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

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (87992)	3/30/2003 2:17:31 PM
From: Ron	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Doubts begin to ripple in capital Second-guessing, complaints, impatience on war signal discontent DAVID E. SANGER New York Times WASHINGTON - After 10 days of watching smart bombs, sandstorms and stiff resistance from the Iraqi regime, a capital that usually embraces the president and his strategy in wartime is beginning to show fissures. Few have openly split with the president, or the decisions made so far. But one does not have to scratch deep to hear the doubts. There are the CIA analysts, quietly complaining that their warnings that Saddam Hussein's government might not crack like peanut brittle were dismissed. There are ex-generals on nightly cable television, expressing unease about a plan that relied more on speed than numbers, and that seemed overly dependent on welcoming cheers from the Iraqis. There are field commanders such as Lt. Gen. William Wallace, whose public complaints of an enemy that was "different from the one we'd war-gamed against" set off denials at the Central Command. There are the terse comments of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who, in an interview on Friday, declined to say whether the Iraq war planners were in danger of violating the famed "Powell doctrine" -- the use of overwhelming force. He assured two visitors to his office that he was certain the Pentagon would, in time, "bring decisive force to bear" -- and then changed the subject. And there are Democrats who chafe about the war's progress but will not say so publicly. Acutely aware that their Senate leader, Tom Daschle, walked into a hornet's nest two weeks ago when he suggested that the war itself was the result of failed diplomacy, they measure every word. "No one is going to make that mistake again," said one veteran Democrat. Still, plenty of Democrats recognize that Bush has staked his presidency on success in Iraq. So they will not hold their fire for long. Finally, there is a White House that is scrounging for evidence that it warned the nation all along that this could be a long slog, even in the face of predictions by Vice President Dick Cheney and others that, in all likelihood, the war would be quick and that "the streets in Basra and Baghdad are sure to erupt in joy." Cheney may yet prove to be right, the White House says, but 11 days into the war there is a feeling that the enthusiasm of the hawks got out of control. "There were very high expectations about the conduct of the war and enormous confidence in the military forces; we've all had drummed into us how superior they are," said Lee Hamilton, the former Democratic head of the House International Relations Committee. "Then you run into difficulties," he said. Even if the Iraqi government collapses in three weeks, or three months, the war is unlikely to be remembered as an easy struggle. "It was hubris to go on Fox News and proclaim the war would be a cakewalk," one former aide to the first President Bush said. "The gods were bound to hear it."

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (87992)	3/30/2003 2:19:04 PM
From: arun gera	Respond to of 281500

I found this article by Pollack which has some more information. meria.idc.ac.il Some excerpts: >The initial entry of the American armed forces into the kingdom occurred almost incidentally at the end of the Second World War, when the United States requested permission to build a modern airbase at Dhahran, near the Hasa oilfields, to support the movement of men and materiel into the Burma theater. Little progress was made by the end of the war, but the U.S. Army Air Corps saw the project through to completion in 1946. The Air Force leased Dhahran Airfield continuously for over a decade and a half, providing both reassurance and discomfort to their Saudi hosts.(11)> >The Hashemites’ proximity to the oil fields, revanchist ambitions, and British-led and -trained military forces all encouraged the Saudis to conclude a mutual defense assistance pact with the United States in 1951. It included a long-term lease of Dhahran Airfield, which came under the auspices of the Military and Advisory Group (MAAG), known from 1959 to the present as the U.S. Military Training Mission (USMTM).(14)> The informality of the arrangements governing the U.S. and British military presence was also a continuing source of tension, and became a more acute problem in February 2001, after the allies mounted a large air raid from Prince Sultan Air Base against air defense targets around Baghdad, apparently without providing prior notice to the Saudi government. Shortly after a special Pentagon press conference announcing and explaining the attack, President Bush played it down, describing it as "routine."(80) Following this episode, the Saudis imposed operational restrictions on allied warplanes operating out of PSAB, forbidding them to conduct further offensive operations against Iraq.(81) In June, Interior Minister Prince Nayif bin Abd al-Aziz again underscored the Saudi government’s desire to assert its exclusive sovereignty in matters related to hosting foreign forces, ruling out extradition of suspects held in the Khobar Towers bombing case: "[n]o other entity has the right to try or investigate any crimes occurring on Saudi lands."(82) These tensions grew even more acute after Bush’s January State of the Union address assailing an "axis of evil" that included two neighboring states, Iraq and Iran, and his insistence on the urgency of replacing Iraq’s regime. Reports that U.S. forces might be asked to leave Saudi Arabia were accompanied by accounts of the construction of a new CAOC in neighboring Qatar.(124) Later, a leaked war plan that appeared in the New York Times indicated that Saudi Arabia would not be a base of operations.(125) Following another leak, which revealed that a consultant had delivered a briefing to a Pentagon advisory panel describing the kingdom as an enemy of the United States, Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal once again explicitly ruled out the use of Saudi bases against Iraq.(126) Barely suppressed anger remains the dominant mode of U.S.-Saudi relations after September 11, and greater tests are likely to come. The consequences of America’s anticipated confrontation with Iraq, or of any decisive action by Israel against Yasir Arafat, are difficult to foresee. While Saudi Arabia’s present financial conditions seem to preclude use of the "oil weapon" in the near future, the kingdom could conceivably extend its denial of basing rights to a denial of overflight rights, seriously complicating an air war against Iraq. Another move reportedly under discussion in Saudi Arabia is to agree to an OPEC proposal switching the pricing of oil from dollars to euros, a decision likely to have significant effects on the value of the dollar.(127)