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American Morning

Interview with Ken Pollack

Aired January 27, 2003 - 07:09   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Now as the world waits for today's report to the Security Council, some Americans seem to be rethinking their support for a possible war in Iraq. According to the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll, support for sending U.S. troops into Iraq has dropped 6 percentage points since December, with 52 percent now in favor of military action. That's down from 58 percent.
To find out more now about the possibility that a new U.N. draft resolution is being crafted by the United States to authorize military action against Iraq, let's turn to Ken Pollack with The Brookings Institution.

Welcome back, Ken.

KEN POLLACK, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: Before we get to the second resolution, you heard a little bit of what Richard Roth had to say about what Hans Blix will lay out today before the U.N. Among other things, accusing Iraq of undeclared chemical warheads, blocked U-2 surveillance overflights, illegally imported missile parts. How does that not constitute a material breach when you look at Resolution 1441?

POLLACK: Well, I tend to agree with your statement there, Paula. I think it does constitute a material breach. But you've got a number of countries out there that simply do not want to go to war at any cost, and they are going to try to interpret this in a very different fashion.

This is what the U.S. is looking for from the Blix report today. What they are hoping is that Blix will simply give a neutral, factual assessment of what the Iraqis have and haven't done. What they're afraid of is that Hans Blix is going to put his own political spin on it, which he has done from time to time, and suggest that what he has seen indicates that the Iraqis are giving some cooperation, and therefore, these things should be going on. That, of course, is a political judgment, and what the U.S. wants is for Blix to simply deliver just the facts and allow the Security Council to make the political determination of whether or not to allow the inspections to go on.

ZAHN: It seems clear from everything we heard from Colin Powell over the weekend the United States will probably go along with a couple of weeks more of inspections. Is there any justification for more time from your point of view?

POLLACK: Well, in truth from the perspective of the inspections themselves, there really isn't. The administration is right even though they're the only ones who are saying it, which is that the inspections are not about giving the inspectors enough time to see all of the sites they want to. That's effectively beside the point.

The point is simply whether or not the Iraqi government is complying, and what we've seen now over the course of almost two months is that the Iraqis are not complying. They're doing exactly what they did during the 1990s. They are providing partial cooperation just enough to try to buy off the inspectors, but they are not actually disarming. They're not doing all of the things necessary to actually have themselves disarmed. And what that suggests is that Saddam Hussein has no particular interest in doing so.

But what the administration has to weigh this against is that right now, the military track and the diplomatic track are out of sync, and we're not going to be ready to go to war for several weeks. And what's more, we're going to need several weeks to put together that coalition of the willing that the president keeps talking about.

So even though it seems like the administration has made up its mind, and I think that they're probably right that we know enough to know Saddam just isn't interested in complying once more, we're not ready yet to actually go to war.

ZAHN: Well, you made that clear from day one that this is not about cooperation, this is about compliance. And you co-wrote an editorial in “The New York Times” this morning that suggests that the United States now is a victim of the inspections trap. How does the Bush administration dig itself out of that, if that is true?

POLLACK: Well, this is the problem is that we have stuck ourselves into the inspections trap. We're now in a position where we can't prove that the Iraqis have got something, but everyone in the world knows that this is the case, at least all of the governments do. And they're using that against us to make it impossible for us to go to war. And I think what the U.S. has to do is basically cut the Gordian (ph) knot, announce that we are now focused on the issue of Iraqi compliance, give the Iraqis a deadline, say you've got a week to make good on all of the discrepancies out there, and if not, that in and of itself will constitute your noncompliance.

It gets back a little bit to what President Bush did back in 1991, the first President Bush did back in 1991, saying, Saddam Hussein, we are giving you this one last chance to comply, and if you don't come clean by this deadline, we are all going to accept that as your final answer.

