Steve Quayle News Alerts

July 22, 2002

Summary
With the U.S. government doing nothing to hide that a campaign against Iraq is at least in the planning stages, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has plenty of time to prepare. His first priority will be to prevent a U.S. attack entirely, or at least to bog down the United States in a long drawn-out campaign -- thus reducing Washington's appetite for battle.

Analysis
On July 17, the 34th anniversary of the coup that brought his Baath Party to power, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein went on his country's television and hurled defiance at the United States. "You will never defeat me this time. Never! Even if you come together from all over the world, and invite all the devils as well to stand by you," Hussein said.

For most targets of American ire these days, this kind of bombast would appear to be -- in the once-common U.S. idiom -- "whistling through the graveyard." But two things have to be recalled in the case of Hussein and Iraq. If any U.S. action comes, it will be one of the most widely broadcast and anticipated attacks in memory. That means Hussein has had plenty of time to prepare.

Second, Hussein has had extensive experience surviving American attacks and covert operations. Since 1991 he has foiled U.S. attempts to overthrow him over and over again. His internal security and counterintelligence capabilities are superb and consistently have countered U.S. plans. Hussein is a survivor by the only meaningful standard: He has survived. Therefore, when he announces that he will not be defeated, his words should not be dismissed out of hand.

Hussein's survival strategy is based on two lines of defense. First, he will do everything possible to prevent an attack. Second, if he cannot to do this, he will seek to defeat or at least bog down U.S. operations to the point that Washington must accept only a partial victory, as it did in 1991.

For Hussein, preventing the attack is of course the optimal solution. For the United States, an Iraq strike is part of a much broader and complex war against al Qaeda. The U.S. government has reached the conclusion that the real threat does not come so much from al Qaeda as an organization but from the general anti-U.S. sentiment that has taken root in the Islamic world. Simply defeating al Qaeda as a distinct organization will not eliminate the threat posed to the United States within the Islamic world.

Rather, the thinking in Washington is that the anti-U.S. faction in the Islamic world must be bought to understand the catastrophic results of challenging U.S. interests. Hussein's survival since 1991, along with the disastrous U.S. experience in Somalia in 1993, was instrumental in convincing Osama bin Laden and others that the United States was weak and could be defeated.

The United States must therefore destroy Hussein in order to change the strategic calculus throughout the Islamic world. In other words, there is only a minimal operational link between al Qaeda and Iraq but a tremendous psychological link.

But this is also the political weakness of the American strategy. In attacking Iraq, Washington is moving from a limited operation against a particular Islamic movement -- al Qaeda -- into a broader operation against a general feeling within the Islamic world. And the United States cannot carry out this operation by itself.

Both in the overall anti-terrorism campaign and in the particular case of Iraq, the United States requires an alliance of nations prepared to support it in everything from intelligence-sharing to logistical support to basing. An anti-al Qaeda coalition was relatively easy to construct. That same coalition will become fragile or insupportable if the U.S. goal is a general redefinition of the politics of the Islamic world.

The United States needs support from two classes of countries. First, it needs the direct support of countries neighboring Iraq in order to launch operations. Second, it needs the support of a global coalition to carry out anti-terrorism operations having nothing to do with Iraq. Hussein is carrying out a two-phased political strategy to disrupt this coalition.

Regionally, he is seeking to deny the United States basing near Iraq. Saudi Arabia already has opted out, afraid of the internal repercussions of another U.S. buildup in the kingdom. The Iranians, although deeply tempted to see their own enemy dismembered, are equally afraid of unchecked American power and are unlikely to provide material support.

The Jordanians appear to be prepared to allow U.S. forces to use their territory, but Hussein will use the fact that such forces would likely have to come by way of Israel (unless they slip in through the tiny Jordanian port of Aqaba) to increase Arab support against such a U.S. plan. Hussein has friends in Jordan, and the country's ruler King Abdullah knows it. Hussein has been careful not to alienate Abdullah permanently, nor let him forget his internal vulnerabilities, so as to limit his cooperation with Washington.

