[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 18 (Monday, March 2, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1177-S1182]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  IRAQ

  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, we are well aware that an agreement was 
struck this week by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi 
Annan, and the Iraqi Government, led by Saddam Hussein, with respect to 
the sites that Iraq agreed would be open to unfettered inspection at 
the conclusion of the gulf war. Let me give a little history first.
  Remember that the United States and the allied forces were prepared 
to carry the battle further, perhaps even to Saddam Hussein himself, 
but the President of the United States judged that the battle could be 
called off if the Iraqi Government would agree to a series of 
commitments to abide by the rule of law in the future. As a result, we 
stopped our military campaign against the Iraqi Army, and an agreement 
was entered into between the Iraqi Government and the allied forces 
under the jurisdiction of the United States in which the Iraqi 
Government made some very specific promises. The key promise was not to 
develop any weapons of mass destruction and to destroy everything that 
they had.

  To implement that commitment, an inspection regime was established, 
and the Iraqi Government agreed to allow unfettered inspection of its 
country in order to assure that it was abiding by the agreement not to 
develop and, indeed, to destroy any weapons of mass destruction that it 
might already have.

[[Page S1178]]

  From the day that agreement was signed, it has been violated 
repeatedly by the Iraqi Government and Iraqi authorities, and it has 
been literally, Mr. President, a cat-and-mouse game between the U.N. 
inspectors under UNSCOM and the Iraqi Government. It seems that 
unfettered inspection has been permitted until the inspectors get 
warm--like the old child's game, ``Am I getting warm yet?''--and as 
soon as the inspectors would get warm, then there would be delay and 
deception and denial and, if it were serious enough, outright barring 
of inspectors from a site or facility until the offending material had 
been whisked literally out the back door, in some cases, and then when 
the site was clean, the front door would open, the inspectors would be 
invited in and they would find, of course, nothing. That game went on 
for a long time. Finally, the U.N. inspector said, ``Enough, this isn't 
going to work; every time we get warm, he stops us and we have to find 
a way to enforce the agreement that Saddam had entered into.'' That is 
when the United States began to consider a bombing campaign as a means 
of at least attempting to degrade the weapons of mass destruction that 
Iraq had developed.
  A lot of people felt it probably wouldn't succeed because it is 
difficult to find those caches of weapons, except for the ones that 
were disclosed when Saddam Hussein's son-in-law defected to Jordan for 
a while and indicated where this material was and our inspectors were 
able to go in and find it as a result of that, Saddam Hussein all of a 
sudden remembering that he had forgotten to tell us that that existed.
  Except for that instance, we have been unsuccessful in being able to 
identify much of these stocks. So it was problematic as to whether a 
bombing campaign would actually result in the destruction of this 
material. As a result, a lot of people were pushing the administration 
prior to that bombing campaign to develop a broader strategy that would 
consist of a wide array of actions that over time could result in 
addressing the real problem here, which everyone agrees is Saddam 
Hussein himself. That broader strategy might consist of a series of 
actions that would destabilize his regime, would put more pressure on 
him and would eventually perhaps result in a replacement of his 
Government, not by assassination, which is contrary to American policy, 
but by means of the assistance of the people of Iraq.
  Since the agreement by the U.N. Secretary General, the need for a 
resolution from the Congress supporting military action has been, in 
effect, put on hold, but I suggest that it is only on hold, that there 
will come a time, sooner or later, when the United Nations will, again, 
be faced with the question, and the United States as the primary actor 
here, as to whether or not it is necessary to take some additional 
action.
  As sure as we are here today, Mr. President, the Iraqis will violate 
the terms of either the most recently agreed-upon regime for inspection 
or the remaining principles of inspection which apply to other than the 
so-called eight Presidential sites in Iraq. That would probably happen 
if, that is to say, we begin again to get warm, if our inspectors find 
something that they want to get into further.
  At that point, we will begin to again see denial and deception by the 
Iraqi Government. At that point, it is going to be relevant again 
whether or not the American people, the world community and the 
Congress support action by the administration to deal with the then 
most recent crisis. If the administration has developed a broad 
strategy, the bombing campaign only being a part of that strategy, and 
everyone recognizing that it by itself is not going to solve the 
problem, but as a part of an overall strategy can contribute to a 
solution, then the President, I think, will have the support he needs 
to proceed with the execution of that plan.
  But the development of that plan is critical, and that is why I think 
during this interregnum, this period in which at least nominally 
inspections will be permitted and pressure of immediate military action 
has receded, it is important for us in the Congress to work with the 
administration to help it develop the outlines of such a policy. That 
is not our job, and I don't suggest that the Congress be the one to 
develop that broad strategy. That is the administration's prerogative; 
it is the administration's responsibility. It is its responsibility, 
and because many in Congress feel the administration has abdicated a 
significant part of that responsibility in the past, I think we have 
the opportunity and we have the responsibility to share ideas with the 
administration that it could put together in a broader strategy. If it 
does that, it will have the support of the Congress if and when that 
time comes. That is why I think it is important for us to talk a little 
bit about the agreement that was entered into and about some 
alternative proposals that have been suggested, including one which I 
will submit for the Record. A letter sent to the President by 28 
prominent--prominent--American citizens offers their suggestions as to 
what might be done, most of which have also been offered by Members of 
the Senate.
  Before I close with that, let me indicate that when the majority 
leader took the floor last week to criticize the agreement that had 
been entered into between the Secretary General and Saddam Hussein, I 
supported the remarks that he gave and I have said that ever since, 
because I think some criticism of this agreement is warranted.
  It is a fact that our Government was put in a box when the President 
and the Secretary of State, in effect, ceded this element of policy to 
the United Nations. It was a foregone conclusion we would have to then 
accept the agreement and attempt to abide by it; we had no choice at 
that point; and as a result, the administration has to go forward with 
it and has to nominally at least support it. Richard Butler, the chief 
inspector, has to support it. He is a man of significant qualifications 
and eloquence. In describing how this is going to work, he says he can 
make it work, but it is all predicated on the assumption that Saddam 
Hussein will abide by the agreement. That is what Richard Butler 
himself says.
  There are a lot of criticisms of the agreement, about the precedent 
that it sets, about the fact that it puts the United Nations literally 
in the driver's seat and reduces the UNSCOM inspectors, the 
professionals, and the United States, which has been a primary country 
backing the agreement, to a secondary position. There has been 
significant question about whether the inspections themselves will be 
compromised by the inclusion of a lot of diplomats which are 
essentially to act as chaperones to the inspectors at these eight 
Presidential sites.
  Part of the problem of the inspections is that Saddam Hussein has 
always seemed to have been aware of where we wanted to go and has been 
one step ahead of us. That is because his Government has significantly 
penetrated the operations and has information in advance of the 
inspections. If the diplomats are involved in this, and some of them 
are from countries which are clearly supportive of the Iraqi regime, it 
certainly is open to question as to whether or not the inspections will 
be compromised in the future.
  So a lot of questions that the majority leader raised about this 
agreement, I think, remain as significant and ought to instruct us in 
the future as to how not to go about business. But it is done. And for 
the time being, we are going to have to at least abide by it.