ZAHN: Ken Pollack, we always appreciate your insights, from The Brookings Institution, also happens to be the author of “The Threatening Storm.” See you a little bit later on this morning.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired January 27, 2003 - 07:09   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Now as the world waits for today's report to the Security Council, some Americans seem to be rethinking their support for a possible war in Iraq. According to the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll, support for sending U.S. troops into Iraq has dropped 6 percentage points since December, with 52 percent now in favor of military action. That's down from 58 percent.
To find out more now about the possibility that a new U.N. draft resolution is being crafted by the United States to authorize military action against Iraq, let's turn to Ken Pollack with The Brookings Institution.

Welcome back, Ken.

KEN POLLACK, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: Before we get to the second resolution, you heard a little bit of what Richard Roth had to say about what Hans Blix will lay out today before the U.N. Among other things, accusing Iraq of undeclared chemical warheads, blocked U-2 surveillance overflights, illegally imported missile parts. How does that not constitute a material breach when you look at Resolution 1441?

POLLACK: Well, I tend to agree with your statement there, Paula. I think it does constitute a material breach. But you've got a number of countries out there that simply do not want to go to war at any cost, and they are going to try to interpret this in a very different fashion.

This is what the U.S. is looking for from the Blix report today. What they are hoping is that Blix will simply give a neutral, factual assessment of what the Iraqis have and haven't done. What they're afraid of is that Hans Blix is going to put his own political spin on it, which he has done from time to time, and suggest that what he has seen indicates that the Iraqis are giving some cooperation, and therefore, these things should be going on. That, of course, is a political judgment, and what the U.S. wants is for Blix to simply deliver just the facts and allow the Security Council to make the political determination of whether or not to allow the inspections to go on.

ZAHN: It seems clear from everything we heard from Colin Powell over the weekend the United States will probably go along with a couple of weeks more of inspections. Is there any justification for more time from your point of view?

POLLACK: Well, in truth from the perspective of the inspections themselves, there really isn't. The administration is right even though they're the only ones who are saying it, which is that the inspections are not about giving the inspectors enough time to see all of the sites they want to. That's effectively beside the point.

The point is simply whether or not the Iraqi government is complying, and what we've seen now over the course of almost two months is that the Iraqis are not complying. They're doing exactly what they did during the 1990s. They are providing partial cooperation just enough to try to buy off the inspectors, but they are not actually disarming. They're not doing all of the things necessary to actually have themselves disarmed. And what that suggests is that Saddam Hussein has no particular interest in doing so.

But what the administration has to weigh this against is that right now, the military track and the diplomatic track are out of sync, and we're not going to be ready to go to war for several weeks. And what's more, we're going to need several weeks to put together that coalition of the willing that the president keeps talking about.

So even though it seems like the administration has made up its mind, and I think that they're probably right that we know enough to know Saddam just isn't interested in complying once more, we're not ready yet to actually go to war.

ZAHN: Well, you made that clear from day one that this is not about cooperation, this is about compliance. And you co-wrote an editorial in “The New York Times” this morning that suggests that the United States now is a victim of the inspections trap. How does the Bush administration dig itself out of that, if that is true?

POLLACK: Well, this is the problem is that we have stuck ourselves into the inspections trap. We're now in a position where we can't prove that the Iraqis have got something, but everyone in the world knows that this is the case, at least all of the governments do. And they're using that against us to make it impossible for us to go to war. And I think what the U.S. has to do is basically cut the Gordian (ph) knot, announce that we are now focused on the issue of Iraqi compliance, give the Iraqis a deadline, say you've got a week to make good on all of the discrepancies out there, and if not, that in and of itself will constitute your noncompliance.

It gets back a little bit to what President Bush did back in 1991, the first President Bush did back in 1991, saying, Saddam Hussein, we are giving you this one last chance to comply, and if you don't come clean by this deadline, we are all going to accept that as your final answer.

ZAHN: Ken Pollack, we always appreciate your insights, from The Brookings Institution, also happens to be the author of “The Threatening Storm.” See you a little bit later on this morning.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com