What to Do About Iraq

...Some of us, it's true, had our doubts about this logic...

...Ten milligrams—one drop—can kill a human being...

...We can only imagine how much anthrax Saddam Hussein may have at his disposal today...

...Saddam could help a terrorist inflict a horrific attack on the United States or its allies, while hoping to shroud his role in the secrecy of cutouts and middlemen...

...We expect the president will courageously decide to destroy Saddam's regime...

...Special Forces alone to do the job...

...The Federation of American Scientists reports that Iraq possesses the equipment, the know-how, and the materials to produce "350 liters of weapons-grade anthrax" a week...

...Who knows how long it may take...

...What we do know is that every month that passes brings him closer to the prize...

...Ultimately, what we do or do not do in the coming months about Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq will decisively affect our future security...

...When U.N...

...A year later, who knows how many of those factories are operational...

...No one doubts the nature of the threat Saddam poses...

...At a more fundamental level, the failure to remove Saddam would mean that, despite all that happened on September 11, we as a nation are still unwilling to shoulder the responsibilities of global leadership, even to protect ourselves...

...What's more, the Iraq doves claim, removing Saddam would be a diversion from the war against al Qaeda, and the cure would be worse than the disease...

...Everyone agrees that, as Al Gore's former national security adviser Leon Fuerth puts it, "Saddam Hussein is dangerous and likely to become more so," that he "is a permanent menace to his region and to the vital interests of the United States...

...But that may be too optimistic...

...The United States should support Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress—they are essential parts of any solution in Iraq...

...We may never know for sure...

...The answer is, we can't...

...weapons inspectors have confirmed the existence of a terrorist training camp in Iraq, complete with a Boeing 707 for practicing hijackings, and filled with non-Iraqi radical Muslims...

...officials told the New York Times that Iraq had rebuilt "a series of factories that the United States has long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons...

...The administration, supported by most of the foreign policy establishment, took the "prudent" course...

...In the Afghan war, it was a change of strategy after three weeks that eventually turned the tide against the Taliban...

...They also believed Iraq possessed enough precursor materials to produce over 200 tons of the poison, enough to kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people...

...But whether they join us or not, there is too much at stake for us to be deterred by the pro forma objections of, say, Saudi Arabia or France...

...Destroying Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda is, obviously, very important...

...But when confronted with the choice of using serious force against al Qaeda, or really helping the Iraqi opposition and moving to drive Saddam Hussein from power, President Clinton and his top advisers flinched...

...So there is no debate about the facts...

...But after September 11, we have all been forced to consider another scenario...

...Today, no one knows how close Saddam is to having a nuclear device...

...No one questions, furthermore, the basic facts about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs: • According to U.N...

...We don't have the luxury of early mistakes in Iraq...

...And after September 11, those risks are no longer abstract...

...We do not expect President Bush to make that choice...

...A difficult transition in Baghdad...

...We don't want a vacuum of power in Iraq...

...A devastating knockout blow against Saddam Hussein, followed by an American-sponsored effort to rebuild Iraq and put it on a path toward democratic governance, would have a seismic impact on the Arab world—for the better...

...It is a tough and dangerous decision to send American soldiers to fight and possibly die in Iraq...

...Can it really be that this great American superpower, much more powerful than in 1941, cannot fight on two fronts at the same time against dangerous but second-rate enemies...

...As soon as any attack begins, Saddam will be sorely tempted to launch a chemical or biological attack on one of his neighbors, probably Israel...

...It gets bigger with every day that passes...

...The United States will have to make a long-term commitment to rebuilding Iraq, and that commitment cannot be fulfilled without U.S...

...Either it will be a world order conducive to our liberal democratic principles and our safety, or it will be one where brutal, well-armed tyrants are allowed to hold democracy and international security hostage...

...We know, too, that Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of September 11, went out of his way to meet with an Iraqi intelligence official a few months before he flew a plane into the World Trade Center...

...The destruction of Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network is not finished...

...The United States can, after all, walk and chew gum at the same time...

...We are aware that many will find all this too much to stomach...

...How in the world do we deter that...

...And most Republicans put little sustained pressure on the Clinton administration to act otherwise...

...American troops on the ground will be important for another reason...

...American ground forces in significant number are likely to be required for success in Iraq...

...Any U.S...

...If the size and speed of an American invasion make it clear, in the first hours, that Saddam is finished, an Iraqi commander may think twice before making himself an accomplice to Saddam's genocidal plans...

...It would complicate Middle Eastern diplomacy...

...attack will have to move with lightning speed to destroy or secure sites from which such an Iraqi strike could be launched...

