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COMMENTARY
October 9, 2002
Warmer & warmer
The Bush administration in Washington and Saddam's regime in Baghdad have a little secret together which they are loath to share with the rest of the world. They are for the moment both pretending there might be a diplomatic alternative to war -- even as they prepare their respective best shots. The question is who will be first to drop the pretence? President George W. Bush made another quite effective speech on Monday night in Cincinnati aimed almost entirely at the U.S. domestic audience. The speech was limited in its ambition to staying on top of the domestic political scene in the run up to the mid-term election campaign. It succeeded in that. But it was slightly surprising for when the media advisory went out at the end of last week there were hints Mr. Bush would revise and sharpen his position towards the United Nations. Over the weekend White House and State Department fears that the French Russians or even the Chinese might veto the U.S. resolution setting standards for weapons inspections in Iraq seemed to evaporate and I think the Bush administration is now fairly confident these powers will at worst abstain when it finally comes to the vote in the Security Council. In fact with all three seemingly on the verge of "yes" in return for cosmetic concessions in public and some private pay-offs Mr. Bush apparently decided not to rock that boat. There was nothing entirely new in the President's speech but two interesting developments of what we had already heard. Even while expressing nominal hope for a diplomatic breakthrough Mr. Bush tightened the logical knot between the need to disarm Iraq and the need to depose Saddam Hussein. One object cannot be achieved without the other: you cannot leave a government in power determined to subvert and prevent what your arms inspectors are trying to accomplish especially when they are searching for things fairly easy to hide. The second development was more confident hints that U.S. intelligence knows exactly what it is dealing with in claiming that Iraq is both sheltering and conspiring with Al Qaeda. I am not privy to these intelligence sources or if I knew anything I wouldn't tell; but the case can be made from external as well as internal observations. (More below.) Perhaps a third. There was something of a breach in the "axis of evil" -- maybe even a hopeful one. Mr. Bush stressed that Iraq is uniquely dangerous and I don't think this was for the sake of the moment. The U.S. has been making discreet overtures to the other two members of this elite club Iran and North Korea ("repent for the end is nigh") and these are showing some modest returns. While the Korean Communists seem actually too demented to know how to exit their cage -- witness their absurd backfiring attempt to confess kidnappings to Japan and to create a "free trade zone" about the size of one of Saddam Hussein's 60 presidential palaces -- Iran's ayatollahs have become noticeably more co-operative over Iraq. The Iranian regime has if I am not entirely mistaken quietly delivered a handful of reasonably senior Al Qaeda operatives to Guantanamo Bay. Other reports have them helpfully turning over intelligence on Saddam's weapons programmes and even fighting alongside Turks Americans and Kurds in the "secret war" that seems to be happening in northern Iraq already. But on the official level in Tehran it's still "Death to America!" -- and the regime meanwhile has its hands full of a very revolutionary pro-Western and young population. (Student demonstrations against the ayatollahs continue to occur almost daily in Iran's major cities.) The ayatollahs' attempts to pacify George Bush are thus most likely the product of real desperation. In the Iraq theatre itself events are progressing ahead of the President's speech. Two publicly reported events may be the visible tip of a joint Iraqi-Al Qaeda plan to maximize disruption of the West on the eve of war. One was an attack on U.S. soldiers training in Kuwait yesterday which resulted in one Marine killed. I don't think this was the only such incident in the past week; I have heard rumours of similar events in Qatar and Oman. The other and more interesting was what I believe to have been the U.S.S. Cole-style attack on a French oil tanker docking off Mukallah Yemen early Sunday. (The Yemenis say it was an accident but then they always do.) The tanker was new state-of-the art and had a security system that warned of an intruding speedboat moments before the explosion; all other circumstantial evidence points the same direction. But no one wants to talk much about an event that could send insurance rates on Middle Eastern oil shipments skyrocketing even if the oil price stays down owing to the international glut. The U.S. has already blockaded the Shatt-al-Arab preventing all uninspected Iraqi shipping from putting to sea. Al Qaeda the likely perpetrators have sworn as a matter of policy not to endanger Arab oil shipments for Osama bin Laden has called this oil and the Arab power that depends on it a gift of Allah. So what gives? If we postulate an alliance between Saddam and Al Qaeda -- which hardly stretches the imagination given both are in lethal conflict with the U.S. -- we would expect to see accommodations from each side. Saddam for his part has come to use the same religious language as Osama in summoning the Arab world to his defence. Al Qaeda may from its side now be adopting Saddam's tactics. The reader will remember what Saddam did to the oil wells of Kuwait in 1991; his principle has always been apr?s moi, le deluge . If it is indeed demonstrated that Al Qaeda holed the French tanker we can safely assume that terror international will now be trying to devastate oil traffic East to West. At this stage it is oil tankers; at the next it might be oil refineries. (And count on Saddam to try to lay waste the Iraqi oil infrastructure around Basra before he withdraws for good from the Shia zone in southern Iraq.) Meanwhile the approach of war has been signalled in Israel by a new and controversial IDF campaign to disrupt Hamas terror preparations in Gaza. The incursion on Khan Yunis in Gaza was not an isolated incident such as an attempt to assassinate another Hamas organizer but the beginning of something new and aggressive. The first operation went wrong in two places with bad publicity fallout. The usual Palestinian victory celebration -- when the Israelis withdraw after completing their mission -- began prematurely before the Israelis were quite gone and it seems an Israeli pilot interpreted the joyous firing of guns in the air as an attack on his helicopter. A missile was fired back that killed a dozen civilians. And round a corner Israeli troops returned fire on a Palestinian gang using a local hospital for cover so that the hospital itself was strafed. Gaza is going to erupt when the war in Iraq begins. The Israelis are determined that the eruption will at least be disorganized hence the present operation to throw spanners into the workings of Hamas. They have too much at stake to listen very long to foreign expressions of outrage about this. Pre-emptive strikes against Hezbollah and other terrorist camps in Lebanon and Syria may also be contemplated. For what the Israelis are now doing -- battening down the hatches -- is paralleled in Jordan where the government is rounding up and deporting large numbers of Iraqi provocateurs and just to be sure Iraqi nationals generally in the hope of preventing pro-Saddam riots and sabotage when the larger conflict begins. But whereas no one bats an eyelash when the Jordanians do such things the massed "human rights" choir of Europe goes into tremolo when the Israelis act to protect themselves against impending acts of murder and mayhem. There will be much for them to sing about in coming weeks. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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