  The key point about the agreement that I think I will make is this: 
We should have no illusions that it will be abided by. At some point, 
the Iraqis will, if we get close to finding something, prevent either 
the full inspection under the new agreement or revert to form under the 
current policies that apply to all of the sites other than the eight 
Presidential sites. In either case, we have the responsibility to act.
  Now, the administration has the view that this will actually make it 
easier for us to engage in military action in the future because in the 
past we did not have support from the world community, but this time if 
Saddam Hussein violates it, the world community will be with us. Well, 
unfortunately, the world community appears to have an almost infinite 
capacity for rationalization not to take an action against Saddam 
Hussein because we cannot even get a resolution through the Security 
Council that says the ``severest'' consequences will result from a 
violation of the agreement. Instead, we argue about words--of whether 
it will

[[Page S1179]]

be very severe consequences. This clearly means that our allies are not 
going to be backing us in terms of the kind of military action that we 
will want to take if and when that becomes necessary.
  So concluding on this point, Mr. President, I think it is important 
for us to look at some of the suggestions that are being made and for 
the administration to begin to develop this broader policy.
  I want to put two things in the Record at this point. I will ask 
unanimous consent to do so. One is a letter, an open letter to the 
President, signed by 28 prominent Americans, calling upon the President 
to consider a variety of specific actions that should be taken; and the 
other is a statement by Paul Wolfowitz who is the Dean of the Paul H. 
Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins 
University for the House Committee on International Relations on 
February 24. Since that was a House hearing, I thought it would useful 
for our Members here in the Senate to have it.
  So I ask unanimous consent that those two documents be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

