Global Policy Forum

Julian Borger

President Bush was wryly amused at the questions he was being asked when he met his military advisers down at his country home in Texas. They all seemed to be about Iraq. "I know there is this kind of intense speculation that seems to be going on," he told the press at the Prairie Chapel ranch. "It's kind of a churning."

The president groped for another word and his defence secretary supplied it: "A frenzy," Donald Rumsfeld suggested, to the evident approval of his boss, who adopted the word, thereby ensuring it would appear in the headlines the next day.

Reinforcing the message, Ari Fleischer, the White House chider-in-chief, chided the press for imagining that last week's national security talks might touch on the possible invasion of Iraq.

So where did all this loose talk come from? More importantly, who had stoked the frenzy? The FBI is currently conducting an inquiry into who may have leaked details of intelligence incompetence in the run up to September 11. But if the bureau was to direct its attention to the conspiracy to talk up a war in Iraq, it might like to examine an interview given to Fox News by a Pentagon operative only two days before the president was inundated with impertinent questions.

The operative said the US should not wait for smoking gun evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, before launching an invasion. To do so would be the equivalent of Nazi-era appeasement. "Critics say evidence must be produced that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction, and that it threatens the west and its allies. So, the people who argue have to ask themselves how they're going to feel at that point where another event occurs and it's not a conventional event, but it's an unconventional event. And ask themselves the question, was it right to have wanted additional evidence or additional time, or another UN resolution?" the Pentagon source said. "Think of all the countries that said, well, we don't have enough evidence. Mein Kampf had been written. Hitler had indicated what he intended to do. Maybe he won't attack us. Maybe he won't do this or that. Well, there were millions dead because of the miscalculations."

This is strong stuff, and certainly sufficient to persuade a reasonable person that this administration, not being the appeasing sort, was contemplating action. The Fox interview had added weight because, unlike most tips from the Pentagon, the source was actually named. It was Donald Rumsfeld.

Furthermore, the defence secretary was echoing similarly Churchillian notes struck by another senior administration official, Condoleezza Rice, in an "are-you-with-us-or-against-us?" interview on the BBC a few days earlier. And then a few days after Bush shrugged his shoulders at all the frenzy, his vice president delivered an even more combative justification for invading Iraq in a speech to war veterans in Nashville on Monday. So what is going on? Incompetence is a strong possibility. The Bush administration has already demonstrated extraordinary foreign policy clumsiness in its handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - also accompanied by spinning in several contradictory directions at once. But incompetence is more a matter of style than substance. At the heart of Bush's policy on Iraq, as it was on the Middle Eastern mess, there is disagreement and indecision. Moreover, there are signs that anxiety over an Iraqi adventure is beginning to spread from the state department to the White House.

Part of the logic behind the plan to attack Iraq soon - this year or early next - was that September 11 provided the necessary domestic and international backing for a longstanding but difficult policy objective, even if the terrorist attacks could not be blamed on Saddam.

Any foreign support there might have been for an attack on Baghdad has almost entirely evaporated for a variety of reasons - including war fatigue, impatience at the Bush administration's unilateralism, and anger at its increasing pro-Sharon partisanship in the Middle East. At the moment, only Britain is willing to lend troops and equipment to the endeavour.

At home too, popular support for an assault on Iraq is eroding fast. A new Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll found that 53% of Americans questioned would support sending ground troops to Iraq to topple Saddam - down from 74% last November and 61% in June - even though overwhelming majorities think the Iraqi dictator supports terrorists and is developing weapons of mass destruction.

Interestingly, only 20% of those asked think the US should go it alone, which suggests that British support, while token in numbers and military significance, could be a decisive factor psychologically and politically. If history is any guide, public opinion will rally around the president once the fighting starts and second-guessing the morality of the war becomes almost synonymous with treason. But such support, quickly gained, can be lost just as rapidly even if all goes well from Washington's point of view. The current president's father had 90% approval ratings in the afterglow of the Gulf war, but went down to electoral defeat 18 months later. If Bush Jr was looking for a martial boost to his popularity, timed to help his re-election campaign, it would make more sense to put the war off until late 2003 or early 2004.

The Pentagon, however, has another argument for taking Saddam on soon. Few people doubt he is working on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Even if he had given up in a fit of conscience after the departure of UN weapons inspectors in 1998, the sabre-rattling from Washington would send any self-respecting dictator scurrying to update his arsenal. So any delay would make the campaign against him more costly to the attacking force, particularly if it is thought the Iraqi regime might be able to acquire weapons-grade uranium or plutonium for a crude nuclear device.

This reasoning begs the question of whether Saddam poses a direct threat to the US in the first place. Sceptics, including some prominent Republicans, believe his primary interest is in survival and would therefore not attempt any move that might invite obliteration. But the Pentagon and the White House believe there is a fair chance he could sub-contract out an attack on the US to a stateless organisation such as al-Qaida, or provoke a potentially catastrophic exchange with Israel. UN inspections, Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld believe, are toothless against the Iraqi regime. Once you accept all that as a premise, then war becomes not only inevitable but near imminent. Hence the frenzy.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.