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CNN Saturday Morning News

Should U.S. Take Military Action Against Iraq?

Aired February 16, 2002 - 09:07   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Much has been made of President Bush's statement declaring North Korea, Iran, and Iraq parts of an axis of evil. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice underscored the comment this week, saying Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is a problem. She said the U.S. is not ruling out any options dealing with him.

Joining us from Washington to talk about all this, Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, Ken Pollack of the Council on Foreign Relations, and, in Little Rock, Arkansas, CNN military analyst General Wesley Clark, a distinguished panel indeed. Thank you all for being with us this morning, gentlemen.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good morning, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's begin -- General Clark, let's begin with you. Militarily, what are the options facing any person who decides that Saddam Hussein has to be toppled?

CLARK: Well, I think there are three broad categories of options. First, you can go back to Desert Storm and look at the model of massive troop deployments, and then a sweep throughout Iraq.

Secondly, you could do some version of the Afghan operation, in which you build up forces with the Northern Alliance or other groups there and you try to push -- I said Northern Alliance, I meant the Iraqi National Congress -- and other groups there, and try to push them against Saddam Hussein, supported by air power.

And third, you could do it unilaterally with U.S. special forces in, calling the air power, drawing out the Republican Guards, and then making the strikes go and taking out those armored forces, and believing that those kinds of defeats would topple Saddam Hussein.

O'BRIEN: Michael O'Hanlon, do you like any of those choices?

MICHAEL O'HANLON, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Well, I think General Clark laid them out very well. I just think options two and three might not work, and therefore you have to assume that option one, the big Desert Storm-like invasion is something you better prepare for from the start. And if you want the Iraqi army to decide that they're better off not fighting very hard and changing sides, the only way to convince them to do -- to make that decision is to have a strong American force that is on their doorstep ready to come in.

That may mean that it's no longer necessary to invade. If you have that force, you may not have to use it. But if you count on option two or three, I think there's a very good chance it would fail.

O'BRIEN: Ken Pollack, would you agree?

KEN POLLACK, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: I generally agree with Mike. I also think that options two and three are not going to be likely war-winners, although you can never rule anything out. The Iraqi opposition is extremely weak, much weaker than the Afghan Northern Alliance was. And the Iraqis have already been through one massive air campaign. And while it did devastate their army, it wasn't enough to topple Saddam Hussein.

I think you've got to be thinking about something in terms of another Desert Storm, a massive U.S. ground-air operation, to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not only defeated but driven from power.

I think where Mike and I disagree is that I'm afraid that at some point in time in the not-too-distant future, we are going to need to go ahead and undertake that kind of a commitment.

O'BRIEN: General Clark, let's talk about that for a moment, then we'll get into Mike's views on this as well. You know, an awful lot of 20/20 hindsight about the Gulf War and the fact that U.S. and the coalition forces didn't go all the way into Baghdad. But the decision was made at the time by the senior Bush administration that it was too costly, it would be too costly in American lives, given the potential payoff.

In retrospect, in hindsight, was that a mistake?

CLARK: Well, I think it's easy to say now that we have solved a lot of problems that we're facing if Saddam Hussein wasn't there. We don't know what problems, additional problems and new problems, we'd have if we'd gone in there.

But the truth is that it was never in the cards. When President Bush made the statement that, "This aggression will not stand," he wasn't talking about toppling Saddam Hussein, he was talking about liberating Kuwait. When he went before congressional leaders and when eventually the congressional resolution was taken, it wasn't about going into Baghdad. And the military plans weren't there to go into Baghdad. It would have meant some kind of an operational pause, a planning pause, perhaps more forces, more logistics, certainly a greater degree of risk for the armed forces to go in there.

So hindsight's wonderful, but I think what comes out of it is if we're going to go into this operation in the future, we've got to be sure before we undertake it that we can go all the way, not only to Baghdad, not only Saddam Hussein, but to know what happens next, to make sure we have our allies and supporters lined up so that there's not chaos and slaughter in Baghdad or in the south or in the Kurdistan areas after we complete the military phase of the operation. O'BRIEN: Michael, what the general just lays out is -- raises such a host of questions. We don't have enough time to deal with them all, but number one, the issue of building a coalition, this would obviously be something that might be difficult to build an alliance to do this. Secondly, the American people might not be on board for this kind of thing. And thirdly, clearly, with no obvious loyal opposition there, the possibility exists that there would be some sort of U.S. occupying force in Iraq for some time to come.

