report states.

Some analysts prefer to downplay the drive to control Iraqi oil. "It is
fashionable among anti-American circles ... to assume that U.S. foreign
policy is driven by commercial considerations," said Patrick Clawson,
an oil and policy analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, in an October talk. Rather, Clawson said, oil "has barely been
on the administration's horizon in considering Iraq policy.... U.S.
foreign policy is not driven by concern for promoting the interests of
specific U.S. firms."

Yet Clawson, whose institute enjoys close ties with the Bush
administration, was more candid during a Capitol Hill forum on a
post-Hussein Iraq in 1999: "U.S. oil companies would have an
opportunity to make significant profits," he said. "We should not be
embarrassed about the commercial advantages that would come from a
re-integration of Iraq into the world economy. Iraq, post-Saddam, is
highly likely to be interested in inviting international oil companies
to invest in Iraq. This would be very useful for U.S. oil companies,
which are well positioned to compete there, and very useful for the
world's energy-security situation."

Indeed, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi, whose close ties
with Perle, Wurmser, Rumsfeld and Cheney predate the current Bush
administration, met recently with U.S. oil executives. Afterward,
Chalabi, the would-be "Iraqi Karzai" and the hawks' long-standing
choice to lead a post-Hussein Iraq, made it clear he would give
preference to an American-led oil consortium. He also suggested that
previous deals -- totaling tens of billions of dollars for Russia's
Lukoil and France's TotalFinaElf -- could be voided.

Next month, key Iraqi exiles will meet with oil executives at an
English country retreat to discuss the future of Iraqi petroleum. The
conference, sponsored by the Center for Global Energy Studies and
chaired by Sheik Zaki Yamani, the former Saudi oil minister, will
feature Maj. Gen. Wafiq Samarrai, the former head of Iraqi military
intelligence, and former Iraqi Oil Minister Fadhil Chalabi, now
executive director of the center.

Fadhil Chalabi estimates that total oil reserves in Iraq could exceed
Saudi Arabia's and that daily production one day could reach 10 million
barrels, making it the world's largest producer. Hence, on the center's
conference agenda is a discussion of Iraq as a "second Saudi Arabia,"
and the prospect of a world without OPEC. Oil executives and analysts
heading to the country retreat will also be able to purchase the
center's 800-page analysis of the prospects for exploration in Iraq.
The cost: $52,500.

But taking over Iraq and remaking the global oil market is not
necessarily the endgame. The next steps, favored by hard-liners
determined to elevate Israeli security above all other U.S. foreign
policy goals, would be to destroy any remaining perceived threat to the
Jewish state: namely, the regimes in Syria and Iran.

"The War Won't End in Baghdad," wrote the American Enterprise
Institute's Michael Ledeen in the Wall Street Journal. In 1985, as a
consultant to the National Security Council and Oliver North, Ledeen
helped broker the illegal arms-for-hostages deal with Iran by setting
up meetings between weapons dealers and Israel. In the current war, he
argues, "we must also topple terror states in Tehran and Damascus."

In urging the expansion of the war on terror to Syria and Iran, Ledeen
does not mention Israel. Yet Israel is a crucial strategic reason for
the hard-line vision to "roll back" Syria and Iran -- and another
reason why control of Iraq is seen as crucial. In 1998, Wurmser, now in
the State Department, told the Jewish newspaper Forward that if Ahmad
Chalabi were in power and extended a no-fly, no-drive zone in northern
Iraq, it would provide the crucial piece for an anti-Syria, anti-Iran
bloc. "It puts Scuds out of the range of Israel and provides the
geographic beachhead between Turkey, Jordan and Israel," he said. "This
should anchor the Middle East pro-Western coalition."

Perle, in the same 1998 article, told Forward that a coalition of
pro-Israeli groups was "at the forefront with the legislation with
regard to Iran. One can only speculate what it might accomplish if it
decided to focus its attention on Saddam Hussein." And Perle, Wurmser
and Feith (now in the Pentagon), in their 1996 Israeli think tank
report to Netanyahu, argued for abandoning efforts for a comprehensive
peace in favor of a policy of "rolling back" Syria to protect Israel's
interests.

Now, however, Israel is given a lower profile by those who would argue
for rollback. Rather, writes Ledeen, U.S. troops would be put at risk
in order to "liberate all the peoples of the Middle East." And this, he
argues, would be virtually pain-free: "If we come to Baghdad, Damascus
and Tehran as liberators, we can expect overwhelming popular support."

Perle concurs on Iraq -- "The Arab World ... will consider honor and
dignity has been restored" -- as well as Iran: "It is the beginning of
the end for the Iranian regime."

Now, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has joined the call against
Tehran, arguing in a November interview with the Times of London that
the U.S. should shift its focus to Iran "the day after" the Iraq war
ends.

The vast ambition of such changes to the Middle Eastern map would seem
an inherent deterrent. But it is precisely this historical sweep,
reminiscent of Sykes-Picot and the British arrival in Iraq in 1917,
that many close to the administration seek. Publicly, Perle and Ledeen
cling to the fantasy that American troops would be welcomed in Baghdad,
Tehran and Damascus with garlands of flowers. Yet they are too smart to
ignore the rage across the Arab and Muslim worlds that would surely
erupt in the wake of war on multiple Middle Eastern fronts.

Indeed, the foreshadowing is already with us: in Bali, in Moscow, in
Yemen and on the streets of Amman. It's clear that even in Jordan, a
close ally of the U.S., the anger at a U.S. attack on Iraq could be
hard to contain.

Indeed, the hard-liners in and around the administration seem to know
in their hearts that the battle to carve up the Middle East would not
be won without the blood of Americans and their allies. "One can only
hope that we turn the region into a caldron, and faster, please,"
Ledeen preached to the choir at National Review Online last August.
"That's our mission in the war against terror."

###

2. The Cheney plan for Iraq: Chop it up and give away the pieces
By Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor & Publisher
http://onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Conover100302/conover100302.html

Three sources are now claiming that "Vice President" Dick Cheney is
working on the "final solution" to the Iraq problem, and it involves
either giving the whole country to Jordan or dividing it up among
Jordan, Kuwait and the Kurds, following the war George W. Bush is
determined to wage against Saddam Hussein.

The first report appeared in Pakistan's News International last
Saturday, under the headline US Plans to Merge Iraq, Jordan After War.

"The idea to unite Jordan and Iraq in a pro-US Hashemite kingdom after
an American war is aimed at "ensuring a stable post-war Iraq,"
according to STRATFOR, a strategic forecasting think tank based in the
US," wrote News International reporter Aslam Khan.

"It says that as a US war against Iraq nears both Washington and Middle
Eastern players are working to make sure the expected American victory
will result in strategic long-term gains. 'The idea of a central Iraq
populated by Sunni Arabs joining with Jordan to form one Hashemite
kingdom is being considered as one way to secure such gains,' STRATFOR
says," Khan noted.

Khan reported, "The plan, authored by US Vice President Dick Cheney,
was first discussed at an unusual meeting between Crown Prince Hassan
of Jordan and pro-US Iraqi Sunni opposition members in London in July."

All the Iraqi Sunni leaders have to do, the report says, is "appeal to
[Jordian] King Abdullah with such a request, which has a weak but still
legally valid justification, as Abdullah is the second cousin of the
last Iraqi king, Faisal II, who was overthrown in 1958."

The second report came from Investor Insight's Gary D. Halbert.

In the Oct. 2 issue of his newsletter, Forecasts & Trends, Halbert
wrote, "A US war against Iraq appears to be only a matter of when, not
if, despite the latest rumblings from a few high-level Democrats who
oppose the idea," citing a Zogby poll that contends 70 percent of the
American people believe Saddam is a threat to the US; that America can
"handily" win a war with Iraq and remove Saddam.

"But the question I have been most interested in is whether there is
any group in Iraq that can successfully manage and govern that country
after Saddam and his thugs are removed from power. It would be a
terrible mistake for the US to clean out Saddam & Company, only to see
the country fall back into the hands of tyrants, especially religious
extremists who are sympathetic to al Qaeda, in another year or two,"
Halbert wrote.

Describing STRATFOR.com as "one of the most respected geopolitical
intelligence services in the world" and calling them "my good friends,"
Halbert cited what he termed "a fascinating report" last Friday, in
which STRATFOR claims "high level" sources told "them that one of the
leading long-term strategies being considered by US war planners is one
that will DIVIDE Iraq into three separate regions. Under this plan Iraq
would cease to exist."

Halbert said STRATFOR believes Iraq would be divided as follows:

1. The central and largest part of Iraq that is populated by the Sunni
Arabs would be joined with JORDAN to form one "United Hashemite
Kingdom," which would be ruled by Jordan's King Abdullah. This area
would include Baghdad, which would no longer be the capital.

2. The Kurdish region of northern and northwestern Iraq, including
Mosul and the vast Kirkuk oilfields, would become its own autonomous
state.

3. The Shia Region in southwestern Iraq, including Basra, would make up
the third state, or more likely it would be joined with Kuwait.

While Halbert claims STRATFOR sources told him that this is not the
only plan under consideration, he said they pointed to Cheney and Paul
Wolfowitz, "both considered the most hawkish of Bush administration
officials," as the architects of the "Hashemite" plan.

Halbert said that "the Bush administration may be considering the
proposal because the current goal of replacing Saddam Hussein with a
pro-US Iraqi government still would not guarantee long-term democratic
stability over the territory and its oil. It may become too hard for a
new government in Baghdad to effectively control the whole country,
even with US troop support. An example is Afghanistan, in which the
government of President Hamid Karzai still controls only the capital.
STRATFOR offers the following analysis:

"The new government's attempts to establish control over all of Iraq
may well lead to a civil war between Sunni, Shia and Kurdish ethnic
groups, with US troops caught in the middle. The fiercest fighting
could be expected for control over the oil facilities. But uniting
Jordan and Iraq under a Hashemite government may give Washington
several strategic advantages.

