SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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81–813PDF
2002
U.S. POLICY TOWARD IRAQ
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
SEPTEMBER 19, 2002
Serial No. 107–115
Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/international—relations
COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
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HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York
JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa
DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
DAN BURTON, Indiana
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina
DANA ROHRABACHER, California
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
PETER T. KING, New York
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
AMO HOUGHTON, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
JOHN COOKSEY, Louisiana
THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado
RON PAUL, Texas
NICK SMITH, Michigan
JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania
DARRELL E. ISSA, California
ERIC CANTOR, Virginia
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
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BRIAN D. KERNS, Indiana
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia
TOM LANTOS, California
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama
BRAD SHERMAN, California
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
JIM DAVIS, Florida
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
BARBARA LEE, California
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL, Pennsylvania
EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
GRACE NAPOLITANO, California
ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
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DIANE E. WATSON, California
THOMAS E. MOONEY, SR., Staff Director/General Counsel
ROBERT R. KING, Democratic Staff Director
HILLEL WEINBERG, Counsel
LIBERTY DUNN, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S
WITNESSES
The Honorable Richard Perle, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
The Hononorable Jessica Tuchman Mathews, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
General Charles G. Boyd, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), President and CEO, Business Executives for National Security
The Honorable R. James Woolsey, Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
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The Honorable Henry J. Hyde, a Representative in Congress from the State of Illinois, and Chairman, Committee on International Relations: Prepared statement
The Honorable Richard Perle: Prepared statement
The Hononorable Jessica Tuchman Mathews: Prepared statement
U.S. POLICY TOWARD IRAQ
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2002
House of Representatives,
Committee on International Relations,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:52 a.m. in Room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Henry J. Hyde (Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
Chairman HYDE. The Committee will come to order. ''May you live in interesting times'' is a traditional Chinese curse, the full meaning of which becomes clear every day. There is no issue more fraught with consequence than the one we face today. What should America's response be to threats posed by Iraq, along with the larger challenge of extirpating ''terrorism of global reach?'' There are disagreements about strategy, tactics, the efficacy of inspections, differing evaluations about the cost of intervention, what should follow a possible intervention, and so forth.
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Today, I would like the attention to be focused mainly on what our expert witnesses have to say. There will be time later for us to debate these important issues, but I would offer only two observations. One is that the Administration seems utterly convinced about the gravity of the threat from Iraq and the need to deal with it quickly. The second is my view that Saddam cannot be trusted. The word, ''unconditional,'' flows very quickly from his lips. His diplomats used it repeatedly in 1991 as they made promises that turned into endless quibbles, obstructions, and defiance.
The Committee begins today by welcoming five very distinguished Americans—both current and former public servants—to talk about this most compelling issue of our day. This afternoon we will hear from the Secretary of State, and I will have a little more to say about that later.
First we will hear from three former civilian government officials—Richard Perle, James Woolsey, and Jessica Tuchman Mathews—and retired Air Force General Charles ''Chuck'' Boyd. I will introduce them more fully after giving my esteemed colleague, the Ranking Member of the Committee, Tom Lantos, an opportunity to make an opening statement.
Mr. Lantos.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hyde follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE HENRY J. HYDE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, AND CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
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The most compelling issue of the day is how America should respond to the challenge posed to it by Iraq, along with the challenge of extirpating ''terrorism of global reach.'' What are weapons of mass destruction if not means to terrorize human beings by harming them, or by threatening them with harm, without distinguishing between lawful and unlawful targets of military action?
As Members of Congress who are in tune with not only the local communities which we represent but also the policy experts, most of us are cognizant of a broad consensus that Iraq must change its behavior.
There is some disagreement about the precise nature of the threat from Iraq, and, thus, about the need to press for early action on Iraq, as opposed to, for instance, dealing with the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
There are disagreements about tactics, about the efficacy of inspections, and different evaluations about the cost of intervention, what should follow a possible intervention, and so forth.
Today, I would like the attention to be focused mainly on what our expert witnesses have to say. There will be time later for my colleagues to debate on these important issues.
I would offer only two observations. One is that the Administration seems utterly convinced about the gravity of the threat from Iraq and the need to deal with it quickly.
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The second is my view that Saddam cannot be trusted. The word, ''unconditional,'' flows very quickly indeed from his word-processors. His diplomats used it repeatedly in 1991 as they made repeated promises that turned into quibbles, obstructions, and defiance. The only way to relieve the world of the Iraqi threat is to uproot the regime now terrorizing Bagdad and the countryside.
The Committee begins today by welcoming five very distinguished Americans—both current and former public servants—to talk about the most compelling issue of our day—what to do about the Iraqi challenge. This afternoon, we will hear from The Secretary of State, and I will have a little more to say about that later.
We will hear from three former civilian government officials—Richard Perle, James Woolsey, and Jessica Tuchman Mathews—and retired Air Force General Charles ''Chuck'' Boyd. I will introduce them more fully after giving my esteemed colleague, the Ranking Member of the Committee, Tom Lantos, an opportunity to extend his remarks.
Mr. LANTOS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to commend you for holding this hearing, and I want to welcome our distinguished witnesses. I fully share your opening comments. It is not only the Administration which is convinced of the gravity of the threat. It is most, if not all, of us in Congress who are convinced of the gravity of the threat.
I also share your second observation that Saddam Hussein on the basis of his record clearly can be trusted only by morons.
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I would add one more observation. Some people conduct this discussion or debate as if it would be analogous to debating the merits of an abstract painting. Some people like the color scheme. Some people don't like the color scheme. Some people would like to see different paintings and different combinations. What distinguishes this debate from a debate on an abstract painting is that we have a history to deal with, and the totally ahistorical approach of some in the public, in the media and in the Congress is profoundly disturbing. So allow me in a minute or so to sketch what I consider to be the historical context of this discussion. The concept of preemption is not a new one as it relates to Iraq.
In 1981, Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak was destroyed. At the time that preemptive act was widely criticized by the Reagan Administration, by most Members of Congress and certainly the bulk, if not all, of the media.
I took a different point of view. On the Floor of this body, I praised that preemptive act, because it was obvious that Saddam Hussein in 1981 was hell bent on developing nuclear weapons. Had the Osirak reactor not been destroyed, the outcome of the Persian Gulf War could have been very different. The voices who, even without a nuclear-equipped Hussein, suggest that we wait would surely have said, how can we contemplate action, military action, against a nuclear-equipped Saddam Hussein?
So maybe nothing would have happened and Saddam Hussein today would be in control of the oil resources not only of Iraq, but Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and he would have a stranglehold on the jugular of the civilized world through his control of energy. Had we decided to commence the war despite his nuclear capability, the losses would have been infinitely higher than what in fact we suffered.
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There was also a debate in the Congress on whether to authorize action by the first President Bush against Iraq after they invaded Kuwait, and while we prevailed, those of us who favored authorization and voted for authorization, there was a very large negative vote which in a historic context appears to have been a profoundly mistaken negative vote.
Now, it is not only Members of Congress who made mistakes. Some of us at the end of the war on Iraq in connection with the invasion of Kuwait, called on the Administration of the first Mr. Bush to finish the job. In retrospect, it would be hard for anyone to argue that leaving Saddam Hussein in power was a wise decision.
So each of us comes to this debate not only with an understanding of what happened objectively but what our own position was along the way, and it is rather intriguing to see that some of the same people who gave bad advice 10 years ago and 22 years ago are again in the business of giving bad advice.
I am looking forward to the Administration sending up its proposal. I am looking forward to our own vigorous debate here in this body and in the Senate, and I know that our distinguished witnesses will shed a great deal of light on this most important issue.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman HYDE. Yes, gentlelady from Georgia.
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Ms. MCKINNEY. I have an opening statement I would like to read.
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, I do as well.
Chairman HYDE. I understand who——
Ms. MCKINNEY. Mr. Chairman, this hearing is about war. This hearing is about life and death, and as I look out at the audience and I see——
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, will we all be allowed to give opening statements?
Ms. MCKINNEY. I would love to be able to give my opening statement.
Chairman HYDE. The gentlelady really has not been recognized.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Yes, I was recognized.
Chairman HYDE. Not for the purpose of giving an opening statement.
Ms. MCKINNEY. I wasn't giving an opening statement. I was giving my remarks.
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Chairman HYDE. Well, you were giving an opening statement to your opening statement.
Ms. MCKINNEY. No, I was not, Mr. Chairman. But I would appreciate very much if you would allow me to give my opening statement. I can't believe that we are having a hearing on matters of war and peace and sending our young people off to war and you are trying to stifle the voices of the Members of Congress.
Mr. ACKERMAN. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman HYDE. Yes.
Mr. ACKERMAN. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me first say that I think that this Chairman would never seek to stifle the voices of Members of Congress, and if I might suggest, Mr. Chairman, we have some very distinguished witnesses here, as you often and mostly have at our hearings, and I think we all have very, very strong opinions on this subject. In the interest of having everybody express their opinions, might I suggest that we proceed with the witnesses and those of us who have statements, that would like, take our 5 minutes sometime right after them, because otherwise we will never multiply by 5 the Members of this Committee——
Ms. MCKINNEY. Mr. Chairman, we always have distinguished witnesses at all of our hearings, but that doesn't give us the right, or give the Chairperson the right to stifle the voices of the Members of Congress.
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Mr. ACKERMAN. Mr. Chairman, for the purpose of making a motion.
Chairman HYDE. Yes. The gentleman from New York.
Mr. ACKERMAN. I would like to move that we proceed with hearing the witnesses, and any Member who has a statement to make, opening, closing or intermediary, after the witnesses and after our questioning period be allowed 7 minutes to make statements.
Ms. MCKINNEY. I object.
Mr. ACKERMAN. I made a motion. I didn't ask for unanimous——
Chairman HYDE. Those in favor of the motion say aye. Opposed, nay.
Ms. MCKINNEY. No.
Chairman HYDE. The ayes have it, and——
Ms. MCKINNEY. I call for a vote, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman HYDE. The motion is granted. The gentlelady asks for a rollcall vote, and the Clerk—do we have a Clerk available? Will the Clerk call the roll.
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The CLERK. Mr. Gilman.
Mr. GILMAN. Aye.
The CLERK. Mr. Gilman votes aye.
Mr. Leach.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Bereuter——
Ms. MCKINNEY. Do we have a Clerk available?
Chairman HYDE. The Clerk is calling the roll.
The CLERK. Mr. Bereuter.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Smith of New Jersey.
[No response.]
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The CLERK. Mr. Burton.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Gallegly.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Ms. Ros-Lehtinen.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Ballenger.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Rohrabacher.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. No.
The CLERK. Mr. Rohrabacher votes no.
Mr. Royce.
Mr. ROYCE. Aye.
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The CLERK. Mr. Royce votes aye.
Mr. King.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Chabot.
Mr. CHABOT. Aye.
The CLERK. Mr. Chabot votes aye.
Mr. Houghton.
Mr. HOUGHTON. Aye.
The CLERK. Mr. Houghton votes aye.
Mr. McHugh.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Cooksey.
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[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Tancredo.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Paul.
Mr. PAUL. No.
The CLERK. Mr. Paul votes no.
Mr. Smith of Michigan.
Mr. SMITH OF MICHIGAN. Aye.
The CLERK. Mr. Smith of Michigan votes aye.
Mr. Pitts.
Mr. PITTS. Aye.
The CLERK. Mr. Pitts votes aye.
Mr. Issa.
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[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Cantor.
Mr. CANTOR. Aye.
The CLERK. Mr. Cantor votes aye.
Mr. Flake.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Kerns.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mrs. Davis.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Green.
Mr. GREEN. Aye.
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The CLERK. Mr. Green votes aye.
Mr. Lantos.
Mr. LANTOS. Aye.
The CLERK. Mr. Lantos votes aye.
Mr. Berman.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Ackerman.
Mr. ACKERMAN. Aye.
The CLERK. Mr. Ackerman votes aye.
Mr. Faleomavaega.
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Aye.
The CLERK. Mr. Faleomavaega votes aye.
Mr. Payne.
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[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Menendez.
Mr. MENENDEZ. No.
The CLERK. Mr. Menendez votes no.
Mr. Brown.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Ms. McKinney.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Mr. Chairman, I have an article here from December 2nd saying that there is a secret plan for a U.S. war against Iraq made by none other than Mr. Woolsey, who is here. I vote no, and I would love to have the opportunity to have my statement heard now as opposed to after these people have had the opportunity to have their say. Were they involved in the plan——
Chairman HYDE. The gentlelady will maintain order. The lady will maintain order, please.
The CLERK. Ms. McKinney votes no.
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Mr. Hilliard.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Sherman.
Mr. SHERMAN. Aye.
The CLERK. Mr. Sherman votes aye.
Mr. Wexler.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Davis.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Engel.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Delahunt.
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Mr. DELAHUNT. No.
The CLERK. Mr. Delahunt votes no.
Mr. Meeks.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Ms. Lee.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Crowley.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Hoeffel.
[No response.]
The CLERK.
Mr. Blumenauer.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Aye.
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The CLERK. Mr. Blumenauer votes aye.
Ms. Berkley.
Ms. BERKLEY. No.
The CLERK. Ms. Berkley votes no.
Mrs. Napolitano.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Schiff.
Mr. SCHIFF. Aye.
The CLERK. Mr. Schiff votes aye.
Ms. Watson.
[No response.]
The CLERK. Mr. Hyde.
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Chairman HYDE. Aye.
The CLERK. Mr. Hyde votes aye.
Mr. Chairman, on this vote there are 15 ayes and 6 noes.
Chairman HYDE. The motion is carried.
The Honorable Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute was formerly an aide to Senator ''Scoop'' Jackson and an official of the Reagan Defense Department. Since then he has written prolifically on defense and security issues and presides over the Pentagon's Advisory Defense Policy Board. Mr. Perle is appearing by digital video conference link from the American Embassy in London, and I thank Ambassador William S. Farish, the Minister Counselor for Public Affairs at the Embassy, Mr. Daniel Screebny, and the Embassy staff for enabling Mr. Perle to join us this morning.
The Honorable Jessica Tuchman Mathews has been a journalist and has worked in the non-profit sector and in government, most recently as Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs in the Clinton Administration. She is currently President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was a principal author, along with General Boyd, of a proposal embodied in a paper entitled, ''Iraq: A New Approach,'' issued August, 2002.
Retired Air Force General Charles Boyd is President and CEO of Business Executives for National Security. He retired from the Air Force after having served as Deputy Commander in Chief of U.S. Forces in Europe. He was shot down on his 105th mission in Vietnam and survived 2,488 days, almost 7 years, as a prisoner of war. Prior to assuming his current position, he was a consultant to former House Speaker Gingrich and, later, Executive Director of the Hart-Rudman National Security Commission.
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Finally, the Committee welcomes the Honorable James Woolsey, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Ambassador to the Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, Under Secretary of the Navy, and General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services. He was also for many years a practicing attorney, and I guess still is.
Mr. WOOLSEY. No.
Chairman HYDE. No. We are certainly honored to have all of you present or appearing before us. We will start with Mr. Perle across the Atlantic with a 5-minute—give or take—summary of your statement, and the full statement will be made a part of the record. Mr. Perle.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE RICHARD PERLE, RESIDENT SCHOLAR, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
Mr. PERLE. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I particularly want to thank you for including me in today's hearing, even though I can be present only through the miracles of a video link from London.
The President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense have all spoken in recent days about the urgency of dealing with the threat posed to the American people and others by Saddam Hussein. In what may be the most important speech of his presidency, President Bush has argued eloquently and persuasively to the United Nations in New York that Saddam's open defiance of United Nations and his scornful refusal to heed its many resolutions is a challenge to the credibility of the United Nations itself, and he has rightly asked the United Nations to approve a Security Council resolution that would force Saddam to choose between full compliance with the many resolutions he has scorned and violated and action to remove his regime from power.
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Saddam's response, calculating, deceitful and disingenuous, moves only slightly in the direction of accepting U.N. inspections of Iraqi territory, and even in this, it is far from clear that he has offered to accept a robust inspection regime.
Such a regime would, at a minimum, include substantial inspection teams with Americans in key leadership and decision-making roles, distributed throughout Iraq, and independent capability to move anywhere from inspection team bases to any site in the country without prior notification or approval, the right to interview any Iraqi or Iraqi resident together with his family at safe locations outside Iraq, appropriate self defense capabilities for the inspectors so they can overcome efforts to impede them and the like.
My own view is that even with all that, it is simply not possible to devise an inspection regime on territory controlled by Saddam Hussein that can be effective in locating, much less eliminating, his weapons of mass destruction. In any case, the inspection regime known as UNMOVIC doesn't even come close. Its size, organization, management and resources are all inadequate for the daunting task of inspecting a country the size of France against Saddam's determined program of concealment, deceptions and lying.
We know, Mr. Chairman, that Saddam lies about his program to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. We know he goes to great lengths to conceal his activities. We know that he has used the years during which no inspections took place in Iraq to move everything of interest with the result that the database we once possessed, inadequate though it was, has been destroyed. We know all this, yet I sometimes think there are those in the United Nations who treat the issue not as a matter of life and death but rather more like—[interrupted transmission]—and perfect and expand his arsenal of chemical and biological weapons. The danger to us, already great, will only grow. If he achieves his holy grail and acquires one of our nuclear weapons, there is no way of knowing what predatory policies he will pursue.
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That is why, Mr. Chairman, the President is right to demand that the United Nations promptly resolve that Saddam comply fully with the full range of United Nations resolutions concerning Iraq or face an American-led enforcement action.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Perle follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE RICHARD PERLE, RESIDENT SCHOLAR, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
Mr. Chairman,
I wish to thank you for including me in today's hearing even though I can be present only through the technical facility of a video link from the American Embassy in London.
The President, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense have all spoken in recent days about the urgency of dealing with the threat posed to the American people, and others, by Saddam Hussein. In what may well be the most important speech of his presidency, President Bush has argued eloquently and persuasively to the United Nations in New York that Saddam's open defiance of the United Nations, and his scornful refusal to heed its many injunctions, is a challenge to the credibility of the U.N itself. And he has rightly asked the United Nations to approve a Security Council Resolution that would force Saddam to choose between full compliance with the many resolutions he has scorned and violated and action to remove his regime from power.