         Open Letter to the President--Committee for Peace and 
           Security in the Gulf,
                                                February 19, 1998.
       Dear Mr. President: Many of us were involved in organizing 
     the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf in 1990 to 
     support President Bush's policy of expelling Saddam Hussein 
     from Kuwait. Seven years later, Saddam Hussein is still in 
     power in Baghdad. And despite his defeat in the Gulf War, 
     continuing sanctions, and the determined effort of UN 
     inspectors to fetter out and destroy his weapons of mass 
     destruction, Saddam Hussein has been able to develop 
     biological and chemical munitions. To underscore the threat 
     posed by these deadly devices, the Secretaries of State and 
     Defense have said that these weapons could be used against 
     our own people. And you have said that this issue is about 
     the ``challenges of the 21st Century.''
       Iraq's position is unacceptable. While Iraq is not unique 
     in possessing these weapons, it is the only country which has 
     used them--not just against its enemies, but its own people 
     as well. We must assume that Saddam is prepared to use them 
     again. This poses a danger to our friends, our allies, and to 
     our nation.
       It is clear that this danger cannot be eliminated as long 
     as our objective is simply ``containment,'' and the means of 
     achieving it are limited to sanctions and exhortations. As 
     the crisis of recent weeks has demonstrated, these static 
     policies are bound to erode, opening the way to Saddam's 
     eventual return to a position of power and influence in the 
     region. Only a determined program to change the regime in 
     Baghdad will bring the Iraqi crisis to a satisfactory 
     conclusion.
       For years, the United States has tried to remove Saddam by 
     encouraging coups and internal conspiracies. These attempts 
     have all failed. Saddam is more wily, brutal and 
     conspiratorial than any likely conspiracy the United States 
     might mobilize against him. Saddam must be overpowered; he 
     will not be brought down by a coup d'etat. But Saddam has an 
     Achilles' heel; lacking popular support, he rules by terror. 
     The same brutality which makes it unlikely that any coups or 
     conspiracies can succeed, makes him hated by his own people 
     and the rank and file of his military. Iraq today is ripe for 
     a broad-based insurrection. We must exploit this opportunity.
       Saddam's long record of treaty violations, deception, and 
     violence shows that diplomacy and arms control will not 
     constrain him. In the absence of a broader strategy, even 
     extensive air strikes would be ineffective in dealing with 
     Saddam and eliminating the threat his regime poses. We 
     believe that the problem is not only the specifics of 
     Saddam's actions, but the continued existence of the regime 
     itself.
       What is needed now is a comprehensive political and 
     military strategy for bringing down Saddam and his regime. It 
     will not be easy--and the course of action we favor is not 
     without its problems and perils. But we believe the vital 
     national interests of our country require the United States 
     to:
       Recognize a provisional government of Iraq based on the 
     principles and leaders of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) 
     that is representative of all peoples of Iraq.
       Restore and enhance the safe haven in northern Iraq to 
     allow the provisional government to extend its authority 
     there and establish a zone in southern Iraq from which 
     Saddam's ground forces would also be excluded.
       Lift sanctions in liberated areas. Sanctions are 
     instruments of war against Saddam's regime, but they should 
     be quickly lifted on those who have freed themselves from it. 
     Also, the oil resources and products of the liberated areas 
     should help fund the provisional government's insurrection 
     and humanitarian relief for the people of liberated Iraq.
       Release frozen Iraqi assets--which amount to $1.6 billion 
     in the United States and Britain alone--to the control of the 
     provisional government to fund its insurrection. This could 
     be done gradually and so long as the provisional government 
     continues to promote a democratic Iraq.
       Facilitate broadcasts from U.S. transmitters immediately 
     and establish a Radio Free Iraq.
       Help expand liberated areas of Iraq by assisting the 
     provisional government's offensive against Saddam Hussein's 
     regime logistically and through other means.
       Remove any vestiges of Saddam's claim to ``legitimacy'' by, 
     among other things, bringing a war crimes indictment against 
     the dictator and his lieutenants and challenging Saddam's 
     credentials to fill the Iraqi seat at the United Nations.
       Launch a systematic air campaign against the pillars of his 
     power--the Republican Guard divisions which prop him up and 
     the military infrastructure that sustains him.
       Position U.S. ground force equipment in the region so that, 
     as a last resort, we have the capacity to protect and assist 
     the anti-Saddam forces in the northern and southern parts of 
     Iraq.
       Once you make it unambiguously clear that we are serious 
     about eliminating the threat posed by Saddam, and are not 
     just engaged in tactical bombing attacks unrelated to a 
     larger strategy designed to topple the regime, we believe 
     that such countries as Kuwait, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, whose 
     cooperation would be important for the implementation of this 
     strategy, will give us the political and logistical support 
     to succeed.
       In the present climate in Washington, some may 
     misunderstand and misinterpret strong American action against 
     Iraq as having ulterior political motives. We believe, on the 
     contrary, that strong American action against Saddam is 
     overwhelmingly in the national interest, that it must be 
     supported, and that it must succeed. Saddam must not become 
     the beneficiary of an American domestic political 
     controversy.
       We are confident that were you to launch an initiative 
     along these line, the Congress and the country would see it 
     as a timely and justifiable response to Iraq's continued 
     intransigence. We urge you to provide the leadership 
     necessary to save ourselves and the world from the scourge of 
     Saddam and the weapons of mass destruction that he refuses to 
     relinguish.
           Sincerely,
         Hon. Stephen Solarz, Former Member, Foreign Affairs 
           Committee, U.S. House of Representatives; Hon. Richard 
           Perle, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; 
           Former Assistant Secretary of Defense; Hon. Elliot 
           Abrams, President, Ethics & Public Policy Center; 
           Former Assistant Secretary of State; Richard V. Allen, 
           Former National Security Advisor; Hon. Richard 
           Armitage, President, Armitage Associates, L.C., Former 
           Assistant Secretary of Defense; Jeffrey T. Bergner, 
           President, Bergner, Bockorny, Clough & Brain; Former 
           Staff Director, Senate Foreign Relations Committee; 
           Hon. John Bolton, Senior Vice President, American 
           Enterprise Institute; Former Assistant Secretary of 
           State; Stephen Bryen, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary 
           of Defense; Hon. Richard Burt, Chairman, IEP Advisors, 
           Inc.; Former U.S. Ambassador to Germany; Former 
           Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs.
         Hon. Frank Carlucci, Former Secretary of Defense; Hon. 
           Judge William Clark, Former National Security Advisor; 
           Paula J. Dobriansky, Vice President, Director of 
           Washington Office, Council on Foreign Relations; Former 
           Member, National Security Council; Doug Feith, Managing 
           Attorney, Feith & Zell P.C.; Former Deputy Assistant 
           Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy; Frank 
           Gaffney, Director, Center for Security Policy; Former 
           Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear 
           Forces; Jeffrey Gedmin, Executive Director, New 
           Atlantic Initiative; Research Fellow, American 
           Enterprise Institute; Hon. Fred C. Ikle, Former 
           Undersecretary of Defense; Robert Kagan, Senior 
           Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; 
           Zalmay M. Khalilzad, Director, Strategy and Doctrine, 
           RAND Corporation; Sven F. Kraemer, Former Director of 
           Arms Control, National Security Council; William 
           Kristol, Editor, The Weekly Standard; Michael Ledeen, 
           Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute, Former 
           Special Advisor to the Secretary of State; Bernard 
           Lewis, Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern and Ottoman 
           Studies, Princeton University; R. Admiral Frederick L. 
           Lewis, U.S. Navy, Retired; Major. Gen. Jarvis Lynch, 
           U.S. Marine Corps. Retired; Hon. Robert C. McFarlane, 
           Former National Security Advisor; Joshua Muravchik, 
           Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute; Robert 
           A. Pastor, Former Special Assistant to President Carter 
           for Inter-American Affairs; Martin Peretz, Editor-in-
           Chief, The New Republic; Roger Robinson, Former Senior 
           Director of International Economic Affairs, National 
           Security Council; Peter Rodman, Director of National 
           Security Programs, Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom; 
           Former Director, Policy Planning