"First, the creation of a new pro-US kingdom under the half-British
Abdullah [king of Jordan] would shift the balance of forces in the
region heavily in the US favor. After eliminating Iraq as a sovereign
state, there would be no fear that one day an anti-American government
would come to power in Baghdad, as the capital would be in Amman
[Jordan]. Current and potential US geopolitical foes Iran, Saudi Arabia
and Syria would be isolated from each other, with big chunks of land
between them under control of the pro-US forces.

"Equally important, Washington would be able to justify its long-term
and heavy military presence in the region as necessary for the defense
of a young new state asking for US protection—and to secure the
stability of oil markets and supplies. That in turn would help the
United States gain direct control of Iraqi oil and replace Saudi oil in
case of conflict with Riyadh."

Wrote Halbert, "According to STRATFOR's sources and the Israeli media,
the richest oil areas would go not to the Hashemite kingdom but to the
autonomous Kurdish region in the north. To make sure the new Kurdish
state is not seen as a threat to Turkey, our ally, the US would deploy
armed forces and build new military bases in the area, not only to
prevent any hostilities along the border, but also to insure the free
flow of oil from this area."

Expressing his support for the plan, Halbert cited Israel and Jordan as
the big winners. Israel because Iraq, the alleged source of the
Palestinians' financial assistance, would be eliminated. Jordan because
it would allegedly become the second-most important US ally in the
region after Israel, and that resource poor country would get a big
chunk of Iraq's oil. Moreover, he said, the US could then negotiate to
build military bases in the three new states from which to launch
attacks on Iran, Saudi Arabia "other states in the region that are
supporting terrorism."


###

3. Richard Perle’s Stealth Attack on Saudi Arabia
By Richard H. Curtiss
http://www.wrmea.com

Former Pentagon official Richard Perle, a long-time supporter of
Israel, reached new heights in his mission to distract the American
public from dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Perle is
chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel to the
Pentagon, which is often in the headlines.

Former French Ministry of Defense employee Laurent Murawiec, now a Rand
Corporation analyst, gave a controversial briefing to the Defense
Policy Board on July 10. Although the topic was expected to be Iraq’s
Saddam Hussain, there were big surprises in store.

Murawiec’s briefing was, to put it mildly, inflammatory. Presented as
it was to former senior officials and intellectuals who advise the
Pentagon, it might have passed without notice. Perle, however, had
ensured that would not happen, with his journalistic cohorts preparing
the way for Murawiec’s shocking statements.

Prior to the briefing, two articles making similar charges to
Murawiec’s already had appeared. One, in the July issue of Commentary,
published by the American Jewish Committee, was entitled “Our Enemies,
the Saudis,” by Victor Davis Hanson.

The other article was printed in a July edition of the Weekly Standard,
edited by William Kristol. The article, written by Simon Henderson, an
adjunct scholar of the AIPAC-spinoff Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, was entitled “The Coming Saudi Showdown.”

Following the same policy line, Murawiec’s briefing recommended that
Saudi Arabia should be warned that its financial assets are at risk.
“The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain,” he alleged,
“from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot soldier, from
ideologist to cheerleaders.”

“Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies,” Muraweic
went on to say, adding that Saudi Arabia “is the kernel of evil, the
prime mover, the most dangerous opponent” in the Middle East. The U.S.
should demand that Saudi Arabia stop funding terrorism around the
world, he said, and Saudi Arabia should stop making anti-Israel
statements and “prosecute or isolate those involved in the terror
chain, including in the Saudi intelligence services.”

If the Saudis refuse to comply, Murawiec recommended, Saudi oil fields
and overseas financial assets should be “targeted.” Murawiec concluded
his briefing by linking the necessity of regime change in Iraq with the
need to alter Saudi behavior.

Having fired a verbal missile against both Saudi Arabia and Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussain, Chairman Richard Perle then seemed to try to
remove the traces of his stealth attack on Saudi Arabia.

It turned out that Murawiec apparently had no previous experience in
the Middle East. If he has any other credentials of note, Murawiec has
not explained them. In short, after having served his purpose, Murawiec
seems to have become a non-person.

Murawiec’s briefing was, to put it mildly, inflammatory.

The confusion between Perle’s Defense Policy Board and the President’s
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, headed by retired Gen. Brent
Scowcroft, apparently serves a purpose. The 15 members of the latter
board have long credentials and have no overlap at all with Perle’s
Defense Policy Board

It is Perle’s group that has been making headlines. Strangely, after
the Murawiec briefing, only one member of the Perle-chaired board stood
up to defend the long-term relationship between Saudi Arabia and the
U.S. That was Henry Kissinger, who said, “I don’t consider Saudi Arabia
to be a strategic adversary of the United States. They are doing some
things I don’t approve of, but I don’t consider them a strategic
adversary.”

It is not clear which other members of the Perle board were present for
Murawiec’s briefing.

Saudi Arabian Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Saud Al-Faisal has
since denounced the briefing as “pure fiction,” predicting that it
“will have no lasting impact. It is unfortunate,” Prince Saud noted,
“that there are some people in some quarters who are trying to cast
doubt and undermine the solid and historic ties between our two
countries. I am confident that they will not succeed.”

Similarly, Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned the prince to
assure him that Murawiec’s “musings” did not represent U.S. policy.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, acknowledging differences with
the Saudis, said, “It is nonetheless a country where we have a lot of
forces located and we have had a long relationship.”

On Aug. 11, Saudi Foreign Ministry adviser Adel-al-Jubeir appeared on
“Meet the Press” and on CNN. Meanwhile, the Saudi foreign minister was
interviewed on ABC’s “This Week.” The two Saudi guests answered all
questions exhaustively.

They made the points that Saudi Arabia has been a very effective member
of the international coalition against terrorism, pointing out that the
Kingdom has frozen bank accounts, made arrests, and seen that “evil
doers” were purged from charities.

Board Clarification

For clarity, members of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board are: Gen. Brent Scocroft, chair; Amb. Cresencio Arcos, Jr.; James
Barksdale; Robert Day; Stephen Friedman; Dr. Rita Hauser; Ray Hunt;
Adm. David Jeremiah (Ret.); Dr. Arnold Kanter; James Langdon; Alfred
Lerner; Dr. Elisabeth Paté-Cornell; John Streicker; Hon. Pete Wilson
and Dr. Philip Zelikow.

After five telephone requests, the Defense Policy Board, chaired by
Richard Perle, produced a list of their board members. They are listed
alphabetically:

Dr. Kenneth Adelman; Hon. Richard Allen; Dr. Martin Anderson; Dr. Gary
Becker; Dr. Barry Blechman; former Defense Secretary Dr. Harold Brown;
Dr. Eliot Cohen; Ms. Devon Cross; Gen. (Ret.) Ronald Fogleman; former
Speaker Hon. Thomas Foley; Hon. Tille Fowler; former Speaker Hon. Newt
Gingrich; Mr. Gerald Hillman; Dr. Kim Holmes; Gen. (Ret.) Chuck Horner;
Dr. Fred Ikle; Adm. (Ret.) David Jeremiah; former Secretary of State
Dr. Henry A. Kissinger; Mr. Phillip Merrill; Adm. (Ret.) Bill Owens;
Dr. Richard Perle; former Vice President Dan Quayle; Dr. Henry Rowen;
former Defense Secretary Dr. James Schlesinger; Gen. (Ret.) Jack
Sheehan; Dr. Kiron Skinner; Dr. Hal Sonnenfeldt; Mr. Chris Williams;
Hon. Pete Wilson; and former CIA Director James Woolsey.

For those who may be confused between the two boards, Richard Perle has
long been referred to by his enemies as “The Prince of Darkness.” Once
again Perle has lived up to his sobriquet in his advice to the
Pentagon. By contrast, Gen. Brent Scowcroft’s advisory board keeps its
recommendations to the president quiet and does not seek publicity or
startling headlines. 

###

4. Dick Cheney's song of America: Drafting a plan for global dominance
David Armstrong
Harper's Magazine
Oct 2002

------------
Discussed in this essay:

Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994-1999 Fiscal Years (Draft),
Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1992

Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994-1999 Fiscal Years (Revised
Draft), Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1992

Defense Strategy for the 1990s, Office of the Secretary of Defense,
1993

Defense Planning Guidance for the 2004-2009 Fiscal Years, Office of
the Secretary of Defense, 2002

--------

Few writers are more ambitious than the writers of government
policy papers, and few policy papers are more ambitious than Dick
Cheney's masterwork. It has taken several forms over the last decade
and is in fact the product of several ghostwriters (notably Paul
Wolfowitz and Colin Powell), but Cheney has been consistent in his
dedication to the ideas in the documents that bear his name, and he
has maintained a close association with the ideologues behind them.
Let us, therefore, call Cheney the author, and this series of
documents the Plan.

The Plan was published in unclassified form most recently under the
title of Defense Strategy for the 1990s, as Cheney ended his term as
secretary of defense under the elder George Bush in early 1993, but
it is, like Leaves of Grass, a perpetually evolving work. It was the
controversial Defense Planning Guidance draft of 1992-from which
Cheney, unconvincingly, tried to distance himself-and it was the
somewhat less aggressive revised draft of that same year. This June
it was a presidential lecture in the form of a commencement address
at West Point, and in July it was leaked to the press as yet another
Defense Planning Guidance (this time under the pen name of Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld). It will take its ultimate form, though,
as America's new national security strategy-and Cheney et al. will
experience what few writers have even dared dream: their words will
become our reality.

The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt
theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination.
It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military
superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on
the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies
alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or
most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful.

The Plan is disturbing in many ways, and ultimately unworkable. Yet
it is being sold now as an answer to the "new realities" of the
post-- September 11 world, even as it was sold previously as the
answer to the new realities of the post-Cold War world. For Cheney,
the Plan has always been the right answer, no matter how different
the questions.