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Saddam's response—calculating, deceitful and disingenuous—moves only slightly in the direction of accepting U.N. inspections of Iraqi territory. And even in this it is far from clear he has offered to accept a robust inspection regime. Such a regime would, at a minimum, include substantial inspection teams with Americans in key leadership and decision-making roles distributed throughout Iraq, an independent capability to move anywhere from inspection team bases to any site in the country without prior notification or approval, the right to interview any Iraqi or Iraqi resident together with his family at safe locations outside Iraq, appropriate self-defense capabilities for the inspectors so they can overcome efforts to impede them, and the like.
My own view is that even with all that it is simply not possible to devise an inspection regime on territory controlled by Saddam Hussein that can be effective in locating, much less eliminating, his weapons of mass-destruction. In any case, the inspection regime known as Unmovic doesn't even come close: Its size, organization, management and resources are all inadequate for the daunting task of inspecting a country the size of France against Saddam's determined program of concealment, deception and lying.
We know, Mr. Chairman, that Saddam lies about his program to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. We know he goes to great lengths to conceal his activities. We know that he has used the years during which no inspectors were in Iraq to move everything of interest, with the result that the data base we once possessed, inadequate though it was, has been destroyed. We know all of this yet I sometimes think there are those at the United Nations who treat the issue not as a matter of life and death, but rather more like an episode of ''Where in the World is Carmen San Diego'', or an Easter egg hunt on a sunny Sunday.
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Saddam is better at hiding than we are at finding. And this is not a game. If he eludes us and continues to refine, perfect and expand his arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, the danger to us, already great, will only grow. If he achieves his holy grail and acquires one or more nuclear weapons there is no way of knowing what predatory policies he will pursue.
That is why, Mr. Chairman, the President is right to demand that the United Nations promptly resolve that Saddam comply fully with the full range of United Nations resolutions concerning Iraq or face an American led enforcement action.
Chairman HYDE. Thank you, Mr. Perle.
Next we are pleased to hear from Ms. Mathews.
STATEMENT OF THE HONONORABLE JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS, PRESIDENT, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE
Ms. MATHEWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for having us to address this distinguished Committee. I believe that all Members of the Committee have been given copies of our report, ''Iraq: A New Approach,'' in these 5 minutes I would just like to supplement that with a few additional points.
The starting point of this proposal—and I would like to emphasize this, because for some—in many respects, it is the most important point, and for some, it is the most controversial. The starting point for this proposal is the belief that only Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, among his many transgressions, only the weapons of mass destruction pose a threat either to the United States or to the world, and it is therefore our belief, and it underlies this proposal, that eliminating the weapons of mass destruction rather than Saddam Hussein, per se, ought to be the primary goal of U.S. policy.
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Not only is this the location of the threat. It is our belief that only this provides legitimacy for the use of force and only this as a goal commands broad international support. As soon as the United States steps beyond that goal and widens its focus beyond that goal of eliminating weapons of mass destruction, we lose the international support we want and need. This is a problem that reaches back to the middle of the Clinton Administration, at least.
Also as a starting point let me emphasize that in our belief Saddam's weapons of mass destruction do pose a pressing threat. That is a threat that dates back at least to 1998. They do not pose an immediate threat that forces us in any way to rush into action in a matter of days or weeks. There is no evidence to support that or to resort to war as a first resort.
What is the proposal, then, as a middle way, a third approach between the unacceptable status quo and the enormous risks and costs—certain costs of going to war? We believe that this middle ground can be found in a proposal to create what we have called the IIF, the Inspections Implementation Force, a powerful multinational force, American led and largely but not wholly American composed, that would enable UNMOVIC, that would strengthen the weaknesses that Mr. Perle just referred to which are real, and would enable UNMOVIC to carry out what we have called ''comply or else'' inspections. We believe with Mr. Lantos that the time for negotiation and discussion with Saddam Hussein has long passed, that that only produces delay, and these inspections would rely far more on Iraqi compliance than on the unlikely event of Iraqi cooperation.
Under these ''comply or else'' inspections, we would have a system of inspections drastically different from those in the early period under UNSCOM where the balance of power in technology, in money, in resources and in political unity were all drastically tilted in Iraq's favor. This is a proposal to drastically redress that balance in favor of inspectors. The ''or else'' in our ''comply or else'' inspections is of course if Saddam chooses that, overthrow of the regime. But in any case, the burden of choosing war would be shifted solely to his shoulders.
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Let me emphasize also that when we speak of inspections, we are talking about two different phases of inspections: A time-limited discovery and disarmament phase and an open-ended monitoring and verification phase. So that is important to keep in mind.
The critical element for this scheme of coercive inspections to work is for the United States to formally unambiguously, unequivocally forswear action on regime change for as long as inspections are working. The United States has to walk in policy a very fine line here. It must first convince Iraq and other countries that if it does not comply we will use force. I think we are close to having conveyed that message, certainly to other countries, if not to Saddam Hussein, but we are close.
But secondly and equally important, we have to convey the message that if Iraq does comply with inspections, we will not invade. Otherwise, an inspection force, particularly an armed inspection force as we are proposing, would be nothing more than a Trojan horse for invasion and something no sane government would accept. It would be the equivalent of asking them to open the door, say come on in and take away our most precious weapons and then invade us. So our proposal does require the United States to make this commitment, this give. However, if our goal is disarmament, it is not giving up anything.
A second point that is crucial and particularly important in your discussions in the forthcoming days in what is happening at the United Nations now is that the goal in our minds must not be a short-term goal about how quickly can we get inspectors into Iraq to begin their task, but under what conditions they will carry out their job once they are there. In other words, the focus of your attention ought to be on the outcome and not on the beginning date.
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In our view Saddam Hussein will give up weapons of mass destruction if and only if he is presented with a choice of doing that or the certainty of losing political power and probably his life. We must not kid ourselves that he regards inspections as anything other than war by other means. In our belief, therefore, only a credible threat of force will be required to get the teams in, but more importantly, to enable them to do their job once they are there.
One final key point I would like to make, if I could, Mr. Chairman, and that is that no amount of force will work without sustained political unity among the P–5, the five permanent members of the Security Council. That is absolutely required. Any ambiguity that is left in the plan will be—any point of disagreement among them will be a point of opportunity to sow dissension among them, which Saddam Hussein has already proved himself a master at over the last 5 years. It was the loss of political unity among the Security Council beginning in about 1995 that caused the unraveling of UNSCOM more than any other technical element. And so that is absolutely essential, and if we are to achieve success, we have to find a formula that allows the P–5 to go forward in agreement under the U.N. charter with international support, but that takes away all opportunities from Saddam Hussein to debate it once the negotiations are underway.
Finally, if I could, Mr. Chairman, since on a relevant point, I think you have in front of you an op-ed piece in today's New York Times. There was an editing error which added some language which neither General Boyd nor I wrote and indeed which is virtually the opposite of what we believe, which suggests that inspectors would be spies in carrying out intelligence operations. This is precisely the kind of violation of the terms of an inspection regime that would destroy it, and so that is what counts for that blacked-out material in the piece.
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We do believe, with Mr. Perle, that UNMOVIC has many weaknesses in its current setup, but that all of these can be corrected, both through the resources of and the operations of the inspections implementation force. And if I could, Mr. Chairman, perhaps I will turn it over to General Boyd to describe how that would work.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Mathews follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONONORABLE JESSICA TUCHMAN MATHEWS, PRESIDENT, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE
The papers in this collection grew out of discussions held at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from late April to late July of this year. The discussions included top regional and military experts, former inspectors with dozens of man-years' experience in Iraq, and individuals with intimate knowledge of the diplomatic situation at the United Nations.
A NEW APPROACH: COERCIVE INSPECTIONS
The summary proposal that follows draws heavily on the expertise of all those who participated in the Carnegie discussions on Iraq and on the individually authored papers. Further explanation and greater detail on virtually every point, especially the proposal's military aspects, can be found therein.
With rising emphasis in recent months, the president has made clear that the United States' number one concern in Iraq is its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). No link has yet been found between Baghdad's assertively secular regime and radical Islamist terrorists.
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There is much else about the Iraqi government that is fiercely objectionable but nothing that presents an imminent threat to the region, the United States, or the world. Thus, the United States' primary goal is, and should be, to deal with the WMD threat.
In light of what is now a four-year-long absence of international inspectors from the country, it has been widely assumed that the United States has only two options regarding that threat: continue to do nothing to find and destroy Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological, and missile programs, or pursue covert action or a full-scale military operation to overthrow Saddam Hussein. At best, the latter would be a unilateral initiative with grudging partners.
This paper proposes a third approach, a middle ground between an unacceptable status quo that allows Iraqi WMD programs to continue and the enormous costs and risks of an invasion. It proposes a new regime of coercive international inspections. A powerful, multinational military force, created by the UN Security Council, would enable UN and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection teams to carry out ''comply or else'' inspections. The ''or else'' is overthrow of the regime. The burden of choosing war is placed squarely on Saddam Hussein.
The middle-ground option is a radical change from the earlier international inspection effort in which the playing field was tilted steeply in Iraq's favor. It requires a military commitment sufficient to pose a credible threat to Iraq and would take a vigorous diplomatic initiative on Washington's part to launch. Long-term success would require sustained unity of purpose among the major powers. These difficulties make this approach attractive only in comparison to the alternatives, but in that light, its virtues emerge sharply.
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Inspections backed by a force authorized by the UN Security Council would carry unimpeachable legitimacy and command broad international support. The effort would therefore strengthen, rather than undermine, the cooperation the United States needs for long-term success in the war against terrorism. It would avoid a direct blow to the authority of the Security Council and the rule of law. It would avoid setting a dangerous precedent of a unilateral right to attack in ''preventive self-defense.'' Although not likely to be welcomed by Iraq's neighbors, it would be their clear choice over war. Regional assistance (basing, over-flight rights, and so on) should therefore be more forthcoming. If successful, it would reduce Iraq's WMD threat to negligible levels. If a failure, it would lay an operational and political basis for a transition to a war to oust Saddam. The United States would be seen to have worked through the United Nations with the rest of the world rather than alone, and Iraq's intent would have been cleanly tested and found wanting. Baghdad would be isolated. In these circumstances, the risks to the region of a war to overthrow Iraq's government—from domestic pressure on shaky governments (Pakistan) to governments misreading U.S. intentions (Iran) to heightened Arab and Islamic anger toward the United States—would be sharply diminished.
Compared to a war aimed at regime change, the approach greatly reduces the risk of Saddam's using whatever WMD he has (probably against Israel) while a force aimed at his destruction is being assembled. On the political front, coercive inspections avoid the looming question of what regime would replace the current government. It would also avoid the risks of persistent instability in Iraq, its possible disintegration into Shia, Suni, and Kurdish regions, and the need to station tens of thousands of U.S. troops in the country for what could be a very long time.
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A year ago, this approach would have been impossible. Since then, however, four factors have combined to make it achievable:
greatly increased concern about WMD in the wake of September 11,
Iraq's continued lies and intransigence even after major reform of the UN sanctions regime,
Russia's embrace of the United States after the September 11 attacks, and
the Bush administration's threats of unilateral military action, which have opened a political space that did not exist before.
Together, these changes have restored a consensus among the Security Council's five permanent members (P–5) regarding the need for action on Iraq's WMD that has not existed for the past five years.
Core Premises
Several key premises underlie the new approach.
Inspections can work. In their first five years, the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), which was responsible for inspecting and disarming Iraq's chemical, biological, and missile materials and capacities, and the IAEA Iraq Action Team, which did the same for Iraq's nuclear ones, achieved substantial successes. With sufficient human and technological resources, time, and political support, inspections can reduce Iraq's WMD threat, if not to zero, to a negligible level. (The term inspections encompasses a resumed discovery and disarmament phase and intrusive, ongoing monitoring and verification extending to dual-use facilities and the activities of key individuals.)
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Saddam Hussein's overwhelming priority is to stay in power. He will never willingly give up pursuit of WMD, but he will do so if convinced that the only alternative is his certain destruction and that of his regime.
A credible and continuing military threat involving substantial forces on Iraq's borders will be necessary both to get the inspectors back into Iraq and to enable them to do their job. The record from 1991 to the present makes clear that Iraq views UN WMD inspections as war by other means. There is no reason to expect this to change. Sanctions, inducements, negotiations, or periodic air strikes will not suffice to restore effective inspection. Negotiations in the present circumstances only serve Baghdad's goals of delay and diversion.
The UNSCOM/IAEA successes also critically depended on unity of purpose within the UN Security Council. No amount of military force will be effective without unwavering political resolve behind it. Effective inspections cannot be reestablished until a way forward is found that the major powers and key regional states can support under the UN Charter.
Negotiating Coercive Inspections
From roughly 1997 until recently, determined Iraqi diplomacy succeeded in dividing the P–5. Today, principally due to Iraq's behavior, Russia's new geopolitical stance, and U.S.-led reform of the sanctions regime, a limited consensus has reemerged. There is now agreement that Iraq has not met its obligations under UN Resolution 687 (which created the inspections regime) and that there is a need for the return of inspectors to Iraq. There is also support behind the new, yet-to-be tested inspection team known as the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC, created in December 1999 under Resolution 1284). Because three members of the P–5 abstained on the vote to create UNMOVIC, this development is particularly noteworthy. The May 2002 adoption of a revised sanctions plan was further evidence of a still fragile but real and evolving convergence of view on the Security Council.
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Perhaps paradoxically, U.S. threats to act unilaterally against Iraq have the potential to strengthen this limited consensus. France, Russia, and China strongly share the view that only the Security Council can authorize the use of force—a view to which Great Britain is also sympathetic. All four know that after eleven years of the United Nations' handling of the issue, a U.S. decision to act unilaterally against Iraq would be a tremendous blow to the authority of the institution and the Security Council in particular. They want to avoid any further marginalization of the Council since that would translate into a diminution of their individual influence. Thus, U.S. threats provide these four countries with a shared interest in finding a formula for the use of force against Iraq that would be effective, acceptable to the United States, and able to be authorized by the Council as a whole. That formula could be found in a resolution authorizing multinational enforcement action to enable UNMOVIC to carry out its mandate.
Achieving such an outcome would require a tremendous diplomatic effort on Washington's part. That, however, should not be a seen as a serious deterrent. Achieving desired outcomes without resort to war is, in the first instance, what power is for. Launching the middle-ground approach would amount, in effect, to Washington and the rest of the P–5 re-seizing the diplomatic initiative from Baghdad.
The critical element will be that the United States makes clear that it forswears unilateral military action against Iraq for as long as international inspections are working. The United States would have to convince Iraq and others that this is not a perfunctory bow to international opinion preparatory to an invasion and that the United States' intent is to see inspections succeed, not a ruse to have them quickly fail. If Iraq is not convinced, it would have no reason to comply; indeed, quite the reverse because Baghdad would need whatever WMD it has to deter or fight a U.S. attack. Given the past history, many countries will be deeply skeptical. To succeed, Washington will have to be steady, unequivocal, and unambiguous on this point.
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This does not mean that Washington need alter its declaratory policy favoring regime change in Iraq. Its stance would be that the United States continues to support regime change but will not take action to force it while Iraq is in full compliance with international inspections. There would be nothing unusual in such a position. The United States has, for example, had a declaratory policy for regime change in Cuba for more than forty years.
Beyond the Security Council, U.S. diplomacy will need to recognize the significant differences in strategic interests among the states in the region. Some want a strong Iraq to offset Iran. Others fear a prosperous, pro-West Iraq producing oil to its full potential. Many fear and oppose U.S. military dominance in the region. Virtually all, however, agree that Iraq should be free of WMD, and they universally fear the instability that is likely to accompany a violent overthrow of the Iraqi government.
Moreover, notwithstanding the substantial U.S. presence required for enforced inspections and what will be widely felt to be an unfair double standard (acting against Iraq's WMD but not against Israel's), public opinion throughout the region would certainly be less aroused by multilateral inspections than by a unilateral U.S. invasion.
Thus, if faced with a choice between a war to achieve regime change and an armed, multilateral effort to eradicate Iraq's WMD, all the region's governments are likely to share a clear preference for the latter.
Implementing Coercive Inspections
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Under the coercive inspections plan, the Security Council would authorize the creation of an Inspections Implementation Force (IIF) to act as the enforcement arm for UNMOVIC and the IAEA task force. Under the new resolution, the inspections process is transformed from a game of cat and mouse punctuated by diversions and manufactured crises, in which conditions heavily favor Iraqi obstruction, into a last chance, ''comply or else'' operation. The inspection teams would return to Iraq accompanied by a military arm strong enough to force immediate entry into any site at any time with complete security for the inspection team. No terms would be negotiated regarding the dates, duration, or modalities of inspection. If Iraq chose not to accept, or established a record of noncompliance, the U.S. regime-change option or, better, a UN authorization of ''use of all necessary means'' would come into play.
Overall control is vested in the civilian executive chairman of the inspection teams. He would determine what sites will be inspected, without interference from the Security Council, and whether military forces should accompany any particular inspection. Some inspections—for example, personnel interviews—may be better conducted without any accompanying force; others will require maximum insurance of prompt entry and protection. The size and composition of the accompanying force would be the decision of the IIF commander, and its employment would be under his command.
The IIF must be strong and mobile enough to support full inspection of any site, including socalled sensitive sites and those previously designated as off limits. ''No-fly'' and ''no-drive'' zones near to-be-inspected sites would be imposed with minimal advance notice to Baghdad. Violations of these bans would subject the opposing forces to attack. Robust operational and communications security would allow surprise inspections. In the event surprise fails and ''spontaneous'' gatherings of civilians attempt to impede inspections, rapid response riot control units must be available.
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The IIF must be highly mobile, composed principally of air and armored cavalry units. It might include an armored cavalry regiment or equivalent on the Jordan-Iraq border, an air-mobile brigade in eastern Turkey, and two or more brigades and corps-sized infrastructure based in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Air support including fighter and fighterbomber aircraft and continuous air and ground surveillance, provided by AWACS and JSTARS, will be required.
