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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (40068)	8/26/2002 5:33:46 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi CobaltBlue; Re: "Oh, Carl, you couldn't be trying to weasel out of our bet, could you?" No, and that you would jump to that conclusion is an indication of the high prescription of the rose colored glasses you're wearing. (g) I'll try to repeat my argument: (1) It is impossible for the US to attack Iraq (i.e. invade and topple Saddam) without allied support. That allied support must be public and undeniable, as it was with the Kuwaiti liberation. Because of this, if we were to make a significant attack against Iraq you it would be very obvious from the diplomatic news. Instead what you read are more warnings and refusals from abroad. For example, j Just a few days ago Egypt announced that they would not participate, and that they would close the Suez to forces that did. This is not the kind of diplomatic success that Bush needs. (2) There are not sufficient rebel forces on the ground for the US to pull off an Afghanistan type liberation. Furthermore, supporting the rebels (weak though they are) that are present would be in contradiction to (a) our war against terror, (b) our relations with Turkey and the Gulf States. Before a war with Iraq can occur, all these forces must reverse themselves. In diplomacy, barring sudden attacks like the WTC, things can only change very slowly. Consequently, I would have plenty of time to retract my statement that war with Iraq was not going to happen. But the facts on the ground are that war with Iraq is diplomatically dead, dead, dead. It's likely that a solution will be "found" that involves some sort of inspection. Rumsfeld hinted as much in his recent interview on DefenseLINK (which you should read instead of the sites that never are right about the war you've been expecting for a year): Q: Mr. Secretary, my question is, how might the relationship between Russia and the United States be affected if the United States were to be engaged in a conflict with Iraq? Rumsfeld: The question is, how would our relationship with Russia be affected if the United States ended up in a conflict with Iraq? I suppose if I answer the question, the implication will be that we're going to have a conflict with Iraq. And I therefore would suggest to the press and the -- everyone here that if I do answer the question, as I'm going to answer the question in a minute, that no one ought to take any assumption away from that, because the president is -- has made no such decision that we should go into a war with Iraq. He's thinking about it, but -- (chuckles; laughter and murmuring among soldiers.) And there's an awful lot of stuff about it, but the fact of the matter is, we are doing things diplomatically, we are doing things economically, and we've got some military activity in Operation Northern Watch and Southern Watch, all of which are designed in cooperation with some coalition countries to try to see if we can't find a way to see that that regime is not developing weapons of mass destruction and is not a threat to its neighbor -- neighbors, which is, of course, our goal. That is our goal and our interest. [Bilow: Funny that he mentioned WMDs and threats to neighbors as being the goal. Didn't you think that administration policy was the elimination of Saddam Hussein?] The answer is I don't think our relationship would be affected with Russia if that were to happen. Why do I say that? Well, I say it because it seems to me that Iraq owes Russia a lot of money and Russia is interested in getting paid back. And that may be the basis for their trade agreement of some sort, I just don't know, because as I say, I haven't seen the details. But my impression is that the Russian administration is fairly pragmatic at this stage and their interest in the United States is greater than their interest in Iraq. And I suspect that the current leadership in Russia's interest in continuing to kind of point that country towards the West, towards Western Europe, towards North America, is a -- somewhat stronger than their old relationship with Iraq. And I therefore think it would not have an adverse effect on our relationship. defenselink.mil -- Carl