Cheney's unwavering adherence to the Plan would be amusing, and
maybe a little sad, except that it is now our plan. In its pages are
the ideas that we now act upon every day with the full might of the
United States military. Strangely, few critics have noted that
Cheney's work has a long history, or that it was once quite
unpopular, or that it was created in reaction to circumstances that
are far removed from the ones we now face. But Cheney is a
well-known action man. One has to admire, in a way, the Babe
Ruth-like sureness of his political work. He pointed to center field
ten years ago, and now the ball is sailing over the fence.

Before the Plan was about domination it was about money. It took
shape in late 1989, when the Soviet threat was clearly on the
decline, and, with it, public support for a large military
establishment. Cheney seemed unable to come to terms with either new
reality. He remained deeply suspicious of the Soviets and strongly
resisted all efforts to reduce military spending. Democrats in
Congress jeered his lack of strategic vision, and a few within the
Bush Administration were whispering that Cheney had become an
irrelevant factor in structuring a response to the revolutionary
changes taking place in the world.

More adaptable was the up-and-- coming General Colin Powell, the
newly appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As Ronald
Reagan's national security adviser, Powell had seen the changes
taking place in the Soviet Union firsthand and was convinced that
the ongoing transformation was irreversible. Like Cheney, he wanted
to avoid military cuts, but he knew they were inevitable. The best
he could do was minimize them, and the best way to do that would be
to offer a new security structure that would preserve American
military capabilities despite reduced resources.

Powell and his staff believed that a weakened Soviet Union would
result in shifting alliances and regional conflict. The United
States was the only nation capable of managing the forces at play in
the world; it would have to remain the preeminent military power in
order to ensure the peace and shape the emerging order in accordance
with American interests. U.S. military strategy, therefore, would
have to shift from global containment to managing less-well--
defined regional struggles and unforeseen contingencies. To do this,
the United States would have to project a military "forward
presence" around the world; there would be fewer troops but in more
places. This plan still would not be cheap, but through careful
restructuring and superior technology, the job could be done with 25
percent fewer troops. Powell insisted that maintaining superpower
status must be the first priority of the U.S. military. "We have to
put a shingle outside our door saying, 'Superpower Lives Here,' no
matter what the Soviets do," he said at the time. He also insisted
that the troop levels he proposed were the bare minimum necessary to
do so. This concept would come to be known as the "Base Force."

Powell's work on the subject proved timely. The Berlin Wall fell on
November 9, 1989, and five days later Powell had his new strategy
ready to present to Cheney. Even as decades of repression were
ending in Eastern Europe, however, Cheney still could not abide even
the force and budget reductions Powell proposed. Yet he knew that
cuts were unavoidable. Having no alternative of his own to offer,
therefore, he reluctantly encouraged Powell to present his ideas to
the president. Powell did so the next day; Bush made no promises but
encouraged him to keep at it.

Less encouraging was the reach tion of Paul Wolfowitz, the
undersecretary of defense for policy. A lifelong proponent of the
unilateralist, maximum-force approach, he shared Cheney's skepticism
about the Eastern Bloc and so put his own staff to work on a
competing plan that would somehow accommodate the possibility of
Soviet backsliding.1

As Powell and Wolfowitz worked out their strategies, Congress was
losing patience. New calls went up for large cuts in defense
spending in light of the new global environment. The harshest
critique of Pentagon planning came from a usually dependable ally of
the military establishment, Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn, chairman of
the Senate Armed Services Committee. Nunn told fellow senators in
March 1990 that there was a "threat blank" in the administration's
proposed $295 billion defense budget and that the Pentagon's "basic
assessment of the overall threat to our national security" was
"rooted in the past." The world had changed and yet the "development
of a new military strategy that responds to the changes in the
threat has not yet occurred." Without that response, no dollars
would be forthcoming.

Nunn's message was clear. Powell and Wolfowitz began filling in the
blanks. Powell started promoting a Zen-like new rationale for his
Base Force approach. With the Soviets rapidly becoming irrelevant,
Powell argued, the United States could no longer assess its military
needs on the basis of known threats. Instead, the Pentagon should
focus on maintaining the ability to address a wide variety of new
and unknown challenges. This shift from a "threat based" assessment
of military requirements to a "capability based" assessment would
become a key theme of the Plan. The United States would move from
countering Soviet attempts at dominance to ensuring its own
dominance. Again, this project would not be cheap.

Powell's argument, circular though it may have been, proved
sufficient to hold off Congress. Winning support among his own
colleagues, however, proved more difficult. Cheney remained deeply
skeptical about the Soviets, and Wolfowitz was only slowly coming
around. To account for future uncertainties, Wolfowitz recommended
drawing down U.S. forces to roughly the levels proposed by Powell,
but doing so at a much slower pace: seven years as opposed to the
four Powell suggested. He also built in a "crisis
response/reconstitution" clause that would allow for reversing the
process if events in the Soviet Union, or elsewhere, turned ugly.

With these new elements in place, Cheney saw something that might
work. By combining Powell's concepts with those of Wolfowitz, he
could counter congressional criticism that his proposed defense
budget was out of line with the new strategic reality, while leaving
the door open for future force increases. In late June, Wolfowitz,
Powell, and Cheney presented their plan to the president, and within
a few weeks Bush was unveiling the new strategy.

Bush laid out the rationale for the Plan in a speech in Aspen,
Colorado, on August 2, 1990. He explained that since the danger of
global war had substantially receded, the principal threats to
American security would emerge in unexpected quarters. To counter
those threats, he said, the United States would increasingly base
the size and structure of its forces on the need to respond to
"regional contingencies" and maintain a peacetime military presence
overseas. Meeting that need would require maintaining the capability
to quickly deliver American forces to any "comer of the globe," and
that would mean retaining many major weapons systems then under
attack in Congress as overly costly and unnecessary, including the
"Star Wars" missiledefense program. Despite those massive outlays,
Bush insisted that the proposed restructuring would allow the United
States to draw down its active forces by 25 percent in the years
ahead, the same figure Powell had projected ten months earlier.

The Plan's debut was well timed. By a remarkable coincidence, Bush
revealed it the very day Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces invaded
Kuwait.

The Gulf War temporarily reduced the pressure to cut military
spending. It also diverted attention from some of the Plan's less
appealing aspects. In addition, it inspired what would become one of
the Plan's key features: the use of "overwhelming force" to quickly
defeat enemies, a concept since dubbed the Powell Doctrine.

Once the Iraqi threat was "contained," Wolfowitz returned to his
obsession with the Soviets, planning various scenarios involving
possible Soviet intervention in regional conflicts. The failure of
the hard-liner coup against Gorbachev in August 1991, however, made
it apparent that such planning might be unnecessary. Then, in late
December, just as the Pentagon was preparing to put the Plan in
place, the Soviet Union collapsed.

With the Soviet Union gone, the United States had a choice. It
could capitalize on the euphoria of the moment by nurturing
cooperative relations and developing multilateral structures to help
guide the global realignment then taking place; or it could
consolidate its power and pursue a strategy of unilateralism and
global dominance. It chose the latter course.

In early 1992, as Powell and Cheney campaigned to win congressional
support for their augmented Base Force plan, a new logic entered
into their appeals. The United States, Powell told members of the
House Armed Services Committee, required "sufficient power" to
"deter any challenger from ever dreaming of challenging us on the
world stage." To emphasize the point, he cast the United States in
the role of street thug. "I want to be the bully on the block," he
said, implanting in the mind of potential opponents that "there is
no future in trying to challenge the armed forces of the United
States."

As Powell and Cheney were making this new argument in their
congressional rounds, Wolfowitz was busy expanding the concept and
working to have it incorporated into U.S. policy. During the early
months of 1992, Wolfowitz supervised the preparation of an internal
Pentagon policy statement used to guide military officials in the
preparation of their forces, budgets, and strategies. The classified
document, known as the Defense Planning Guidance, depicted a world
dominated by the United States, which would maintain its superpower
status through a combination of positive guidance and overwhelming
military might. The image was one of a heavily armed City on a Hill.

The DPG stated that the "first objective" of U.S. defense strategy
was "to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival." Achieving this
objective required that the United States "prevent any hostile power
from dominating a region" of strategic significance. America's new
mission would be to convince allies and enemies alike "that they
need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive
posture to protect their legitimate interests."

Another new theme was the use of preemptive military force. The
options, the DPG noted, ranged from taking preemptive military
action to head off a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack to
"punishing" or "threatening punishment of" aggressors "through a
variety of means," including strikes against weapons-- manufacturing
facilities.

The DPG also envisioned maintaining a substantial U.S. nuclear
arsenal while discouraging the development of nuclear programs in
other countries. It depicted a "U.S.-led system of collective
security" that implicitly precluded the need for rearmament of any
kind by countries such as Germany and Japan. And it called for the
"early introduction" of a global missile-defense system that would
presumably render all missile-- launched weapons, including those of
the United States, obsolete. (The United States would, of course,
remain the world's dominant military power on the strength of its
other weapons systems.)

The story, in short, was dominance by way of unilateral action and
military superiority. While coalitions-- such as the one formed
during the Gulf War-held "considerable promise for promoting
collective action," the draft DPG stated, the United States should
expect future alliances to be "ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting
beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many cases carrying only
general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished." It was
essential to create "the sense that the world order is ultimately
backed by the U.S." and essential that America position itself "to
act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated" or
in crisis situations requiring immediate action. "While the U.S.
cannot become the world's 'policeman,"' the document said, "we will
retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively
those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our
allies or friends." Among the interests the draft indicated the
United States would defend in this manner were "access to vital raw
materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil, proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction and ballistic missiles, [and] threats to U.S.
citizens from terrorism."