That's a lot for the American public to digest, isn't it?

O'HANLON: I think you're right, Miles. It may be worth it, and this is where Ken thinks it is worth it. I'm not sure we have to overthrow Saddam. But either way, if you're the president of the United States, you have to make the case. And there's been a lot of loose talk in Washington about how it would be easy to overthrow Saddam. There was an op-ed in "The Washington Post" just this week that said it would be a cakewalk. I think that kind of language is, frankly, irresponsible.

The American public needs to be ready for casualties and intense urban combat, because the Iraqis may fight. They may also use weapons of mass destruction and terror attacks against Israel, Saudi Arabia, or even this country. And if we're not ready for that, we're not serious and we shouldn't do it.

O'BRIEN: Why do you think it's not necessary to overthrow Saddam Hussein?

O'HANLON: I think he's pretty well contained. The last thing he really did that I think was a serious threat to the United States or its top leadership was the attempted assassination of President Bush, former President Bush, in 1993. That's nine years ago. I think he's realized that we're serious about containing him and about going after him if he's ever caught trying to kill Americans.

I really don't think, therefore, that he would take the risk of giving biological weapons to al Qaeda, for example. So I think he's pretty much in a box, and he's going to stay there. But I recognize that the Iraqi people are paying a big price for that. And so there would be a number of benefits to overthrowing him. I would not object strongly, as long as we do it right.

O'BRIEN: Ken, do you really think that Saddam Hussein is concerned about the risk of sharing his weapons of mass destruction with anybody who would share his goals?

POLLACK: I think that Saddam Hussein is absolutely determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction. And he's already got the full arsenal, he's been hiding it, for the most part, with the one big exception of nuclear weapons.

And this is my great concern, which is that the containment regime that we've had in place over the last 10 years, although it's served us wonderfully well, I'm quite concerned that it is eroding, that over time, Saddam is increasingly gaining control over Iraq's resources and revenues, and that's just going to increase over time, and that makes it increasingly likely that at some point in the future, probably not tomorrow, probably not a year from tomorrow, but maybe five years down the road, maybe 10 years down the road, we may need to deal with a Saddam Hussein with a nuclear weapon.

General Clark can tell you how much that would change how military planners would think about taking on Iraq in any kind of a future contingency. Having seen it from the political side, it would be a mess if Saddam Hussein ever had nuclear weapons. And my own feeling is just, the United States probably doesn't want to live in a world where someone like Saddam Hussein, a repeat aggressor, someone who has been as extremely difficult to deter in the past, has a nuclear capability.

O'BRIEN: General, let's put yourself in that scenario for just a moment, war college-type stuff. Saddam Hussein has a nuclear weapon. How does that change the way planners might go after him?

CLARK: Well, there's two real risks. One is that he has a nuclear weapon and he has a way to deliver it, like a ballistic missile. So that means that when you stage forces in the area, depending on the range of those missiles, he's a threat to your forces before you can ever act. And he's a threat to the allies in the region who might support you. So it makes it much more difficult to operate against him. It raises the risk, it starts in motion actions which might serve to deter U.S. necessary involvements abroad.

And so this is going to be a major concern. But there's another problem with his acquisition of nuclear weapons. And let's say he doesn't want to use a real delivery system like a ballistic missile, he just puts it on a ship, and you don't know that he's done that. So now he's got a major terror weapon that could go into any harbor in the world, unless every ship is checked for this, and it could be there and be a threat of violence, directed violence, that might even be difficult to trace back to its state origin.

So it is a significant problem. I think the decision's been made that we favor, the United States favors regime change in Baghdad. But how we do that is going to be very important, because Saddam Hussein's not going to be the last person who's after nuclear weapons, and he's not going to be the last person who doesn't share all of the interests of the United States.

And so we want to solve this problem in a way that forestalls future problems.

O'BRIEN: All right, on that sobering note, we're going to have to leave it, unfortunately, for lack of time. General Wesley Clark, Michael O'Hanlon, Ken Pollack, thank you very much for joining us this morning on CNN SATURDAY MORNING.

CLARK: Thank you, Miles.

O'HANLON: Thanks, Miles.

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