...Or can't we just drop some bombs, let the Iraqis fight it out, and then beat it home...

...When the World Trade Center was attacked in 1993, when former President Bush was almost assassinated by Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, when bin Laden and al Qaeda bombed U.S...

...No step would contribute more toward shaping a world order in which our people and our liberal civilization can survive and flourish...

...To this day we don't know who provided the anthrax for the post-September 11 attacks...

...At the least, we need to be prepared to use such forces, and for a number of reasons...

...But we cannot count on the Iraqi opposition to win this war...

...A few missile strikes here and there, a few sting operations...

...Leon Fuerth recently wrote that Saddam "and his government must be ripped out of Iraq if we are ever to be secure and if the sufferings of the Iraqi people are ever to abate...

...What we do know is that Saddam is an ally to the world's terrorists and always has been...

...We have already begun to see the price of not having such a force in Afghanistan...

...troops on the ground...

...First, there is the special problem posed by Saddam's weapons of mass destruction...

...The best way to avoid chaos and anarchy in Iraq after Saddam is removed is to have a powerful American occupying force in place, with the clear intention of sticking around for a while...

...Meanwhile, Robert Kagan is a contributing editor and William ^^^ Kristol is editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...But it is more horrible to watch men and women leap to their deaths from flaming skyscrapers...

...According to the Federation of American Scientists, even with an intrusive inspections regime, "Iraq might be able to construct a nuclear explosive before it was detected...

...inspectors left Iraq at the end of 1998, they believed Iraq maintained 41 different sites capable of producing VX in a matter of weeks...

...We've already tried the alternative...

...We doubt that the so-called "Afghanistan model" of airstrikes combined with very limited U.S...

...As for the other arguments, the effort to remove Saddam from power would no more be a "diversion" from the war on al Qaeda than the fight against Hitler was a "diversion" from the fight against Japan...

...There is no time to repeat the pattern in Afghanistan of trying a little of this and a little of that and seeing what works...

...A report prepared by the German intelligence services in December 2000, based on defectors' reports, satellite imagery, and aerial surveillance, predicted that Iraq will have three nuclear bombs by 2005...

...I don't think we should ever act unilaterally...

...Although we hear only about the risks of such action, the benefits could be very substantial...

...In the mid-1990s, Iraq admitted producing VX in large quantities...

...We don't want Turkey worried that it will be left alone to deal with the Kurdish question...

...All this strikes us as an elaborate stratagem for avoiding the hard decision to confront Saddam Hussein...

...After all, the mission in Afghanistan is not over...

...But when it comes to actually doing something about Saddam, suddenly it's a different story...

...An unsettled Kurdish situation...

...If bin Laden has left Central Asia, he'll be hard to find...

...If too many months go by without a decision to move against Saddam, the risks to the United States may increase exponentially...

...Occupation...

...Nor is there any doubt that, after September 11, Saddam's weapons of mass destruction pose a kind of danger to us that we hadn't fully grasped before...

...A year ago, U.S...

...But, in the near-future, Iraq is the threat and the supreme test of whether we as a nation have learned the lesson of September 11...

...In the five years before Desert Storm, Iraq produced 8,500 liters of anthrax and managed to place 6,500 liters in various munitions...

...What if Saddam provides some of his anthrax, or his VX, or a nuclear device to a terrorist group like al Qaeda...

...The problem today is not just that failure to remove Saddam could someday come back to haunt us...

...weapons inspectors and western intelligence agencies, Iraq possesses the necessary components and technical knowledge to build nuclear bombs in the near future...

...Democratization and westernization in the Arab world...

...Nation-building...

...Ground forces...

...Hussein's intelligence apparatus and various terrorist networks, including that of Osama bin Laden...

...Not to take on Saddam would ensure that regimes implicated in terror and developing weapons of mass destruction will be a constant—and growing—feature of our world...

...And if we haven't learned this much from September 11, then all that we lost on that day will have been lost in vain...

...And as for the issue of unilateral versus multilateral action, we would prefer that the United States act together with friends and allies in any attack on Iraq...

...Once Iraq and Turkey—two of the three most important Middle Eastern powers—are both in the pro-western camp, there is a reasonable chance that smaller powers might decide to jump on the bandwagon...

...And, yes, we have to roll up the al Qaeda operations in other troublesome parts of the world...

...Fuerth, Berger, Madeleine Albright, and Tom Daschle and a host of other Democrats (with the increasingly notable and honorable exception of Joseph Lieberman) insist over and over again that no matter how much of a threat Saddam may pose, no matter how necessary it may be to "rip" him out of Iraq—neverthe-less we should not do it...

