The Road to Iraq: Part 4

Letter from Project for the New American Century for which signers in bold either have in the past or are now serving in the George W. Bush Administration:

January 26, 1998

The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.

The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.

Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.

Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

Sincerely,

Elliott Abrams (Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs, Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy under George W. Bush. Conviction in 1991 on two misdemeanor counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress during the Iran-Contra Affair investigation.)

Richard L. Armitage (United States Deputy Secretary of State under George W. Bush (2001-2005). Armitage admitted to being the source in the CIA leak in the Valerie Plame Affair.)

William J. Bennett

Jeffrey Bergner (Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs under George W. Bush (2005-Present))

John Bolton (Permanent US Representative to the UN from August 2005 until December 2006 on a recess appointment by George W. Bush, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security under George W. Bush)

Paula Dobriansky (Under-Secretary of State for Democracy & Global Affairs under George W. Bush)

Francis Fukuyama

Robert Kagan (Foreign-policy advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney)

Zalmay Khalilzad (U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, present Permanent US Representative to the UN under George W. Bush.)

William Kristol

Richard Perle (Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee from 1987 to 2004. He was Chairman of the Board from 2001 to 2003 under George W. Bush.)

Peter W. Rodman (United States Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs under George W. Bush.)

Donald Rumsfeld (Secretery of Defense under George W. Bush.)

William Schneider, Jr. (Chairman of the Defense Science Board under George W. Bush.)

Vin Weber (Republican Party stratagist. Served as the Bush-Cheney '04 Campaign Plains States Regional Chairman)

Paul Wolfowitz (U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense (2001-2005) under George W. Bush. Author (along with I. Lewis Libby) of Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994-99 fiscal years (Wolfowitz Docterine).)

R. James Woolsey

Robert B. Zoellick (United States Deputy Secretary of State under George W. Bush.)