[[Page S1180]]

           Staff, U.S. Department of State; Hon. Peter Rosenblatt, 
           Former Ambassador to the Trust Territories of the 
           Pacific; Hon Donald Rumsfeld, Former Secretary of 
           Defense; Gary Schmitt, Executive Director, Project for 
           the New American Century; Former Executive Director, 
           President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; Max 
           Singer, President, The Potomac Organization; Former 
           President, The Hudson Institute; Hon. Helmut 
           Sonnenfeldt, Guest Scholar, The Brookings Institution; 
           Former Counsellor, U.S. Department of State; Hon Caspar 
           Weinberger, Former Secretary of Defense; Leon 
           Wienseltier, Literary Editor, The New Republic; Hon. 
           Paul Wolfowitz, Dean, Johns Hopkins SAIS; Former 
           Undersecretary of Defense; David Wurmser, Director, 
           Middle East Program, AEI; Research Fellow, American 
           Enterprise Institute; Dov S. Zakheim, Former Deputy 
           Undersecretary of Defense.

       Organization affiliations given for identification purposes 
     only. Views reflected in the letter are endorsed by the 
     individual, not the institution.
                                  ____


                      Statement of Paul Wolfowitz

       Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to testify 
     before this distinguished committee on such an important 
     subject as policy toward Iraq.
       Although I share in the general sense of relief that the 
     mission of the U.N. Secretary General has made it possible to 
     avoid, for the time being, the necessity of U.S. military 
     action against Iraq, I see no reason to rejoice about the 
     outcome of the latest crisis with Iraq. Nor do I see any 
     reason to be optimistic about the agreement that has been 
     reached. In fact, the events of the last several weeks 
     constitute a significant political victory for Saddam 
     Hussein.
       However, the course of military action that the 
     Administration was preparing for would have been an even 
     greater political defeat for the United States, accomplishing 
     little or nothing at the cost of the lives of American pilots 
     and Iraqi civilians and also at great political cost to our 
     friends and allies in the region. What the United States 
     needs to develop urgently is a long-term strategy so that we 
     will not find ourselves in the same box again in a few 
     months, forced to choose between an unsatisfactory diplomatic 
     outcome or costly and ineffective military action. If we must 
     act militarily in Iraq, it should be in support of a serious 
     effort to help Iraqis to liberate their country from Saddam 
     Hussein's tyrannical grasp. That is also the only way to 
     rescue the region and the world from the threat that will 
     continue to be posed by Saddam's unrelenting effort to 
     acquire weapons of mass destruction and to exact vengeance 
     for the defeat he suffered in the Persian Gulf War.
       I would like to discuss three points in my testimony this 
     morning:
       (1) Even a perfect agreement would have constituted a 
     tremendous victory for Saddam Hussein and left the UNSCOM 
     inspectors under an enormous handicap in their efforts to 
     uncover his weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems.
       (2) The agreement, or what we know of the agreement, leaves 
     enormous question marks about whether UNSCOM will any longer 
     be able to carry out its function of searching for Saddam 
     Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in any of the eight so-
     called Presidential Palaces or for that matter, in any other 
     locations that Saddam Hussein may at some later date decide.
       (3) If the agreement has not effectively gutted the 
     inspection effort and if the inspectors are thus able to get 
     lucky and get back on the trail of what they were about to 
     discover when Saddam blocked inspections a few months ago, 
     the United States must have military options that are better 
     than the one that was available this time of bombing targets 
     whose contents we have little knowledge about in the small 
     hope that this might ``substantially reduce'' his weapons of 
     mass destruction capability. What is needed is not the 
     ``major land campaign'' that top Administration officials 
     falsely suggest is the only effective way to remove Saddam 
     from power. The real option is to support the many Iraqis who 
     desperately want to overthrow this tyrant, but who have so 
     far found the U.S. stinting and unreliable in the support we 
     have provided them. What is needed is not a ``massive U.S. 
     ground invasion'' but political, economic and military 
     support so that Iraqis can carry that fight themselves.