The IIF must have a highly sophisticated intelligence capability. Iraq has become quite experienced in concealment and in its ability to penetrate and mislead inspection teams. It has had four unimpeded years to construct new underground sites, build mobile facilities, alter records, and so on. To overcome that advantage and ensure military success, the force must be equipped with the full range of reconnaissance, surveillance, listening, encryption, and photo interpretation capabilities.
The bulk of the force will be U.S. For critical political reasons, however, the IIF must be as multinational as possible and as small as practicable. Its design and composition should strive to make clear that the IIF is not a U.S. invasion force in disguise, but a UN enforcement force. Optimally, it would include, at a minimum, elements from all of the P–5, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, as well as others in the region.
Consistent with the IIF's mandate and UN origin, Washington will have to rigorously resist the temptation to use the force's access and the information it collects for purposes unrelated to its job. Nothing will more quickly sow division within the Security Council than excesses in this regard.
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Operationally, on the civilian front, experts disagree as to whether UNMOVIC's mandate contains disabling weaknesses. Although some provisions could certainly be improved, it would be unwise to attempt to renegotiate Resolution 1284. Some of its weaknesses can be overcome in practice by tacit agreement (some have already been), some will be met by the vastly greater technological capabilities conferred by the IIF, and some can be corrected through the language of the IIF resolution.
Four factors are critical:
Adequate time. The inspection process must not be placed under any arbitrary deadline because that would provide Baghdad with an enormous incentive for delay. It is in everyone's interest to complete the disarmament phase of the job as quickly as possible, but timelines cannot be fixed in advance.
Experienced personnel. UNMOVIC must not be forced to climb a learning curve as UNSCOM did but must be ready to operate with maximum effectiveness from the outset. To do so, it must be able to take full advantage of individuals with irreplaceable, on-the-ground experience.
Provision for two-way intelligence sharing with national governments. UNSCOM experience proves that provision for intelligence sharing with national governments is indispensable. Inspectors need much information not available from open sources or commercial satellites and prompt, direct access to defectors. For their part, intelligence agencies will not provide a flow of information without feedback on its value and accuracy. It must be accepted by all governments that such interactions are necessary and that the dialogue between providers and users would be on a strictly confidential, bilateral basis, protected from other governments. The individual in charge of information collection and assessment on the inspection team should have an intelligence background and command the trust of those governments that provide the bulk of the intelligence.
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Ability to track Iraqi procurement activities outside the country. UNSCOM discovered covert transactions between Iraq and more than 500 companies from more than 40 countries between 1993 and 1998. Successful inspections would absolutely depend, therefore, on the team's authority to track procurement efforts both inside and outside Iraq, including at Iraqi embassies abroad. Accordingly, UNMOVIC should include a staff of specially trained customs experts, and inspections would need to include relevant ministries, commercial banks, and trading companies. As with military intelligence, tracking Iraqi procurement must not be used to collect unrelated commercial or technical intelligence or impede legal trade.
Conclusion
War should never be undertaken until the alternatives have been exhausted. In this case that moral imperative is buttressed by the very real possibility that a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein, even if successful in doing so, could subtract more from U.S. security and long-term political interests than it adds.
Political chaos in Iraq or an equally bad successor regime committed to WMD to prevent an invasion from ever happening again, possibly horrible costs to Israel, greater enmity toward the United States among Arab and other Muslim publics, a severe blow to the authority of the United Nations and the Security Council, and a giant step by the United States toward—in Zbigniew Brzezinski's phrase—political self-isolation are just some of the costs, in addition to potentially severe economic impacts and the loss of American and innocent Iraqi lives, that must be weighed.
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In this case an alternative does exist. It blends the imperative for military threat against a regime that has learned how to divide and conquer the major powers with the legitimacy of UN sanction and multilateral action. Technically and operationally, it is less demanding than a war. Diplomatically, it requires a much greater effort for a greater gain. The message of an unswerving international determination to halt WMD proliferation will be heard far beyond Iraq. The only real question is can the major powers see their mutual interest, act together, and stay the course? Who is more determined—Iraq or the P–5?
Chairman HYDE. Thank you very much. General Boyd.
STATEMENT OF GENERAL CHARLES G. BOYD, U.S. AIR FORCE (RET.), PRESIDENT AND CEO, BUSINESS EXECUTIVES FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
General BOYD. I would add to Dr. Mathews' beginning remarks by——
Chairman HYDE. Would you put your mike on?
General BOYD. I would add to Dr. Mathews' beginning remarks in expressing my sense of—as always, my sense of honor in being brought before this House in whatever Committee to help in any way I can. I thank you for inviting me. The convictions that Dr. Mathews has expressed with respect to this larger issue are obviously shared by me. I joined her effort for that reason. I would emphasize one additional point with greater clarity.
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I also have the conviction that as a professional military officer and lifetime warrior, that all reasonable means to solve problems should be exploited before we resort as a last measure to that of armed force.
I believe there are many ways that you can get at the problem of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. I would prefer that course of action which carries the broadest base of support among other nations throughout the world. Much as President Bush the First did in the Gulf War, we should amend our role in that region from the standpoint of our long-term relationships with other nations.
My task was to devise a framework by which the inspection process could be successful—as Dr. Mathews outlined—a framework of military accompaniment with the inspectors themselves, a robust force, one capable of supporting any size operation on any kind of an inspection site, one that could provide security for the inspection process and one that could provide an intimidating force, if necessary, to deal with any obstruction of the moment.
But I have the conviction that she shared that this is not a force to fight its way into every inspection site that they want to inspect. At the point at which Saddam Hussein would in any meaningful way obstruct the process of inspection, then I think it should be an automatic transfer to the second phase of the operation, which would be to constitute an invasion force for the purpose of regime change.
So the two are linked, and the force that I have described in this report is one that while small enough, it would not be seen as an invasion force in disguise. It would be large enough and so constituted through prepositioned equipment and infrastructure support, that it could be turned into an invasion force if necessary.
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I am going to yield the rest of my statement time because of the importance of your questions. I would add only one thing. In my discussion with current military planners, all describe this as a complex operation, and indeed it is. All military operations of any size are complex. It is only in comparison to the complexity of an invasion force does it gain its appeal and in fact can be constituted—it has a simpler task than that of an invasion force and can be constituted and even trained I believe in collaboration with other members, other coalition members, in a relatively short period of time, and be prepared to accompany any kind of an inspection regime as required.
With that——
Chairman HYDE. General, we have three votes pending. The Floor calls us for three votes. So we will suspend until the final vote, and we will hurry back. We will hear the rest of your testimony and Mr. Woolsey, and then we will go to questions. So if you can be patient, and you, too, Mr. Perle. Thank you.
The Committee stands in recess till after the final vote.
[Recess.]
Chairman HYDE. General Boyd, did you have a codicil to what you were saying? Have you more?
General BOYD. One sentence. One concluding sentence, sir. I believe that there is a means that can be effective to solve this problem short of war, but I would link it to this certainty, that if it fails we go to war.
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Chairman HYDE. Thank you, General.
Mr. Woolsey, I understand you—I didn't introduce you in the fullness of your resume—that you are Vice President of Booz, Allen & Hamilton. So permit me to amend my introduction of you and to ask you to make your presentation.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE R. JAMES WOOLSEY, VICE PRESIDENT, BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON
Mr. WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are a number of important issues before the Committee, but let me turn principally to the issue of whether an inspection regime could conceivably succeed in disarming Ba'athist Iraq.
Let me say that my experience as Director of Central Intelligence may be a bit relevant here, but more relevant is the fact that I was adviser, delegate and finally Ambassador and chief negotiator in five different arms control negotiations between the United States and either the Soviet Union or, later, the Warsaw Pact between 1969 and 1991. And the last treaty I negotiated, the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, has probably the most demanding and intrusive inspection regime that any arms control treaty has ever had. There are certain features of the Chemical Weapons Convention that are more demanding in some specific regards.
But I speak not as an enemy of the principle of inspections or arms control. I spent a lot of my life at it, and I supported the Chemical Weapons Convention in testimony before the Congress. But I believe, first of all, there is no chance that an inspection regime could succeed such as that which is represented by UNMOVIC, the new weakened regime (weakened in 1999 from the terms under which the previous inspectors worked, which also were inadequate). I think there is no chance that UNMOVIC could succeed under any terms that are likely to be discussed at the United Nations.
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I take my hat off to my colleagues on the panel. I think they have done a good job of trying to put together an inspection regime as demanding as one could imagine. But I think there are two problems, even with the regime which they have in their report and in the New York Times this morning.
The first is that we know from Khidhir Hamza, the head of the Nuclear Program for Saddam, and from Kamil, Saddam's son-in-law, the head of the Biological Weapons Program who came out in 1995 and then went back to Iraq and was killed, that there were and are hundreds of sites where weapons of mass destruction are worked on in Iraq. Many of them are buried. Many of them are quite small. Saddam is not using nuclear reactors any more to make nuclear fissile material, thanks to the Israeli Air Force strike of 1981, but he is using centrifuges and other facilities that can be relatively small. His biological weapons laboratories can be quite small. We believe that some seven of them are mobile, on the Renault trucks that were sold by France a short while back. And indeed any biological weapons production material can be quite small. It could be, for example, very much like the equipment in a microbrewery attached to a small restaurant, which it really rather resembles, to ferment material and the like.
So we have to know where to look. Now, we are not going to find that out from spies. There aren't going to be nearly enough of them. We are not going to find it out from satellite photography except in a few regards, and we are not going to find it out from intercepted communications because the Iraqis are too clever to talk about these sorts of things over communications that can be intercepted. The only way Hamza and others will tell you that we are going to be able to find where to look is to talk to Iraqis who are in the program. Some have defected, but not enough to find everything we need to know. We have to be able to do what UNSCOM, the previous inspectors, tried to do during the 1990s and talk to Iraqis who are in the program.
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The problem was that the way the inspection regime worked, they had to talk to Iraqis in Iraq, which meant that the people in the program who were being interviewed by the inspectors were interviewed with Iraqi intelligence officers standing right beside them. As Saddam has done in the past when he believes anyone may be communicating with his enemies or the inspectors, he has many delightful tactics for dealing with this. If an individual may be out of the country, he has in the past, and I am sure would again, take the individual's wife and daughters into custody, have them raped, have them killed, have that videotaped and have that videotape sent to the husband or father of whomever he believes is talking to someone he doesn't want to be talked to.
As a result, there is no imaginable way—Richard Perle alluded to this in his testimony and Khidhir Hamza has spelled it out as well—that one could have an inspection regime that would work unless one was free to remove Iraqis who wanted to talk and their families from Iraq. Now, I believe that is completely inconsistent with the totalitarian regime that we see.
A second problem, I believe, with even the very demanding regime that my colleagues have come up with is that symbolic force is not enough. I take fully on board the statement that the force should be substantial, but we had a substantial force in Berlin for most of the Cold War, the Berlin Brigade. It was a well-equipped substantial force, three, four thousand troops, more. That force everyone knew would die if the surrounding Soviet 25 divisions chose to move west, as almost happened once or twice during the Cold War.
So I think any force that was in Iraq surrounded by, say, the Republican Guard and the like, would not really be able to exert force. They would have to be involved in finding some way to deal with the inevitable blocking of the front door while the biological weapons are moved out the back door, and so on. That has happened so many times, time and time again during the 1990s.
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And in closing, Mr. Chairman, let me just say that I think that if we accept anything other than absolute certainty that all equipment and facilities related to all weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles of greater than 150 kilometers range have been destroyed, then we will be putting at risk—unless we are able to stay in Iraq for a long time, as long as this Ba'athist regime exists under Saddam's sons or otherwise—Iraq's neighbors and friends and allies of the United States. Because biological weapons can be reconstituted relatively quickly, with relatively simple equipment, and 150 kilometer missiles can have work done to expand, to extend their range relatively quickly. We should not be under any illusion that we would be able to create some solution to this problem and then leave.
So I believe what one is talking about—for any really effective way of using inspections to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles of greater than 150 kilometers range—is an occupying force of very substantial size and a fundamental change in the nature of the Iraqi regime. That this Iraqi regime would agree to that I find unimaginable.
Chairman HYDE. Thank you, Mr. Woolsey. Now we will turn to the Members for questions. I would ask them to limit their questions to 5 minutes, and the technique of making a statement for 4 3/4 minutes and then asking a question prolongs the 5 minutes, and so I ask your cooperation with the spirit of giving everyone a chance. Don't forget Mr. Perle, who is lurking over us like a brooding omnipresence, to use Oliver Wendell Holmes' phrase. Anyway, we turn to the questions. And Mr. Lantos.
Mr. LANTOS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to commend all four of our witnesses, including the brooding omnipresence of Mr. Perle from London, for giving us serious and thoughtful testimony.
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I would like to spend a moment on Ms. Mathews and General Boyd. Let me just say both of you have distinguished records, and you have come forward with an intellectually appealing proposal which I do not believe has any practical likelihood of succeeding. I think you are predicating your notion on a totally artificial separation of Saddam Hussein from weapons of mass destruction. You are correct. If we could wish to have all weapons of mass destruction destroyed and we really wouldn't care whether Saddam Hussein stays or not, that in theory is a plausible approach.
In fact, it is not a plausible approach. Saddam Hussein has sacrificed, if that is the term, 50-, 75-, 100 billion in foreign exchange to develop weapons of mass destruction. And the notion that he would cooperate in the destruction of all weapons of mass destruction I find fanciful.
I also find it, with all due respect, wholly unrealistic to expect the United Nations Security Council, as divided as it has been over a long period of time, as incapable as it has been over a long period of time, of making decisive and cohesive decisions to create an entity that relinquished control to an American military commander who would make the decisions. I also share Mr. Woolsey's reservations, every single one of them, and I do want to commend you for attempting to find what you are groping for, and that is a middle way. There is no middle way in this crisis, and much as I want to applaud you intellectually, I think as a pragmatic proposal, I frankly do not think yours can be taken very seriously, with all personal respect to both of you.
I would like to deal with an issue—and I would be grateful if Mr. Woolsey or Secretary Perle would comment on it and the two of you as well. Since one of the President's economic advisers has estimated the cost may be $100 billion, those who oppose forceful action have now a new economic argument saying how can we afford to spend $100 billion on this. Well, it seems to me that Iraq is potentially one of the wealthiest countries on the face of this planet, and it is self-evident to me that any rational post-Hussein regime would be compelled over a reasonable period of time to pay for the cost of this venture.
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Iraqi oil resources create an enormous difference between what we are up against in Afghanistan, where of course the post-war cost is infinitely smaller than this figure. All of the donors have combined to offer about $5 billion but haven't delivered half of it yet. So about two, two and a half billion has been put into Afghanistan. The notion that Iraq's oil resources under a new civilized regime cannot be used over time to pay for this damage is to me an absurdity, and I would like to ask, perhaps starting in London with Mr. Perle, as to what your thoughts are vis-a-vis the notion of Iraqi oil resources should pay for the cost of this activity should the President decide to use military force.
Mr. PERLE. Well, Congressman Lantos, I believe that military action to remove Saddam Hussein would in fact be an act of liberation, and the principal beneficiaries of that would be the people of Iraq. Of course the main issue is the question of our safety. But the Iraqis themselves have suffered horribly under the regime of Saddam Hussein. There will be a tremendous amount of work to do to reconstitute the country, and I see no reason why the people of Iraq would not be prepared, in the aftermath of the removal of Saddam, to bear some of the cost of that, along with others in the international community.
There are those now who are skeptical about military action. I strongly believe that once Saddam is removed, much of that skepticism will give way as we see the reaction of the people of Iraq. So I think it is entirely plausible.
One last point, one can put forward a number like $100 billion or $200 billion. No one really knows. The cost of not acting in time to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring a nuclear weapon, for example, is inestimable, and $100 billion would look like a bargain if we were faced with a nuclear-armed Iraq.
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Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Woolsey.
Mr. WOOLSEY. I agree with what Mr. Perle has said, and I would simply add that in 1944, 38 percent of the American gross national product went to the military. Even $100 billion is about 1 percent of our gross national product of $10 trillion, approximately. So although I agree that we could quite reasonably see some contribution from a democratic Iraqi regime in the future to a war that freed Iraq, I must say that compared with the sacrifices that this country has made in its two world wars and in the Cold War, financially and otherwise, to prevail and advance the cause of democracy throughout the 20th century, even $100 billion, in relative terms, is reasonably modest.
Mr. LANTOS. Ms. Mathews.
Ms. MATHEWS. Let me first make the point that the cost of $100 billion, or whatever the direct cost to the fiscal treasury is, may only be the tip of the iceberg. We don't know what the economic losses would be caused by $40 barrel oil on what is already a very fragile stock market. It may dwarf that figure.
Mr. LANTOS. Are you assuming a protracted engagement under those circumstances?
Ms. MATHEWS. I am not.
Mr. LANTOS. Or are you assuming just a spike in the price of oil which then would recede, because a very powerful argument can be made that under a new non-Hussein regime Iraq would be the most effective weapon against OPEC. Iraq will have enormous reconstruction costs. Iraq may be pumping 5, 6 million barrels, and the price of oil could well plummet well below $20.
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Ms. MATHEWS. Perhaps.
Mr. LANTOS. Are you positing a $40 figure for the long run?
Ms. MATHEWS. No. I am positing a spike, and I believe that a spike in the current stock market, which we know to be very fragile, could have very severe economic consequences.
Just very quickly, I think we perhaps kid ourselves to call this or to think of this as a liberation. To Iraqis it will be an invasion and a great many of them will die. We are talking about urban warfare. A great many innocent Iraqis will die. I don't believe that it is going to be looked upon as a wonderful event by Iraqis, any more than an invasion of the United States under any condition would be felt that way by Americans.
The only——
Mr. LANTOS. You are not drawing an analogy between a free and open democratic society and a society living under a ruthless and bloody totalitarian dictator, are you?
