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

To: JohnM who wrote (41715)	9/3/2002 12:16:04 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Hidden agendas stymie Iraq debate By JIM HOAGLAND SYNDICATED COLUMNIST Monday, September 2, 2002 WASHINGTON -- Hidden agendas are to Washington what cars are to Detroit or skyscrapers to Manhattan: They come in all shapes and sizes. Silent motives color the flawed debate over Iraq rattling through the nation's capital in these somnolent days of August. Critics have developed the Saddam Hussein two-step to glide over underlying concerns: YES, they dutifully say, the Iraqi dictator is a thug who has done terrible things (pause) BUT the time is not right, the administration has not made its case, the allies are not with us, we can still contain and deter the beast of Baghdad. Why this rush to prejudge a case not yet made for a decision not yet made? Let me decode a central fear of some critics: They do not think that George W. Bush and his divided administration are capable of implementing an orderly and successful military campaign in Iraq without inflicting major casualties and national damage on the United States. They don't think this president, our 43rd, and all his squabbling men are up to the job, despite the United States' experiences in the 1991 Gulf War, the successful use of air power in Bosnia and Kosovo and the surprisingly swift breaking of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The first thing to be said about this line of argument is that it is legitimate and important, and could even come to be correct in one circumstance that I will identify. For the American public to understand the stakes in a war that no one should want to wage, this misgiving and others should be plainly stated by our foreign-policy wise persons. But very few of those urging "Don't Attack Iraq," as Brent Scowcroft did in The Wall Street Journal on Aug. 15, are prepared to engage in open debate on the competence issue. The frontal assault is not the way the Washington policy elite fights internecine battles. Positioning, deception and undoing a president's decision one piece at a time are the ways of Washington. But the steady drumroll of opinion pieces by former national security advisers and CIA chiefs -- who when in office encouraged the Iraqi dictator to attack Iran, bolstered his forces during that war or made sure he paid no significant price for kicking out U.N. weapons inspectors later on -- suggest that some of them share the open skepticism of many of my journalistic colleagues over Bush's intellectual and leadership abilities. How else to explain the judicious Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush's father and mentor to George W.'s adviser, Condoleezza Rice, going postal and public rather than seeking a quiet meeting with Bush the younger to explain why attacking Iraq is a bad idea? One problem of dynastic politics is that personal and national history become interwoven. Can Scowcroft really look at George W. and see THE president, rather than the son of the 41st president? Perhaps he can, making him an even more remarkable human being. But the scar tissue is deep in the Bush 43 administration from unresolved battles of Bush 41 over Iraq. Many senior officials argued back then that: (1) Saddam could be co-opted, or at least deterred from attacking America's friends, by words and favors. (2) Economic sanctions would drive him out of Kuwait once he had proved (1) wrong. (3) The war their mistakes on (1) and (2) helped produce should be stopped short of victory because the Iraqi dictator would soon be toppled by his army. Going 0-for-3 might deter some from predicting with great certainty what Saddam's future actions will be. But humility would be a less important issue to a team player like Scowcroft than the need to sound the alarm of a looming disaster. The circumstance that might prove such fears justified? There is one huge difference on the American side this time around. Bush the elder and his secretary of state, Jim Baker, were intimate friends and political allies. Baker bent the State Department to his president's will to organize the effective diplomatic and military coalition of 1991. Bush the son is at odds in public and in private with his secretary of state, Colin Powell, whose skepticism about warring against Iraq has not been hidden in 41 or 43. Those who predict that Bush 43 will not come up with an effective diplomatic strategy to support a new Gulf War may be dealing in a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Bush cannot show that he has convinced Colin Powell of the wisdom of his Iraq strategy, how can he convince the nation and the world? That is the question that needs to be asked openly and debated clearly, not in sub-rosa fashion. ----------------------------------------------------------- Jim Hoagland is associate editor/senior foreign correspondent for The Washington Post. Copyright 2002 Washington Post Writers Group. E-mail: hoaglandj@washpost.com seattlepi.nwsource.com