The DPG was leaked to the New York Times in March 1992. Critics on
both the left and the right attacked it immediately.
Then-presidential candidate Pat Buchanan portrayed it as giving a
"blank check" to America's allies by suggesting the United States
would "go to war to defend their interests." Bill Clinton's deputy
campaign manager, George Stephanopoulos, characterized it as an
attempt by Pentagon officials to "find an excuse for big defense
budgets instead of downsizing." Delaware Senator Joseph Biden
criticized the Plan's vision of a "Pax Americana, a global security
system where threats to stability are suppressed or destroyed by
U.S. military power." Even those who found the document's stated
goals commendable feared that its chauvinistic tone could alienate
many allies. Cheney responded by attempting to distance himself from
the Plan. The Pentagon's spokesman dismissed the leaked document as
a "lowlevel draft" and claimed that Cheney had not seen it. Yet a
fifteen-page section opened by proclaiming that it constituted
"definitive guidance from the Secretary of Defense."

Powell took a more forthright approach to dealing with the flap: he
publicly embraced the DPG's core concept. In a TV interview, he said
he believed it was "just fine" that the United States reign as the
world's dominant military power. "I don't think we should apologize
for that," he said. Despite bad reviews in the foreign press, Powell
insisted that America's European allies were "not afraid" of U.S.
military might because it was "power that could be trusted" and
"will not be misused."

Mindful that the draft DPG's overt expression of U.S. dominance
might not fly, Powell in the same interview also trotted out a new
rationale for the original Base Force plan. He argued that in a
post-Soviet world, filled with new dangers, the United States needed
the ability to fight on more than one front at a time. "One of the
most destabilizing things we could do," he said, "is to cut our
forces so much that if we're tied up in one area of the world ...
and we are not seen to have the ability to influence another area of
the world, we might invite just the sort of crisis we're trying to
deter." This two-- war strategy provided a possible answer to Nunn's
"threat blank." One unknown enemy wasn't enough to justify lavish
defense budgets, but two unknown enemies might do the trick.

Within a few weeks the Pentagon had come up with a more
comprehensive response to the DPG furor. A revised version was
leaked to the press that was significantly less strident in tone,
though only slightly less strident in fact. While calling for the
United States to prevent "any hostile power from dominating a region
critical to our interests," the new draft stressed that America
would act in concert with its allies-when possible. It also
suggested the United Nations might take an expanded role in future
political, economic, and security matters, a concept conspicuously
absent from the original draft.

The controversy died down, and, with a presidential campaign under
way, the Pentagon did nothing to stir it up again. Following Bush's
defeat, however, the Plan reemerged. In January 1993, in his very
last days in office, Cheney released a final version. The newly
titled Defense Strategy for the 1990s retained the soft touch of the
revised draft DPG as well as its darker themes. The goal remained to
preclude "hostile competitors from challenging our critical
interests" and preventing the rise of a new superpower. Although it
expressed a "preference" for collective responses in meeting such
challenges, it made clear that the United States would play the lead
role in any alliance. Moreover, it noted that collective action
would "not always be timely." Therefore, the United States needed to
retain the ability to "act independently, if necessary." To do so
would require that the United States maintain its massive military
superiority. Others were not encouraged to follow suit. It was
kinder, gentler dominance, but it was dominance all the same. And it
was this thesis that Cheney and company nailed to the door on their
way out.

The new administration tacitly rejected the heavy-handed,
unilateral approach to U.S. primacy favored by Powell, Cheney, and
Wolfowitz. Taking office in the relative calm of the early post-Cold
War era, Clinton sought to maximize America's existing position of
strength and promote its interests through economic diplomacy,
multilateral institutions (dominated by the United States), greater
international free trade, and the development of allied coalitions,
including American-led collective military action. American policy,
in short, shifted from global dominance to globalism.

Clinton also failed to prosecute military campaigns with sufficient
vigor to satisfy the defense strategists of the previous
administration. Wolfowitz found Clinton's Iraq policy especially
infuriating. During the Gulf War, Wolfowitz harshly criticized the
decision-endorsed by Powell and Cheney-to end the war once the U.N.
mandate of driving Saddam's forces from Kuwait had been fulfilled,
leaving the Iraqi dictator in office. He called on the Clinton
Administration to finish the job by arming Iraqi opposition forces
and sending U.S. ground troops to defend a base of operation for
them in the southern region of the country. In a 1996 editorial,
Wolfowitz raised the prospect of launching a preemptive attack
against Iraq. "Should we sit idly by," he wrote, "with our passive
containment policy and our inept covert operations, and wait until a
tyrant possessing large quantities of weapons of mass destruction
and sophisticated delivery systems strikes out at us?" Wolfowitz
suggested it was "necessary" to "go beyond the containment
strategy."

Wolfowitz's objections to Clinton's military tactics were not
limited to Iraq. Wolfowitz had endorsed President Bush's decision in
late 1992 to intervene in Somalia on a limited humanitarian basis.
Clinton later expanded the mission into a broader peacekeeping
effort, a move that ended in disaster. With perfect twenty-- twenty
hindsight, Wolfowitz decried Clinton's decision to send U.S. troops
into combat "where there is no significant U.S. national interest."
He took a similar stance on Clinton's ill-fated democracy-building
effort in Haiti, chastising the president for engaging "American
military prestige" on an issue "of little or no importance" to U.S,
interests. Bosnia presented a more complicated mix of posturing and
ideologies. While running for president, Clinton had scolded the
Bush Administration for failing to take action to stem the flow of
blood in the Balkans. Once in office, however, and chastened by
their early misadventures in Somalia and Haiti, Clinton and his
advisers struggled to articulate a coherent Bosnia policy. Wolfowitz
complained in 1994 of the administration's failure to "develop an
effective course of action." He personally advocated arming the
Bosnian Muslims in their fight against the Serbs. Powell, on the
other hand, publicly cautioned against intervention. In 1995 a
U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign, combined with a Croat-Muslim ground
offensive, forced the Serbs into negotiations, leading to the Dayton
Peace Accords. In 1999, as Clinton rounded up support for joint
U.S.-NATO action in Kosovo, Wolfowitz hectored the president for
failing to act quickly enough.

After eight years of what Cheney et al. regarded as wrongheaded
military adventures and pinprick retaliatory strikes, the Clinton
Administration-mercifully, in their view--came to an end. With the
ascension of George W. Bush to the presidency, the authors of the
Plan returned to government, ready to pick up where they had left
off. Cheney, of course, became vice president, Powell became
secretary of state, and Wolfowitz moved into the number-two slot at
the Pentagon, as Donald Rumsfeld's deputy. Other contributors also
returned: Two prominent members of the Wolfowitz team that crafted
the original DPG took up posts on Cheney's staff. I. Lewis "Scooter"
Libby, who served as Wolfowitz's deputy during Bush I, became the
vice president's chief of staff and national security adviser. And
Eric Edelman, an assistant deputy undersecretary of defense in the
first Bush Administration, became a top foreign policy adviser to
Cheney.2

Cheney and company had not changed their minds during the Clinton
interlude about the correct course for U.S. policy, but they did not
initially appear bent on resurrecting the Plan. Rather than present
a unified vision of foreign policy to the world, in the early going
the administration focused on promoting a series of seemingly
unrelated initiatives. Notable among these were missile defense and
space-based weaponry, long-standing conservative causes. In
addition, a distinct tone of unilateralism emerged as the new
administration announced its intent to abandon the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty with Russia in order to pursue missile defense; its
opposition to U.S. ratification of an international nuclear-testban
pact; and its refusal to become a party to an International Criminal
Court. It also raised the prospect of ending the self-imposed U.S.
moratorium on nuclear testing initiated by the President's father
during the 1992 presidential campaign. Moreover, the administration
adopted a much tougher diplomatic posture, as evidenced, most
notably, by a distinct hardening of relations with both China and
North Korea. While none of this was inconsistent with the concept of
U.S. dominance, these early actions did not, at the time, seem to
add up to a coherent strategy.

It was only after September 11 that the Plan emerged in full.
Within days of the attacks, Wolfowitz and Libby began calling for
unilateral military action against Iraq, on the shaky premise that
Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network could not have pulled off the
assaults without Saddam Hussein's assistance. At the time, Bush
rejected such appeals, but Wolfowitz kept pushing and the President
soon came around. In his State of the Union address in January, Bush
labeled Iraq, Iran, and North Korea an "axis of evil," and warned
that he would "not wait on events" to prevent them from using
weapons of mass destruction against the United States. He reiterated
his commitment to preemption in his West Point speech in June. "If
we wait for threats to fully materialize we will have waited too
long," he said. "We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his
plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge." Although
it was less noted, Bush in that same speech also reintroduced the
Plan's central theme. He declared that the United States would
prevent the emergence of a rival power by maintaining "military
strengths beyond challenge." With that, the President effectively
adopted a strategy his father's administration had developed ten
years earlier to ensure that the United States would remain the
world's preeminent power. While the headlines screamed "preemption,"
no one noticed the declaration of the dominance strategy.

In case there was any doubt about the administration's intentions,
the Pentagon's new DPG lays them out. Signed by Wolfowitz's new
boss, Donald Rumsfeld, in May and leaked to the Los Angeles Times in
July, it contains all the key elements of the original Plan and adds
several complementary features. The preemptive strikes envisioned in
the original draft DPG are now "unwarned attacks." The old
Powell-Cheney notion of military "forward presence" is now "forward
deterrence." The use of overwhelming force to defeat an enemy called
for in the Powell Doctrine is now labeled an "effects based"
approach.

Some of the names have stayed the same. Missile defense is back,
stronger than ever, and the call goes up again for a shift from a
"threat based" structure to a "capabilities based" approach. The new
DPG also emphasizes the need to replace the so-called Cold War
strategy of preparing to fight two major conflicts simultaneously
with what the Los Angeles Times refers to as "a more complex
approach aimed at dominating air and space on several fronts." This,
despite the fact that Powell had originally conceived-and the first
Bush Administration had adopted-- the two-war strategy as a means of
filling the "threat blank" left by the end of the Cold War.