Ms. MATHEWS. Of course not, but I am just trying to point out that it is, I think, easier from this distance to use the word ''liberation'' to what I believe will feel more like an invasion, but I——
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Mr. LANTOS. Did you view the occupation of Germany by Allied Forces following D-Day and the movement of the Soviet army toward Berlin an occupation or a liberation?
Ms. MATHEWS. That was a liberation. If I could just make the point that I was trying to make, if—the only way I think under which the U.S. could hope to get some sort of payments, which I understand to be what you are talking about, from Iraqi oil revenues to pay for this war would be under some kind of multilateral auspices. Anything else I believe will look to the world like a United States that went to war in order to get its hand on Iraq's oil resources, and I think the cost to us of doing that would be inestimable.
Mr. LANTOS. General Boyd.
General BOYD. I would only make one point, Mr. Lantos.
Mr. LANTOS. Mike.
General BOYD. I would only make one very brief point, and it won't be to really try to persuade you with a well-reasoned conclusion that you have made up your mind, but let me add one point for the sake of others.
I don't know how many nations, but I suspect very few, would view a preemptive use of force and military invasion for the purpose of regime change as being a legitimate move. It may well be——
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Mr. LANTOS. If I may stop you for a minute. Would you suggest that the purpose would be regime change, or the purpose would be the destruction and elimination of weapons of mass destruction which is predicated on the regime change? I mean, what is the goal? The goal clearly is to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, and your formula offers an avenue—not very realistic in the minds of some of us—of bringing about destruction of all weapons of mass destruction without a regime change.
General BOYD. I think that is a distinction that doesn't mean very much. If you say to disarm, which is my objective, and the purpose of which cannot be achieved without regime change. To the neighbors and for the rest of the world watching, it would look like that force was invading for the purpose of regime change, yes, ultimately to disarm him. But the point is the regime change. Now, then—which I think would be viewed by very few nations as a legitimate move.
If, as you say, this inspection regime that we have outlined is unrealistic and ultimately cannot be effective, cannot succeed, if in fact Saddam Hussein would be effective in obstructing it, then it links to regime change that you seek. The difference, it seems to me, is that it then becomes this is a legitimizing mechanism. It seems much more obvious to me, and I think to the rest of the world, that we have attempted everything we can within the framework of existing international law, it has proven ineffective, and we then have no other choice but to do the regime change of favor——
Chairman HYDE. The Chair——
General BOYD [continuing]. It becomes a legitimizing mechanism, I believe, if preemptive action does not happen.
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Chairman HYDE. The Chair is very reluctant to intrude, but——
Mr. LANTOS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman HYDE. Mr. Gilman.
Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman I hope that equal time will be given to all of us.
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for——
Chairman HYDE. You want to be here until 6 o'clock this evening?
Mr. GILMAN. Not necessarily. But I think we have to consider Mr. Powell, who is coming.
I want to thank you for arranging this timely hearing on our Nation's policy toward Iraq. It is certainly important for the entire Congress, and I want to thank our panelists and Mr. Perle for making himself available. I fully support the President's efforts to demand Iraqi compliance with the adopted U.N. resolution. Since expelling U.N. inspectors from Iraq, Mr. Hussein has had 4 years to rebuild and rearm his country's weapons stockpiles. I doubt if we are going to be able to find those.
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It is imperative that the world of nations in the united front take this threat seriously and take preventive action against the tyranny of the Iraqi Government and to order it to disarm before the events of September 11th are allowed to be repeated.
And I might add that we were with the President at the U.N. a week ago. The U.N. still hasn't acted on a resolution. As September 11th taught us, Saddam's means of deployed weapons of mass destruction are by no means limited to conventional means. His continued sponsorship of terrorist groups of global reach provides him an additional mechanism with which to deliver them. As long as the Saddam regime continues, policies aimed at acquiring nuclear weapons, increasing his storehouse of chemical, biological, and possibly radiological weapons, the Iraqi regime continues to pose a very serious threat to our Nation, not only to our Nation but to our allies as well.
And I want to take this opportunity to commend the President for developing a strong legal case against Iraq as he set forth at the U.N. Iraq's attempts to both reconstitute and to expand its weapons of mass destruction is a clear breach of the terms of the U.N. Security Council resolutions 686 and 687, which included the demand that Iraq unconditionally accept the destruction and elimination of all of those weapons, and that it unconditionally undertake not to use, develop, or acquire any means relevant to these weapons of mass destruction.
This, in my opinion, constitutes a serious breach that must be viewed as a threat to all international peace and security. His continued material breach of these resolutions further illustrates his regime's views of itself in a perpetual state of war with our Nation. It is a military, diplomatic, and economic war that Saddam's regime is intent on winning and is willing to pay a heavy price to emerge as its victor. We must take all necessary steps to ensure that he fails.
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Mr. Perle, I would like to ask you, what is your opinion of the coercive inspection team?
Mr. PERLE. Well, I am afraid I share Congressman Lantos' view that it is unrealistic. I think any inspection scheme that requires the cooperation of Saddam Hussein—and because he controls the territory, it is hard to imagine any scheme that would not—is ultimately bound to fail. He will go to whatever lengths are necessary to prevent us from finding the things that are so easily hidden in a country the size of France. So adding some military forces, which would ultimately be modest in relation to Iraqi military forces, seems to me not to change the fundamental obstacle that any inspection team faces. It is simply too large a country. There are too many places to hide. And without very precise intelligence making known the places that we should inspect, it is virtually impossible to achieve an effective inspection regime.
Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Perle.
Mr. Woolsey, in light of the fact that the U.N. has not acted on the resolutions requested by the President, should we continue to put pressure on the Security Council? Or what would be the alternative if they failed to act in a reasonable time?
Mr. WOOLSEY. I believe it is useful to continue to make the case to the Security Council for a time, as long as it doesn't interfere with a properly timed military action.
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In my judgment, the situation here does not require us to talk of preemption. There was a war in 1991, and a cease-fire agreement temporarily halted that war. There were conditions to the cease-fire agreement that Saddam give up all chemical, bacteriological, and nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles of greater than 150 kilometers. He is in clear violation of three of those four terms, and he is working hard to violate the fourth, to obtain nuclear weapons. He is in violation of the cease-fire agreement. As far as I am concerned, we don't need to claim that we have some preemptive rights. We can enforce the cease-fire agreement.
Now, if it helps from the point of view of international politics to spend a bit more time working with our French and Russian and Chinese colleagues in the Security Council to obtain a resolution, that seems to me that is well within the purview of what the President and the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense decide.
But if the French and Russians especially believe that they can oppose steps to destroy Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and change the regime as necessary and still be favorably treated or have their oil companies favorably treated in a newly liberated Iraq, I believe we should give them something else to think about.
I think it is ridiculous for them to believe that Total and Elf and LUKOIL can have deals with Saddam Hussein, and then following a war in which Saddam is deposed, simply pick right up where they left off. They should be asked, I think, to think about the implications of their actions now.
Chairman HYDE. Mr. Ackerman.
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Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Woolsey.
Mr. ACKERMAN. Thank you. Thank the panel.
General, I listened with great care to your statement about regime change. If the scenario were that somebody moved next door to you who was a madman, and appeared with a gun and was a menace to your children and your family and those you love, and then some authority came along and removed those weapons, and then a short while down the road the same thing happened, the same madman was rearmed with the same weapons, intent on menacing and doing harm to your family and was disarmed, the next time this happened, would you want to search his house, or would you want to just disarm him again? Would you want to get rid of him? Is he the problem, or is the spontaneous appearance of arms the problem? How do you solve that problem?
General BOYD. If I thought I could gain the support of the United Nations Security Council and hold in my camp a large body of world opinion in support of doing what you have just outlined, then that would be my first option. I don't believe that is the case. The case that we have outlined in this Carnegie report is a step in that direction, principally because we think we can do that with a much broader base of support on the first option, that of regime-change-oriented invasion. But we link to—if it does not succeed—we link to the second option, which is the one you have outlined.
Mr. ACKERMAN. So then you——
General BOYD. And we think we carry a much broader base of support.
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Mr. ACKERMAN. You would wait as this madman inched closer and closer to you, while trying to gain the support of the rest of the community? At what point do you forsake the consent of the community to protect what is near and dear to you?
General BOYD. I don't know you mean by that.
Mr. ACKERMAN. What I mean is, at what point—if I can switch back to the real situation. At what point do we forsake the U.N.'s involvement and go it alone?
General BOYD. If we cannot gain their consensus to begin with, then that is the point. If we do gain their consensus and move in a U.N.-supported back——
Mr. ACKERMAN. Is there a time line here?
General BOYD. However long it takes to determine that that system is not effective.
Mr. ACKERMAN. If Tariq Aziz sits there and they push the envelope back and forth, and there are delays? Let us assume that the inspectors go in and Saddam Hussein again, as is obvious to most people, tries to impede the inspections and come up with terms and puts things in their way. At what point does the threshold kick in? What? Where is the trigger here? I think that is what is missing from your report. Is it the first time that there is a delay? And when there is that first delay, and I would be willing to put $50,000 on the line with you to say there is going to be a first delay. If you want to do that, I am willing—just to let you know—I am willing to risk my money, than to risk him getting more out of control.
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General BOYD. You could probably afford that; I probably can't. So I think I will——
Mr. ACKERMAN. Well, I don't——
General BOYD [continuing]. Not take your bet.
Mr. ACKERMAN. Yeah, I understand that. But I think that the world and the international community and the region can't afford to have him do what it looks like he is going to do based on his track record. But at what point, at what point do we stop the niceties in that process? And when we stop that process, is the retaliation limited? Is it overwhelming? Is it regime change? What is it in your plan?
General BOYD. Dr. Mathews answered—and the report is clear on this—that we would foreswear an invasion for exactly as long as the inspection process was effective; moving effectively, without impediment, without obstruction. At the point at which that ceases, that is the point that you are asking about, that is when we switch to the second option.
Mr. ACKERMAN. So as soon as he stutters.
General BOYD. As soon as the effective process of inspection and disarmament is obstructed by Saddam Hussein.
Mr. ACKERMAN. And our response is what? This last question, Mr. Chairman.
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General BOYD. Then the response is——
Mr. ACKERMAN. Regime change?
General BOYD. Invasion for the purpose of regime change.
Mr. ACKERMAN. Thank you.
Chairman HYDE. The gentleman from California, Mr. Berman.
Mr. BERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First, I would like to yield to the Chairman.
Chairman HYDE. Would the gentleman yield? Very briefly. I don't want to take a lot of time and very quickly make two comments. It seems to me coercive inspection leaves in the lurch a lot of people over there who have been working with us to liberate their people: The Kurds, the Shia, other elements within Iraq who have been working with us clandestinely and otherwise to liberate their country. They would suddenly find themselves isolated and alone. I think that is an unfortunate consequence of limiting our response to coercive inspection.
Secondly, how do you erase from the mind of scientists over there, and chemists and biologists, the ability to reconstitute these things when things quiet down? Let the inspectors leave, let a couple of summers go by and, bang, they are back in business with more anthrax and botulism and whatever it takes. That will be a constant threat while Saddam Hussein and his ilk hang around.
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So, just a loose end that I think deserves some attention, but I am not asking as a question. I just wanted to vent that. Thank you, Mr. Berman.
Mr. BERMAN. I would be very grateful if the panel could answer my first question just in one sentence, because there is more I would like to get into.
And the question: I believe, as close to certainty as one can have, that what we would find in Saddam's arsenal, in his weapons of mass destruction, is significantly worse than the evidence of what we have now: The evidence from satellites, from human intelligence, from defectors, from all the other testing kinds of things. In other words, that what our intelligence agencies now know will, when we finally find it out, will be much worse than what we know.
Do you agree with that assessment or disagree? If you could, a very short reply would be grateful.
Mr. WOOLSEY. I agree.
Ms. MATHEWS. We will know more than we know now. But whether it will be worse than what we consider probable, I don't know. I mean, partly because I am not privy to the current intelligence, but I know a fair amount about what he—if the import of your question is do you believe that he has attempted and has been successful in reconstituting a good deal of what we know he had in 98, the answer is yes.
General BOYD. And you are asking me to guess. I would guess the same that you are guessing. But I don't know that.
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Mr. BERMAN. And Mr. Perle?
Mr. PERLE. And I would agree with that. We never know everything. And so almost by definition, what we ultimately learn is worse than what we knew when we started out.
Mr. BERMAN. Okay. Then for any of you who would care to respond, just a couple of points.
One, Ms. Mathews challenged the assumption that the Iraqi people would view us as liberators were there to be an attack which resulted in regime change. I have thought, if things went well—one never knows—but if things went well, that it would be pretty clear that this would not be the clash of civilizations and it would not be America against the Arab people. The Iraqi people would be viewing us as liberators, and it would take away the argument from those who would want to create that conflict; that it would show to everyone else that in fact Saddam was the enslaver, and America was not the enemy of the 25 million Arabs living in Iraq.
Ms. Mathews challenges that assertion and raises the issue of urban warfare. I am particularly curious what Mr. Woolsey and Mr. Perle think of how it might go and what that reaction would be, because—certainly there could be tens of thousands of civilian casualties, massive deaths—that assumption might turn out to be quite wrong.
Secondly, I am curious, General Boyd. I am told that in the previous Administration, part of the premise of coercive inspections is no-drive zones. There is no practical way in the world that we have the ability to enforce no-drive zones in the context of conducting these inspections, even with a fairly robust military presence accompanying the inspectors. It just can't be done with current military capabilities.
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I am curious to hear your response to that assertion.
Mr. WOOLSEY. Thank you, Congressman. I will start on the liberation. We have two excellent case studies for how the Iraqi people would regard being freed of Saddam Hussein. One is what happened in Iraq in 1991; the other is what happened in Afghanistan last fall.
In Iraq in 1991, liberation movements erupted in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces, and they were succeeding. And the joy in the streets was palpable. Read about or talk to anyone who was there and got out. There was an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal by a young woman who was there just 4 or 5 days ago.
And as far as Afghanistan goes, we saw when Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul were liberated, what happened when the women could finally show up in public with their faces uncovered, and the men could have their beards cut, and the children could fly kites and music could finally be played. They were ecstatic. And I think after 40 years of tyranny, the chance that we would be regarded as anything other than liberators is slim, to the vanishing point.
Now, any war that takes a long time and is very bloody is going to have a lot of people who don't want it to continue and are bothered by it. But if you look at what happened in 1991, after 5 weeks of an air war in which we used 5 percent smart weapons, the main-line Iraqi Army, which was 800- to 900,000 strong then, basically made one of two choices: Either they surrendered to Italian television film crews or they surrendered to American unmanned aerial vehicles. It is not that they didn't fight well; they didn't fight at all. The Republican Guard fought in some cases reasonably well, but the Iraqi Air Force fled to Iran.
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I don't think that this is going to be a cakewalk at all, but I do think that we have a reasonable chance—using, as we probably will there, 80 to 85 percent smart weapons in the air war—of making this a decisive victory. There could be a retreat to the cities and fighting in the cities. But how long can Saddam hold out in the cities without oil, without resources, without food?
I am, frankly, more concerned about how we handle the postwar occupation, the rebuilding of Iraq, and that we could make mistakes doing that, than I am about the war itself. I don't think we need to be—should at all be—overconfident. And I think we ought to put 100- to 200,000 troops into the region and make absolutely sure we could deal with any contingency that came up. But I think the Iraqi people would definitely, particularly in a quick and decisive war—which I think is likely, not certain but likely—greet us as the liberators we would be.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY [presiding]. Let me just say I think it is an excellent panel. All of us are getting some very important insights. But I do have a question that I would like to ask Ms. Mathews and the others on the panel with regards to the admittedly——
Mr. BERMAN. Just—Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Yes.
Mr. BERMAN. Just—at least General Boyd had—there was one outstanding question to him. And he just wanted to——
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Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Okay. I would ask all Members—and I will restrict myself to 3 minutes as well. General Colin Powell, Secretary Colin Powell will be here within an hour, and we have several Members who want to ask questions. I would hope that we would all try to stay within the 3- to 5-minute rule.
General Boyd, please proceed and answer Mr. Berman's question.
General BOYD. I will be very quick. I am familiar with the no-drive argument that has taken place. And the conditions that you are describing—or that debate is over an entirely different kind of a mechanism, where you deny movement on the surface virtually in an enduring way. What we foresee in this—and I have worked with current military planners on how to go about this—is short duration and denial of the assembly of military forces and movement in a defined region while an inspection is taking place—as well as denying the airspace. And that is an entirely different problem, and that is quite a workable problem.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Let me just ask one question on coercive inspections, which clearly has some surface appeal. But I would ask the panel, very briefly, if they could respond.
I have concerns and I think many Members have concerns. One, would inspections be successful in their own right—and, of course, that is an open question for all inspections? Second, I am concerned about the safety of the troops.
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We saw in Srebrenica when UNPROFOR had a relatively weak mandate, that over time those so-called safe havens became a mecca, a gathering part of—an area for people to be clustered and then, like we saw in Srebrenica, summarily killed.
And I am very concerned about hostage taking. We know that Saddam Hussein certainly has no qualms about what he called, euphemistically, human shields in a scenario where they have found weapons of mass destruction. In an act of desperation that might ensue and could be overpowered, it would seem to me, as we saw in Somalia, even though the numbers of deaths obviously were largely on the side of Somalis, it was a terrible situation that our soldiers found themselves in.
So, again, it has surface appeal, but does it have also the attendant risks of hostage taking, of being—you know, this idea that it looks good but obviously does not yield the result that is looked for?
Mr. Woolsey, could you answer that?
Mr. WOOLSEY. Congressman, I share your concern. In the first 2 years of the Clinton Administration there were a number of discussions about whether to try to use force in Bosnia or not. And the big objection in most cases was that the U.N. peacekeepers by that time were there and they could be taken hostage by the Serbs.