The key is Turkey, where there are two variables: oil and Kurds. Turkey profits from the Iraqi oil trade and is fine with the status quo. Moreover, the Turks are wary of anything that may lead to an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, which Ankara fears would encourage separatist Kurdish fighters in eastern Turkey.

Since U.S. strategy likely will rely heavily on the Kurds (a possible U.S. attack from Turkey into Iraq would have to run through Kurdish territory, and the ethnic group maintains its own fighting forces), the Turks may well choose not to play. Hussein is playing both cards deftly against the United States. And since the Turkish government is collapsing -- due to recent resignations from the ruling coalition of ailing Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit -- a clear commitment from even the closest U.S. ally in the region may not be easy to get.

But it is in the global coalition that Hussein is most effective, simply by doing nothing and remaining inoffensive. Over the long haul, the Americans need the Europeans, who are prepared to cooperate against al Qaeda. But they are not interested in redefining the Islamic world. Quite the contrary, the Europeans are doing extensive business in that world and are more than a little interested in doing business in Iraq.

This is why Baghdad recently has been sending envoys to gather more European consensus against a U.S. attack. The American redefinition of the war is not in Europe's interests, and other than Britain most of the countries there are not prepared to cooperate in a war against Iraq. Therefore, the United States must calculate the broader costs of such attack.

For Hussein, the optimal method for splitting the coalition is to do as little as possible. The natural dynamic of the coalition is designed to actually limit U.S. operations. The particular U.S. operations against Iraq seem to be modeled vaguely on the Afghan model:

* An air campaign designed to paralyze Iraqi state operations and, in this case, to decapitate the regime by killing key leaders, particularly Hussein.
* A ground campaign combining Special Operations forces and indigenous forces, along with air operations, to destroy Saddam's military capability.
* The insertion of light-infantry forces to seize and hold key positions and support indigenous forces in forming a government.

Obviously, the scale of forces will be greater than in Afghanistan, but this appears to be the core model. The methods Hussein will use to counter this attack likely will include:

* Extensive air defenses to impose at least some level of attrition on attacking air forces.
* A campaign of dispersal and deception designed to deny the air campaign the real-time intelligence needed to conduct a decapitation attack.
* Use of Iraq's counterintelligence capability to monitor U.S. covert operations in Iraq and in particular to identify potential collaborators. Allow these to remain in place until shortly before the attack, then strike and liquidate them, leaving the U.S. military without the indigenous support it would expect.
* Disperse heavy forces in such a way as to pose a threat to light-infantry forces if and when inserted. The Iraqis understand that the air campaign will cause heavy attrition to Iraqi armored and mechanized forces. However, they also understand that an effective air campaign against these forces, if it can be extended by Iraqi deception, could create an unacceptable situation for U.S. air power, already stretched thin by other simultaneous operational requirements and denied support.

The key for Hussein militarily is to create a situation in which the American campaign has a high probability of dragging out for months. The political costs for the coalition would be too high. The key to extending the war would be to slow down the rate at which his forces are destroyed, by denying U.S. air power the intelligence needed to identify and destroy targets. In particular, by keeping his nuclear, chemical and biological deployments as opaque as possible, the risk factor shifts in Hussein's favor. And the general ability to disperse, secure and camouflage Iraqi assets will increase the cost of the campaign.

This in turn would decrease the American appetite for a battle. The longer and more costly the campaign appears to be, the less likely Washington will be to mount it. Therefore, Hussein is now engaged in three operations: hardening air defenses, dispersing forces, and monitoring U.S. intelligence efforts and identifying potential collaborators, particularly in the Iraqi army.

Hussein has proven very adept in the intelligence war. He is also far from omnipotent. The United States has never mounted a campaign of the scope that is currently being envisioned and, from the intelligence standpoint, implemented. In recent wars the United States has shown a remarkable ability to achieve low-cost goals. On the other hand, it has not come up against the Iraqis lately. There are those who argue that recent wars are a model for Iraq as well. Hussein will do everything possible to prove them wrong.

http://www.watch.org/showart.php3?idx=31784&rtn=/articles.html&showsubj
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