Rumsfeld's version adds a few new ideas, most impressively the
concept of preemptive strikes with nuclear weapons. These would be
earth-- penetrating nuclear weapons used for attacking "hardened and
deeply buried targets," such as commandand-control bunkers, missile
silos, and heavily fortified underground facilities used to build
and store weapons of mass destruction. The concept emerged earlier
this year when the administration's Nuclear Posture Review leaked
out. At the time, arms-control experts warned that adopting the
NPR's recommendations would undercut existing arms-control treaties,
do serious harm to nonproliferation efforts, set off new rounds of
testing, and dramatically increase the prospects of nuclear weapons
being used in combat. Despite these concerns, the administration
appears intent on developing the weapons. In a final flourish, the
DPG also directs the military to develop cyber-, laser-, and
electronic-- warfare capabilities to ensure U.S. dominion over the
heavens.

Rumsfeld spelled out these strategies in Foreign Affairs earlier
this year, and it is there that he articulated the remaining
elements of the Plan: unilateralism and global dominance. Like the
revised DPG of 1992, Rumsfeld feigns interest in collective action
but ultimately rejects it as impractical. "Wars can benefit from
coalitions," he writes, "but they should not be fought by
committee." And coalitions, he adds, "must not determine the
mission." The implication is the United States will determine the
missions and lead the fights. Finally, Rumsfeld expresses the key
concept of the Plan: preventing the emergence of rival powers. Like
the original draft DPG of 1992, he states that America's goal is to
develop and maintain the military strength necessary to "dissuade"
rivals or adversaries from "competing." With no challengers, and a
proposed defense budget of $379 billion for next year, the United
States would reign over all it surveys.

Reaction to the latest edition of the Plan has, thus far, focused
on preemption. Commentators parrot the administration's line,
portraying the concept of preemptory strikes as a "new" strategy
aimed at combating terrorism. In an op-ed piece for the Washington
Post following Bush's West Point address, former Clinton adviser
William Galston described preemption as part of a "brand-new
security doctrine," and warned of possible negative diplomatic
consequences. Others found the concept more appealing. Loren
Thompson of the conservative Lexington Institute hailed the "Bush
Doctrine" as "a necessary response to the new dangers that America
faces" and declared it "the biggest shift in strategic thinking in
two generations." Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley echoed
that sentiment, writing that "no talk of this ilk has been heard
from American leaders since John Foster Dulles talked of rolling
back the Iron Curtain."

Preemption, of course, is just part of the Plan, and the Plan is
hardly new. It is a warmed-over version of the strategy Cheney and
his coauthors rolled out in 1992 as the answer to the end of the
Cold War. Then the goal was global dominance, and it met with bad
reviews. Now it is the answer to terrorism. The emphasis is on
preemption, and the reviews are generally enthusiastic. Through all
of this, the dominance motif remains, though largely undetected.

This country once rejected "unwarned" attacks such as Pearl Harbor
as barbarous and unworthy of a civilized nation. Today many cheer
the prospect of conducting sneak attacks-potentially with nuclear
weapons-on piddling powers run by tin-pot despots.

We also once denounced those who tried to rule the world. Our
primary objection (at least officially) to the Soviet Union was its
quest for global domination. Through the successful employment of
the tools of containment, deterrence, collective security, and
diplomacy-the very methods we now reject-we rid ourselves and the
world of the Evil Empire. Having done so, we now pursue the very
thing for which we opposed it. And now that the Soviet Union is
gone, there appears to be no one left to stop us.

Perhaps, however, there is. The Bush Administration and its loyal
opposition seem not to grasp that the quests for dominance generate
backlash. Those threatened with preemption may themselves launch
preemptory strikes. And even those who are successfully "preempted"
or dominated may object and find means to strike back. Pursuing such
strategies may, paradoxically, result in greater factionalism and
rivalry, precisely the things we seek to end.

Not all Americans share Colin Powell's desire to be "the bully on
the block." In fact, some believe that by following a different path
the United States has an opportunity to establish a more lasting
security environment. As Dartmouth professors Stephen Brooks and
William Wohlforth wrote recently in Foreign Affairs, "Unipolarity
makes it possible to be the global bully-but it also offers the
United States the luxury of being able to look beyond its immediate
needs to its own, and the world's, long-term interests....
Magnanimity and restraint in the face of temptation are tenets of
successful statecraft that have proved their worth." Perhaps, in
short, we can achieve our desired ends by means other than global
domination.

David Armstrong is an investigative reporter for the National
Security News Service.

Footnotes:

1 During the elder Bush's tenure as CIA director in the 1970s,
Wolfowitz had served on a panel of defense experts known as Team B,"
which concluded that U.S. intelligence was vastly underestimating the
scale of the Soviet threat-an opinion he had yet to revise in 1990.

2 Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as assistant deputy undersecretary of
defense during the first Bush Administration, wrote a book during the
Clinton interval expressing the core concepts of the original DPG.
Khalilzad argued that the United States should "preclude the rise of
another global rival for the indefinite future," and "be willing to
use force if necessary for the purpose." Khalilzad joined the inner
circle of the current administration as a special assistant to the
president and today serves as a U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan.


###

5. CIA Assassination, Regime Change, Mass Murder and Saddam
by Richard Sanders

Political assassination is a valuable weapon in the covert operative's
toolbox.  But it is only one tool among many. A successful right-wing
covert action not only removes the enemy's head, it replaces the body
politic.
 
The CIA has been organizing "regime change" for 50 years.  They have
removed many governments that are unfriendly to US corporate interests
and replaced them with regimes that are more likely to work closely and
slavishly to carry out the economic and geopolitical desires of the US
corporate elite.
 
But the CIA's crimes don't end when a right-wing coup has succeeded. 
The CIA then has to keep its repressive despots in power in order to
ensure that they can put into place and then maintain a variety of
unjust economic systems and structures.  

This is done with arms sales (and outright gifts of "surplus" weapons),
glowing diplomatic support, "intelligence support" (sic) and massive
economic investment (i.e., pillaging as much profit as possible by
exploiting the natural resources that drew them in there in the first
place, and handing out some of the spoils to a loyal local elite).
 
When the corporate media describe the CIA's use of political
assassination as if it exists in isolation from mass imprisonment,
torture and murder, they cover up the horror, pain and suffering
experienced by thousands of ordinary people in countries where
CIA-backed blood baths have taken place.  They neglect to reveal that
when the CIA carries out its high-profile assassination efforts, they
also carry out murders of thousands of lesser-known political figures.
 
It's standard procedure with many coups that thousands of grassroots
activists and organizers get rounded up, tortured and killed.  Such
waves of mass violence make today's serial sniper in Washington look
like a Boy Scout.  The CIA has used such goons to eliminate its
opponents and as a scare tactic to ensure that other citizens, who
might otherwise have protested the regime change, decide instead to lay
very low in order to stay alive.

A very good example of a CIA-organized "regime change" was a coup in
1963 that employed political assassination, mass imprisonment, torture
and murder.  This was the military coup that first brought Saddam
Hussein's beloved Ba'ath Party to power in Iraq. At the time, Richard
Helms was Director for Plans at the CIA. That is the top CIA position
responsible for covert actions, like organizing coups.  Helms served in
that capacity until 1966, when he was made Director.
 
In the quotations collected below, the name of the leader who was
assassinated is spelled variously as Qasim, Qassim and Kassem.  But,
however you spell his name, when he took power in a popularly-backed
coup in 1958, he certainly got recognized in Washington.  He carried
out such anti-American and anti-corporatist policies as starting the
process of nationalizing foreign oil companies in Iraq, withdrawing
Iraq from the US-initiated right-wing Baghdad Pact (which included
another military-run, US-puppet state, i.e., Pakistan) and
decriminalizing the Iraqi Communist Party.  Despite these actions, and
more likely because of them, he was Iraq's most popular leader.  He had
to go!
 
In 1959, there was a failed assassination attempt on Qasim.  The failed
assassin was none other than a young Saddam Hussein. In 1963, a
CIA-organized coup did successfully assassinate Qasim and Saddam's
Ba'ath Party came to power for the first time.  Saddam returned from
exile in Egypt and took up the key post as head of Iraq's secret
service.  The CIA then provided the new pliant, Iraqi regime with the
names of thousands of communists, and other leftist activists and
organizers.  Thousands of these supporters of Qasim and his policies
were soon dead in a rampage of mass murder carried out by the CIA's
close friends in Iraq.
 
Iraq is once again a target of US "regime change." Despite that,
precious little is being said by the corporate media about how the CIA
aided and abetted political assassination, regime change and mass
murder, all in the name of putting Saddam's Ba'ath power into power for
the first time in Iraq.
 
One thing is for sure, the US will find it much harder to remove the
Ba'ath Party from power in Iraq than they did putting them in power
back in 1963.  If more people knew about this diabolical history, they
just might not be so inclined to trust the US in its current efforts to
execute "regime change" in Iraq.
 
###

Here then are some quotations that I've gathered on this fascinating
early history of CIA involvement in the vicious history of "regime
change" in Iraq:

In early 1963, Saddam had more important things to worry about than his
outstanding bill at the Andiana Cafe. On February 8, a military coup in
Baghdad, in which the Baath Party played a leading role, overthrew
Qassim. Support for the conspirators was limited. In the first hours of
fighting, they had only nine tanks under their control. The Baath Party
had just 850 active members. But Qassim ignored warnings about the
impending coup. What tipped the balance against him was the involvement
of the United States. He had taken Iraq out of the anti-Soviet Baghdad
Pact. In 1961, he threatened to occupy Kuwait and nationalized part of
the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), the foreign oil consortium that
exploited Iraq's oil. In retrospect, it was the ClAs favorite coup. "We
really had the ts crossed on what was happening," James Critchfield,
then head of the CIA in the Middle East, told us. "We regarded it as a
great victory." Iraqi participants later confirmed American
involvement. "We came to power on a CIA train," admitted Ali Saleh
Sa'adi, the Baath Party secretary general who was about to institute an
unprecedented reign of terror. CIA assistance reportedly included
coordination of the coup plotters from the agency's station inside the
U.S. embassy in Baghdad as well as a clandestine radio station in
Kuwait and solicitation of advice from around the Middle East on who on
the left should be eliminated once the coup was successful. To the end,
Qassim retained his popularity in the streets of Baghdad. After his
execution, his sup- porters refused to believe he was dead until the
coup leaders showed pictures of his bullet-riddled body on TV and in
the newspapers.
 