Now, I think General Boyd and Ms. Mathews have done the best they can in the context of their proposal to talk about having robust military forces and arrests. But even, you know, a brigade or more of troops inside Iraq, surrounded by the Republican Guard, are effectively hostages. And I think that it would be a very tough decision for an American President to go to war and sacrifice that brigade, or those inspectors and the rest, if they were harassed, prevented from moving, et cetera, by this totalitarian regime. This is the type of proposal that would work with perhaps a regime that was hesitant or was autocratic, but not absolutely totalitarian, or that wanted the world's approval or something. But with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, I just don't think it would work.
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Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Ms. Mathews, General Boyd, or Mr. Perle?
General BOYD. I think that there are no risk-free options here. I don't think you can guarantee security of that force, that inspection team. But you can certainly enhance it greatly by the kind of measures that we have outlined. But you can't guarantee the security of an assembling invasion force either. And assembling that force is the moment in which I believe that it is the greatest risk, on the border of a nation that is in possession of weapons of mass destruction, and your objective is to remove those who hold control of those weapons of mass destruction, without any incentive at that point to hold anything back. It is show time. They are going down, and I suspect they will use everything they can. Not just Saddam Hussein, but all of those who would find their future at risk as well. So that is a pretty high-risk operation at that point.
I share Jim Woolsey's assessment and I know very well how they fought in 1991, and I doubt if they are going to fight much better. Although I accept Jessica Mathews' point that people fight differently on their own soil than they fight on somebody else's soil. So you have to prepare for the worst, as he has suggested. There are no risk-free options is what I am saying. But I believe you can make that inspection process in that phase relatively—if you use the measures we have called for, you can make that risk very low.
Mr. PERLE. Mr. Chairman, could I add something?
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Yes, please, Mr. Perle.
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Mr. PERLE. It seems to me that there is general agreement that the purpose of inspections is to find—leading ultimately to the destruction of weapons of mass destruction. It is not inspection for inspection's sake. And it seems to me that the proposal is seriously and deeply flawed in the following respect:
Suppose we adopt this proposal and we enter into an inspection regime that is heavily reinforced, reinforced so that when something is found, we have a sufficient presence to destroy what it is that is found. Suppose we don't find anything. Suppose we don't find anything because the country is vast and we don't know where to look. You cannot conclude from the fact that we haven't found anything that there is nothing to be found.
So when General Boyd and Jessica Mathews argue that if Saddam blocks inspections, we could then take action, you have to ask, ''suppose he never blocks inspections because he has hidden the things we are trying to find so well that it isn't necessary to block inspections?'' In that case, the inspection regime goes on forever, while Saddam holds on to the weapons of mass destruction that have been effectively concealed, and we have no means of removing those weapons of mass destruction.
Now, you know and I know that after some period of time, without having found weapons of mass destruction, the ability to sustain those inspections is going to go away. The Iraqis are going to argue, you have been here for X months—or years, even—you have found nothing; it is time to leave and restore normalcy to Iraq. And in that event, he would have gotten away with it. So everything depends not on whether the inspectors have military means to back them up, but on whether we know where to look; because if we don't know where to look, random checks will not unearth weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
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Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Thank you.
Mr. Faleomavaega.
Ms. MATHEWS. Mr. Chairman, can I also provide an answer?
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Sure.
Ms. MATHEWS. And I will be very quick. What you have just heard—and Mr. Woolsey's earlier comments are made in complete ignorance of the record of UNSCOM in the period from 1991 to 1997—going in, starting from nothing, mind you, with very little resources and without prior knowledge, they uncovered all of the four areas of weapons of mass destruction and missiles. The story is laid out in detail in our report of what they found and what they didn't. They uncovered his most precious secret, the biological weapons program, not because of defection but because of their own inspections.
We know, as though these people would be going into—not knowing where to look, as Mr. Perle states, they know exactly where to begin. We have a huge amount of intelligence. We have a huge amount of acquired knowledge. This team has a vast work plan already laid out. This is not going in on a blank slate at all.
I would recommend or commend to the Committee the piece by Ambassador Ekeus from last Sunday's Washington Post, where he lays this out, lays out how it was done, and gives us a sort of a granular firsthand sense of how inspections actually proceed that this discussion I think has not conveyed.
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Thank you.
Mr. WOOLSEY. Mr. Chairman, I have to say just one sentence. I rather take umbrage at the assertion that I am in ignorance of the record here, and that defectors were of no utility, and that the inspectors discovered this material entirely on their own. It is simply not true. The defection of Kamil and the defection of Khidhir Hamza had a great deal to do with where the inspectors looked with respect to biological weapons records and the rest. And the record simply doesn't support what Ms. Mathews said.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Mr. Faleomavaega.
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I certainly want to commend the members of our panel for their statements. I think two fundamental things that we have to be reminded as Members not only of Congress, but we are all sworn to sustain and support the Constitution of the United States. And two fundamental things that we need to be reminded of: The President does not declare a war; it is the Congress. That is specifically stated. An act of war has to be stated clearly by the Congress.
Congress also is charged with the responsibility of raising the Army and the Navy, not the President.
I have the deepest respect for our President, and I would never question his sincerity, his integrity. But I think this is where our responsibility comes to bear to question the wisdom and the thoroughness of this very, very basic and fundamental issue of our government.
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We are going to declare war on another country, and I would like to ask—I have other things I want to say, but just quickly to the members of the panel. You believe the President is going to be asking the Congress for an official declaration of war? Or is it going to be like another resolution of Tonkin, like we did in Vietnam? Should the President be asking for an official declaration of war by the Congress, or should it be in another form of resolution that gives him flexibility with all conditions? It doesn't really state clearly it should be a declaration of war.
Mr. WOOLSEY. Congressman, I don't believe a formal declaration of war is necessary. As I said earlier, I believe the 1991 war never stopped, from Saddam's point of view; it was temporarily halted by a cease-fire which he is in violation of. So under those circumstances, I don't believe a formal declaration of war is necessary.
I do believe it would be wise for the President—and I am glad he has so decided—to come to the Congress and present the case to the Congress and ask for congressional authorization. The precise form of that, whether it is under the War Powers Resolution or something else, I would leave to the back-and-forth between the legislative and executive branch on this long-standing, troubling constitutional issue.
So I think Congress should deliberate and make its judgment. But that it needs be a formal declaration of war such as last occurred in World War II? No, I don't believe that is necessary.
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Thank you. Because my time is limited, I wanted to give another question to General Boyd and Dr. Mathews.
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Your position is not an intellectual exercise. You are wanting to see if this could be another—we all know what happened 10 years since the first Bush Administration. Saddam has violated every resolution that the United Nations has put forth. Are you suggesting here that we ought to put more teeth in the inspection process? And if that does not work, then go to the next level, which is a mass invasion of Iraq? Is this what I sense from both of you in your proposal?
Ms. MATHEWS. That is right.
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. And in addition to your setting this position is because this has the support not only of all the Arab countries, but also I think the members of the Security Council and even the United Nations? Am I correct on this? General Boyd?
General BOYD. You are asking for proposing something that would require a United Nations Security Council resolution. So——
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. With teeth. I mean, with enforcement procedures.
General BOYD. The mechanism that we propose would require that kind of a consensus within the Security Council. Yes.
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. You know, it is interesting to note—is my time over—to note that General Westmoreland once said that politicians are the ones that create war, and not the military.
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And I wanted to ask General Boyd, you know more than anybody what it means to be in a state of war. Are there presumptions made about—could we say that it is a safe presumption that we are looking at millions of refugees that are going to come out of that country of Iraq once we start bombing the heck out of these people? And who is going to take responsibility for these 20 million people that live in that country if we take invasion as our best option, a state of war? Have we taken that into consideration?
General BOYD. I don't know the answer to that, but I have to assume that we have. Those who are—these are careful men with good judgment that are doing our planning. I have no qualms about that at all. I am only suggesting a mechanism that would precede a method that I believe can carry broad-based international support, to see if it is effective. And, if it is not, then I will go to this more troublesome regime-change-oriented invasion force that we are talking about.
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know other Members want to ask questions.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Thank you very much.
Mr. Rohrabacher, the gentleman from California.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much, and let me pay my respects to the whole panel, especially Mr. Perle. Dr. Perle, thank you for spending the time with us today, and thank you for your great service to our country. Dr. Perle, of course, was very important when I was in the Reagan Administration in laying out the theories that led to the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War, the peace-through-strength proposal that led, with President Reagan's leadership, to a more peaceful world. I think there were people on the other side of that, maybe at the Carnegie Institute, who fought us in several of our efforts back in those days as well.
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The only thing that we are going to get widespread support from—and with all due respect to Ms. Mathews and General Boyd, and to my colleague, Mr. Faleomavaega—is, as Ms. Mathews indicated, getting rid of the weapons, getting rid—and that is if we can count on getting rid of all the weapons, which I have never seen evidence that we can for sure be sure certain that we have gotten rid of all the weapons.
But let me note this. Once we have eliminated the weapons that we do find, Ms. Mathews, doesn't this mean that we just start the process all over again? Isn't what happened, that what we have right now and the fact that we are in this pickle right now and that we are in jeopardy to the likes of Saddam Hussein—isn't this due to the fact that we had this passion for a multilateral support and an effort last time around, and we gave in to our allies in not taking out Saddam Hussein that 10 years ago? Isn't that what this is all about? We gave in to our allies saying don't take out Saddam Hussein 10 years ago, and now here we are in jeopardy again?
Aren't you just talking about starting that same cycle all over again, and a few years down the road we are going to be right, and you are going to be right there saying, let us go to our allies and make sure that they concur with us, and then we end up with a half-hearted effort?
Ms. MATHEWS. The choice that we made not to end the war with the death of Saddam Hussein in 1991 had nothing to do with our allies. It was our own choice.
Secondly, the answer to your question about whether we would have to start all over again in 2 years again is no. The inspection regime, as already written, presupposes a highly intrusive, open-ended, ongoing monitoring and verification phase after the disarmament phase.
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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, I would suggest this. The only allies that count in this effort are the people of Iraq. And we have the people of Iraq on our side. And I will tell you that I am very disturbed at listening to your testimony suggesting that the people of Iraq will not welcome the United States' efforts to help them rid themselves of Saddam Hussein. I think that there is some type of a fundamental misunderstanding that you have about what people who live under such tyrants really feel; because if you lived under this kind of tyranny and you saw some Americans working with Iraqis to get rid of Saddam Hussein, I think you would be doing what they will be doing when we liberate Baghdad. And that is, they will be dancing in the streets, waving American flags, thanking us for ridding themselves of this gangster who has been murdering their own people for so long.
All this caution that we have about going in—and I think that we have to be very reasonable and rational about it, but we shouldn't show caution about the feelings of some of our, quote, allies, who they themselves have less than free countries. We should be concerned about the people of Iraq and making sure they are on our side.
Mr. Perle, do you have something to say about that?
Mr. PERLE. Well, I very much agree with that. And I think—I am sure that Jessica doesn't intend it this way, but it sounds to me a rather demeaning characterization of the Iraqi people to suggest that they would not wish to see the end of this tyrannical rule. Of course they would. Anybody would. And this, I am afraid, is part of a larger tendency to believe that somehow the Arab world isn't fit for democracy, isn't fit for decent government. That is not the explicit argument, but it is certainly implicit in much of what we hear.
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And, finally, that is one reason why the President is, in my view, absolutely right to argue that this is more than a question about inspections. There are other issues here. There are other U.N. resolutions, including resolutions dealing with the way Saddam deals with his own people. There are those who want to reduce it to the very narrow question of the return of inspectors. And this clearly is Saddam's preferred tactic at the moment. But the issue here is much broader than simply the question of inspections, which I think, as a practical matter, won't work anyway.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, Ronald Reagan showed that if you have a long-term goal of freedom and democracy, it also brings peace. And I think that is what is going to happen in Iraq, too.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. The time has expired.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from Georgia, Ms. McKinney.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Perle, my first and second questions are for you. Ms. Mathews, I have several questions for you.
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My first question for Mr. Perle: On behalf of the many young men and women in our Armed Forces who won't be paid their high deployment overtime pay as they are just about to be sent off to war in Iraq, because President Bush signed an Executive order denying them their pay, do you intend to ask the President to reinstate the overtime pay of our young men and women?
The second question that I would ask for Mr. Perle is the Sunday Observer, December 12, 2001, entitled ''Secret U.S. Plan for Iraq War,'' mentions James Woolsey, Paul Wolfowitz, Tommy Franks, as having participated in secret plans to prosecute the war in Iraq. But most disconcerting is the final paragraph of this article which states that the most adventurous ingredient in the anti-Iraqi proposal is the use of U.S. ground troops, Pentagon sources say. Significant numbers of ground troops could also be called on in the early stages of any rebellion to guard oil fields around the port of Basrah in southern Iraq.
In addition to the Administration having come up with the idea of hitting Saddam on weapons of mass destruction only after the Europeans told the United States that Iraqi links to 9/11 were circumstantial at best, is it true that U.S. troops will guard oil fields near Basrah?
My questions for Ms. Mathews: Why would the United States Government need to spend $200 million to convince the American people that Saddam must be ousted? I have an article here that the Administration is about to launch a $200 million campaign which will be overseen by the Office of Global Communications—which sounds something eerily like the Office of Strategic Influence, which was denounced publicly. Yet, this Office of Global Communications, its existence won't be announced until next month. Why is it that we have to spend this amount of money to convince the American people that this is the right thing to do?
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I also have a question for Ms. Mathews again. And this President tells us that we are going to war in order to ensure peace. How can we believe this President when we failed to use U.S. troops to ensure the peace in East Timor when it was the Indonesians; in Afghanistan when it was the Taliban; in Rwanda when it was genocide; in Sierra Leone, when it was the RUF; and in the Democratic Republic of Congo right now with the aggression with respect to Rwanda and Uganda?
Those are the questions that I would like to have answered, starting with you, Mr. Perle.
Mr. PERLE. Well, I have no particular insight into the question of pay and bonuses, so I am afraid I can't——
Ms. MCKINNEY. But you sit on the defense board.
Mr. PERLE. Yes, But the——
Ms. MCKINNEY. Don't you set policy?
Mr. PERLE. No, No. That is a misconception. The Defense Policy Board is a group of individuals who advise the Secretary of Defense, but only on some issues. And that is not an issue that——
Ms. MCKINNEY. Well, don't you think it would be advisable that the men and women who are being asked to fight the war be paid for fighting the war?
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Mr. PERLE. Yes. I happen to think that we should extend ourselves with respect to our troops. And I would cheerfully testify in favor of budget increases to accomplish that.
On your second question, I have no knowledge of the plan that you refer to. I have my doubts that the Observer newspaper in London is well-informed on these matters. But you should put that question to General Franks—or, Jim Woolsey is right there in front of you. I have no knowledge of it.
Mr. WOOLSEY. I've never met General Franks, Congresswoman.
Ms. MCKINNEY. That wasn't the question that was asked.
Mr. WOOLSEY. But if I was supposed to be planning a secret war with him, then presumably I would have met him, and I did not.
Ms. MCKINNEY. No, No. Was there a plan to go to war prior to the announcements now? And did you participate in those plans?
Mr. WOOLSEY. I have no idea. I have been in Defense Policy Board meetings that Richard chairs. But our plans for war are not the provenance of advisory boards consisting of former folks who worked in government and come in for a couple days several times a year. And no military, and certainly not Don Rumsfeld, and certainly not the Joint Chiefs, would delegate any planning responsibility to——
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Ms. MCKINNEY. Well, actually the article says it was Paul Wolfowitz.
Mr. WOOLSEY. Well, neither would Paul Wolfowitz.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Well, I don't want to use all of my time. I would like to get to Ms. Mathews.
Ms. MATHEWS. Congresswoman, on your first question I think it is best addressed to the Administration itself.
On the question of peace, I guess my only comment would be that if our goal is disarming Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which I believe it should be, I believe there is a credible, peaceful way to achieve it.
Ms. MCKINNEY. And your comment, your response to the $200 million that the President intends to use to convince the American people that going to war against Saddam Hussein is the right thing to do through this Office of Global Communications, which is as yet unannounced?
Ms. MATHEWS. Well, as I said, I think the question of the legitimacy of that, of the details of it, is best addressed to the Administration.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. The time of the gentlelady has expired.
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Chairman Royce.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, former Director Woolsey. I was going to ask you, we have heard conflicting reports on Saddam Hussein's capability to develop nuclear weapons, and clearly that is a strategic goal of Iraq. But some say it is only a matter of months; that is the view of some of the defectors. Others say it would take years.
I think it was National Security Adviser Condi Rice who said she did not want to wait to see the exploding mushroom cloud to know that he had accomplished his goal of finishing the bomb.
In your estimate, how long until Iraq possesses that type of weapon? And I ask that, because earlier this year I had an opportunity to go to Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Afghanistan, and the borders are very porous. And one of the assertions that you hear is that at one time it was possible to buy anything in Central Asia from organized crime, including enriched uranium. I think we have got to wrestle with this question about his capability to develop that type of a weapon. And I wanted your expertise on it.
Mr. WOOLSEY. Congressman, I agree very much. I think the only reasonable answer is when Saddam could have his first nuclear weapon is within a few months at most of the time he has 40 pounds or so of highly enriched uranium, which is about the amount you need for a primitive bomb. We know through Khidhir Hamza, who headed the program and came out of Iraq in 1994, how well-developed the program was in terms of design, in terms of expertise, in terms of the components of the weapon other than the fissionable material. And we know that Saddam came close to having enough fissionable material even after the Osirik reactor was destroyed in 1981. He came close to having enough—Hamza has the numbers in his book—until the war in 1991 interrupted his progress. We know that he is proceeding not to use large reactors and plutonium, but rather to use highly enriched uranium which can be enriched through, among other things, gas centrifuges which can be relatively small. I believe the evidence is quite good that he is seeking to import material for gas centrifuges.
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So if he needs further fissionable material to what he has now, and needs to produce that himself from facilities inside Iraq, it could be months, it could be a year or two, but as soon as he has the fissionable material he will in relatively short order have a weapon.
The key point is the one you mention, that he does not necessarily need to produce this fissionable material himself. About a month ago, an operation—a joint operation by Russians and Americans—seized approximately 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium in former Yugoslavia. That would be enough for about two bombs and a bit. There are facilities in the former Soviet Union—there are even some in Africa—which have enriched, in some cases even highly enriched, uranium of bomb quality which are not well guarded. There are real possibilities of organized crime selling such material.