...history moves on, and the clock is ticking in Iraq...

...This is nonsense...

...He has provided safe haven to the infamous Abu Nidal...

...Unilateralism is a very dangerous concept...

...Dealing with other sponsors of terrorism—Iran in particular—is crucial...

...That we were "prudent...

...If we fail to address the grave threats we know exist, what will we tell the families of future victims...

...In Iraq, even more than in Afghanistan, the task of nation-building will be crucial...

...Reliable reports from defectors and former U.N...

...And it can't wait until we finish tying up all the "loose ends...

...As Leon Fuerth understates, "There may well have been interaction between Mr...

...These may be problems, but they are far preferable to leaving Saddam in power with his nukes, VX, and anthrax...

...The Arab world may take a long time coming to terms with the West, but that process will be hastened by the defeat of the leading anti-western Arab tyrant...

...Nor can we count on precision bombing and U.S...

...On one point, we agree with some of the critics...

...Whether or not they carry out an order from Saddam to launch a chemical or biological weapon at Israel may depend on their perception of whether Saddam and his regime are likely to survive...

...Tough talk from a Clintonista...

...It is past time for the United States to step up and accept the real responsibilities and requirements of global leadership...

...We believe it is essential that the effort to remove Saddam not be a drawn-out affair...

...Before the Gulf War no one had a clue how far advanced Saddam's nuclear weapons program was...

...Can't we just continue to "contain" Saddam...

...A key element of American strategy must therefore aim at affecting the decision-making process of Saddam's top commanders in the field...

...Only now we know that it was an imprudent course...

...Yes, it is essential to capture bin Laden and destroy al Qaeda...

...If we turn away from the Iraq challenge— because we fear the use of ground troops, because we don't want the job of putting Iraq back together afterwards, because we would prefer not to be deeply involved in a messy part of the world—then we will have made a momentous and fateful decision...

...But none of this precludes dealing with Iraq, or makes the obligation of dealing with Iraq less urgent...

...I think we have to keep the pressure on Iraq in a collective way, with our Arab allies...

...And it will determine more than that...

...During the 1990s, those who argued for limiting American involvement overseas, for avoiding the use of ground troops, for using force in a limited way and only as a last resort, for steering clear of nation-building, for exit strategies and burden-sharing—those who prided themselves on their prudence and realism—won the day...

...The necessary actions were all deemed too risky...

...The Iraqi threat is enormous...

...Saddam was not a madman, the theory went, and would not commit suicide by actually using the weapons he was so desperately trying to obtain...

...The chemical weapon VX is the most toxic poison known to man...

...Most even agree that, as former national security adviser Samuel R. Berger says, "the goal . . . should be getting rid of Saddam Hussein...

...Any attack on Iraq must succeed quickly...

...We believe others will indeed join us if we demonstrate our serious intention to oust Saddam—the British and some other Europeans, as well as Turkey and other states in the Middle East...

...The issue seemed to us not so much whether we could deter Saddam, but whether he could deter us: If Saddam had had nuclear weapons in 1991, would we have gone to war to drive him from Kuwait...

...But even then, as the Gulf War demonstrated, it is almost impossible to locate every Scud missile in the Iraqi desert before it is fired...

...ground troops, and dependence on a proxy force, can be counted on as sufficient for Iraq...

...And even when these goals are accomplished, they say, we won't even begin to think about Iraq until we've taken care of Somalia, the Philippines, Yemen, Indonesia—and Antarctica, and the moon...

...For one thing, those loose ends are not just minor details...

...We don't want Iran playing games in Iraq...

...Whether or not we remove Saddam Hussein from power will shape the contours of the emerging world order, perhaps for decades to come...

...We hear from many corners that it is still too early to ask this question...

...embassies and the USS Cole, the Clinton administration took the cautious approach...

...A fractured Iraq...

...It is necessary to stabilize Afghanistan and back a functioning government there...

...If you mention the word Iraq, respectable folks at the State Department and on the New York Times op-ed page get red-faced...

...The amazing thing about the current "debate" over Iraq is that no one disputes the nature of the threat...

...The failure of the United States to take risks, and to take responsibility, in the 1990s paved the way to September 11...

...In the 1990s, much of the complacency about Saddam, both in Washington and in Europe, rested on the assumption that he could be deterred...

...Here is Daschle, in late December: "A strike against Iraq would be a mistake...

...It is almost impossible to imagine any outcome for the world both plausible and worse than the disease of Saddam with weapons of mass destruction...