                the losses in a return to the status quo

       First, it is important to recognize how much Saddam has 
     gained even if the present agreement actually did commit him 
     to allow the UNSCOM inspectors the ``free, full, unfettered 
     access to these sites, anywhere in the country'' that 
     President Clinton demanded in his speech to Pentagon 
     personnel on February 17. Most of the reasons to be skeptical 
     about this agreement can be found in the President's own 
     speech.
       As President Clinton said, an agreement with Saddam Hussein 
     on this issue means nothing: ``Saddam has spent the better 
     part of the past decade trying to cheat on [the] solemn 
     commitment'' to submit to inspection of his suspect weapons 
     programs. ``Throughout [this] entire process,'' as the 
     President said, ``Iraqi agents have undermined and undercut 
     UNSCOM.''
       It is also true, as the President said, that the UNSCOM 
     inspectors have done a remarkable job of uncovering Iraq's 
     secret programs despite all of this lying, concealing and 
     obstruction. But there is one major difference now if the 
     inspectors are able to go back to work unhindered in Iraq: 
     this crisis has bought Saddam months of time to move whatever 
     it may have been that U.N. inspectors were about to discover 
     that forced Saddam finally to declare key sites off limits. 
     As good as the inspectors are, it is not reasonable to think 
     that they could get back any time soon to the point they were 
     at when Saddam's obstruction began. It could take many 
     months, or even years, particularly when much of the progress 
     they have made in the last two years has been due, again as 
     the President acknowledged, to the extraordinary revelations 
     brought out by Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, when he 
     defected in 1995. It is unlikely that we will ever get such a 
     well-placed defector again.
       Thus, even in the best of circumstances. Saddam Hussein has 
     almost certainly bought himself a very long time before we 
     will have to face the need to obstruct the U.N. inspectors 
     again, to continue the game of ``cheat and retreat'' as Les 
     Aspin called it. Long before then, we can be sure, the 
     pressure will build from Russia, France and others to lift 
     the sanctions on Iraq on the grounds that the inspectors have 
     found nothing. And once again President Clinton had it right 
     in his February 17 speech when he said: ``Already these 
     sanctions have denied him $110 billion. Imagine how much 
     stronger his armed forces would be today, how many more 
     weapons of mass destruction operations he would have hidden 
     around the country if he had been able to spend even a small 
     fraction of that amount for a military rebuilding.''
       What has Saddam had to pay for this long breathing space 
     and for the four-month defiance of the United Nations that 
     produced it? Absolutely nothing. Even worse, he has been 
     rewarded for it. Rewarded by forcing the United States into a 
     costly military build-up that has strained our relations with 
     key allies in the region. Rewarded by the legitimacy of a 
     meeting with the Secretary General of the United Nations and 
     a formal agreement with him (a dignity, we should be 
     remember, would never have been accorded to Radovan Karadzic 
     when he claimed to be the leader of Serbian Bosnia). 
     Rewarded by an enormous outpouring of sympathy and support 
     for him in many parts of the Arab world. Rewarded by 
     appearing to have stood up to the United States and not 
     paying any price for doing so.
       Perhaps most seriously of all, Saddam has been rewarded by 
     the repeated statements by top U.S. officials--not to mention 
     those of other countries--that our goal is limited merely to 
     getting the U.N. inspections restored. That is to say, or 
     rather as President Clinton said, ``Would the Iraqi people be 
     better off if there were a change in leadership? I certainly 
     think they would be. But that is not what the United Nations 
     has authorized us to do; that is not what our immediate 
     interest is about.'' Or, in the words of the Secretary of 
     Defense: ``What we are seeking to do is not to topple Saddam 
     Hussein, not to destroy his country, but to do what the 
     United Nations has said in its declarations.'' Of course, 
     these are not warm endorsements of Saddam Hussein's 
     continuation in power. But they certainly go a long way to 
     discourage opponents of his regime from thinking that we are 
     seriously interested in removing Saddam.


                 potential weaknesses in this agreement

       There are also serious problems with the agreement itself. 
     It does much more than simply provide for ``diplomats'' to 
     accompany UNSCOM inspectors in visiting sensitive sites. In 
     fact, Article 4 of the agreement says that inspection of 
     those sites will be conducted not by UNSCOM but by a new 
     Special Group, appointed by the Secretary General, in which 
     members of UNSCOM will simply be members. Although the 
     language is ambiguous, it suggests that the Executive 
     Director of UNSCOM, Ambassador Richard Butler, who by all 
     reports has done a magnificent job to date, would not be a 
     member of this Special Group. The Special Group would have 
     its own head, called a Commissioner, also appointed by the 
     Secretary General.
       If this means that Ambassador Butler has effectively been 
     dismissed for the function of inspecting sensitive sites, and 
     access to those sites is now to be negotiated by a Russian 
     diplomat or someone else who is more sensitive to Saddam's 
     claims of ``sovereignty'' than to the need to carry out 
     effective inspections, then the damage to the inspection 
     regime is truly fatal. If any confidence is to be placed in 
     this agreement at all, it is vital that the Secretary General 
     move very quickly to appoint Ambassador Butler as the 
     Commissioner of the Special Group, something which the 
     agreement permits but does not require.
       Even if the Executive Director of UNSCOM remains in charge 
     of inspecting sensitive sites, there are other reasons for 
     concern. The inclusion of ``diplomats'' in the teams may 
     compromise security, a serious problem for UNSCOM in the best 
     of circumstances. The promise by the Secretary General to 
     bring the issue of lifting of sanctions to the attention of 
     the Security Council, while seemingly vapid, could generate 
     serious problems. Finally, there are serious concerns about 
     the size and scope of the defined eight ``Presidential 
     Sites'' that are supposed to be defined in the annex to the 
     agreement, an annex which was still not available more

[[Page S1181]]

     than twenty-four hours after the agreement was announced.


