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To: Sector Investor who wrote (36986)	3/1/1998 9:55:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

***OT***** EDITORIAL A star-crossed deal with Iraq esterday was the new moon, the darkest night of the month. Not only was it the new moon, but the first new moon since the end of the Olympic Games in Nagano. In case anyone missed the significance for U.S. foreign policy of the lunar phases and the timing of the Olympic Committee, this was the day the bombing was supposed to start over Baghdad. And Democrats had the audacity to make fun of Nancy Reagan's astrologer! Not since Gen. George Patton's invasion of Calais in 1944 has an attack been so well-advertised. And for much the same reason. Gen. Patton's army was made out of cardboard and plastic in order to fool the Germans, with the real landing taking place at Normandy. President Clinton's armed build-up was meant to fool Saddam Hussein -- only it seems we were the ones who got fooled. It now appears that by Feb. 15, the Clinton administration had concluded that without domestic support and world opinion behind it, the best the administration could do was threaten Saddam Hussein and pray that a diplomatic solution could be found. By then, the main players on the U.S. foreign policy team had decided to put their faith in U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan as the best way to defuse the crisis over Iraq's refusal to open up Saddam Hussein's spacious palace sites to international weapons inspectors. According to news reports, Secretary of Defense William Cohen and U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson expressed serious doubts about Mr. Annan's ability to negotiate with a wily character like Saddam. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, on the other hand, were in favor, and Mrs. Albright worked closely for days with Mr. Annan on the language of a possible deal. So, first, we farmed out our Iraq policy to Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who interceded for Saddam in last fall's inspection crisis. Now, we've turned over U.S. policy to Mr. Annan. Maybe Mrs. Albright is looking to retire soon; before long, there won't be much for her to do. The fact is that this is a very bad deal. That's primarily because it deprives inspectors from the U.N. Special Commission, known to friends as UNSCOM, of their independence and ties them to the political bureaucracy of the United Nations. Not that UNSCOM was a perfect regime by any standards; lots of chemical, biological and nuclear facilities were only discovered after debriefings of Iraqi defectors. Still, what the inspectors achieved depended entirely on their independence and ability to mount surprise visits to suspect sites. According to the arrangements made by Mr. Annan to respect Saddam's "dignity," engineers and scientists will now be required to enter the palaces only in the presence of U.N. appointed "chaperones" -- as if they were making some kind of courtesy call. According to an Op-Ed in the New York Times by David Kay, formerly the leader of the American team of UNSCOM inspectors and a man who knows first-hand what kind of tricks the Iraqis are up to, "Inspection teams may not work that well, but Mr. Annan's latest proposal could set back even the modest progress that UNSCOM has made. . . . By signalling that one can do business with Saddam Hussein, Kofi Annan has essentially blocked any opportunity for political change." One must also take the strongest exception to the language used by Mr. Annan about Saddam Hussein on his triumphal return to the United Nations. Mr. Annan described Saddam Hussein as calm, relaxed, and well-informed, a man concerned for the welfare of his people. "I think I can do business with him, and I think he was serious." Unless Saddam Hussein has undergone a character transplant, that is a complete misreading of the Iraqi dictator. This is the man who invaded his much smaller neighbor and allowed his troops rampant barbarity until they were driven out; who after losing the war turned his guns on his own people, killing hundreds of thousands; who set fire to the Kuwaiti oil fields when he could not have them for himself; who routinely beheads his officer corps to preempt any coups in the making. Saddam is not a reasonable man. He's a cold-blooded killer. Furthermore, we are fooling ourselves if we think for a moment that the Annan agreement presents an effective way of dealing with such a man.