June 17, 1998

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS

FROM: GARY SCHMITT

SUBJECT: Iraq

Sunday, Chief UN weapons inspector Richard Butler and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz announced that they had agreed on a plan to close the books on the UN's effort to verify Iraq's destruction of its weapons of mass destruction. As early press accounts make clear, the agreement's utility is very much in the eyes' of the beholder. Butler believes he has reached agreement with Iraq on a "road map" to bring it over the next two months into compliance with UN resolutions requiring the destruction of all Iraqi missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while Saddam Hussein sees the accord as bringing a rapid end to the regime of economic and trade sanctions now in place against Iraq. Neither view, of course, is likely to be totally correct. The UN weapons inspectors will not get Iraq's full cooperation and the U.S. will continue for the immediate period ahead to veto any effort within the UN Security Council to remove all sanctions against Iraq. In the end, however, Iraq's view is likely to prevail. The international community will decide that any cooperation on the part of Iraq is "good enough" and the Clinton Administration, increasingly isolated in its position toward Iraq, will convince itself that "containing" Iraq is also "good enough" strategically.

But it won't be good enough. As Butler himself argued before the UN Security Council on June 3rd, Iraq has developed an indigenous capability to produce ballistic missiles and an assortment of weapons of mass destruction. And, as in the past, what Iraq can't produce it will be able to obtain clandestinely and conceal behind the mass of Iraq's day-to-day commercial activity. Whatever window dressing the UN and the administration put on the current policy, we are now headed toward a result in which Saddam Hussein will have all the weapons necessary to terrorize neighboring states and deter the U.S. from exercising effective leadership in the region. Containment, in the case of Saddam Hussein, will inevitably lead to policies of accommodation by both the U.S. and its allies. By ceding leadership on Iraq to the UN, the Clinton Administration has put us on a road that will undermine American credibility and power in the region, and increase our exposure to the most dangerous weapons known to man.

As we pointed out in our letter to President Clinton in January and, more recently, to the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, the only lasting and effective solution to the problem presented by Saddam Hussein is his removal and the destruction of his regime. But time is getting short. Unless Congress forces the administration's hand, it will continue to go along with the UN's game plan and leave the U.S. and its allies facing a Saddam powerful at home and in the region, and bent on avenging his previous losses.