I think the Lieven piece is acute in many ways, although there is a certain minimization of the possibility that Saddam Hussein might supply doses of WMD for terrorists to use not only against Israel, which Lieven thinks fairly likely, but against the US as well. He says,
There is little real fear, however, that Saddam Hussein will give those weapons to terrorists to use against the United States - though a more genuine fear that he might conceivably do so in the case of Israel. Nor is there any serious prospect that he would use them himself in an unprovoked attack on the US or Israel, because immediate annihilation would follow.
That doesn't answer some important questions. Nobody thinks that Saddam is directly, openly, going to target the US. But that doesn't cover all the options. If he could cover his fingerprints, and if he felt he was losing everything (as he might not feel about having to live with a stringent inspection regime as opposed to an assault), he might well take the route of supplying units of WMD to terrorists who hate us.
(Not that I believe he would actually cooperate with stringent inspections.)
As for Lieven's proposition that the basic goal of the war exercise is to "retain an absolute certainty of being able defend the Gulf against an Iraqi attack, but, more important, to retain for the US and Israel a free hand for intervention in the ME as a whole," -- this seems very plausible.
The business about the interaction of the agendas of the religious right and the Israeli lobby has been pointed out before, even on a recent 60 Minutes, I think.
Here's a link to a Maureen Dowd column on that subject. From last Sunday's NYT:
nytimes.com |
