March 3, 1999

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS

FROM: GARY SCHMITT

SUBJECT: Iraq

I would like to draw your attention to a letter co-authored by Paul Wolfowitz, dean of the Nitze School for Advanced International Studies and former under secretary of defense, and Stephen J. Solarz, former Democratic member of Congress from New York, which appears in the most recent Foreign Affairs. The letter is a response to an article (Daniel Byman, Kenneth Pollack and Gideon Rose, "The Rollback Fantasy," Foreign Affairs, January/February 1999) highly critical of an aggressive policy of removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power in Iraq. Wolfowitz and Solarz offer a brief but telling rebuttal of the key assumptions and straw men put forward by the article's authors.

The Clinton Administration of course committed itself to a policy of removal when the president signed the Iraq Liberation Act last year. Yet there have been persistent doubts about how serious the administration was in carrying out the Act. Its efforts at implementation have been grudging, background statements about the Act by administration figures have been dismissive, and its response to the assessment made by Marine General Anthony Zinni, commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Middle East, about the Act's wisdom was indifferent. Now we have been told that National Security Advisor "Sandy" Berger has decided to bring Kenneth Pollack, one of the co-authors of the "The Rollback Fantasy," on board the staff of the National Security Council to handle Iraq policy.

In the absence of administration efforts to put forward a coherent and strategically-sound policy toward Iraq, Congress enacted the Iraq Liberation Act. However, if Congress wants to see the law effectively implemented it will need to increase its oversight of the administration's handling of U.S.-Iraq policy and insist on a more faithful adherence to what is, after all, the law of the land.