                  the need for better military options

       It may be a long time, if ever, before the inspectors can 
     get close to finding whatever it was that caused Saddam to 
     start obstructing them last year. But if they do, we can be 
     certain, he will block them again. President Clinton has said 
     that in that case we must be prepared to take military 
     action. If so, that military action needs to be something 
     more effective than what was planned this time.
       Although the Clinton Administration declared repeatedly 
     that the air strikes they were planning would not be ``pin-
     pricks'' like the ones they administered in response to 
     Saddam's attempted assassination of President Bush in 1993 or 
     to his attack on our Iraqi opposition allies in 1996, simply 
     making a bigger bang is no guarantee of serious results. 
     There is simply no way that the U.S. Air Force can do from 
     the air what the U.N. inspectors must do from the ground. 
     Over time it seemed that our objectives were steadily scaled 
     back. As it began to dawn that bombing would probably not 
     succeed in forcing the inspectors back in--indeed, it might 
     well have the opposite effect--one heard less talk of that as 
     a possible objective. But since we also couldn't hope to 
     eliminate Saddam's weapons of mass destruction with air power 
     alone, we finally ended up with the objective of 
     ``substantially reducing'' that threat. In the absence of 
     inspectors, it would be impossible to know what we had 
     actually destroyed. Perhaps the thinking was that the word 
     substantially has enough flexibility in it to cover a range 
     of outcomes. But as Secretary Cohen demonstrated with his bag 
     of sugar, it would not take much left over to continue to 
     pose a serious threat.
       Thus, the U.S. would have been left trying to claim 
     significant military success, with little evidence to back it 
     up, while the evidence of death and destruction in Iraq would 
     be real and readily demonstrated by Saddam. Risking American 
     lives and the lives of innocent civilians is something that 
     should be done only when there are serious goals to be 
     accomplished by doing so. The proposed operation could meet 
     that standard only with the greatest of difficulty. And it 
     would have imposed serious costs on our allies in the Arab 
     world.
       Which brings us to the question asked by the elderly 
     veteran in Columbus, Ohio: ``If push comes to shove and 
     Saddam will not back down, will not allow or keep his word, 
     are we ready and willing to send the troops . . . and finish 
     this job, or are we going to do it half-assed, the way we did 
     before?''
       Secretary Cohen's answer was ``What we are seeking to do is 
     not to topple Saddam Hussein . . . but to do what the United 
     Nations has said in its declarations.'' At the same Town 
     Meeting, Sandy Berger said that ``The costs and risks of that 
     course of action, in our judgment, are too high and not 
     essential to achieving our strategic interests as a nation . 
     . . It would require a major land campaign, and risk large 
     losses of our soldiers.''
       Yet Secretary Cohen on other occasions, has said correctly, 
     that this is not simply about U.N. declarations but about 
     real threats to U.S. National Security. Saddam Hussein has 
     demonstrated that we will cheat and try to build weapons of 
     mass destruction as long as he remains in power. He 
     demonstrated, by attempting to assassinate George Bush early 
     in the term of a new American administration and by 
     burning Kuwait's oil fields as his army left that country, 
     that he is bent on serious vengeance against those who 
     opposed him in the Gulf War. He has demonstrated not only 
     in 1990 but also again in 1994 that he will pose a threat 
     to Kuwait whenever he thinks he has a chance. He has 
     demonstrated countless times that he will conduct genocide 
     and war crimes against his own people including gassing 
     them with chemical weapons, machine-gunning them in mass 
     graves. and threatening them with starvation by diverting 
     rivers. The one effective way to cope with the weapons of 
     mass destruction problem, like all these other problems, 
     is to help remove him from power.
       As President Clinton has said, the issue of weapons of mass 
     destruction is an issue that concerns the future of the 
     twenty-first century. As Mr. Berger said in Columbus, it is 
     an issue worth fighting for. Why is it worth fighting for 
     ineffectively with air power and not worth fighting for 
     effectively, if that means using ground forces? Instead of 
     deciding what means it is willing to use, and then tailoring 
     the goals to fit them, the Clinton Administration should 
     decide what it takes to do the job and ask the country to 
     support it.
       However, the estimates that it would take a major invasion 
     with U.S. ground forces seriously overestimates Saddam 
     Hussein. As we did for too long in Bosnia, we are in danger 
     of painting a brutal dictator and his army as mighty giants 
     when, in fact they are military pygmies. There was some 
     excuse for overestimating the capability of the ``fourth 
     largest army in the world'' before the Gulf War, when all we 
     had to go on was their performance against Iran in the 
     1980's. There is no reason to be doing so today, when their 
     weaknesses were exposed in 1991, and when the Iraqi army of 
     today is far weaker than the one that we faced then.
       The notion that a large U.S. ground invasion would be 
     needed is based on the belief, repeated often by U.S. 
     government officials, that the Iraqi opposition is feckless. 