I was interviewed a few months ago by a French television network who believed that they had in Bulgaria the previous year purchased an artillery shell that had nuclear fissile material in it from Russian organized crime. They had an expert with them who verified it. They gave it back; they didn't keep the artillery shell. There was a special on French television about this.
There are a lot of risks to sitting and waiting and hoping that we would know before he has a nuclear weapon. That is why I believe Condi Rice is exactly right, and in a way it is my main problem with the proposal that Ms. Mathews and General Boyd have made. My main concern is delay. Each month that goes by makes it more likely he will have a nuclear weapon and will have one quite possibly without our knowing, because he can do this underground, he can do it in small facilities, and he is working very hard at it.
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Mr. ROYCE. Based on his past behavior with respect to using chemical weapons in Iran, and his attacks on the Kurds, would you say that if he had that type of weapon, this is the type of personality that could use that type of weapon?
Mr. WOOLSEY. He might use it in a sort of ''twilight of the gods'' as-he-goes-down kind of situation. He might use it in some effort—he has talked about it reportedly—against Israel. He lacks a number of the types of delivery vehicles that he would like to have, I am sure, so he will be limited for some time in how he can strike at long range. But I think one of the main uses he would make of it would be to let it be known that he had such a weapon, and use it to deter the forming of coalitions against him, use it to deter his neighbors from cooperating with us. And that would be the main problem, as he sought to dominate the Middle East.
General Boyd quite reasonably said he is concerned now about the possibility that as we marshal our forces near Iraq, Iraq might use weapons of mass destruction such as, let us say, biologicals.
Such as, let us say, biologicals. If we are worried about that now, we and Iraq's other neighbors will be more worried next month and the month after and the month after. So as far as all these proposals for inspections and all the rest, I don't have any massive problem with them as long as they don't take more than another month or so. But I think we ought to be ready by the time cool weather would permit action against Iraq to move forward.
Mr. ROYCE. But let us get to the point of a suitcase bomb. How do we know he doesn't pass that off to a terrorist organization?
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Mr. WOOLSEY. He could conceivably get hold of one of the atomic demolition munitions that the Russians—Soviets have had in the past, and there have been reports from General Lebed and others that some of those were missing. They are not quite suitcase, but they are pretty small. It is not unimaginable that he could acquire something like that and even give it to a terrorist group. I am more concerned about the possibility that he would acquire enough fissionable material to have a couple of bombs and then publicize the fact and use that in order to keep coalitions from forming against him and permit him to dominate the Middle East.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Mr. Sherman.
Mr. SHERMAN. I hope this is a hearing about nuclear weapons, because if it is a matter about all U.N. resolutions, then we should have a hearing about invading Syria or a host of other nations. We had in this very room yesterday hearings on Syria that show that that government accepts that the development of nuclear weapons is just as bad. They are, of course, in violation of the U.N.—a host of U.N. resolutions, including those dealing with the withdrawal from Lebanon. In fact, when you realize that there are U.N. resolutions imploring member states to follow the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, you could argue that a decision—a new doctrine of this Administration that we invade every nation that violates U.N. resolutions could involve a majority of the U.N. member states.
Either this is about all U.N. resolutions, or I hope it is about U.N. resolutions dealing with nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are important, because they can be smuggled into the United States and once they are hidden in any apartment building in any city, then America can be blackmailed into not being involved when, for example, Saddam decides to reoccupy Kuwait.
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Now, there are three approaches we can take to nuclear weapons. The first was the consensus approach until September 10th of last year, and that was to simply turn a blind eye and let Saddam do whatever he is going to do while trying to limit the money that he has to do it.
President Bush never departed from that until after the tragedy of September 11th. President Clinton departed from it once when—in late 1998, in response to the U.N. report that its inspectors had been barred and that the rules for those inspections had been violated. We will remember that when there were limited modest and, upon reflection, inadequate responses from the Clinton Administration, the other party came forward with a torrent of some of the most ugly political rhetoric questioning President Clinton's motives.
I am proud that the people on this side of the aisle are ready to unite behind President Bush without politics playing a role and are here to discuss policy, not to decry politics.
There are two reasonable approaches, both represented by our witnesses here today. One is, invade now, or to put it another way, give Saddam a week to stop persecuting his own people and to morph into Mother Teresa, and then if he doesn't, then invade. I call that ''the invade now or the invade next week strategy.''
The other approach is to invade unless the most extreme, intrusive, continuous, unimpeded inspections take place. That is ''the invade unless strategy.''
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We are going, in this Committee, to do the most important work this Committee can do, probably the most important work we will do in a decade, and that is to mark up the resolution to authorize the use of force under some circumstances. There are two approaches this Committee can take. We can take the policy setting approach, or we can take the policy abdication approach. One possible draft will simply state the President is authorized to use force against Iraq whenever he feels like it is a good idea. The other approach will be one that conditions the authorization for the use of force on a failure of Saddam to allow the most extreme kinds of inspections.
My hope is that we will debate that, and it will not be that we are abdicating to the President, that we are not going to just say, well, the President can do whatever he wants. If you look at the Constitution, it says that foreign policy is supposed to be set—and I know people familiar with post-World War II history and not familiar with the Constitution are unaware of this—is supposed to be set by the United States Congress. I hope that we will either have a resolution that says invade now or invade if Saddam doesn't morph into Mother Teresa in a week or one that says invade only if and when Saddam fails to concede—consent to these extreme inspections. One way or the other.
My fear is that we in Congress will simply say we are not up to the task set for us by the Constitution, we can't decide—let the President decide whether to invade now or invade unless. I hope that the input you have given will allow us to feel up to that task, and I look forward to drafting that resolution.
I would welcome comment from the panel, either in writing if time does not permit or now if the Chairman wants to indulge me. And I don't, frankly, deserve that indulgence.
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Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. I would just tell the panelists, we have four votes scheduled for 2:30. We have been in touch with Secretary Powell, who has agreed to appear before the Committee an hour later. So we can extend this a little bit. The panelists have just been advised, and they graciously have agreed to that as well. So—although we have not gotten to Dr. Perle to see whether or not he can remain—I would ask Members to keep it brief, because there still are several who have to ask questions and I don't want their time to be intruded upon.
But, briefly, if you could respond to Mr. Sherman and then we will go to Dr. Paul of Texas.
Mr. WOOLSEY. I will just say a quick word, Congressman.
I think that is a very well-structured and wryly humorous formulation. I think that the issue is time. It is obviously not going to be the case that Saddam Hussein is going to morph into Mother Teresa. I think it is only slightly more likely that he would accept a truly intrusive and effective inspection regime. But if it doesn't take more than a few weeks, it seems to me that there is a bit of room here, but only a very little bit, for the various schools to try to coalesce around something.
My fear is that he will do what he has done time and time and time again in the 1990s, which is accept something superficially and then start stalling, and he will have the Secretary General, perhaps, suggesting, well, it doesn't need to be that demanding and so on and so on.
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So whether it is morphing into Mother Teresa or accepting very extreme inspections plus the requirement that people be able to be interviewed outside Iraq with their families, if we can get absolute clarity on that within the next few weeks, to me, that is within the realm of reason. What I am worried about is letting the winter get behind us.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Dr. Paul.
Mr. PERLE. Well, I would like to come back to a relevant point which arose earlier, and that was the question, what is the trigger; because if you are talking about inspections, even an aggressive inspection program, the trigger is the key. You have to ask, ''under what circumstances do you go to the Phase 2 that is been proposed here?'' And I promise you, any discovery, if one were made, would be ambiguous. Any interference with an inspection regime would be ambiguous.
So the inspectors set out to visit a site, because they believe they may find something, and the highway is blocked. The highway is blocked because there is a tractor-trailer that has overturned. Is that a casus belli? Does that take us into an act of war?
It isn't as clear-cut as the theory seems to suggest. So when you talk about even a very aggressive inspection scheme, the implementation of such a scheme is enormously difficult, and the circumstances are never as clear as you envision when you are putting that forward as a proposal.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. The gentleman from Texas.
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Mr. PAUL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I first want to express my disappointment about the hearing, because in many ways it is very one-sided. We don't—we haven't heard that there may be a diplomatic solution to this. We haven't heard about containment. And that, to me, is a shame. This is all one-sided. But fortunately I think the American people will see through this.
The Senate hearings were the same way. This turns out to be more propaganda for war than anything else, so I am disappointed and also I want to mention about the resolutions.
This concentration—and the gentleman before me did mention this—if this is about resolution, this is a joke. I mean, literally hundreds of U.N. resolutions have been ignored. If you want to deal with a serious resolution in a serious place in the world, why don't you go to Kashmir? Nuclear weapons on both sides, and they ignore U.N. resolutions. So this has nothing to do with U.N. resolutions. That is a sham, and I think it is disappointing that we place so much emphasis on that.
There are nukes around the world. There has been no indication that Saddam Hussein has this. We are willing to go to war over phantom weapons, and I think we are falling into a serious trap. The trap is that we are going to look like we support the Christian West against the Muslim East, which they have been arguing all along.
Twenty Arab nations have condemned this proposal to go to war, and I think that this is going to turn out to be a monstrous mistake. There is no indication that Saddam Hussein is related to the 9/11 terrorism, even though the public has come to believe this because of the propaganda that we hear.
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But my questions to you are the costs—because those are difficult problems, and we have heard all the hyperbole over it. And fortunately for our Administration they have been straightforward on this. They have told the American people $200 billion, and we don't even know what the results will be, and we don't know what the oil will cost. I want to know more about the cost and what this means because, you know, if the American people knew that $200 billion would come out of Social Security, boy, they would wake up all of a sudden. And all funds are fungible; all Social Security money goes to the general revenue. All they hold are Treasury bills.
So if you say it is $200 billion, that means there is a $200 billion possibility to undermine the Social Security system, and we should not ignore that.
But I want to know about some other costs, and the question I have now will be directed more to Mr. Woolsey and Mr. Perle, because I want to quantify what you two think this war is worth in terms of human life, American human life, American soldiers.
Vietnam cost us 60,000 soldiers. Is this worth 30? If it cost 30,000 American soldiers? I want to know if you think it is worth 30,000, plus 20,000 more probably wounded or injured or coming back with Persian Gulf War Syndrome that was totally ignored by the U.S. Congress. I want to know if that is really worth it, to lose 30,000.
Or how much do you think it is worth if I told you we would lose a million? Of course, nobody would believe it, and it wouldn't be true, but realistically we could lose 10-, 20-, 30,000 men. Is this war worth it? And I think we should answer that as honestly as possible and not just say, yeah, it is necessary, because, you know, maybe down the road we would lose even more lives.
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But also I would like to know from the two of you, is this war worth your life? Are you willing to go to the front line and expose yourself to this type of danger? That is really what counts. That is what I look at as a Member of Congress. If I ever vote for a declaration of war, that means it is like an intruder came into my house and I will sacrifice my life for my family. That is when we should go to war, and I would like to know from the two of you, do you feel that strongly that you would be willing to expose your life to pursue this cause that you so adamantly push?
Ms. MCKINNEY. Or that of the young people and their families.
Mr. WOOLSEY. I will take that one on.
I have three sons in their 20s. I served 2 years in the U.S. Army. I flew a desk working on intelligence matters; I was not in combat. I was opposed to the Vietnam War. Indeed I founded and chaired Yale Citizens for Eugene McCarthy for President in 1967–1968, but I went on active duty immediately after that, and I would have gone to Vietnam had I been ordered to. I think a political difference is a different thing from being willing to serve the country.
I don't think it is up to private citizens to tell you how much succeeding in freeing Iraq and ridding the Mideast of this threat is worth, Congressman. The country decided that ending Nazism and Japanese militarism was worth over approximately half a million American deaths and that ending slavery in the American South was worth hundreds and hundreds of thousands of deaths.
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I think that only the elected representatives of the people and the President can make a decision on whether war is worth the sacrifices that we and our families would be called upon to make, and the families of our people who serve in the military.
But in answer to your direct question, yes, 60-year-old civilians long out of the Reserves are not normally considered frontline troops, but if I could be of assistance in this war, yes, I would be.
Mr. PERLE. Well, I find the question a particularly troubling question, because the suggestion is that somehow it is illegitimate to make recommendations with respect to what one believes is in the best interest of the country and all of our citizens, except in some intensely personal context.
I am obviously not competent to contribute very much in my age and condition to the front lines, but I believe that action to deal with Saddam Hussein sooner rather than later is in the best interest of protecting the lives of the American people, and if I were in a position to serve, I would do so.
But that seems to me quite the wrong question, Congressman. The question is how do we best protect the citizens of this country. And I believe that purpose is best accomplished by not waiting until Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons, by not waiting until he has improved and perfected his chemical and biological weapons, by not waiting and hoping for the best.
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We waited too long before September 11th, and some thousands of Americans lost their lives, and we mustn't repeat that mistake.
Mr. WOOLSEY. Could I add one point, Mr. Chairman? I am sorry. Just one short sentence.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Mr. Woolsey.
Mr. WOOLSEY. This so-called ''chicken/hawk argument'' does seem to me to be an extraordinarily unworthy argument, and I think Senator John McCain has put it exactly where it belongs. For one thing, it says that if an American woman or an openly gay American man supports the war, or an over-military-age American man, that that is an unworthy and ought to be an unconsidered opinion because none of those people are going to serve in combat. I join Mr. Perle in saying that I think that it is an extraordinarily unworthy, ad hominem argument.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Delahunt.
Mr. DELAHUNT. I thank the Chair, and I would comment to my friend from Texas that maybe if we instituted the draft and we only drafted males over 60, you and I would go and maybe we would have a different attitude about it.
In any event, I would like to direct my questions to Ms. Mathews just for the sake of brevity.
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I think it was Dr. Paul that talked about how do we protect America and how do we protect our citizens. Do you have information, or do you know whether Iran and North Korea possess weapons of mass destruction? And if you have that information acquired over time, do you know at what stage their development of weapons of mass destruction may be?
Ms. MATHEWS. We know that Iran has been covertly, and in violation of its Nonproliferation Treaty commitment, pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that. And we know that in all probability they have greater capability even right now than Iraq does.
One of the risks of a war—and I do agree with the previous point in this respect. This hearing has not really grappled with the cost of a war, and in fact, I think there is a good deal more agreement on this panel than there has seemed in the key respect that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction do pose a threat that needs to be dealt with.
Mr. DELAHUNT. I understand that, Ms. Mathews, but again, if you could direct——
Ms. MATHEWS. But I think one of the great risks that goes directly to your question of a war is the likelihood that it will prompt Iran to withdraw from the NPT just as the United States just withdrew from the ABM Treaty, to say that it believes it needs nuclear weapons in order to prevent the same thing from happening to itself. And I believe that if that were to happen, it would never be walked back, because nuclear weapons would instantly become the focus of Iranian nationalism, just as they were in Pakistan, and we would have a very different and much more dangerous Middle East.
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Mr. DELAHUNT. Again, I included in my question North Korea.
Ms. MATHEWS. The last time that I had access to classified information the North Korean program was on hold.
Mr. DELAHUNT. If you could, would you describe it in any comparable terms to the situation or to the development of the program in Iraq? If you don't know, you don't know.
Ms. MATHEWS. I think it is in a very different situation right now, because the Framework for Cooperation with North Korea has established a framework that has put that program into a very different mode than it was in before. I don't question in any way the threat that Iraq's weapons of—the determination in Iraq to acquire weapons of mass destruction. I do——
Mr. DELAHUNT. Let me restate the question just a bit then.
You suggested Iran is more advanced in terms of the possession and the development of weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear device. Is that a fair statement?
Ms. MATHEWS. Of what we knew for certain when we left in 1998, which is what we know for certain, when the inspectors left Iraq in 1998——
Mr. DELAHUNT. I am talking Iran.
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Ms. MATHEWS [continuing]. Plus what we can estimate to be either possible or probable——
Mr. DELAHUNT. Then it is a fair statement, the one that I am making?
Ms. MATHEWS. Yes.
Mr. DELAHUNT. And what we hear is a sense of urgency.
I think it was Dr. Woolsey that talked about a month. I guess we can conclude then, that ought to be of more concern to Congress and to the American people, what is happening in Iraq, than in either Iran or north Korea. Is that a reasonable inference?
Ms. MATHEWS. That would be a reasonable inference. I don't think it is valid.
Mr. DELAHUNT. You don't think it is valid?
Mr. WOOLSEY. It is also not what I said.
Mr. DELAHUNT. I don't think I alluded, Dr. Woolsey, to you making any comments about Iran or North Korea.
Mr. WOOLSEY. No. The one month. I did not say one month, and I think that Ms. Tuchman said that—Ms. Mathews said that it was not valid—and I just wanted it on the record that I said ''months'' from the time they had the fissionable material.
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Mr. DELAHUNT. That is fine.
Ms. MATHEWS. Actually what you said—I wrote it down—was ''a month or so.''
Mr. DELAHUNT. That was my memory, too, but we have a record we can check.
Ms. MATHEWS. The issue—if Iraq were to get fissile material out of the—somewhere—from the former Soviet Union, which is the most likely place, then they probably—or they might have a nuclear weapon in a matter of months. That might have happened last year, 2 years ago, 4 years ago; or it could happen tomorrow.
Mr. DELAHUNT. But the concern really is a question of intention.
We have known for years, we knew during the 1980s when we supported Iraq, that they had chemical and biological weapons at their disposal. We supported Iraq. We, in fact, installed an Embassy in Iraq. We were aware of what they were doing in terms of the use of weapons of mass destruction against the Iranians at that point in time.
Now, I guess what I am suggesting is that this is really more a determination when the President describes Iran, North Korea and Iraq as the ''axis of evil,'' it would appear to be that, given the concern and the focus on Iraq, that the magnitude of evil in Iraq far surpasses that of Iran and North Korea; given, I guess, what we presume to be the intentions of those particular regimes; and given the articulation, not just by Dr. Woolsey, but by others about urgency, that is the point I am trying to drive at.
