Gulf War II

As a U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer, Scott Ritter, now 38, monitored missile buildup in Russia and missile destruction in the Persian Gulf. In 1991 he was hired as a weapons inspector for the UN Special Commission. He resigned seven years later, charging that U.S. intelligence had taken over a program Ritter had started--to monitor Saddam Hussein's personal safety and Iraq's concealment of major weapons--and then had denied Unscom the data collected under their auspices. More damagingly, Ritter has told Playboy, 1998's Operation Desert Fox, ostensibly designed to bomb Baghdad into letting UN inspectors back in, was a botched secret attempt to kill Hussein. Ritter is the author of Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem--Once and for All.

If you want to get an emotional response from someone, ask what the U.S. should do about Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

As an intelligence analyst who served on the staff of the U.S. Central Command during the Gulf war, I'm pretty sure that unless we can overcome this emotional response, we'll have another war with Iraq in three to five years.

I was recently approached to speak at two national meetings: one of an American Islamic group, the other of an American Zionist group. Protests from within each organization caused the invitations to be withdrawn. Both groups' event organizers said they didn't want their meetings to become "political." I took this to mean that neither group wanted to be presented with facts that might require them to consider options outside those framed by their respective political platforms. When it comes to Iraq, a politics of irrationality reigns supreme.

Obviously, the international consensus that supported economic sanctions against Iraq is disintegrating. The sanctions are going to be either formally lifted or informally disregarded. When the sanctions are no longer effective, Iraq will rearm. But without sufficient reconstruction, Iraq's devastated economy won't be able to sustain this military buildup. Baghdad's inability to service its foreign debt, which triggered its invasion of Kuwait, will be repeated. When the debt-service crunch comes, three to five years from now, Iraq will once again attempt to seize sources of additional oil revenue. The U.S. will again be compelled to respond with military action. But such a future conflict will bear little resemblance to Desert Shield or Desert Storm.

In August 1990 Iraq limited its advance to Kuwait. There was, despite propaganda to the contrary, no Iraqi intention to move into Saudi Arabia. This shortsightedness on the part of the Iraqi leadership allowed the U.S. and its coalition partners to carry out a huge military buildup in a friendly environment. The Iraqis simply sat back and watched as nearly a million allied troops and tens of thousands of combat vehicles poured into Saudi Arabia.

Iraq has had plenty of time to learn from its 1990 error. If Iraqi forces move south in the future, they will roll through Kuwait into the eastern province of Saudi Arabia.

Last time around, the U.S. brought in hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops via Saudi airfields and ports without any Iraqi resistance. This time we will have to fight our way into the Saudi city of Dhahran. We may even have to land an army at the Red Sea port of Jidda and move it across Saudi Arabia to forcibly enter the country's Iraqi-occupied sector.

Making matters worse, the military forces the U.S. will be able to bring to bear in any future conflict with Iraq won't resemble the juggernaut deployed in 1990. Reductions in defense spending have resulted in significant cutting of our combat (concluded on page 202)Gulf War II(continued from page 178) forces. Operational changes have lowered morale and curtailed training, impairing effectiveness.

Simply put, the U.S. lacks the military resources to refight Desert Storm. In 1990 we dispatched more than 540,000 troops to the Persian Gulf to defeat Saddam. They were joined by an additional 258,000 troops supplied by other members of the coalition. Today, the U.S. would be lucky to amass 250,000, and even this number would require an extensive call-up of reserves--something politicians will be reluctant to do. Three to five years from now, this figure will have deteriorated. And far from being able to assemble an impressive coalition, the U.S. would be hard-pressed to line up half a dozen nations willing to commit troops to take on Saddam. In a second Gulf war, we will probably be called on to respond to a greater threat, with fewer troops and questionable allied support.

Even with our military cutbacks, there is no nation on the planet that can stand up to the U.S. in armed conflict. But this time around, the war will not be a video game. It is unlikely that Iraq would use weapons of mass destruction in such a war; the consequences of such an action are well known in Baghdad. But Americans will have to fight and die--probably by the hundreds, if not thousands--especially if U.S. ground troops penetrate deeply into Iraq in a final effort to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Any move into the Iraqi capital would necessitate a long-term, large-scale commitment of American forces in an occupation role, which obviously wouldn't sit well with the region's Arab nationalists and Islamic fundamentalists.

Once the smoke clears and the Iraqi military once again lies shattered, it will be hard to claim the results of such a conflict as a victory for the U.S. A second Gulf war will not be surgical. It will be drawn out, bloody and ultimately devastating for our national interests.

Such a conflict, inevitable if the U.S. continues on its current course with Iraq, can be avoided. We need a diplomatic solution based on fostering Iraqi economic recovery. But such a solution would require us to overhaul our Iraqi policy.

The posturing of the Clinton administration and the Republican-controlled Congress reminds me of my experience with the Islamic and Zionist groups: They differ in ideology, but are identical in their narrow-minded pursuit of irrational politics. Our elected officials and representatives have to rise above their petty politicking and reformulate our Iraqi policy--before it's too late.