Source: Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, excerpt from Out of the Ashes, The
Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, 2000.  Cited by Tim Buckley
<http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2000/msg01267.html >
 
###

The Ba'athist coup, resulted in the return to Iraq of young
fellow-Ba'athist Saddam Hussein, who had fled to Egypt after his
earlier abortive attempt to assassinate Qasim. Saddam was immediately
assigned to head the Al-Jihaz al-Khas, the clandestine Ba'athist
Intelligence organisation. As such, he was soon involved in the killing
of some 5,000 communists. Saddam's rise to power had, ironically, begun
on the back of a CIA-engineered coup!

Source: Alfred Mendes, Excerpt from "Blood for Oil,"  Spectr@zine.
<http://www.spectrezine.org/war/Mendes.htm >

###

1963: Qasim's government is overthrown in a coup bringing the Arab
nationalist Ba'ath party to power. They favour the joining together of
Iraq, Egypt and Syria in one Arab nation. In the same year, the Ba'ath
also come to power in Syria, although the Syrian and Iraqi parties
subsequently split.

The Ba'ath strengthen links with the U.S.  During the coup,
demonstrators are mown down by tanks, initiating a period of ruthless
persecution. Up to 10,000 people are imprisoned, many are tortured. The
CIA supply intelligence to the Ba'athists on communists and radicals to
be rounded up. In addition to the 149 officially executed, about 5,000
are killed in the terror, many buried alive in mass graves. The new
government continues the war on the Kurds, bombarding them with tanks,
artillery and from the air, and bulldozing villages.

Source: From Practical History, London, May 2000.
<http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/7672/iraq.html >

###

Iraqis have always suspected that the 1963 military coup that set
Saddam Husain on the road to absolute power had been masterminded by
the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). New evidence just published
reveals that the agency not only engineered the putsch but also
supplied the list of people to be eliminated once power was secured - a
monstrous stratagem that led to the decimation of Iraq's professional
class.
 
The overthrow of president Abdul Karim Kassim on February 8, 1963 was
not, of course, the first intervention in the region by the agency, but
it was the bloodiest - far bloodier than the coup it orchestrated in
1953 to restore the shah of Iran to power. Just how gory, and how deep
the CIA's involvement in it, is demonstrated in a new book by Said
Aburish, a writer on Arab political affairs.

 
The book, A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite (1997), sets
out the details not only of how the CIA closely controlled the planning
stages but also how it played a central role in the subsequent purge of
suspected leftists after the coup.

The author reckons that 5,000 were killed, giving the names of 600 of
them - including many doctors, lawyers, teachers and professors who
formed Iraq's educated elite. The massacre was carried out on the basis
of death lists provided by the CIA.

The lists were compiled in CIA stations throughout the Middle East with
the assistance of Iraqi exiles like Saddam, who was based in Egypt. An
Egyptian intelligence officer, who obtained a good deal of his
information from Saddam, helped the Cairo CIA station draw up its list.
According to Aburish, however, the American agent who produced the
longest list was William McHale, who operated under the cover of a news
correspondent for the Beirut bureau of Time magazine.

The butchery began as soon as the lists reached Baghdad. No-one was
spared. Even pregnant women and elderly men were killed. Some were
tortured in front of their children. According to the author, Saddam
who 'had rushed back to Iraq from exile in Cairo to join the victors,
was personally involved in the torture of leftists in the separate
detention centres for fellaheen [peasants] and the Muthaqafeen or
educated classes.'

King Hussain of Jordan, who maintained close links with the CIA, says
the death lists were relayed by radio to Baghdad from Kuwait, the
foreign base for the Iraqi coup. According to him, a secret radio
broadcast was made from Kuwait on the day of the coup, February 8,
'that relayed to those carrying out the coup the names and addresses of
communists there, so they could be seized and executed.'

The CIA's royal collaborator also gives an insight into how closely the
Ba'athist party and American intelligence operators worked together
during the planning stages. 'Many meetings were held between the Ba'ath
party and American intelligence - the most critical ones in Kuwait,' he
says.

At the time the Ba'ath party was a small nationalist movement with only
850 members. But the CIA decided to use it because of its close
relations with the army. One of its members tried to assassinate Kassim
as early as 1959. Saddam, then 22, was wounded in the leg, later
fleeing the country.

According to Aburish, the Ba'ath party leaders - in return for CIA
support - agreed to 'undertake a cleansing programme to get rid of the
communists and their leftist allies.' Hani Fkaiki, a Ba'ath party
leader, says that the party's contact man who orchestrated the coup was
William Lakeland, the US assistant military attache in Baghdad.

One of the coup leaders, colonel Saleh Mahdi Ammash, former Iraqi
assistant military attache in Washington, was in fact arrested for
being in touch with Lakeland in Baghdad. His arrest caused the
conspirators to move earlier than they had planned.

Aburish's book shows that the Ba'ath leaders did not deny plotting with
the CIA ro overthrow Kassim. When Syrian Ba'ath party officials
demanded to know why they were in cahoots with the US agency, the
Iraqis tried to justify it in terms of ideology comparing their
collusion to 'Lenin arriving in a German train to carry out his
revolution.' Ali Saleh, the minister of interior of the regime which
had replaced Kassim, said: 'We came to power on a CIA train.'
 
It should not come as a surprise that the Americans were so eager to
overthrow Kassim or so willing to cause such a blood bath to achieve
their objective. At the height of the cold war, they were causing
similar mayhem in Latin America and Indo-China overthrowing any leaders
that dared show the slighest degree of independence.
 

Kassim was a prime target for US aggression and arrogance. After taking
power in 1958, he took Iraq out of the Baghdad Pact, the US-backed
anti-Soviet alliance in the Middle East, and in 1961 he dared
nationalise part of the concession of the British-controlled Iraq
Petroleum company and resurrected a long-standing Iraqi claim to Kuwait
( the regime which succeeded him immediately dropped the claim to
Kuwait).
 
But the cold war does not by itself explain Uncle Sam's propensity to
violence. When president George Bush bombed Iraq to smithereens,
killing thousands of civilians, the cold war was over. Clinton cannot
cite the cold war for insisting that the brutal regime of sanctions
imposed on the country should stay.
 
In fact the brutal, blood-stained nature of Uncle Sam goes back all the
way to the so-called 'Founding Fathers,' who made no attempt to conceal
it. As long ago as 1818, John Quincy Adams hailed the 'salutary
efficacy' of terror in dealing with 'mingled hordes of lawless Indians
and negroes.' He was defending Andrew Jackson's frenzied operations in
Florida which virtually wiped out the indigenous population and left
the Spanish province under US control. Thomas Jefferson and his
colleagues were not above professing to be impressed by the wisdom of
his words.
 
Source: Muslimedia: August 16-31, 1997
<http://www.muslimedia.com/archives/features98/saddam.htm >
 
###

The CIA has been meddling in Iraq with disastrous consequences for over
four decades. After propping up the corrupt Nuri Said, the USA went
after Abdul-Karim Kassem, whose popularly-supported coup eliminated the
old British agent Nuri in 1958. Among those whom the CIA recruited to
do its dirty work were the Iraqi Baath Party, including a brash
power-hungry adventurer named Saddam Hussein. Saddam actually engaged
in an attempt on Kassem's life, one of many engineered by CIA "assets."
The Baath did finally succeed in overthrowing and killing Kassem in
1963. The CIA gave the emergent Baath a long list of Communists and
others to liquidate, which they undertook to accomplish with their
usual thoroughness, Husayn Al-Kurdi , "The CIA In Kurdistan", December
1996, <http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/dec96kurdi.htm >
 
Source:
<http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/behindheadlines/timeline/timeline.html
>

###

Kassem had helped found the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) in an attempt to curtail Western control of Arab oil.
He had been planning to nationalise the Iraq Petroleum Company in which
the USA had an interest. Iraq had also disapproved when Kuwait had been
given independence by the UK with a pro-west emir (king) and oil
concessions to Western companies.  A few days before the coup, the
French newspaper La Monde had reported that Kassem had been warned by
the USA government to change his country's economic policies or face
sanctions. British government papers later declassified would indicate
that the coup was backed by the USA and UK.  The new government
promises not to nationalise American oil interests and renounces its
claim to Kuwait. The USA recognises and praises the new government.

Source: Kryss Katsiavriades and Talaat Qureshi, "The Acts of the
Democracies: 1960 to
1964"<http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_1960to1964.html >

###
 
A history of twists and turns, with the CIA often as a blunt axe, have
made it very difficult for the United States to be seen as a reliable,
or even honest, presence in the Middle East. The resentment is not
confined to Arabs. Nine years ago, Massoud Barzani, who has rarely ever
traveled away from Kurdistan, agreed to visit Washington with a
deputation of the opposition Iraqi National Congress (INC). Massoud,
used to the traditional baggy trousers and cummerbund, looked
uncomfortable in an Armani suit at receptions, but the INC was keen to
create the right impression with senators and opinion-formers.
Nonetheless, Massoud refused an invitation to visit Henry Kissinger.

 
Despite all the compromises of Kurdish politics, Massoud had never
forgiven the former secretary of state for engineering the 1975 Algiers
agreement between Iraq and Iran, when the two sides suddenly settled
long-standing differences and felt free to deal with their "internal
problems," including the Kurds. Algiers came just two years after
Massoud went to Washington to meet Richard Helms, the CIA director, and
Al Haig, the White House chief of staff  a meeting that led to both CIA
and Israeli advisers moving into northern Iraq to help the Kurds.
Algiers left the Kurds high and dry, ending a generation of Kurdish
revolt led by Massoud's father, Mulla Mustafa, whose broken heart sent
him into exile and an early death. Even if those in Washington forgot
quickly, Massoud did not.

