“Why did Saddam do it?” Richard Butler, the new UN chief of inspections of Saddam Hussein’s increasingly threatening weapons of mass destruction, posed that question, among many, this week. “We’re all asking ourselves that.”
But the usually astute Butler, while reflecting the confusion of many, was posing a question that actually does have answers. Unfortunately, they’re not very gratifying.
First, we are seeing a revving up of Hussein’s intentions to keep and increase his biological, chemical and nuclear-power capacity, regardless of the world’s opinion. Beginning Oct. 29, his actions forbidding American weapons inspectors from entering Iraq and forbidding American overflights have initiated a new and even more violent period in his history.
“I always thought the end game would be difficult because when we came closer to him, he would have to make a break-out,” said Rolf Ekeus, the respected Swedish diplomat who was the first UN inspector chief for six years.
“My hope was that the great pressure being put on him would make him understand there is no way out. Maybe this is his last try–I don’t know–but my sense is that it is not,” he told me here.
In addition, said Ekeus, now Swedish ambassador to Washington, for the last year and a half Hussein has been “narrowing down on his concealment mechanisms.” That has meant giving the inspectors blatantly false and misleading information as to where Hussein’s awesome weapons are hidden and using an elite brigade of the Republican Guards to guard and to disguise them.
In fact, in these past few weeks, Baghdad has been the scene of innumerable bizarre attempts to mislead the inspectors, attempts that would be comical were they not so deadly serious. At one point in September, Iraqi officials were carrying biological and chemical weapons evidence out the back door of a building while UN inspectors waited in front. In another case, Iraq delivered to the UN a report on its biological weapons program that was six years late and virtually unbelievable.
Second, Hussein is seeing an America he no longer need be afraid of, and so once again he can afford to exercise his intent to become the leader of the Arab world (and perhaps more).
Bulent Ali-Reza, a particularly deft analyst on the region at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, puts it this way:
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“Saddam sees the U.S. switching on China, letting (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu get away with murder in Israel, (U.S.) Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talking tough and nothing else, the administration’s `dual containment’ policy toward Iran and Iraq failing and almost none of the Arabs going to the (U.S.-backed) economic summit in Doha, Qatar, this month.
“The dimensions of this challenge have not sunk in with this administration. Basically, Saddam is dragging the U.S. into a confrontation at the worst possible time for the U.S. And remember, Saddam sees everything in terms of the Arab world–he’s only been out of Iraq once–and this newest crisis could be his entry back into the Arab world.”
And what has been the answer of the United States and the United Nations to these obvious newest depredations of Hussein?
Wow–something just came off the ticker tape. Hold your breath! We are now going to ban Iraqi officials from traveling abroad! We can all sleep better now.
What we know now through the UN is that, immediately after the Gulf War ended in April 1991, Iraq divided its missile force into two parts. One was presented to the UN inspectors for destruction and the second was secretly retained and enlarged.
We know that about once a year since then, Hussein has challenged and rechallenged the United States to see how far he can go. On the last occasion, in the fall of 1996 when he marched over and took over Kurdestan, the U.S. supinely withdrew from that region it was “protecting,” an action hardly ignored by Hussein, who feeds on expressions of human weakness.
We know that Hussein is forever working on ways to put his precious nerve gas and germ weapons into some 25 medium-range Scud missiles he has carefully hidden away. He has rebuilt his most important military assembly lines and his nuclear brain trust remains intact.
And we know further that he has, in these past weeks, canceled all military vacations and maneuvers, which is exactly the kind of signal he gave in 1990 before the invasion of Kuwait.
And yet both the administration and the United Nations have held back from even threatening military force.
But not to worry! If Hussein sets one foot on the Riviera, he’s a goner.