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Ms. Mathews.
Ms. MATHEWS. This is an enormously important point. To the best of my knowledge, certainly in the public domain and including everything the Administration has said, there is no reason for a sense of urgency on the order of weeks or days or months here. There is nothing that has happened.
There is no intelligence that suggests that we have some greater additional new reason to feel a sense of urgency that we shouldn't have felt in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001. There is no new intelligence, at least that the Administration has been able or willing to make public to do it. There is no—there is no sense of new immediacy.
There is time—in other words, there is time to do this right. There is not time—I agree with Jim, there is not time for endless delay.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Dr. Perle, very briefly.
Mr. PERLE. Simply to say that I think the situation was more urgent in 1998 than we understood, and now, partly under the influence of September 11th, but partly because you have a new Administration looking at this, this sense of urgency has come to the fore.
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We were dangerously remiss, in my view, in not taking serious action to deal with Saddam Hussein much before now; and in particular when the inspectors were unceremoniously expelled from Iraq.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Mr. Woolsey, I see you have a brief——
Mr. WOOLSEY. Very, for an intervention.
Ms. Mathews said no urgency in terms of days, weeks or months, plural. I believe there is definitely urgency in terms of months, because the winter months are the times in which our soldiers would be able to be in protective gear for chemical weapons in the desert. So if this delay occurs and takes us past midwinter, I believe that we are, in effect, delayed for another year, and that, I think, would be extremely irresponsible indeed.
I never got past——
Mr. DELAHUNT. I will give you a——
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Let me—I do have to go to the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Smith. If time permits, we will get back to you, Mr. Delahunt.
Mr. SMITH OF MICHIGAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Reviewing where we are now, our current quest is to get more international support and go to the United Nations Security Council for U.N. authorization. I think it is important that Congress pass a resolution giving our support for addressing the problems in Iraq to the President, because I think that it is going to help encourage the United Nations to take action. I would just suggest that if the United Nations doesn't take some actions to start enforcing some of the many resolutions that are not being enforced, then I think they are going to become even more insignificant in their activities for world peace.
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Let me ask all of our panelists three questions, and if you would take notes of the three questions, maybe each of you can respond to them briefly. The first is, are there ways to implement current U.N. resolutions without getting bogged down in Security Council debate over a new resolution?
The next question is what would you think would be our prime objective as far as going into Iraq? Would it be Saddam Hussein, would it be weapons of mass destruction, or would it be terrorist networks and the problem of terrorism in that country and that support?
And the third question is, what do we do in the aftermath if there is an attack. Assuming we force a regime change in Iraq, who would rule? How would we lay down our responsibilities there—in other words, our exit strategy? Or how long do you suspect we are going to have to be there, or other forces are going to have to be there? So for the sake of time, I would jumble all three questions together, and maybe just starting with you, Mr. Perle, and then Mr. Woolsey, Ms. Mathews, General, if you have a comment.
Mr. PERLE. Well, Congressman, the questions require a degree of prescience that I am not sure I can muster.
With respect to the earlier resolutions, I think a case can be made that the earlier resolutions invite member countries to do whatever they can to secure compliance, and so I am not sure that a resolution is needed. The President has chosen to go to the United Nations, and I think that is commendable; and he did it in a brilliant speech. So we ought to get a resolution now under those circumstances, but I am not sure that it was technically necessary.
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As for the prime objective, it is my view—no one can prove this—that as long as Saddam Hussein and his regime are in power, he will pose a threat to this country and to the world, and he will try continuously to perfect and improve the weapons he already has and to acquire more; and we may play an inspection game with him, but he will be relentless in this respect, and he has every chance of succeeding, in hiding better than we can find.
Finally, as to the aftermath, I would hope and believe that the people of Iraq, who are sophisticated and educated and have the capacity for decent self-government, would with some help from the United States bring to power in that country people capable of governing in a decent and humane way, in a way that brings all of the people of Iraq together.
The Iraqi National Congress has been in existence for many years. It has a manifesto that calls for democracy, calls for renouncing weapons of mass destruction, calls for supporting the peace process in the region. That would be a very good place to start.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Mr. Woolsey.
Mr. WOOLSEY. Congressman, very briefly, I agree with Richard's answer on the first question about the U.N. resolutions.
As far as the objective, I think it has to be a regime change and not just Saddam; as I said earlier, his son Qusay would be as bad or worse. And I think it is not justifying the weapons of mass destruction facilities, because there are hundreds of them—from defectors we know this—in the country, and one has to effectively take over the country in order to deal with them. That has been my problem with the inspection regime that was proposed here today all along.
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Terrorist networks. There have been definitely ties of one kind or another to terrorist networks over the years. There are some facilities. For example, at Salman Pak, just south of Baghdad, the Iraqis have trained for years Islamists, non-Iraqi religious fundamentalists, in hijacking aircraft. We don't have any smoking gun that relates that to 9/11, but there are terrorist training facilities, and all of these, I think, would be the types of things that we need to get rid of with a regime change.
In the aftermath of a regime change, I believe we would be well advised to plan to be in Iraq for at least a few years, hopefully together with allies, and hopefully in decreasing numbers, because I do believe that Bernard Lewis, who in my judgment is our greatest expert in this country on the Mideast, says that Iraq is the Arab country best suited to democracy. Because it has an educated population, it has had 40 years of tyranny and the people would like nothing better than to have decent government. And it is a potentially wealthy country. It has the second largest oil reserves in the world.
He also believes that it would take some effort, but it is quite plausible to hold the country together in a federal structure and not have it fly apart.
So I believe we should work toward having a decent government in Iraq, moving toward a democracy, and the Iraqi people ought to choose their leader. We didn't choose Konrad Adenauer in the late 1940s in Germany. We helped set up a system, de-Nazified the country, and the German people chose him. And I think that is the way things should go in Iraq.
Ms. MATHEWS. Congressman, I would associate myself with the previous speakers on your first and second questions. I don't think I have anything to add. If we did go to war in Iraq, the primary objective, I think, would in fact be regime change, and I think Richard Perle exactly spelled out the situation with respect to resolutions.
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On your third question, I think the only honest answer to the question of who would rule in Iraq after a war is that we don't know, and that is one of the great risks of a war, along with the question that Jim just alluded to of whether the country can be politically held together.
Some weeks ago when the Foreign Relations Committee in the other body held a hearing on this, a panel of regional experts was asked how long they would expect the need for American troops to be after a war. The minimum estimate among, I think, five panelists was 5 years, and the estimates ranged up to 20 years. This is for a very large contingent of American forces in order to basically hold Iraq together and rebuild it, and I believe that is one of the aspects of a war that has not gotten the attention it deserves.
General BOYD. I don't have much to add, but with respect to the first question, it strikes me that the interpretation presented in the existing resolutions do carry enough weight to take action, the interruption-of-the-war argument that Richard Perle made earlier. It seems to me, however, that we are assuming there that others would join us in our interpretation. From what I understand anyway of the debate in the U.N., that it would take another resolution to give clarity for action and to build the kind of support that I think we need—or that we would certainly benefit from having.
So I guess my answer is that I believe we have, for a variety of reasons—many of which have been discussed here today—I believe we can achieve that additional United Nations Security Council resolution now, where we couldn't have a month ago or 5 months ago, and may not be able to in the future if we don't do something very soon and very resolute.
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I don't have anything to add on the second question. I don't think in that case you can really separate Saddam from the WMD. I mean, both become the objective if you invade the place. I would say that there is no certainty about the future of WMD with a new regime, even if it is—unless we stay there in the way Jessica has just outlined. And that leads me to the last question.
I think I wouldn't argue with Bernard Lewis in that it is probably the country best suited to democracy. There is not much body of experience with democratic processes in that country either, and—which would lead me to believe it is not analogous to the post-World War II situation in Germany.
I would opt for an answer that would be that we will stay there a long time if we really want to form and shape the kind of governmental process that will go on in the future. It will take us a long time. I don't know what a long time is, but I don't think you do that in 5 years.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Thank you, General Boyd.
Mr. Meeks.
Mr. MEEKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank all of the panelists. This is indeed a difficult time for me, number one, being a New Yorker and what took place on 9/11, and being an American. We are in this debate in regard to Iraq at this particular time, and to be honest, I am still focused on the war on terrorism. I don't know, to me, it seems to be two different things—the war on terrorism and the war against Iraq.
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And 9/11 surely has changed a number of things for us, and I think has also resulted in how we think about foreign policy and how we think that we need to move, because when we are talking now in regards to Iraq, I believe that we are not just talking about Iraq. We are talking about how and what implications Iraq will have and what we do with Iraq in the rest of the world.
I have spent some time recently talking to individuals in my district and leaders from around the world and individuals that we call our allies in this war against terrorism, and two questions come up. What kind of world do we, as Americans, want our children to live in? And in the 21st century particularly, which national security strategy do Americans think is the best way to achieve security, stability and prosperity for Americans?
Perhaps, is it one that is based on the United States global cooperation, or is it based on the United States global dominance? I think that those are decisions that we have to make and what we have got to determine.
All through the testimony today I have heard mentioned—well, virtually by everybody—of the need of our allies and the countries or the neighbors of Iraq, for their security. Yet I have not heard, unless one of the panelists can tell me different, any of those allies, other than the British or the neighbors of Iraq, indicate that they would like for the United States to go on a unilateral basis to strike Iraq. These are the individuals that would be in the most danger.
From all the information that I have heard—and that is what I am trying to get; I am trying to get information. I have not heard today one scintilla of evidence or information that says Iraq is now ready to strike the United States of America, or has the capability to do that now, or could do it in a month. I have not heard that. And for me, that becomes of importance, because I think that my job, my first job, is to protect the citizens of the United States of America.
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And when I saw what took place on 9/11, it wasn't a nuclear weapon that killed those 3,000 people in New York City or those at the Pentagon or those that died in Pennsylvania. It was the use of an airplane that was made as a weapon. And so I am concerned about this new type of terrorism.
So my first question is, and as I talked to—then I will say this. The other fact that I know is that there are people hell-bent on attacking us in America. Some individuals who have become our allies who were not our allies prior to 9/11, some doubted whether or not—I can remember an argument—discussions, debates here in Congress whether or not we should even chance Pakistan being an ally of ours against the war on terrorism, and they have proven to be a country which have fought and is now uncovering cells preventing individuals from attacking us. Same with Malaysia. Same with Indonesia. Same with—there is another that is eluding me right now.
But my first question then is, if in fact—and maybe I direct this to Mr. Perle. If we had some intelligence and/or knowledge that some of these Muslim countries—the majority of them are Muslim countries—that if we did unilaterally attack Iraq, without them being our allies, would that have a decrease in their cooperation against us? And against the known threats that are going to happen to us in America.
Would you feel that by attacking Iraq you could therefore decrease the security of American citizens? That would be my first question.
And then the second question that I will ask, because to me, it is also an overall theme of where we go from here. Do you think a winning strategy—you know, when we are fighting now in this era that we are in, in the permanent war against terrorism—do you think a winning strategy rests on the idea that the United States must maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new arrivals from rising up to challenge us on a world stage?
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Is that what is going to keep us in peace, just having overwhelming military presence? Mr. Perle.
Mr. PERLE. Mr. Meeks, I don't believe that an effective removal of Saddam Hussein from power would cause any of our friends to diminish their cooperation from us in the fight against terrorism. The countries that are working with us are doing so not because they are doing us a favor, but because they believe it is in their interest as well. At least that is what they say. They are opposed to terrorism, they are potentially victims of terrorism themselves, and so they are cooperating with us; and I see no reason to believe that that cooperation would cease or diminish if we were effective in removing Saddam Hussein.
In fact, I think the opposite is true. If we were now to recoil from dealing effectively with Saddam Hussein, it would convey an impression of weakness and irresolution that would be both an encouragement to terrorists and a discouragement to those who cooperate with us in the war on terror.
Finally, let me just say that a number of the countries that I think you have in mind have one view in public and another view in private, and I don't think any tears would be shed for Saddam Hussein in any of the countries that I think you are referring to.
Finally, with respect to American military strength, I think the United States is a force for stability in the world. We certainly have an obligation to protect our citizens, and I think we need to maintain whatever strength is necessary for that purpose, not to dominate others, but in order to be strong enough to discourage others from seeking to do harm to us and our friends and allies.
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Mr. MEEKS. My point simply is, though——
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. The gentleman suspend. We have four Members remaining and we have to be out of here by 2:30. So you have already gone—your questions are well taken, but I would ask you to conclude if you would, and maybe a brief response from our panelists.
Mr. MEEKS. I will respect my other Members. So I will yield back.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Ms. Lee.
Ms. LEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to also thank our panelists for their testimony and your willingness to really provide this Committee with the information which we need with regard to the grave and important decisions with which we are faced. Nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction, biological weapons, they are all pointed in all directions here in our world. I think it is up to us to make sure that no country—and I mean no country—ever uses these.
We know that robust, unfettered inspections probably would uncover what is in Iraq. It did not in the 1990s. The inspection process in the 1990s took on a search-and-destroy mission, and it is my understanding that much—and I think we have heard testimony—that much of what was found was destroyed.
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And I am still unclear about—and I understand what you all have said—with regard to regime change versus ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. I am trying to get some understanding of what you think our U.S. policy is, or should be, toward Iraq at this point. Should it be ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, or should it be, as a goal, regime change?
So let me just ask any of you who could respond to that. And also the second part of my question is in regard to this whole notion of the doctrine of preemption. Do you believe that once we engage in a first strike, a military attack to topple a regime—Saddam Hussein—do you think that our moral authority and our standing in the world as it relates to preemption, to first strike—for example, with regard to India and Pakistan or China and Taiwan—do you believe we have set another standard and would we allow such a launch of preemptive strikes by other countries? Would that be a new standard we have set and a new doctrine and a new part of our foreign policy that we have allowed to emerge?
Ms. MATHEWS. Perhaps I will start and very quickly address your two questions.
On the first, I do believe, as I began my initial statement, that the goal of U.S. policy in Iraq should be the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, the disarmament of those weapons and of the threat that Saddam poses outside his borders, outside his region and toward us.
Ms. LEE. Should be; but I am asking, what is it?
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Ms. MATHEWS. I think it is evolving. I think it is uncertain. I think it is not fully shaped.
I think both Houses of Congress have to have a say in this. And I think the President has very wisely made it clear that it matters to him what the community of nations believes in this as well. So I think it is in play.
On your second question, I think that the consequences of turning a tactic that has always been one available to the U.S. military and to U.S. policymakers, namely, of preemptive strikes, of turning that from a tactic into a doctrine would be enormously costly for the United States. As you suggested, it invites others to exercise that exact same doctrine on their own.
You can pick your own nightmare. For me, the most obvious one is a choice by India to say, well, we are facing terrorist strikes across our border. If the U.S. can go halfway around the world to fight them, we can certainly go a few tens of kilometers, and we are going to take preemptive action, too we might well have a nuclear war on our hands.
Ms. LEE. Could I ask Mr. Perle to respond to that, secondly, and then the other panelists, please?
Mr. PERLE. Sure. I think you have to look at the context, and the context here is one of a decade of Saddam Hussein's defiance of resolutions agreed to by the United Nations, as the President pointed out. We are not talking about a decision to take some preemptive action against a perfectly innocent state that menaces no one. We are talking about giving substance to what the U.N. has on many occasions declared.
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The President has gone back to the U.N. for still further expression, but I think the situation of Saddam Hussein, one of the most vicious tyrants on the face of the Earth, in open defiance of the U.N., is the context in which one has to look at the question of preemption; that is, taking action before he does. I don't believe Indian policy will in any way be affected by what we choose to do here. And the suggestion somehow that if we move against Iraq there may be a nuclear war in the subcontinent, I think is stretching things beyond any reason.
Ms. MATHEWS. But that is not remotely what I said. I was addressing the issue of adopting a doctrine of——
Mr. PERLE. Well, this isn't a question of doctrine. This is a question of what we do in the very practical circumstances we now face, circumstances in which Saddam has expelled inspectors for 4 years and continues to work away at acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
So we can be as theoretical as we would like. We have a problem, and we need a solution.
Mr. WOOLSEY. Congresswoman, let me take a crack at the two questions quickly, first of all, ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction or regime change.
In practical terms, I think these are exactly the same thing; I think, more and more, people are coming to realize that. I think that even in historical terms, a very ambitious inspection regime, which General Boyd and Ms. Mathews have suggested, I believe would be ineffective for the reasons that I stated. It doesn't have anything in it about taking people out of Iraq to interview them, them and their families, in order to learn where the hundreds of places are that one would have to look. And I think the military force, even if reasonably substantial, would effectively end up being a hostage and prevent our further military action.
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As far as preemption is concerned, I don't think we need to reach that issue. The other circumstances you described and the one that Ms. Mathews described with India and Pakistan are not parallel to what we have.
What we have here is a cease-fire agreement 11 years ago that temporarily ended a war in which all people of goodwill believe the other side is in violation of; and if you sign a cease-fire agreement that temporarily halts hostilities and then you violate it by developing and having in possession chemical weapons, bacteriological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles, and you are working hard on violating the fourth term, having nuclear weapons, it is a completely different situation under international law and otherwise than a situation such as India and Pakistan, where there is not a cease-fire agreement that anyone is violating as far as we know.
And that cease-fire agreement is implemented by these 15, 16, 17 U.N. resolutions which Saddam is also in violation of.
So I think the legal situation with respect to Iraq is completely different than a bolt-out-of-the-blue preemptive attack on one country by another.
Ms. LEE. General Boyd—are we done, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. With the time that remains, perhaps they could respond to another question.
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The Chair recognizes Chairman Leach, the gentleman from Iowa.
Mr. LEACH. It strikes me in all this that the Administration has made a very powerful legal case, but it is not necessarily a compelling one, and partly because they have overlooked one aspect of the legal case; and that aspect that they have overlooked underscores the dangers of action. And by that I mean, most of the legal case that has been made relates to Gulf War circumstances.
But it strikes me, the most powerful legal case is one that relates to international law, and it is called the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972, where it is illegal to develop, produce or stockpile biological agents. And if you are going to make the U.N. relevant, it is upholding this aspect of international law that strikes me as very important.
