WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 (UPI) -- On this hot Thursday, Washington is swept with war fever. From Foggy Bottom along the Potomac to Capitol Hill, war is on the lips of the political cognoscenti.
The question, insiders whisper at ominously at dinner to reporters, is not "whether" President George W. Bush will attack Iraq but "when." The attack will come before the election some say, as early as September. They chatter knowledgeably about the rains in the North and the heat in the South, "windows" of opportunity they say "are controlling." The time to strike is now. The iron is hot.
Can the president start a war by himself, the naive ask, without Congress or a vote or anything? They wave away that question. Bush is up for the job, they say, having made his bones in ordering the invasion of Afghanistan. This is a worldwide war on terrorism it's got different rules than all those old 20th Century wars.
If you are a journalist and no one has leaked you a detailed Bush administration plan to depose Saddam Hussein, you're out of the loop.
The plans and counterplans are on the front pages of every day's newspaper and dominate the endless political talk shows. One anxious reader sent an e-mail to one of my colleagues after he wrote a story from secret sources detailing a plan to invade Iraq with 250,000 troops, which that story said, had been written by Gen. Tommy Franks and was waiting for Bush's go ahead. Was it wise to publicize Army plans, this reader asked, before the war? Wouldn't that warn Saddam and cost American lives?
If any of these plans have a grain of truth in them, Saddam must by now know every single military tactic we've got. Interestingly enough, President Bush, one of the most obsessive presidents about secrecy in recent memory, has not complained about these leaks.
The senators got so anxious about all the war talk this week, they held a hearing, but no administration official testified.
After the 250,000 man big invasion force plan was leaked, several of the Arab states around Iraq including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan publicly or privately sent word to Washington: there is no way you are going to attack Iraq, a Muslim nation, from bases on our soil. King Abdullah of Jordan reportedly called it "ridiculous."
This week, only weeks after the 250,000-man invasion force plan was in the news, unnamed "senior administration and Pentagon officials," leaked a new plan to The New York Times, called imaginatively the "inside out attack."
The descriptions of this plan is a little vague, even in the Times story, but basically it appears that Americans would swoop down and capture someplace in the middle of Iraq, neutralize Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (it sounds very easy in the Times account), and then attack outward and conquer the country.
The nice part of this plan, the leakers told the Times was that it didn't require bases on the soil of all those reluctant Arab countries and it would take only about 80,000 troops to carry out. It would "decapitate" Hussein's command system and mid-level Iraqi commanders haven't been allowed to develop the initiative to take over and fight the invader.
That is, by the way, what military planners used to say about North Vietnamese Army, but the soldiers in the field found out that mid-level NVA commanders were dammed good.
UPI Terrorism Correspondent Richard Sale reports this new plan was devised by Richard Perle, a former defense official in the Reagan administration and Douglas Feith, a longtime colleague of Perle's who is a planning official at Defense. They are backed by Paul Wolfowitz, deputy assistant secretary of defense and Vice President Dick Cheney, Sale reports.
According to the Washington Post, the Perle-Feith plan is locked in an internal debate over when and how to unseat Hussein with Secretary of State Colin Powell, the Joint Chief's of Staff and most of the uniformed military.
For the American reader, choosing between these plans, being, as they are, sort of unofficial and leaked, may be difficult. It might be worth noting that Perle, Feith, Wolfowitz and Cheney never served in the United States Armed Forces. Perle, Wolfowitz and Cheney were all eligible to serve in Vietnam. Cheney once told a reporter in 1989 that he had "other priorities in the 60s than military service" and he was deferred as a husband and later as a father.
Powell, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Gen. Franks are decorated American military men.
Though he didn't go to Vietnam, Perle is an accomplished Washington operator and the Washington war fever has the earmarks of the Reagan administration. When war lovers in the Reagan crowd were out to get Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, the same pattern of leaks and backgrounders was produced and same number of anonymous sources were quoted. At the same, the Reagan pollsters were trying to find out if the American people would stand for an unprovoked attack against Libya. In the end, the Libyans provoked the United States and an American aircraft destroyed a Libyan naval vessel. Gadhafi retaliated by ordering a terrorist attack on a disco in German where an American serviceman died. Reagan ordered a bombing raid and Gadhafi's adopted daughter died.
President Bush, who has called for Hussein's ouster from power, said only Thursday that he had made no decision about an attack. He said he is a "patient man." This weekend, he will be with his father in Kennebunkport, Maine at the family compound.
His father, a decorated combat pilot in World War II, is also a patient and careful man. He relied on the United State's professional military and diplomacy to put together a coalition force of a half a million soldiers, sailors and airmen. They conducted a long air bombardment and short ground attack and pushed Iraq out Kuwait with minimum loss of life among the allies. The Saddam Hussein that the United States fought then, though recently weary from a war with Iran, was certainly a match for the Saddam today.
Perhaps President Bush's father will weigh in with his plan.