The relationship between the CIA and Saddam Hussein is a long one. In
1963, the Americans plotted with the Ba'ath against Abdel Karim Kassem,
a man who, in the words of the writer Said Aburish, "retains more of
the affection of the Iraqi people than any leader this century." The
CIA supplied lists for the Ba'ath to kill leftists and communists, and
Washington flew arms to Kirkuk to use against the Kurds.

In Aburish's biography of the Iraqi leader, the author quotes many
anti-Saddam Iraqis  including Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the INC  on CIA
cooperation with the second Ba'ath coup in 1968. Later, in the 1980s,
the United States and Britain helped arm Saddam in his confrontation
with Iran  only to turn against him over the 1990 Kuwait crisis. When
in 1991 the Iraqi people rose against Saddam, the United States was
fearful that change would put its majority Shi'ites  and thus Iran  in
power, and US forces stood by as the Republican Guard crushed the
rebellion. The CIA then worked on sponsoring a coup in Baghdad, a
strategy that crumbled in 1996 when Iraqi intelligence infiltrated a
conspiracy led by the ex-Ba'athist Iyad Alawi. Having rounded up
hundreds of officers, the mukhabarat sent a message to the CIA team in
Amman: "We have arrested all your people. You might as well pack up and
go home."

The CIA's half-hearted support for the INC also ended in 1996, when
Saddam exploited Kurdish in-fighting to crush an INC presence in the
Kurdish-controlled zone in the north. As Iraqi tanks moved in, the CIA
fled and left the INC people to their fate. Washington washed its hands
of the affair, and Chalabi noted that CIA officials "are not known for
their veracity."

Source: Gareth Smyth, "In the Middle East, the CIA has hurt its friends
and helped its own
enemies."<http://www.mafhoum.com/press2/cia276_files/home_files/azpolitics_03.htm
>

###
 
In 1963, Saddam Hussein worked with the CIA to carry out the coup by
the Baath party, which eventually brought him to power in Iraq. The
book, A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite by Said K.
Aburish, which was reviewed recently in Counterpunch ("The CIA: Lest We
Forget", CounterPunch. Sept.16-30 1997, p.2), describes how the CIA,
Saddam and other members of the Baath party collaborated to bring about
the coup, murdering perhaps 5,000 people in the process. The United
States went on to help Saddam win the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
According to Noam Chomsky, "There were no passionate calls for a
military strike after Saddam's gassing of Kurds at Halabja in March,
1988; on the contrary, the US and U.K. extended their strong support
for the mass murderer, then, also 'our kind of guy'" ("Iraq and the UN
Sanctions", The Economist, Nov.19 1994, p.47)

Source: Ruth Wilson, "American Policy in
Iraq"<http://www.speakeasy.org/wfp/37/american.html >

###
 
America aided Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath party into power in Iraq.
Describing them as "...the political force of the future..." the CIA
met with Ba'ath activists in the early 1960's. In the coup of 1963,
thousands of Iraqi opposition political figures were murdered in three
days, many them on a list which, according to journalist John Pilger,
was supplied by the CIA. James Critchfield was the head of the CIA's
Middle East Desk at the time. He later described the coup to authors
Andrew and Patrick Cockburn for their book 'Out of the Ashes.' "It was
a great victory. [....] It was an operation where all the 't's were
really crossed."  Another CIA agent testified to Congress: "He [Saddam]
was a son of a bitch, but he was OUR son of a bitch." ['PAYING THE
PRICE' - documentary by John Pilger, CARLTON TV, UK, 1999]

Source: "Fear And Loathing Of The US Government"
<http://www.firethistime.org/fearusgovt.htm >

###
 
1963: U.S. supports coup by Iraqi Ba'ath party (soon to be headed by
Saddam Hussein) and reportedly gives them names of communists to
murder, which they do with vigor.
Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, Out of the Ashes: The
Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, New York: Harperperennial. 1999, p. 74;
Edith and E. F. Penrose, Iraq: International Relations and National
Development, Boulder: Westview, 1978, p. 288;
Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of
Iraq, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978, pp. 985-86

Source: Stephen R. Shalom Middle East Time Line (revised, 12 Dec. 2001)
<http://csf.colorado.edu/forums/pfvs/2001IV/msg01736.html >

###

It is astonishing how many tough-minded men in American government have
been convinced by the regular spiel that the CIA has a deeprooted
antipathy to proposals for political murder. A witness to still another
episode of the sort was Armin Meyer, a career diplomat with a long
history in the Near East going back to the Office of War Information, a
kind of offshoot of the OSS, during World War II. In July 1958, when
the government of Iraq was overthrown in a coup notable for its
violence, Meyer was deputy director of the State Department's Office of
Near Eastern Affairs. The following year he was promoted to director
and as such was called in whenever the CIA contemplated covert
operations in Iraq. The new ruler of the country was an army general
named Abdul Karim Kassem, who had murdered his predecessors as well as
a number of foreigners who happened to be in Baghdad at the time of his
coup. On top of that, he immediately restored diplomatic relations with
the Soviet Union, later lifted a ban on the Iraqi Communist party while
suppressing pro-Western parties, and in many other ways invited the
hostility of Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles. On one occasion during
Armin Meyer's tenure as director of the Office of Near Eastern Affairs,
he attended a meeting in Allen Dulles's office at the CIA to discuss
how the United States might remove Kassem.  Meyer had attended many
such meetings; they were a routine of government; but this one stuck in
his mind.

During the meeting one of those present suggested that Kassem was the
problem, and maybe the best way to get rid of him was to get rid of
him. Wait a minute, Dulles said. An awful silence followed. Dulles was
a man of great personal authority, and his words on this occasion had a
cold and deliberate emphasis which Meyer never forgot. Dulles wanted
one thing to be understood: it is not in the American character to
assassinate opponents; murder was not to be discussed in his office,
now or ever again; he did not ever want to hear another such suggestion
by a servant of the United States government; that is not the way
Americans do things.

Dulles was so clear on this point, and spoke with such evident passion
and conviction, that Meyer simply could not understand how Dulles ever
could have been party to an assassination plot no matter who gave the
orders. Meyer knew what was in the Church Committee's reports, but he
simply did not believe it, there must be some error, it was beyond
Meyer's capacity to conceive that he could have been mistaken on this
point, Dulles had left no room for doubt: he would not be a party to
assassination.

The regular spiel
....
The message to McNamara, and to us, ought to be loud and clear:
assassination was too sensitive a matter to be discussed in official
meetings or to be recorded in official memos and minutes. What those
high officials who received the regular spiel failed to comprehend was
the degree of secrecy which surrounded any matter as explosive as
assassination. Armin Meyer, for example, was convinced by Dulles's
version of the regular spiel that he would never be a party to
assassination. He knew what was in the Church Committee's Assassination
Report  roughly knew, that is; he had not actually read itbut he
couldn't square what he'd heard with what he thought he knew. If he had
read the report, the whole report, and most particularly the long
footnote on page 181, he would have known that Dulles's solemn
disapproval was in truth nothing more than the regular spiel. In
February 1960, while the government was trying to decide what to do
about General Kassem, the chief of the DDP's Near East Division
proposed that Kassem be "incapacitated" with a poisoned handkerchief
prepared by the DDP's Technical Services Division. In April the
proposal was supported by the DDP's Chief of Operations, Richard Helms,
who endorsed Kassem's incapacitation as "highly desirable." Meyer would
further have known that Bisseil did not act in such matters without
Dulles's approval, and that Bissell was convinced  he could hardly have
made this point any clearer to the Church Committee  that Dulles would
not have proceeded without an order from the only man with the
authority to okay an attempt on a foreign leader's life. In this
instance the handkerchief was duly dispatched to Kassem, but whether or
not it ever reached him, it certainly did not kill him. His own
countrymen did that on February 8, 1963, by executing him before a
firing squad on live television in Baghdad.

What Livingston Merchant, Armin Meyer, Robert McNamara, and others
failed to understand was that official meetings in the office of the
Director of the CIA, or of the Secretary of State, or of the Special
Group, were hardly the place to discuss something that was really
secret. From the CIA's point of view the Secretary of State's office
was about as secure as the floor of Congress with a full press gallery.
It you were going to plan an assassination in the Secretary of State's
office, or record the discussion in the minutes, you might as well send
a press release to the New York Times. Eisenhower and Kennedy went
after two enemies in particular in the years between 1959 and 1963 
Lumumba in the Congo and Castro in Cuba  but when they gave the job to
the CIA they expected secrecy, and that is what they got.

Source: Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept The Secrets: Richard Helms and
the CIA, 1979, pp. 160-164.

###


6. U.S. Facing Bigger Bill For Iraq War
Total Cost Could Run As High as $200 Billion
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 1, 2002; Page A01

Within a month of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the
first Bush administration launched what became known as "Operation Tin
Cup" -- a frenzied round of diplomacy aimed at getting U.S. allies to
help pay for war with Iraq. As a result, the bill to American taxpayers
for the Persian Gulf War was about $7 billion, a fraction of its cost.

Although it is difficult to predict how much Americans would pay for a
new war with Iraq, one fact seems indisputable: It will be many times
more than the cost of the last war, if only because other countries are
much more reluctant to share the burden.

Informal estimates by congressional staff and Washington think tanks of
the costs of an invasion of Iraq and a postwar occupation of the
country have been in the range of $100 billion to $200 billion. If the
fighting is protracted, and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein blows up his
country's oil fields, most economists believe the indirect costs of the
war could be much greater, reverberating through the U.S. economy for
many years.

The 1991 Gulf War led to a brief spike in oil prices and a fall in
consumer confidence that helped tip the country into a recession that
cost President George H.W. Bush his chances of reelection. Despite the
high economic and political stakes, there has been no equivalent of
Operation Tin Cup this time around, and the current administration has
refused to engage in public debate about the likely costs of a new war.

"If we can plan a war, we should also be planning a way to pay for the
war," said Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (S.C.), the ranking Democrat on the
House Budget Committee. "Last time, we were able to slough the costs
off on other countries. This time, we will have to absorb most of these
costs ourselves. Someone ought to be asking questions about the impact
on the budget."

