|
Interview: Thomas E. Ricks Discusses the Division Over Going to War With Iraq
Weekend Edition Sunday: August 4, 2002
 Iraq
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
Talk of war and military action ricocheted down the corridors of power in Washington this past week. On Capitol Hill, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard opinions on a possible attack on the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. At the White House, Bush administration officials pressured the CIA and the FBI to find intelligence which might link the September 11 hijackers with Baghdad. And at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called top military officers in to discuss ways to reinvigorate the war against terrorism.
Thomas E. Ricks is the military correspondent for The Washington Post, and he's here.
Good morning, Tom.
Mr. THOMAS E. RICKS (The Washington Post): Good morning.
HANSEN: Your story in The Post this weekend reported that Secretary Rumsfeld wants some aggressive new strategies from the military to combat terrorism. First of all, who makes those decisions, and what are some of the ideas that are being discussed?
Mr. RICKS: Well, the decisions in this case are coming out--mainly out of the Special Operations Command, which although it's called a command is almost like a separate service within the US military, currently, commanded by an Air Force general named Charles Holland. He was coming in and telling Rumsfeld, `Here are a bunch of things I can do if you can get me the political backing, including of Congress, and the legal approval.' This is things like boarding ships globally in a hostile fashion--that is to say, without permission--and searching them. It's very dirty, difficult, dangerous work, and likely will produce some casualties, not only because you can be booby-trapped easily, but also some of these ships are just very dangerous. They can sink. A couple of guys were killed when a ship sank in the Persian Gulf a couple years ago while being boarded like that. It's not something the US military has done a lot of, but I think they're going to go ahead and do it.
Also, Holland talked to Rumsfeld about having Special Operations troops go along with foreign militaries on ground combat missions, something that probably will raise some eyebrows in Congress.
HANSEN: Iraq was a big topic of conversation. And what are the principal positions being taken now at the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and in Congress vis-a-vis new military action against Iraq?
Mr. RICKS: Well, the scorecard is, at the White House Cheney is one of the leading advocates of a hawkish stance, and he's kind of shoulder to shoulder with Rumsfeld on this, as I understand it.
HANSEN: OK.
Mr. RICKS: On the other side, you have Powell--Secretary of State Powell not so much taking a dovish position, but asking skeptical questions--Are you sure? Have you thought about this?
HANSEN: But he was a military leader; now he's in the position of being a diplomat.
Mr. RICKS: And actually it's funny because the administration hawks the kind of unholy alliance here, an unusual one, between the State Department and the uniformed military. I think because of Powell's background as former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, they feel like they have a friend who understands them over at State. There are two general points of consensus. One, they would like to get rid of Saddam Hussein, everybody in the administration. Number two, the hard question here is the aftermath. What do you do after you win? How long do you have to stay? How many troops do you have to put in?
One of the numbers that came up in the congressional hearings this week was 75,000 US troops. Seventy-five thousand US troops may not sound like that much in a US military of 1.4 million people on active duty. But that's three-plus divisions. Well, the US Army only has 10 active-duty divisions. Three divisions takes up a big chunk of the Army, because the Army's rule of thumb is for every division deployed, one has to be training and one has to be recovering from that mission. That's nine divisions. Well, that's the US Army, and then one division doing Afghanistan. So there's a lot of worry in the military, especially on this, that, yeah, we can do this. But have you thought about the consequences for us and for the region.
And so the military has, I think, playing in some ways the most interesting role in here. The military's view, interestingly, is, A, we're kind of already at war with Iraq, in case nobody else noticed. We've been bombing the place for the last 10 years, and especially the last five years, or four years. And, B, the policy we have here of aggressive containment, of no-fly zones, of sanctions--the military thinks that's working pretty well. The phrase they use is `in the box.' Saddam Hussein has been kept in the box. Their measures are he's not an immediate threat to his neighbors, though he'd like to be. They see no evidence of him playing footsie with terrorist organizations, especially with al-Qaeda. They don't see him, though he'd like to get them, of having nuclear weapons. And they don't believe he has any operational Scuds or other long-range missiles.
So they're saying, `Look, we think this is a pretty effective policy we've been carrying out, in case you didn't notice.'
HANSEN: So let's talk about the dynamics then. I mean, if--you've given us the scorecard, I suppose the teams are the uniforms against the suits, in many ways.
Mr. RICKS: Well, the one person I didn't mention on that scorecard is President George W. Bush. This is, I think, the single biggest question in Washington this week that's sort of--when I ran into people on the street, former officials and stuff, this is what we talk about: Where will Bush come down on this? And I think nobody knows, and I don't even think the president knows. There's one camp that says, `Look, the guy's way out there. The president has said he's determined to do this. There's no way he cannot do it.'
The other side says, `He understands the risk involved. You don't want to go to war with a bunch of people whose heart isn't in it. And he understands also that this time we're not going to get foreigners to pick up the tab for the war.' So it would be a big hit on the US economy. Oil prices might spike, and it could lead to real problems. And so there are people, especially in the military, who think this is not going to happen.
HANSEN: If the divisions are so deep about whether or not to invade Iraq, one of the things you would need, as you said, is the American support. That's one of the things that the president is considering; does he have support. Terrorism could be a reason for the American people to support an invasion of Iraq, and if nuclear or biological weapons exist as a form of terror, inspections could prove that.
Mr. RICKS: I don't think inspections will produce anything dispositive on this. The administration believes that any inspection regime that is worthwhile enough to really produce information would be so intrusive that Iraq wouldn't allow it. It reminds me of Groucho Marx's old line about he wouldn't want to join any club that would have him as a member. You know, they're saying Saddam Hussein wouldn't permit any inspections that would be worth a damn.
HANSEN: Given the conflicts that are going on right now, the tension between civilians and the Pentagon in the power structure and the military officers--you were on the show one weekend when Steve Inskeep was the host, and you were talking about your novel, "A Soldier's Duty," which is the story about similar kinds of tensions. Is it deja vu all over again for you?
Mr. RICKS: Well, as it happened, I posited a US military intervention in Afghanistan. It turns out I had the right war but I had the wrong tension. There was no tension in the US military about going to Afghanistan. They thought it was the right thing to do, and they executed it very crisply and smartly, generally. Where there is a lot of tension is over Iraq. I usually don't get into motivations with sources. `Why are you telling me?' I don't care why you're telling me as long as you're telling me what's going on. But this did come up with one general. I said, `Why are we getting into this? I mean, this is an unusual conversation. Why are you telling me about your opposition to administration policy here?' And he said, `It goes back to the Vietnam War. We're not going to be LBJ's Joint Chiefs of Staff. We're not going to roll over. We're going to ask the tough questions.'
So they think they're performing their professional duty right now. I think some people in the administration feel that the military's gone over the line here from professional advice to obstructionism.
HANSEN: Thomas E. Ricks is a military correspondent for The Washington Post. His novel, "A Soldier's Duty," was published last year by Random House. He's also the author of "Making the Corps," the story of a platoon of Marines and their experience going through boot camp at Parris Island.
Thanks so much for coming in.
Mr. RICKS: Thank you.
Copyright ©2002 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information, please contact NPR's Permissions Coordinator at (202) 513-2000.
This transcript was created by a contractor for NPR, and NPR has not verified its accuracy. For all NPR programs, the broadcast audio should be considered the authoritative
version.
|
