Col. Hackworth: Stick With Containing Saddam
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com, December 11, 2002
Although war hero, journalist and military advocate, retired Army Col. David Hackworth colorfully tells NewsMax that a new war with Iraq would result in “slam, bam, good-bye Saddam,” he is dead set against the U.S. ever launching such a campaign.
He is also warning that if war breaks out, he has little doubt Saddam will use weapons of mass destruction against U.S. targets.
“It’s a question of misdirected priorities,” says Hackworth. “Containment has worked with Iraq; focus attention on the main event – fighting terrorism.”
Hack says he is hardly alone in his thinking, having sounded out senior military officers both present and past, noting such figures as retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni and retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who are also firm advocates of containment over war.
Hackworth has an extensive Pentagon rolodex and he says that the top brass is almost unified in opposition to an outright invasion of Iraq.
The former colonel says that the higher the rank the more opposed to striking Iraq.
“I’ve got a whole platoon of colonels in the Pentagon that are very vocal about the policies coming out of the White House,” he says. “They all favor containment.”
So where did this lust to war against Saddam come from?
Hackworth’s ready answer to NewsMax: Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who he says, “was advocating that Iraq should go long before 9-11.”
According to Hack, Wolfowitz was writing war plans to dispose of Saddam early on in the administration. Currently the hawkish defense official and right-hand-man to Donald Rumsfeld wants to use the relatively successful American campaign in Afghanistan as a “template” to neutralize Iraq.
Says Hackworth, Wolfowitz apparently went too far in pressing his template model, advocating that the military go in lean and mean rather than with heavy forces as in the 1991 Gulf War.
But folks like Central Command chief Gen. Tommy Franks “put his stars on the line,” holding out for a force of about 250, 000.
In the meantime, as the politics are played out and inspectors come and go, U.S. military operatives in the region are working overtime on what Hack styles as “psy-ops” or a psychological warfare campaign. A key element of that campaign, says Hack, is talking with Iraqi Army commanders via cell phone, going so far as to discuss rally points for surrender if the Coalition invasion ever steps off.
'Nothing to Lose'
Hackworth is of the opinion that if the hot war ever starts, only about 10 to 30 thousand of Saddam’s elite forces will put up much of a fight. “They’ll go down swinging because they have nothing to lose,” he says. “They know that they will be tried as war criminals.”
Although Hackworth’s last war was Vietnam, he was a Newsweek war correspondent in the Gulf in 1991. There he got to see first hand the things that fuel his strong opinions.
He describes even the vaunted Republican Guard troops as “pitiful,” recalling corroded ammunition and tank trends.
So if it’s a “slam, bam, thank you” situation, why not just go in and take him out like the administration has been talking about for so long?
“When Saddam knows he is going down for the count, he will employ his weapons of mass destruction,” Hackworth opines.
Taking Care of the Troops
And therein lies the rub for this former enlisted man who rose through the ranks in two wars. He is used to taking care of his men – just like Franks or Zinni. And like his fellows who have experienced the ravages of war, he balks from putting our troops into the toxic maelstrom of another Gulf War.
“We’ve got 160,000 disabled from the first Gulf War,” Hack explains to NewsMax. That, considering the number who served in that brief conflict, translates into the highest casualty rate of any modern war.
Hackworth is also quick to share stories from the field he is hearing about the deficiencies of our troops’ bio-chemical protective gear. “The only thing new since the Gulf War is an improved gas mask,” he laments.
Would you like to return to the Gulf as a war correspondent in the next one?
“Not in a million years,” says Hackworth, citing the same concerns over the toxic battlefield that spawned the mysterious “Gulf War Illness,” that cut like a scythe through the ranks of the first band of warriors to invade that foreign and hostile land.
Fighting House to House Unlikely
And how about those nightmare scenarios some paint about our troops fighting house-to-house in Baghdad and other population centers in Iraq?
Never going to happen, says Hackworth, citing the example of Tora Bora the labyrinthine cave system in Afghanistan that was eventually scoured by the Afghans – not U.S. troops.
“Urban warfare is a stupid way to fight a war,” says Hackworth, who relates that his sources on the ground in the Iraq region are telling him that word from on high is that there will be no urban fighting if and when the balloon goes up.
And it’s a good thing that we are apparently being smart about this issue, Hackworth says. “Saddam has a library full of Stalin books. He is a student of the battle of Stalingrad, where the soviets fought the German Army to a standstill and turned the tide of World War Two.” As in that infamous battle, Hackworth suggests that snipers would reign supreme in the urban environment.
Hack’s suggested tactic to by-pass such a golden opportunity for Saddam: “Encircle the city, shut down the water and electricity; they will capitulate in weeks.”
And to speed the process along, suggests Hackworth, “Shoot in some non-lethal stuff like Ex-lax.”
Some life-saving practical advice from an old warrior.
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