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By Christopher Dickey
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Saddam Hussein knows what he wants: Domination of the Arab world with all its oil. Elimination of Israel. Vengeance on the United States. His record is so clear on all these points that only those who refuse to see could be blind to the danger he presents to Americans and their vital interests. Does he have the means to act? Possibly. Should he be allowed even the slimmest chance to use them? Never. The road to hell is paved with Saddam Hussein's intentions.
What's important now is for the United States to be clear about its intentions. And on some points it is. President Bush means to eliminate the threat that is Saddam, and he will not be distracted. American resolve must be--and be seen to be--unshakable. This administration knows there are far too many examples, dating back three decades, of American wishful thinking about Saddam Hussein's mellowing. In fact, when his regime is threatened with destruction, he'll sign anything. When he thinks the threat is gone, and feels strong, he tears up the agreement. His neighbors in Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have all paid the price of his vengeful duplicity. So have the Kurdish and Shiite citizens of Iraq, many times over.
To say that Iraq's lethal resources are not as great as North Korea's is to miss the point. Saddam will use whatever he's got whenever he thinks he can get away with it.
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His craving for nuclear weapons was never even thinly disguised. His authorized biographer, Fouad Mattar, wrote in the early 1980s "it is no longer a secret that Iraq is seeking to acquire nuclear arms because of President Saddam's intention to make the Iraqi Army the Arab world's defense force." Although a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Saddam pursued an aggressive secret project to build the bomb throughout his first 20 years in power. If the Israelis had not blown up his Osirak reactor in 1981, and if an aggressive United Nations inspection regime had not been put in place after he was defeated in the gulf war in 1991, Saddam's Iraq would be a nuclear power today and the world would be a very different--and even more dangerous--place. At some point after he acquired two or three bombs, or more, his nuclear threat would have become nuclear deterrence. Arguably, that's what's happened already in Pyongyang. And that's why Baghdad should be the first target.
"The lessons of North Korea argue for military action against Iraq now," says Rachel Bronson of the Council on Foreign Relations. "They show that negotiating with leaders who are bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction is futile. We will have to deal with Saddam one way or the other. I'd rather do it when he can't destroy entire cities in this volatile region." And a show of resolution in one corner of the world could have an impact on the other. As a State Department veteran of the Iraq desk says, whichever country gets hit first, "it's a bit like the gunslinger shooting the feather from the whore's hat to convince the bad guy that he can, and will, take him out too."
Yet nukes are only one potential danger posed by Saddam, and no longer the most important. Intimidation and inspections almost certainly have eliminated them for the time being. Nor does he have missiles even remotely capable of threatening the United States or its regional allies without incurring massive retaliation, and, in any case, self-immolation is not his style. The Iraqi threat that counts today, the risk that has to be eliminated urgently, is the one that brings together what's been called "the poor man's atom bomb"--a chemical weapon like VX nerve gas or a biological one like anthrax, both of which he's known to have produced--with the fresh post-9-11 menace of "the poor man's guided missile": a suicide bomber or another kind of terrorist cell. Even massive surveillance can't be counted on to eliminate weapons created in test tubes and fermenters. And should such an attack occur, there would be no satellite pictures of launch sites to indict Baghdad as the source. Saddam wouldn't need Al Qaeda, although he might want it to be blamed. He's a past master at terrorism, and he'd expect his victim to understand--but never be sure--that he was behind the attack.
That's why he must go. But what happens then--after Saddam is finally strung up, blown up, shot down or ushered into exile? Alas, Washington has yet to provide a plausible answer, which is the main reason so many leaders in the region and in Europe are so worried about this fight. They see that President Bush has learned to show determination when threatening war, but he has yet to show a similar resolve for building peace.
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