Hoagland's column from the WP points out, in it's last paragraphs, the real reason that France and Germany may be opposing the Iraq war. They don't want Saddam's Euro deals exposed. And you "Conspiracy theory" types will be frustrated by the fact that our Government controls them.
washingtonpost.com
War's Opening Hours
By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, February 2, 2003; Page B07
The American attack on Iraq that is now a few weeks away will look familiar in its opening hours. As they did in Iraq in 1991 and Kosovo in 1999, U.S. pilots will roar in without serious opposition to destroy remaining surface-to-air missile batteries and radars and to disrupt communications.
But that will be prelude to a vastly different campaign, which is being shaped not only by the clear risks of confronting Iraq's chemical and biological weapons but also by a trio of goals that for now go unhighlighted by the Bush administration.
Fast-moving ground forces will race to secure Iraqi oil fields and especially the Kirkuk area in Kurdistan. Other units will try to find Saddam Hussein's stores of biological and chemical weapons before they can be used or moved. And as resistance to the invasion cracks, an urgent hunt will be launched for the regime's other hidden crown jewel -- the voluminous official archives that record the Baath Party's reign of terror in sickening detail.
Confirmation that U.S. war planning has reached its final phase is contained in a secret National Security Presidential Directive recently signed by President Bush putting the Pentagon in charge not only of the military campaign but also the immediate political aftermath of post-Hussein Iraq. Expect Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to apply the recent lessons of Afghanistan to both phases.
That means emphasis on unified authority. A senior civilian political adviser will report to Gen. Tommy Franks, the theater commander for the war and now Rumsfeld's designated person in charge in Iraq when the shooting stops. The president's intent in making this designation now is to halt jockeying between the Pentagon and the State Department over Iraq's future.
More immediately, applying the lessons of Afghanistan means the early introduction of Special Operations Forces into Iraq instead of waiting for a lengthy bombing campaign to crack the regime. Some troops under Pentagon control are in fact already undertaking preparatory operations inside Iraq from facilities in Jordan and Turkey -- two countries that have been voicing apprehension about hostilities in Iraq even as their armies cooperate covertly with the Pentagon.
U.S. commanders have in recent weeks loosened the rules of engagement for pilots enforcing the "no-fly" zones in northern and southern Iraq. American fliers are now destroying Iraqi air defense units in and near those zones pretty much at will to clear the way for the war's opening hours.
U.S. planners have detected recent movement of radar to the al Assad air base, which is about 110 miles west of Baghdad and which houses the regime's best pilots and a half-dozen MIG-25s. Brief -- but suicidal -- resistance can be expected there.
But American intelligence has thus far seen surprisingly little redeployment of Iraq's main ground forces, suggesting at this point they will fight in the field rather than fall back into Baghdad and force an urban siege.
Iraq's megalomaniacal dictator gives every sign of preferring to see his army and his country destroyed rather than survive without him. American troops will urgently try to secure oil facilities throughout Iraq to prevent them from being torched. But there are other strategic reasons for making sure Americans land in Kirkuk as soon as the war starts.
Kirkuk is an oil-producing center historically coveted by the Kurds and Turks, and both will want to occupy it at least as a bargaining chip for a postwar settlement. Preempting a grab from either is important to the new federal system that the Pentagon will be in charge of getting on its feet when the fighting stops.
Obviously, finding and neutralizing the biological and chemical weapons that Hussein continues to hide from U.N. inspectors is important for the safety of the coalition forces and Iraq's civilians when fighting starts. It should be no surprise that the Bush administration discloses little of what it knows about hiding places at this moment to the inspectors or anyone else.
But the deadly arsenal is also a huge political trophy. Being able to display of vats of anthrax and/or rail cars of chemical warheads should silence those who now criticize President Bush for undue haste and recklessness. It could compel international cooperation that is lacking now.
High priority is also being assigned to capturing the extensive archives established by Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council, which has ordered that even its most minute and horrible directions be fully documented to prove they have been carried out in full. A Middle Eastern intelligence source says three duplicate sets of the Command Council's archives exist. He expects one or more to be put up for sale or offered to Iraqi opposition or foreign intelligence services in Hussein's twilight moments.
Documents and details of this dictator's secret dealings over three decades with the Soviet Union, East Germany's secret police, leading Arab and Western politicians and perhaps even terrorist groups would be worth a pretty penny to many people. A race to expose -- or bury forever -- Hussein's secrets has already begun in the shadows cast by the fast advancing war on Iraq. |