To: JohnM who wrote (41715)	9/3/2002 12:57:22 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Dick Cheney's Nightmare of Peace War could be just the thing to banish the Halliburton specter. By Robert Scheer Syndicated Columnist The Los Angeles Times September 3, 2002 In the dreams of Dick Cheney, to which I am not privy, I imagine there are boldly contrasting scenes of victory and despair. In one fantasy, he leads a victorious U.S. Army to a hero's welcome through the crowded streets of Baghdad, cheered wildly for having been the most outspoken proponent of war against Saddam Hussein. In his nightmares, meanwhile, he is led off in handcuffs, accused of crimes committed while CEO of Halliburton, securing that company's place in the ever-growing pantheon of post-boom corporate fraudsters. Peace, particularly the functioning of the economic order, has turned out to be far riskier than the waging of war for this administration. A typical American POW these days is a captain of industry who played loose with his company's books, and both Cheney and his alleged boss ran with that crowd. Of course, we should probably leave the novelization of a hawkish vice president's innermost thoughts to the likes of Tom Clancy. Regardless of Cheney's best-and worst-case scenarios, there are myriad other destinations still possible on the strange, grim trip we've all taken since that bizarre election night not yet two years ago. For example, the go-it-alone invasion of Old Mesopotamia that Cheney is pushing could dangerously backfire in the ways a bunch of Republican elders are predicting: Eroding allied support for the campaign against Al Qaeda, further destabilizing the Middle East and raising the likelihood that Hussein might launch whatever nasty weapons he does have. Cheney, though, is unmoved by voices of moderation. He even argues that the return of U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq, something the U.S. and our allies have been demanding for years, would only strengthen Hussein. Perhaps the veep is worried that the inspectors might not find the weapons of mass destruction that he, almost alone, is convinced are already operational. As for the CEO-in-handcuffs nightmare, it would be wrong to deny Cheney the presumption of innocence in any of the possible violations by Halliburton being pursued by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Still, one can imagine Cheney bolting awake in a cold sweat and moaning, "How could I have been so stupid as to make a video effusively thanking Arthur Andersen for giving me 'good advice over and above the normal by-the-books audit arrangements'?" There's just no way that sounds good when the SEC is looking into whether Halliburton cooked the books like those of other companies that the disgraced accounting firm helped to defraud stockholders. Somehow, we Joe Blows thought corporate accountants should keep to "normal by-the-books audit arrangements" when assessing the companies we pour our retirement savings into. Color us naive. But, as with the Republican war skeptics, here too Cheney is being bitten from behind. A conservative organization that successfully hounded Bill Clinton for years, Judicial Watch, charged in a lawsuit that "Vice President Cheney broke the law" with accounting tricks as Halliburton's CEO. Cheney also might be wondering whether he wasn't a bit too greedy in grabbing an $18-million profit on the sale of his Halliburton shares shortly before the stock tanked. Whether it was insider trading or just luck, the timing looks bad; no wonder, then, that a CNN poll showed only 11% of Americans believed that the vice president was telling the truth about his Halliburton history. Cheney is not dumb. He assuredly recognizes his future reputation and domicile might be riding on a Republican sweep of the November election. Imagine what a field day a Democrat-controlled Congress would have looking into how Cheney was able to cash out with $30 million after sending Halliburton down the road to possible bankruptcy, thanks to his lack of "due diligence" on a merger deal? It might also take a close look at a decade of lucrative government contracts Halliburton secured while Cheney was in and then out and then back in the White House. Or, how about that whole Enron thing, so many corporate scandals ago? A Democrat-controlled Congress might be able to finally get answers to what exactly Enron's role was in the Cheney-led drafting of the administration's energy policy. The VP has managed to keep secret the minutes of meetings between himself and Enron officials--including top Bush campaign contributor and then-Enron CEO Kenneth Lay. Maybe the elusive Cheney has a bunch of good explanations for all of this bad-smelling stuff. Until he decides to publicly share them, however, his passion on Iraq will remind many of us of the old saying that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels. For Cheney and his embattled cohorts in the White House, facing a potential second recession in their first term, peace is just too risky. Better to go back to sleep and dream of war. _________________________________________ ROBERT SCHEER, a journalist with over 30 years experience, has built his reputation on the strength of his social and political writing. His columns appear in newspapers across the country. latimes.com