For
almost all the American
people, the best news they
could be given about Iraq
would be that they did not
have to go to war against it.
But that clearly was not what
Perle was thinking at
all.
-- Martin Sieff | United
Press International Thursday, July 18, 2002 [images
added by this
website] Pentagon
hawks hasten Iraq attack By Martin Sieff UPI Senior News Analyst From the Washington Politics & Policy
Desk WASHINGTON, July 18 (UPI) --
When will the Bush
administration launch U.S. armed forces
against Iraq in a bid to topple President
Saddam Hussein? Bet on this year rather
than next and sooner rather than
later. The conventional wisdom in Washington
in recent months has been that no such
attack is likely until well into next
year. Of course, that may well be the
case. Several detailed articles have
appeared in major U.S. newspapers citing
senior, unnamed Department of Defense
officials as saying that this is their
understanding. David Irving
comments: HERE's a story by a UPI
analyst saying the US invasion of
Iraq might be coming sooner than
most folks think. As usual the
leading hawks named -- Donald
Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas
Feith, and Richard
Perle who looms offstage --
include three rabidly Zionist
Jews: Wolfowitz, Feith, and
Perle. See too an
Arab's
commentary on the news from
www.arabia.com which is funded by
Jordan or Saudi Arabia, we
believe. It's a fairly
moderate commentary as compared
with the rage that is building up
among the people in the Arab
world. | These reports may be accurate, or they
may be the American version of
masrilovka -- the old Soviet term
for strategic disinformation to misdirect
an enemy. Undersecretary of Defense for
Policy Douglas Feith, who
championed the actual creation of an
explicit information unit in the Pentagon
that would spread misleading stories as
well as accurate ones, is known to have a
passion for such things.What is remarkable is that, if they are
the latter, it is one of the leading hawks
pushing for a pre-emptive offensive war
against Iraq who may have blown the
whistle on it. Speaking
on a PBS network documentary about Iraq
last week, Richard Perle, the
former assistant secretary of defense in
the Reagan administration who is also
immensely influential with civilian
Pentagon hawks in the current
administration one, confidently predicted
that when President George W. Bush
gives his State of the Union message next
year he would have "good news" to give the
American people about Iraq. For almost all the American people, the
best news they could be given about Iraq
would be that they did not have to go to
war against it. But that clearly was not
what Perle was thinking at all. By "good
news" about Iraq he mean the elimination
of Saddam and his government by the U.S.
armed forces. There are quite a number of straws in
the wind to suggest that Perle, who enjoys
immense influence with and access to Feith
and to Undersecretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz, knows what he is talking
about. First, the
British government, the only major
European ally that is enthusiastically
supporting the Bush administration in
its determination to bring down Saddam
by direct military means, is quietly
acting as if a war will come this fall
or winter rather than not until next
year. British security sources have confirmed
that significant contingents of British
troops are being quietly withdrawn from
peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan, Bosnia
and Kosovo. The only reason this could be
happening simultaneously at this time,
they said, was in preparation for the
expected operations against Iraq. Also, these sources confirmed,
Britain's Royal Air Force is practicing
low-level precision bombing strike
missions that they expect to have to
undertake against Iraq. UPI veteran foreign correspondent and
Middle East expert Claude Salhani,
who covered the 1991 Gulf War from the
front lines, also believes that the
combination of seasonal physical
conditions in the Middle East and
political factors back in the United
States point to a full-scale offensive
against Iraq this fall, rather than later
next year. "If they go in, they will have a very
short window of opportunity -- after the
desert heat, before the rains in the
mountains and before the U.S. elections,"
Salhani says. The baking heat in the Arabian Desert
and Fertile Crescent almost never eases
before October, especially in these days
of global warming. But if significant U.S.
forces go in through Turkey and Kurdistan
in the north of Iraq, as seems
increasingly likely, the usual winter
heavy rains could significantly deplete
the effectiveness of U.S. air support and
also turn mountain roads and tracks into
mud, slowing down heavy, tracked
vehicles. As
to the November midterm congressional
elections, political leaders always react
with outrage to the very idea that
military operations are ever timed, or
rushed, to conform to any such partisan
and selfish domestic political
considerations. But for an administration
that has deliberately made its alleged
effectiveness and resolution in the war on
international terror its central appeal,
the desire to have good news from Iraq, or
at least progress on any anti-terror
front, by November is obvious. It is also striking that some of the
U.S. media coverage making the case that
the offensive will not be launched until
next year, based key arguments on claims
that Department of Defense civilian
policymakers had been forced to slow down
their hell-bent and ambitious timetable
because senior Army military officers had
said they needed more time in
planning. But this Pentagon civilian leadership
led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
and Wolfowitz has been deliberately more
contemptuous and unheeding of the concerns
of infantry and armor experts in the
regular Army than any other since the dark
days of Robert McNamara during the
Vietnam War more than 35 years ago. Well-placed
armed forces officers serving in the
Pentagon have told UPI that the leaders
of the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Special
Forces are enthusiastic about
undertaking operations against Iraq.
Special Forces commanders in particular
believe they can rapidly replicate
their lightning and virtually casualty
free operations in Afghanistan, these
officers said. However, senior Army and Marine
officers do not share these gung ho
attitudes and believe that operations
against Iraq will require at least 200,000
regular troops and possibly more, and will
need to be planned and conducted very
carefully, these sources said. There is no question about which side
of the debate Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith
and their colleagues come out on. A recent article in the New
Yorker magazine traced the way in
which Rumsfeld had humiliated and isolated
current Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric
Shinseki, a regular Army infantry
expert, and appointed as his vice chief of
staff and future successor Lt. Gen.
John Keane, a Special Forces
enthusiast. It therefore appears unlikely that he
and his civilian colleagues would actually
heed such cautious advice from
professional Army officers when it
conflicts with what their more
eager-beaver Special Forces enthusiasts
are telling them. This analysis is obviously not carved
in stone. The attack on Iraq may not come
until next year or it may not come at all.
Or all the factors we have listed above
may turn out to be more deliberate
disinformation fed to the unsuspecting
press. But don't rule it out either. When
ambitious men with dreams of glory are in
a hurry, subtlety often gets left behind
as often as prudence or plain common
sense. Copyright
© 2002 United Press
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