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Interview: Lawrence Eagleburger Discusses the Buildup to War with Iraq
Weekend Edition Saturday: January 11, 2003
What Comes After a War in Iraq?
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Coming up, Dan Schorr reveals the truth behind Humpty Dumpty.
But first, another 35,000 US troops are heading to the Persian Gulf. On Friday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized that deployment. By the end of the month, 100,000 American service people will be within striking distance of Iraq. Now last summer, former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger opposed the Bush administration's talk of a possible war against Iraq. He worried that the US would be acting alone and was placing too much emphasis on Iraq's perceived nuclear threat, but Mr. Eagleburger now says he is satisfied that the administration is part of a multilateral effort to disarm Saddam Hussein. Mr. Eagleburger now supports war with Iraq. When we spoke with him at his office in Washington, DC, this week, we asked Secretary Eagleburger about the UN inspections--seven weeks, 125 sites; so far, no smoking gun.
Former Secretary LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER (State Department): I think from the very beginning there was a good chance that the inspectors would not find anything. By the way, the inspectors aren't, by any means, through. But given the amount of attention this administration has given to the issue, I do not see how this president can possibly now back away from doing something. His reputation will be badly damaged in the last two years of his administration. As a result, I don't see that he has any choice but to proceed.
SIMON: What would happen either to this president's reputation or the reputation of the US and Britain, though, if there's not what Mr. Blix described as the smoking gun, if the inspectors cannot find any stored weapons?
Mr. EAGLEBURGER: It's going to be tough. There's no question about it, it's going to be very tough, and I think the war--I use the term `war'--I think it's going to have to proceed anyway. But I have no argument with you that if they don't find anything and we proceed anyway, it is going to go down very hard internationally; I can't deny that.
SIMON: You had a vivid phrase last summer where you said that you had to be convinced that he, Saddam Hussein, had his finger on the trigger.
Mr. EAGLEBURGER: Well, if I said that vividly last summer, I guess I would have to say that it was excessively vivid in this sense: It is clear to me on the basis of what he submitted in that 25,000-page document, or whatever, that he has not done the one thing I think he had an obligation to do, and that is...
SIMON: He is Saddam Hussein.
Mr. EAGLEBURGER: He is Saddam Hussein.
SIMON: Yeah.
Mr. EAGLEBURGER: We all know he had weapons of mass destruction, at least in chemical weapons, at an earlier stage. He has not explained in that document what he did to destroy whatever weapons of mass destruction he had. I admit, that's not having his finger on the trigger, but it is, as far as I'm concerned, the next best thing in the sense that we have a right to believe that he has not met his obligations to the Security Council resolution and that, therefore, there is reason to believe that there is a good bit there that we have to worry about.
SIMON: Do you still have reservations about what the effect of an American military effort in Iraq would have...
Mr. EAGLEBURGER: Yeah.
SIMON: ...in the neighborhood, in a sense?
Mr. EAGLEBURGER: Not only in the neighbor--I'll tell you what my real concerns are with Iraq, and they continue, and that is the aftermath. I think we could win the war. Those hairy-chested tub thumpers that think it's all over in two days because Saddam is so evil that everyone will overthrow him, I don't really believe them, and I don't believe them when they say there are all these Iraqi democrats just waiting to come in and govern the country. I think there's going to be a real time after the victory, if that's what we want to call it, of putting together any sort of a government. I can't conceive of anything that would be worse than our sort of running a colony there. The neighborhood won't like it. They won't like that we were there at all. We're going to have a problem with the Kurds and the Shiites and all of these domestic problems, and we could be there for a very long time.
So it's the aftermath that worries me. And by the way, one of the reasons I believe so much that we have to have allies involved in this is precisely because they need to be there at least to help us in the aftermath, if not to take it over for us. If you want to know one of the fundamental reasons that the first George Bush got us out as fast as he did and one of the reasons that we did not pursue Saddam and get him out of there in the first place, it was precisely because of his great concerns about this question of the aftermath and what the United States did once we won.
SIMON: There are some people who've raised their voices recently who say they're concerned about an operation against Iraq distracting US policy from what seems to be a very live imminent danger in North Korea...
Mr. EAGLEBURGER: I have some sympathy with that.
SIMON: ...and, for that matter, the war against terrorism.
Mr. EAGLEBURGER: Well, I do believe that the consequences of Iraq and now perhaps North Korea have, in fact, distracted us from the war on terrorism. I can't argue that. The North Korean thing is a very serious danger, and I also think that the North Koreans may well have decided this was the time to play this game because of what we're doing in Iraq. North Korea is probably more strategically dangerous than Iraq. Iraq is a danger in the region. North Korea now has the means to deliver a nuclear weapon as far as Japan, and they can develop the means of delivery that over a period of time they could probably deliver a nuclear weapon as far as the United States. North Korea is still a small pip-squeak country, but it has the ability to do some damage that very few other countries could do.
SIMON: Mr. Eagleburger, thanks very much.
Mr. EAGLEBURGER: My pleasure. It's been fun.
SIMON: Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger speaking with us this week at his office in Washington, DC.
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