Now, having said that, we have underestimated the nature of biological agents. These are living organisms that have greater potential of jeopardizing life on the planet than all other weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear. And so we have a circumstance of MAD—the old Soviet doctrine, mutually assured destruction—and madness in the form of a head of state that is a very dangerous individual.
And we have also moved in the direction of shortchanging international law in the sense that we had an opportunity to upgrade the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention with a tougher inspections regime, that is a verification protocol, last year, and we turned back from that. We also have the option of moving forth with ratification of a comprehensive test ban which is a basis for intervention.
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And so what I would like to ask the three of you and also our visitor from afar is, should we be moving to upgrade this protocol? Should we be moving to a comprehensive test ban? Should we be recognizing that the regime change issue is one that may be more compelling than going to war is, and that this notion of biological agents being unleashed on the world is of such stunning significance that we have not given that enough thought in terms of our strategies, which clearly envision, I think, a rather ready conventional control of Iraq, but not necessarily before biological agents are unleashed.
Would you care to comment on that? First, Mr. Woolsey.
Mr. WOOLSEY. Congressman, I think you make excellent points.
On the biological weapons convention, there is a reasonable dispute about the nature of the inspection regime, and the Administration has not wanted to go forward with that because of the difficulty of it. I haven't decided what I think about it yet. It is a complicated question, and I haven't gotten into the details of it. I supported the Chemical Weapons Convention and the inspection regime there.
But quite apart from the Biological Weapons Convention's inspection regime, we know that Saddam is in violation of it, because we know he has anthrax, botulinum and aflatoxin. Aflatoxin is clearly only a terror weapon, because as far as we know, its only real use is to create liver cancer, principally in children, long term. It has no battlefield use at all.
So the fact that we know he is in violation of that convention strikes me as an important added reason for considering a regime change to be necessary.
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As far as a comprehensive test ban is concerned, I have long thought that if that had not been set at an absolute zero level, if we had set the level for testing at a level which could be verified; or if the test ban had not been perpetual, if it had been a trial period of 5 years or 10 years or something like that, we might well have been able to have worked with it. It was the fact that the Clinton Administration made it absolutely zero and perpetual, departing from a lot of the previous discussions and negotiations.
Mr. LEACH. As did the Eisenhower Administration, as did the Nixon Administration.
Mr. WOOLSEY. Not to my knowledge zero, Congressman; I don't think so.
Mr. LEACH. Yes, sir. This was a comprehensive test ban. The word is ''comprehensive.''
Mr. WOOLSEY. Well, there is a long history of this. We may have to do this off-line, but I don't think at the level of hydro tests and the like, those previous discussions ever envisioned an absolutely zero level.
Mr. LEACH. They surely did.
Ms. Mathews.
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Ms. MATHEWS. I do believe that the verification protocol that was being looked at a year-and-a-half ago was inadequate, but I believe a strong one could be drafted and it should be. It should be a very, very high priority. I think there will be broad international support for that effort, to create one that holds water. I also believe that the U.S. ought to ratify the CTB.
I would just add to your points that Saddam is also in violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty, the most widely signed and honored treaty in the world, 186 countries, by which he pledged not to seek nuclear weapons. So the legal case, as you say, is overwhelming.
The issue—the case is made for action. The question is whether the case has been made for war.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. General Boyd.
General BOYD. Obviously because of time I will only take a moment. With my work with the Hart-Rudman Commission, I came to believe what I think you have just said is your principle concern, that the greatest potential danger is in the world of biological weapons, and more so, in my own personal view, than with nuclear weapons.
Exactly what to do about it is beyond the scope of my time left, but it is certainly in the presence, in my view, of why it is essential to deal with these weapons in Iraq at this time. We only differ here today on the method that we get at it. That we should go and do it is simply not in question, in my mind.
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Mr. PERLE. Congressman, I certainly share your concern about the danger of the use of biological weapons and the horrendous potential they have for inflicting mass fatalities. I wish I thought that tweaking the protocol to the convention, banning them, would solve the problem. I don't think it will. I think we now have seriously to consider whether the idea of very broad and inclusive global agreements are the right way to protect against menaces like biological weapons or, for that matter, the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It may well be that a relatively small number of liberal democracies will have to band together to deal with those countries and in some cases even individuals who seem determined to acquire these terrible weapons.
And that approach may prove to be more effective than broad global agreements that are often violated and cannot be enforced, and I think it is worth noting, as Jessica Mathews just did, that Saddam has for a long time been in violation of the CTBT, and for a long time no one did anything about it. So simply passing more laws that are violated like the laws that went before them is not a solution by itself.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Mr. Blumenauer.
Mr. LEACH. If I can just conclude with a 10-second observation. A great deal of what Mr. Perle says is precisely right. On the other hand, when you have international law, you have a justification for action that can be respected by all parties in the world, not simply some geostrategists here in Washington. So the reason you have a treaty is to operate under the rubric of law. The reason you might have to act is to uphold the law. And that is all I am suggesting.
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Thank you.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Mr. Blumenauer.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I really appreciate the patience of the witnesses staying with us and adding, I think, valuable context to what we are wrestling with. I would just have one brief comment to my colleague, the Ranking Minority Member, when he talked about the liberation of Germany, and I was thinking this is not analogous. But even there, the liberation of Germany, because of a whole series of unintended consequences and circumstances that we didn't foresee, led to 40 years of oppression, dictatorship, and the world teetering on the balance. And it seems to me that it is not at all clear what the consequences are going to be if we move into a very unstable part of the world bent on regime change. It is not just innocent victims that might be killed. But we don't know what we are left with. And just even looking at the experience in Central Europe after World War II when we won ought to give us pause, I think.
I am intrigued, General, Dr. Mathews, with the proposal that you have brought forward. It seems to me that it is extraordinarily valuable to advance this type of strategy even if it doesn't work in terms of harnessing attention, focusing our efforts on unifying the world around us. And it may work, but if it doesn't, we are in a stronger position to hasten the day when there is a change in regime and when we don't have to fear weapons of mass destruction.
Even if your proposal is hopelessly impractical, it seems to me to be valuable, but I would like to give you a minute or two to respond to the notion that it is hopelessly impractical. We have heard a number of people, at least in the time I have been here, dismiss it. I don't feel comfortable with that dismissal, and I wonder if you want to elaborate a little bit on why your effort over a number of months with very distinguished people feel that this does have the potential of being successful.
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General BOYD. I am mindful that it is past 2:30, and I thought we were going to turn into a pumpkin or something. But I will take a minute. To your first point——
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Take two. I would rather you talk than me.
General BOYD. It is true. I was 7 years old in 1945, so I am not certain what was going on in Germany, but I don't recall many of the Germans in the streets waving American flags rejoicing their liberation even from one of the most heinous figures in human history.
To the second point, I would say just this. If you make up your mind that inspections cannot work, if obstruction would certainly occur, and always in such an ambiguous way that you could never distinguish whether it was really obstruction or not, and thus make your case. If you really believe that, then that seems to me to be an excessively pessimistic or almost a defeatist notion, and I reject it. I believe that structured properly, forcefully, and with clarity to the alternative, that that process can work. But I would always give myself an exit strategy, and the exit strategy is this: That if I cannot make it work, I have got a stronger hammer to use after its failure.
But we are faced with this particular case, this particular moment in history. We are going to deal with this issue in other places in other times in the future, and I don't want to be in a position where I only have one arrow in my quiver, and that is always the arrow of invasion, preemptive action, when I feel threatened. And I reject as frankly unrealistic that preemption could ever be used in a context where a perfectly benign neighboring state would be invaded. People always invade or always contemplate action when they truly feel threatened for whatever reason.
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So I only conclude in that I am willing to take—I share the objectives ultimately of I think all of our panelists here, but I don't have the sense of urgency that I can't take a little time to try a system that may produce the results that I achieve without going to war.
Ms. MATHEWS. Let me just add something to that, because I think General Boyd raised the key question about the efficacy of inspections per se, which is something we have alluded to a lot today but haven't really grappled with in any kind of a satisfactory way.
If you look at the list of the participants who worked on developing this, you will see six or seven, I believe, former inspectors with collectively several dozen years of experience on the ground in Iraq. The four of us on this panel have collectively zero man-years of experience on the ground in Iraq inspecting. We put a lot of time and thought, effort, and critical self-questioning into whether or not we were producing something that could work on the ground. I think that the strongest case that—since he isn't here to speak for himself, but I would commend to you Ambassador Ekeus' piece in the Post where he says, in effect, this is what worked before, this is why we need a stronger regime now, and this is why I think it can work.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Thank you.
Mr. Schiff.
Mr. SCHIFF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to direct this—I have a couple interconnected questions—to Mr. Perle and Mr. Woolsey, and then the second question to Ms. Mathews and General Boyd.
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The first question I have is, if we invade Iraq there is some possibility, maybe even a probability, that if we assume that Saddam Hussein has the chemical and biological weapons that prompt our invasion, that he will be inclined to use them against American troops when cornered, when confronted with the realization that our goal is not only the disarmament but regime change. So we have to contend with that probability or possibility.
We also have, I think, a fairly realistic scenario that he tries to change the nature of the conflict by once again attacking Israel. And there again is the possibility of using weapons of mass destruction against Israel and some possibility that if biological or chemical weapons are used against Israel, Israel will respond with a nuclear weapon, depending on the severity of that chemical or biological attack. So at some level an invasion does increase the likelihood of weapons of mass destruction actually being used against Americans, in this case American troops, and also increases the possibility of use of nuclear weapons by some nation—in this case, Israel against Iraq. I want to get your thoughts on evaluating on the one hand the short-term increase and likelihood of the use of those very weapons that we are concerned with compared with the longer term concern about their falling into the wrong hands or being used by Iraq against us elsewhere.
And the second question is, how would unilateral U.S. action against this threat affect other nations' willingness to use preemptive action against their perceived threats? In other words, will we change the international calculus in a way such that Russia and Chechyna or Georgia can now say that we are doing nothing different than the United States is doing or really any other nation, Azerbaijan and Kariba or others, claiming that they are, too, like the United States, acting preemptively before they are struck?
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Mr. PERLE. Congressman, if I could begin with the second question, I don't believe that the behavior of any other country will be altered by what we choose to do. The circumstances here are very specific. There are massive violations of U.N. resolutions. There is, as Jim Woolsey has pointed out two or three times, the particular situation of a cease-fire agreement that has now been violated. None of these circumstances apply to any of the other situations you have suggested, and I think countries do what they feel is vital to do in their national interests, and what we do is not going to have any systemic effect, and I think that is what you were getting at.
On the danger of the use of chemical and biological weapons, there is no question that that danger exists. It is very real. It isn't going to get better with the passage of time. Saddam's chemical and biological capabilities now, to the best of our knowledge, are not terribly well-developed. They will be better developed with the passage of time, better means of delivery, a greater variety of weapons, including potentially a greater variety of biological weapons. So time is not on our side in this regard.
We know how to deal with chemical weapons in the battlefield. That is one of the reasons why, as Jim Woolsey has suggested, we cannot afford to wait until the use of protective gear is made ineffective by seasonal change.
Finally, with respect to a weapon of mass destruction being used against Israel, that danger certainly exists. Again, it doesn't get better with the passage of time. We believe that the number of missiles that Saddam possesses that are capable of reaching Israel from the western deserts is small, and Israel now has some capacity to intercept those missiles and we have a greater capacity than we had in 1991 to detect them before they are launched. Not a perfect capacity, but a much better capacity.
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So there are risks, and it would be foolish to suggest otherwise. The question is, how do you measure those risks against the risks of allowing Saddam to go on improving all of those capabilities? And I come down on the side of taking action sooner rather than later.
Mr. WOOLSEY. I agree with Richard's answers on those points. I would only add one thing, which is that the fact that if we invade he may use chemical and bacteriological weapons. That means protective gear for our troops is extremely important. That is why the winter months are the key months. And that in turn is the underlying reason why I would disagree with the proposal for inspections that my two fellow panelists have made, because there is no realistic way I think those would work. But even if they could work in part, they are not going to work within the next few weeks. And I think we need to be able and ready to move this winter, because if we let another year go by waiting for another window of time in which our troops could wear chemical protective gear, for example, we will have many months in which Saddam could either enrich uranium himself or obtain it by theft and put into an already designed bomb the fissionable material that he would need for nuclear weapons.
So in addition to the points that Richard mentioned, which I agree with, I think that delay beyond a very few weeks here is very much not in the Nation's interest and the world's.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. I want to thank our very distinguished witnesses for your very incisive commentary. The arguments you have made before the Committee will be very helpful, not just for ourselves, but for the American people who have seen this by way of C-SPAN and by extension the members of the media who are here. These are obviously very troubling questions that we are grappling with, and again your incisive commentary has been very, very helpful. And I want to thank all four of you for your expert testimony before the Committee today.
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Ms. MCKINNEY. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. I am not finished.
Ms. MCKINNEY. I have a question.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. In a minute.
Let me just say as well that we will leave open the record for any additional comments you might want to make in a timely fashion in answer to questions that might have been posed. Members who were unable because of scheduling to pose questions to you might want to submit those; we will get those to you in a timely manner, and we hope that you will respond. And so again, I want to thank you very deeply for your expert testimony. Again, it is very, very useful. Thank you. You are dismissed.
We do have four votes——
Ms. MCKINNEY. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. I will yield to the gentlelady in one moment. We have four votes pending on the Floor. I will say to the distinguished General that we thought those votes were going to begin at 2:30, and that is why we had that time limit imposed, and thankfully we got a little extension there.
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Pursuant to a motion that was made earlier by Mr. Ackerman, I would like to recognize any Member for an opening statement. I will have to leave as will other Members to vote, but 7 minutes I believe was the time Chairman Hyde had agreed to, so I recognize the gentlelady if she has an opening statement.
Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You read my mind.
Once again, the world now waits with fear and trepidation regarding the threat of a U.S. attack on Iraq. The President provides a justification for this impending attack, the Iraqi refusal to comply with U.N. resolutions regarding weapons inspections, the alleged Iraqi threat to its neighbors, and the Iraqi government's mistreatment of its own citizens. The American people are being called upon to send their young sons and daughters to go and kill young Iraqi sons and daughters. This war like all wars will be brutal and will leave many American and Iraqi families mourning the loss of their children.
We are not allowed to publicly question the Bush Administration for fear of being called unpatriotic. Aren't we entitled to really know why we are being urged to go to war? Aren't we entitled to be confident that the Administration is telling the truth?
We know that this Administration has some trouble with the truth. You might recall that the White House had a kind of amnesia a few months ago and didn't tell the truth about 9/11 until I asked some pretty straightforward questions. In so doing, it seems I helped them remember that they had in fact received a whole raft of reports warning of terrorist attacks against this country. And this is the same Administration which stole the 2000 election in Florida and then lied about it.
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There have been so many times I wished our country could have used its massive military resources for such noble goals as protecting civilians and enforcing U.N. Security Council resolutions. I would be their greatest supporter. But I have sat upon this Committee for 10 years and I have seen our country repeatedly refuse to use its military to save civilians from slaughter.
I only need to remind you of our country's shameful failure to intervene in Rwanda in 1994, and in so doing we allowed one million Rwandan men, women, and children to be butchered with axes and machetes in 100 days. And yes, we are the same country that abandoned the people of Afghanistan to the Taliban, that abandoned the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo to the invading Rwandans and Ugandans, that abandoned the people off East Timor to the invading Indonesians, that abandoned the people of Sierra Leone to the brutal hand-chopping killers of the RUF, that abandoned the people of Chechyna to the brutal Russian army, that abandoned the people of the Philippines to brutalities of Ferdinand Marcos, that abandoned the people of Chile to the monstrous crimes of General Pinochet, and on and on and on.
But the President would have us believe that this time things are different. For once he says we are going to war to save lives. However, just last Sunday, September 15th, 2002, the Washington Post's lead story carried the banner headline: In Iraqi War Scenario Oil Is the Key Issue. The article then went on to describe how U.S. oil companies were looking forward to taking advantage of the oil bonanza which would follow Saddam Hussein's removal from office. Apparently so, the article says, CIA—former CIA Director James Woolsey, indicated that non-U.S. oil companies who sided with Hussein would most likely be excluded from sharing in Iraq's massive oil reserves, second only to Saudi Arabia.
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And I find the current Bush fervor and alleged urgent justifications for attacking Iraq startling, because I read an article from the London Guardian on December 2nd, 2001 last year, a banner headline which read: ''Secret U.S. Plan for Iraq War.'' The article, almost a year old now, is interesting because it reports that the President had already ordered the CIA and its senior military commanders to draw up detailed plans for a military operation against Iraq. What I found most incredible about the article, especially after reading last week's Washington Post article, was the last sentence which said:
''The most adventurous ingredient in the anti-Iraqi proposal is the use of U.S. ground troops. Those troops could also be called on in early stages of any rebellion to guard oil fields around the Shi'a port of Basrah in southern Iraq.''
Isn't it amazing that the London Times didn't refer to U.S. troops guarding the new parliament or the schools or hospitals full of ravaged civilians, or saving the men, women, and children who have been brutalized under years of Hussein's rule? I wonder why the President hasn't talked about these plans which were being cooked up nearly a year ago.
I learned this week from the Times of London that the Bush Administration plans to spend some $200 million on convincing a skeptical America and world public that the war against Iraq is justified. I didn't realize that telling the truth would be so expensive. And surely, if we were really interested today in the truth about whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, wouldn't this Committee have heard from Scott Ritter? And in fact, we went through this entire hearing without even the mention of his name. I cannot believe that he is not here today.
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Before we send our young men and women off to war we really need to make sure that we are not sacrificing them so rich and powerful men can prosecute a war for oil. I love this country too much to see it abused this way, and I implore other Members of the House to join me in voting no and denouncing such a war of aggression.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Thank you, Ms. McKinney.
This hearing is adjourned, and I want to thank everyone for attending, and I especially want to thank our distinguished witnesses.
[Whereupon, at 2:59 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]