November 13, 1998

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS

FROM: MARK LAGON

SUBJECT: Iraq

Conservatives now agree that the only solution to the present Iraqi crisis is to remove Saddam from power. The sustained bombing campaign which the Clinton Administration has planned must be only the first step in a broad political-military strategy to accomplish that goal. As Senator Richard Lugar pointed out on Thursday, airstrikes alone “will not get the job done. And therefore, the planning really has to be for stages two, three, or four.”

Senator Lugar correctly argues, moreover, that a “credible program for the removal of Saddam Hussein [is] going to involve U.S. ground troops in due course.” “Ultimately, there’s likely to have to have to be some ground action, or at least a credible threat of that, for that regime to change.” In the end, Lugar observed, “the credibility of ground troops is very different than that of remote bombers or even more remote cruise missiles.”

As the present confrontation with Iraq unfolds, conservatives and congressional leaders will have to take Senator Lugar’s argument seriously. Unfortunately, the Clinton Administration’s mishandling of U.S. policy toward Iraq has left the United States without any low-risk options for protecting American interest from a Saddam Hussein armed with weapons of mass destruction.