A White House official, speaking on condition of not being identified,
said it would be premature to talk about the costs of a war with Iraq
because President Bush has not decided on the use of military force. He
added that unofficial estimates of the cost of war had to be weighed
against the "potentially incalculable" political, diplomatic and
economic costs of permitting Hussein to develop and spread weapons of
mass destruction.

Using different methodologies, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget
Office and staff for the Democrat minority on the House Budget
Committee have concluded that a short, decisive war involving the
deployment of 250,000 U.S. troops could cost between $44 billion and
$60 billion. This is significantly less than the cost of the 1991 war,
which came to nearly $80 billion in 2002 dollars, reflecting the fewer
numbers of troops involved. A protracted war, by contrast, could cost
upward of $100 billion.

The direct military costs of a new war will likely be less than in 1991
under most scenarios, but the postwar occupation costs will be
considerably greater, most experts believe.

In Kuwait, most U.S. troops were able to pack up and go home in a few
weeks. In Iraq, a large international military presence will be
required for many years to provide security for a post-Hussein
government and avert a civil war between ethnic factions, which include
Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south.

"It's a no-brainer that this is going to cost us more than the last
time," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military economist at the Brookings
Institution. "In addition to the nominal price tag for the operation,
you will need a large stabilization force in there for a number of
years. Anything else will not be strategically viable."

Extrapolating from similar peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and
Kosovo, O'Hanlon estimates that the United States is likely to
initially spend between $15 billion and $20 billion a year for its
share of a multinational stabilization force for Iraq. Depending on how
long the stabilization force remains in Iraq, the cost to the American
taxpayer could be between $50 billion and $100 billion. His
calculations are based on an assumption that U.S. allies will pick up
two-thirds of the cost of the stabilization force.

Adding the costs of a stabilization force to the costs of an invasion
brings the total to between $100 billion and $200 billion. This is in
line with an upper-bracket estimate by White House economics adviser
Lawrence B. Lindsey in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in
September. The White House subsequently distanced the administration
from Lindsey's comments, saying they were not based on any official
study.

If the war costs between $100 billion and $200 billion, it would still
be relatively inexpensive in historical terms. Because of the growth in
the U.S. economy, wars are getting cheaper, at least to the American
consumer. In a $10 trillion economy, the cost of a second Gulf War
would be between 1 percent and 2 percent of the nation's annual gross
domestic product, compared with 12 percent for the Vietnam War, 15
percent for the Korean War and 130 percent for World War II.

Measured against a federal budget of about $2 trillion a year, the cost
of the war would be proportionately larger: between 5 percent and 10
percent.

"You have to ask yourself where would that money come from," said
Spratt, who represents the pay-as-you-go philosophy in Congress. "While
the costs of the war are clearly not beyond our means, they are beyond
our budget. Remember, this all comes at a time when we are losing
control over the budget."

In 1991, U.S. taxpayers paid about 12 percent of the military costs of
the Gulf War, with the remainder of the burden being shared among such
countries as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Germany and Japan. This time around,
none of these countries is expected to contribute significantly.

Iraq could be expected to assume major responsibility for the long-term
costs of its economic reconstruction out of increased oil revenue. But
the country has been devastated by two decades of war and economic
sanctions, and cannot pay for a U.S.-led invasion and military
occupation.

The generosity of the allies was "exhausted" by the first attack on
Iraq, said Chas Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Riyadh who helped
raise $16.8 billion from the Saudis to pay for Desert Storm. He added
that the Saudi government would find it politically impossible to pick
up a substantial portion of the costs of a new Gulf War even if it had
the money, because the Saudi public is "now 100 percent against an
attack on Iraq."

Freeman says the U.S. government grossly underestimated the costs of
the 1991 war by excluding various services provided free by the Saudis.
These included the costs of housing and repatriating Kuwaiti refugees,
the provision of free fuel, transport and lodging to coalition forces,
and a major environmental cleanup. In a future conflict, many of these
costs will be borne directly by the United States.

The most uncertain cost of the war, economists agree, is the impact on
the broader U.S. economy. Such costs are difficult to quantify. William
Nordhaus, a professor of economics at Yale University, estimates the
indirect cost of the 1991 conflict with Iraq at about $500 billion,
many times larger than the official military price tag. Depending on
what happens in a future conflict, the macroeconomic impact of the war
could be between zero and $1 trillion, according to his estimates.

"I was surprised to discover that the nonmilitary costs are likely to
be much larger than the military costs," he said.

A recent conference by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and
International Studies considered three scenarios for a war with Iraq.
The benign scenario, the probability of which was estimated at 40
percent to 60 percent, envisaged a decisive victory for allied forces
in four to six weeks and no disruption in oil supplies. Under this
scenario, oil prices would likely come down in the aftermath of the
war, boosting the U.S. economy.

A worst-case scenario (5 percent to 10 percent probability) envisaged
fighting for three to six months, massive political unrest in the
Middle East, terrorist attacks against the United States and
large-scale damage to Iraqi oil facilities.

An intermediate scenario (30 percent to 40 percent probability)
included limited damage to oil facilities, major urban warfare and
fighting for up to three months. The intermediate and worst-case
scenarios would have "serious adverse effects" on the U.S. economy,
according to Laurence H. Meyer, a former Federal Reserve Bank governor
now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The
worst-case scenario would likely lead to a global recession.

Nordhaus said U.S. wars have almost always gone over budget. The Civil
War was 13 times more expensive than the worst-case forecast of Abraham
Lincoln's treasury secretary. Similarly, in early 1966, the Pentagon
underestimated the likely cost of the Vietnam War by about 90 percent. 

7. U.S. Voices Doubts on Iraq Search: 
Bush, Aides Talk of Hussein 'Games,' Renew War Threat
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, December 3, 2002; Page A01

President Bush and his top lieutenants said yesterday they have little
hope that Iraq's Saddam Hussein will comply with requirements to
disclose his arsenal and disarm himself, renewing the threat of
military action just days after the start of new weapons inspections.

In speeches in Washington, Denver and London, Bush, Vice President
Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz sought to
increase pressure on Hussein in advance of a Sunday deadline for the
Iraqi leader to declare his inventory of weapons and missiles. As
national security adviser Condoleezza Rice met privately in New York
with chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, administration officials
served notice there would be no room for "games" by Hussein and set a
low threshold for what the United States would consider violations of
the latest United Nations resolution requiring Iraq's disarmament.

"In the inspections process, the United States will be making one
judgment: Has Saddam Hussein changed his behavior of the last 11
years?" Bush said in a speech at the Pentagon, where he signed a $355.5
billion defense spending measure. "Has he decided to cooperate
willingly and comply completely, or has he not? So far the signs are
not encouraging."

Administration officials said their pessimism was not based on
information from the weapons inspectors but on Iraq's belligerent
communications with the United Nations and its continuing challenge of
U.S. and British warplanes enforcing "no-fly" zones. The coordinated
speeches yesterday seemed designed to preempt any positive sign from
the U.N. inspection teams about Iraqi compliance and to set the stage
for an early confrontation with Hussein.

White House officials have not had official reports yet from the
inspectors, but there has been no public indication yet that the
inspectors have found any damning evidence, even though they have
visited some of the sites thought by the Americans to be particularly
suspicious. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer cautioned
yesterday that it was "much too soon to make any judgments" about the
inspections and said "we have intelligence information about what
Saddam Hussein possesses" regardless of what the inspectors find.

In his daily briefing, Fleischer indicated Hussein was in a no-win
position no matter what he declares by Sunday. "If Saddam Hussein
indicates that he has weapons of mass destruction and that he is
violating United Nations resolutions, then we will know that Saddam
Hussein again deceived the world," he said. Alternatively, Fleischer
noted, "If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam
Hussein is once again misleading the world."

Cheney, at an Air National Guard gathering in Denver, invoked Sunday's
deadline as Bush did, saying Hussein's "defiance will invite the
severest consequences. The demands of the world will be met, or action
will be unavoidable."

Bush indicated that the United States would consider Hussein to be
violating the new resolution if he does not provide "a full and
accurate declaration" by Sunday's deadline. "That declaration must be
credible and complete, or the Iraqi dictator will have demonstrated to
the world once again that he has chosen not to change his behavior,"
the president said. Bush added that "any act of delay, deception, or
defiance will prove that Saddam Hussein has not adopted the path of
compliance and has rejected the path of peace."

Despite the tough words, however, Bush and his aides indicated that the
administration would not immediately declare Iraq in violation of the
U.N. resolution based on what it discloses of its weapons by Sunday.
Bush said it would be up to the inspectors to "confirm the evidence of
voluntary and total disarmament" -- assuming, as expected, that Hussein
asserts that he has no weapons of mass destruction.

Fleischer said the Dec. 8 deadline for Hussein's catalogue "will mark
the beginning of a process, a process of verification . . . . The
president wants to allow the inspectors to do their jobs."

If Iraq asserts that it has no weapons of mass destruction, the Bush
administration is prepared to share intelligence with the United
Nations indicating otherwise to aid inspectors in their search. Iraq's
U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Al-Douri, said the declaration could be ready
as early as Wednesday. "There will be nothing surprising," Al-Douri
said. "We have repeated our position several times that we have nothing
hidden."

The president and his top advisers stopped short of repeating earlier
assertions of a desire to topple Hussein, indicating that the choice
between war and peace was in the Iraqi leader's hands. "The bottom line
is that Saddam Hussein and his regime must fundamentally change their
attitude and finally implement a disarmament that they agreed to over a
decade ago," Wolfowitz said at the International Institute for
Strategic Studies in London.

As has often been the case, Cheney went further than Bush in his
denunciation of Baghdad, calling it an "outlaw regime" and accusing
Hussein of "harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror."
Venturing into an area disputed by some in the intelligence community,
Cheney asserted that Hussein's government "has had high-level contacts
with al Qaeda going back a decade and has provided training to al Qaeda terrorists."

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