     But that Iraqi opposition rose up in large numbers to fight 
     against Saddam Hussein in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf 
     War. That Iraqi opposition, with some help from the U.S. 
     Operation Provide Comfort, kept the northern third of Iraq 
     out of Saddam's control for more than five years, and even 
     today, despite the serious division between the two major 
     Kurdish factions, Saddam's writ is weak in Northern Iraq.
       Alas, it is U.S. support for the Iraqi opposition, more 
     than that opposition itself, which has been feckless. I am 
     sorry to say that the single best opportunity to support the 
     Iraqi opposition was during the Bush Administration, when 
     Saddam Hussein was to use his armed helicopters to slaughter 
     the rebel forces, while American fighter planes flew over 
     head, with their pilots not allowed to shoot at Saddam's 
     gunships. But, where the Clinton Administration came to 
     office promising to do more, they in fact have done less. We 
     have preferred to support coup attempts in Baghdad, which are 
     almost certain to be penetrated and to fail, than to provide 
     open support to the democratic opposition. Ultimately, when 
     the Iraqi opposition was fighting for its life in the North 
     when Saddam attacked Irbil in 1996, the United States made a 
     few meaningless missile strikes against radars in the South, 
     proclaiming the North to be of no strategic importance and 
     abandoning the people whom we had promised to support.
       But Saddam is not ten feet tall. The brutality that makes 
     him so feared by his people also makes him hated. And his 
     army is badly weakened by its defeat in the Gulf War and by 
     the effect of years of sanctions. When President Bush did 
     decide to do something to stop Saddam's repression of his 
     people, by launching Operation Provide Comfort in April of 
     1991, it took only a small, lightly armed American force and 
     ill-equipped Kurdish guerillas, backed up by the threat of 
     American air power, to drive the Iraqi army out of the 
     northern third of the country. When the opposition proposed 
     an attack on Iraqi forces in the North in 1995, the United 
     States warned them not to and said we would not support them. 
     As a result, the larger of the two Kurdish factions pulled 
     out but the operation nevertheless succeeded in capturing 
     several large Iraqi army units with minimal fighting.
       Just a few days ago, Daniel Williams reported in the 
     Washington Post from Amman, in an article titled ``Saddam May 
     Be Weaker Than He Seems,'' that:
       ``Diplomats, Jordanian officials and travelers say that the 
     south is dangerous territory for Saddam Hussein's army and 
     police. `By day, things seem calm enough, but at night the 
     police and soldiers retreat into their shelters. They are not 
     safe,' said a recent arrival from Iraq. `There is lots of 
     hit-and-run activity on Saddam's security forces. The 
     nighttime belongs to them,' a Western diplomat added.''
       What saves Saddam from massive uprisings in this situation, 
     a former Iraqi military official exiled in Jordan told 
     Williams, is that ``no one wants to be burned twice.'' If the 
     United States wants the opposition to Saddam Hussein to be 
     less feckless, then it must be less feckless in its support. 
     This does not mean that we can guarantee their success. But 
     there are certain minimum things that we must do. We cannot 
     pretend to support a serious resistance movement when we have 
     yet to give them a single rifle, much less antitank weapons. 
     We cannot plan to sit by while helicopter gunships slaughter 
     them without interference.
       What the U.S. needs to do to support effective resistance 
     to Saddam Hussein is not a large ground invasion, but rather 
     a series of political, economic and military measures that 
     can help the Iraqi people liberate themselves:
       Political: We need to challenge Saddam Hussein's claims to 
     be the legitimate ruler of Iraq. This will be much harder to 
     do in the wake of the agreement that he has just signed with 
     the Secretary General. But it is important, nevertheless, to 
     press to indict him as a war criminal and to challenge his 
     claim to represent Iraq in the United Nations.
       We should also indicate our willingness to recognize a 
     provisional government of free Iraq, and the best place to 
     start is with the current organization and principles of the 
     Iraqi National Congress, the only organization that has to 
     date set forth a set of principles on which a post-Saddam 
     representative government could be built.
       The United States can expect to be isolated at first in 
     pushing these positions, but it is important to do so because 
     they are not merely symbolic steps. They have real practical 
     consequences, both political and economic.
       Economic. One of the consequences of creating a mechanism 
     to recognize a provisional government for Iraq is that it 
     would open a way to make the frozen assets of Iraq, 
     reportedly in the neighborhood of $1.6 billion just in the 
     U.S. and U.K. alone, available to support the resistance.
       Another important measure will be to lift economic 
     sanctions from regions in Iraq that are wrested from Saddam's 
     control. It is inexcusable that sanctions have been kept in 
     place all this time on Northern Iraq, even when it was 
     liberated territory. This squeezed the people in the North 
     between a U.N. embargo from the north and Saddam's embargo 
     from the south, thus exacerbating tensions among the Kurds.
       Ultimately, the most important economic measure will be to 
     make provision for the oil

