September 9, 2002
Bush Officials Say the Time Has Come for Action on Iraq
WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 — Led by Vice President Dick Cheney, who warned grimly that "time is not on our side," President Bush's top national security officials said nearly in unison today that Saddam Hussein's efforts to build an arsenal of immensely destructive weapons left the United States little choice but to act against Iraq.
"There shouldn't be any doubt in anybody's mind that this president is absolutely bound and determined to deal with this threat, and to do whatever is necessary to make certain that we do so," Mr. Cheney said. He said that Iraq was sparing no effort to revive its nuclear weapon program and that in light of the terror attacks of last Sept. 11, its history with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs directly threatened the United States.
In almost identical language that signaled a carefully coordinated campaign to move Congress and the United Nations in their direction, Mr. Bush's other top national security officials said on television news programs today that the president would seek support from Congress and the United Nations for action, including a possible military strike. But they insisted, as Mr. Cheney put it on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," that "This problem has to be dealt with one way or another."
The president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said "there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly" Mr. Hussein can acquire nuclear weapons. But, speaking on CNN's "Late Edition," she added: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Like his colleagues, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cited the Sept. 11 attacks in making his case that the world cannot wait to see what Iraq may do. "Imagine a Sept. 11 with weapons of mass destruction," he said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation." "It's not 3,000; it's tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children."
Even Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who has been among the most cautious of Mr. Bush's senior advisers on Iraq, urging intense consultation with allies and detailed discussion of the challenge of building a stable Iraq after Mr. Hussein, took pains to say the administration would act alone if necessary.
"I think there is a sound legal argument that the president, if he felt it was necessary to do something now, can find the authority within existing U.N. resolutions" dating from the Persian Gulf war, Secretary Powell said on "Fox News Sunday," though he added, "I'm not saying that that's the way he would go."
Still, Secretary Powell said, "The president will retain all of his authority and options to act in a way that may be appropriate for us to act unilaterally to defend ourselves."
Secretary Powell said Mr. Cheney and others were right to be skeptical about how much could be done even if Iraq gave United Nations weapons inspectors unfettered access. But he also seemed to express satisfaction that Mr. Bush would, as he has urged, make the case to the United Nations this week that Iraq is in flagrant violation of its international resolutions, not just in disfavor with the Bush administration.
"And therefore, the United Nations should feel offended" by Iraq's noncompliance, Secretary Powell said. "The United Nations should feel that something has to be done. The president will, I've no doubt, give them a strong message that it's time to do something."
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, like other officials, took care to say that Mr. Bush had not yet decided on a military attack. But he said on the ABC News program "This Week" that Iraq's military capacity was considerably weaker, and the United States' stronger, than in the gulf war a decade ago. He said there were many ways, besides door-to-door urban fighting with high casualties, that the United States might proceed militarily.
"I mean, there are other ways to get the effects we want, and this is probably as much as I ought to say," he said.
At the same time, the officials expressed alarm at the persistence and variety of Iraq's attempts to build its capabilities, for instance on the spraying of chemical and biological weapons using drone aircraft, and on its willingness to enlist terrorists in its cause.
The administration officials said Iraq had made continuing efforts to build nuclear weapons, including its attempt over the last 14 months to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended for use as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. American officials told The New York Times last week that several efforts to arrange such shipments were blocked or intercepted, but, citing the sensitivity of the intelligence, declined to say how.
All the officials, who met with Mr. Bush over the weekend at Camp David before his meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, characterized the Iraqi threat as grave, immediate and unavoidable. Still, they acknowledged uncertainties and varying estimates of how long it might take Mr. Hussein to be capable of using nuclear weapons or passing them to terrorists for use against the United States.
"Our task is to connect the dots before the fact, and see if we can't behave in a way that there won't be books written about why we slept, or what happened," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
But it was Mr. Cheney, in a nearly hourlong interview on "Meet the Press," who outlined the darkest picture of Iraq's potential threat, not only of Mr. Hussein's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons but of his possible connections to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
Mr. Cheney cited what he called a credible but unconfirmed intelligence report that Mohamed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, had met at least once in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attacks.
Of Mr. Hussein's efforts to develop nuclear weapons, Mr. Cheney said, "All of the experience we have points in the direction that, in the past, we've underestimated the extent of his program." He added that he hoped more intelligence about such efforts could soon be made public, without compromising sources, to help persuade allies, Congress and the public of the need for action.
"One of the real concerns about Saddam Hussein, as well," he said, "is his biological weapons capability, the fact that he may at some point try to use smallpox, anthrax, plague, some other kind of biological agent against other nations, possibly including even the United States. So this is not just a one-dimensional threat."
Mr. Cheney said the nature of terrorism often made it difficult to determine responsibility, asking at one point: "Who did the anthrax attack last fall? We don't know." Asked if Mr. Hussein could have been responsible, Mr. Cheney replied: "I don't know who did it. I'm not here to speculate on or to suggest that he did. My point is that it's the nature of terrorist attacks, of these unconventional warfare methods, that it's very hard sometimes to identify who is responsible, who is the source."
Mr. Cheney and Ms. Rice both said the administration would prefer a Congressional vote on Iraq before Congress adjourned for the midterm elections this fall. The vice president sharply disputed any suggestion that the White House's timing was driven by politics.
"The suggestion that I find reprehensible is the notion that somehow, you know, we saved this and now we've sprung it on them for political reasons," he said. "The president and I have talked about this for months."
The televised appearances today marked the administration's most concerted effort not only to sound the alarm on Iraq, but also to show its resolve to consult with allies and Congress before taking the next step.
At his meeting with Mr. Bush on Saturday, Prime Minister Blair, Washington's closest ally, agreed that on Iraq, "the policy of inaction is not a policy we can responsibly subscribe to."
Mr. Cheney said the administration was "trying very hard not to be unilateralist." But he defended the administration's willingness to consider a pre-emptive attack on Iraq as part of a new, post-Sept. 11 reality that the world was still absorbing.
"We are in a place now that some, I think, some Americans as well as some of our European friends, for example, have difficulty adjusting to," he said, "because they haven't — in the case of the Europeans, they haven't the experience we have of 3,000 dead Americans last Sept. 11. They are not as vulnerable as we are, because they are not targeted.
"They also really don't have the capacity to do anything about the threat," he added. "They could participate in an international coalition, but left to their own devices, they can't deal with Saddam Hussein."
Kurdish Factions Sign Pact
ERBIL, Iraq, Sept. 8 (Agence France-Presse) — The heads of the two main Kurdish factions in northern Iraq signed an accord today to end a longstanding rivalry.
The leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Massoud Barzani, and the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Jalal Talabani, said they had reached an agreement
to resolve any lingering disputes from an United States-brokered peace deal in 1998 that sought to end almost five years of armed conflict between them.
The new accord would reactivate the Kurdish Parliament, which is evenly split between the two factions. The Parliament has not convened with all its members since 1996, when fighting between the sides reached its peak.
