Targeting Saddam

As the search for justification for going to war against Iraq gets ever more feverish, the prize for the most inane piece of reasoning once again goes to The Weekly Standard. The April 1 issue, given over almost wholly to anti-Arab tirades, included this gem from Tom Rose, publisher of the Jerusalem Post: "The Arab world is terrified not of the regional instability that might ensue if American efforts to depose Saddam Hussein fail, but of the regional instability that might ensue if those efforts succeed. To Arab leaders, 'regional stability' means safety for their own regimes, all of which are undemocratic. If America does manage to help free Iraq from decades of ruthless tyranny and assist that country toward a more open future, the 'regional instability' that might result could be the best thing that ever happened to the Middle East."

So there it is. Forget trying to tie Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11. No one believed that story of the Prague meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi "agent" anyway. It's all about "democracy" in the Arab world.

It's a little bizarre to say the least. What do The Weekly Standard warriors have against the various sheiks and emirs that successive U.S. administrations have been propping up for decades? They're about as pro-American as America?Israel's enabler?will ever get in the Arab world. After all, the Kristols and the Podhoretzes wouldn't dream of calling for a free vote in the West Bank to decide if its inhabitants wished to continue to live under Israeli occupation.

The case for attacking Iraq is looking ever more threadbare. The Saddam Hussein-Osama bin Laden connection is nonexistent. Iraq, unlike the United States, has always taken a dim view of Islamic terrorism. The other day in NATO-run Bosnia, police raided the offices of an Islamic believed to be linked to Al Qaeda and seized bogus passports, weapons and plans for making bombs. Two days later the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo had to be closed down for fear of a terrorist attack. In another raid last October, according to an AP story, "Photos of the World Trade Center and street maps of Washington with government buildings marked were found on a computer seized in [a] raid on a Saudi aid agency." Such events would be inconceivable in Baghdad. A recent lengthy and breathless article in The New Yorker by Jeffrey Goldberg unquestioningly accepts allegations of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, yet provides no serious evidence other than gossip emanating from Kurds eager to incite the United States to attack.

The weapons-of-mass-destruction drumbeat is also becoming a little faint. For seven years Iraq had been inspected over and over again by the United Nations. According to former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, by 1997 "Iraq had been disarmed. Iraq no longer possessed any meaningful quantities of chemical or biological agent, if it possessed any at all, and the industrial means to produce these agents had either been eliminated or were subject to stringent monitoring. The same was true of Iraq's nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities." Moreover, the International Atomic Energy Agency has continued to inspect Iraq and has repeatedly asserted that Baghdad is not stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

In any case, Saddam Hussein has reasonable grounds for trying to keep UN inspectors out of the country. For years he had accused them of being U.S. spies. He proved to be correct. Starting in 1992, the United States had been sending in agents posing as arms inspectors to spy on Iraq's military and doubtless to plot Hussein's overthrow and assassination. According to a 1999 report in The Washington Post: "U.S. agents rigged UNSCOM equipment and office space?to intercept Iraqi military communications between commanders and infantry and armored forces in the field." Scott Ritter had his suspicions about a 1996 coup attempt against Hussein, which coincided with the presence of an inspection team that included nine CIA officials.

Then there is the issue of Saddam Hussein's alleged use of poison gas on his own people. The story of the murdered 100,000 Kurds always turns up whenever there is talk of mounting an attack on Iraq. Jude Wanniski has written fascinating stuff on the subject disputing that Iraq had ever used poison gas on the Kurds.

The truth is that there is no particularly compelling reason to hate Saddam Hussein. His regime is nasty, but not much worse than that of others. He did invade Kuwait. For which Iraq has already paid a high price. But he had no desire to attack Saudi Arabia. He would have been a fool to try it, given the extent and history of the U.S. commitment to the regime in Riyadh. Moreover, U.S. ambassador April Glaspie had suggested that the U.S. didn't care all that much about what Iraq did to Kuwait. She said this during a meeting in which she was conveying President Bush's message that America wanted better relations with Iraq. It was a more sensible policy than the all-out confrontation with the Arabs that Israel's amen-corner is seeking.