[[Page S1182]]

     resources of liberated areas to be made available to support 
     the resistance to Saddam Hussien.
       Military: Serious military support is also needed from the 
     United States, but not the large land invasion that is thrown 
     up regularly as a straw man. What is needed most of all is 
     weapons and logistics support. Anti-tank weapons, in 
     particular, could have a powerful equalizing effect, just as 
     anti-air weapons did in Afghanistan. It is difficult to 
     understand how U.S. officials can claim that we have tried 
     supporting the opposition, when we have never tried to arm 
     them.
       We should also be prepared to provide air cover for 
     liberated areas within the southern and northern no-fly 
     zones. This is of critical importance, not only to provide a 
     base from which the resistance to Saddam can operate, but 
     also to provide a secure zone to which units of his own army 
     that wish to change sides can go. Saddam is now so unpopular 
     with his own regular army and even with many parts of his 
     Republican Guards that if a secure and honorable path can be 
     opened for his army to leave, major units are likely to do so 
     or to desert without a fight. This presents a very different 
     scenario than the imagined ``major land invasion'' with U.S. 
     troops marching on Baghdad against a fiercely resisting Iraqi 
     army.


                               conclusion

       Mr. Chairman, it seems clear that the United States is 
     going to have to live with this agreement. While we can work 
     to clarify certain important details--particularly those that 
     bear on the continued ability of UNSCOM to do its remarkable 
     work. But no new agreement with Saddam Hussein is going to 
     fundamentally alter the threat that Saddam poses to his 
     people, his neighbors and the world, whether from weapons of 
     mass destruction or conventional weapons or from terrorism. 
     Despite the eagerness of some for a quick test of the new 
     agreement, we can't really know whether this new 
     inspection regime is working for a long time (although we 
     might learn sooner that it is not working). Despite the 
     eagerness of some for quick military action if the 
     inspectors are obstructed now, we should not be in a hurry 
     to take military action as pointless as what we were just 
     now planning to do.
       What we should be doing now is preparing for the time when 
     we face another crisis with Saddam Hussein or another 
     opportunity to act to help the Iraqi people liberate 
     themselves. That is something that we should start doing now. 
     It seems to be something the Administration will not do 
     unless Congress forces them to. For that purpose, I would 
     urge the Congress to:
       Urge the United States government to recognize, and assist 
     in all practicable ways, a provisional government of free 
     Iraq representing all the people of Iraq and committed to 
     reconciliation within Iraq and to living at peace with its 
     neighbors.
       Appropriate $100 for the purpose of assisting the 
     provisional government. The administration should work to 
     recover these funds from blocked Iraqi assets now held by the 
     U.S. treasury.
       Press for the United States to seek an indictment of Saddam 
     Hussein for war crimes and crimes against humanity in an 
     appropriate international tribunal.
       Saddam is in a position of great weakness today. But the 
     weakness will only become apparent if he is pushed. If we 
     exaggerate his strength and thus encourage the defeatist 
     mentality that seems to affect Administration strategy today, 
     we will help him buy time for a later confrontation when he 
     will be much stronger and the costs in blood and lives will 
     be much higher. As the veteran said in Columbus:
       ``Are we going to do it half-assed? And then men at that 
     time to (sic) come back and ask my grandson and some of these 
     other grandsons to put their lives on the line, if we're 
     going to do it half-assed, the way we did before.''

  Mr. KYL. Now, this document that the 28 advisers--let me indicate who 
some of these people are, people like former Secretary of Defense Frank 
Carlucci; and Caspar Weinberger; and Judge William Clark, former 
National Security Adviser; Doug Feith, former Deputy Assistant 
Secretary of Defense; Fred C. Ikle, former Undersecretary of Defense; 
Bill Kristol; Robert Kagan; Bernard Lewis; Don Rumsfeld, former 
Secretary of Defense; and Paul Wolfowitz, as I said; and Richard Perle. 
They are all, I think, eminently qualified to offer this kind of 
advice.
  I urge the President to consider the suggestions that are made here, 
which revolve around preliminarily the principle that military action 
alone will not force Saddam to comply, that he is the problem, that is, 
no coup d'etat is likely to succeed in this country and therefore the 
way to get him out is to create a series of conditions which will 
enable the Iraqi people themselves to provide the insurrection that 
will eventually depose him. This might include the following:
  Recognizing a provincial government; restoring safe-haven both in the 
northern and southern portions of Iraq so that the people there can 
actually declare themselves free of his influence and control; lifting 
the sanctions in those areas so that the people can benefit from the 
economic end, of course, that would result; release frozen Iraqi assets 
to the Iraqis in exile; facilitating broadcasts from U.S. transmitters 
to the people of Iraq; removing vestiges of Saddam's ``legitimacy'' by 
considering, for example, whether the United Nations should indict him 
as a war criminal; an air campaign could be a part of this, launched 
against the Republican Guard divisions which prop him up; and 
tightening down on the embargo.
  Right now we know the sanctions are of primary concern to him. And if 
we tighten down on the embargo so that the black market oil sales 
cannot continue to provide him with significant oil revenues, it will 
squeeze him further.
  All of these things could eventually create conditions under which 
the Iraqi people could retake the Government of Iraq from Saddam 
Hussein.
  So, Mr. President, my concluding point is this: The administration 
now has some time to develop a strategy which had not been developed 
prior to the time that it was asking for Congress to support a bombing 
campaign. If that program is developed, with the help of the Congress--
and it makes sense as a broad strategy to deal with Saddam Hussein--the 
President will have all of the authority and the backing that he needs 
and deserves in taking action against Saddam Hussein, I would say, 
when, not if, that is called for, as a result of probable Iraqi 
violation of some part of the international inspection regime.
  It is a serious business, Mr. President, for us to decide to move 
beyond a policy of containment to a policy of rollback. It is one which 
ought to be debated by this body and by the administration. But the 
time for it has come because, as we have seen, neither the American 
people nor the Congress were willing to support a half-measures kind of 
action against Saddam Hussein. We felt something more was required to 
really deal with the problem.
  As we learned in Vietnam, and as we have learned elsewhere, halfway 
measures--calibrated bombing attacks, and the like--do not seem to 
solve the problem. When you go to war, I think the maxim from the gulf 
war, from the Vietnam war, and the new thinking of military strategists 
in this country is: When you go to war, you'd better mean it; you have 
to be able to succeed at what you are doing.
  That probably requires the imposition of overwhelming force and it 
requires a broad strategy that will get you where you are going. That 
is why the administration needs to develop this policy, with the 
assistance of the Congress, and be able to implement it if and when the 
time for action comes.
  Mr. President, I ask, how much of that remaining time do I have, 
because I have one more thing I would like to say?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has consumed 16 and a half 
minutes.
  Mr. KYL. Fine. Mr. President, I know I can conclude these remarks in 
the time allotted.
  Mr. President, I want to change the subject in this remaining 2 or 3 
minutes to discuss the issue of balancing the budget for American 
families.

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