Bush changed tactics, but not goals to attack Iraq

Additional Reporting by Khaled Mamdouh, IOL Staff

CAIRO, Sept 7 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – U.S. President George W. Bush is to meet with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at Camp David Saturday, September 07, 2002, with only one topic on their agenda, Iraq. The two leaders are expected to adopt a plan of action based on getting a UN mandate to attack Iraq unless it readmits weapons inspectors back into the country.

Bush and Blair Friday, September 6, already started the first step. Both launched a diplomatic drive to win global backing for tougher action against Iraq hours after their warplanes staged a major raid on Iraq's military.

They separately telephoned Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Jacques Chirac, both of whom expressed serious reservations about toppling the Iraqi leader.

The U.S. President also spoke to Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

Bush, Putin, Chirac, Jiang and Blair represent the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and all hold veto power over any UN resolution on Iraq.

"The (U.S.) President told the foreign leaders that he values their opinions. He stressed that Saddam Hussein is a threat and that we need to work together to make the world more peaceful," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

Predicting that a war could break out any time from November, before Congressional polls in the United States, analysts believe that the two leaders will have to get “the UN resolution they want very soon”.

However, British officials admitted that Blair would be involved in a complex juggling act in the coming weeks, according to British daily Telegraph.

Even if he manages to persuade Bush to deal with Iraq through the UN, he will struggle to convince Security Council members to set such a "high bar" for Iraqi compliance.

Given that Iraq is likely to reject U.S. conditions (to readmit weapons inspectors back in), America and Britain would effectively be asking the UN to create a legal pretext for the invasion of Iraq. At the very least, an invasion force would be set on a hair trigger, and could be sent into action at the smallest Iraqi violation, the Telegraph said.

According to the British daily, Blair believed that only UN backing for "coercive inspections" would convince Washington hawks to build an international coalition rather than go it alone against Iraq.

Blair is carrying plans to help Bush gain some support for military action

Another possible scenario put forward by Blair, according to press reports, will be for the UN Security Council to deliver a four-week ultimatum for Iraq to admit weapons inspectors. This way, Bush will still have time to attack before November.

For his part, Bush, in light of almost unanimous world rejection of unilateral military action against a UN member state, seemed more than willing to listen to Blair and even change tactics in a bid to achieve his goals and get rid of Saddam. Hence, the flurry of diplomatic offensive, in a parallel line with military preparations on the ground.

This can easily be seen through the change of tone and words. Not long ago, Bush and other U.S. officials made it clear that “they would attack Iraq to remove Saddam, whether on not weapons inspectors were allowed back into Baghdad”.

Also, when the idea of proposing “a deadline for Iraq to readmit inspectors back in, or face the consequences” was first declared by Britain, it was met coolly by Bush and his hawks, who repeated the same response; “Inspections or not, we will attack”.

On the ground, meanwhile, the U.S.-British warplanes Kept up pressure on the Iraqi military, with a dozen planes bombing a "critical command and control" base in western Iraq Thursday, September 5.

"It was bigger than the ones we'd done in the last probably two weeks, but we've done strikes of that size several times over the last 10 or 11 years," said Brigadier General John Rosa, deputy operations director of the Joint Staff.

Rosa said that in Thursday's raid 12 aircraft dropped 25 bombs on the target, located at a military airfield 380 kilometers (240 miles) west of and slightly south of Baghdad.

The Daily Telegraph of London, however, said the raid was the biggest in four years and involved about 100 U.S. and British aircraft, including the dozen that dropped precision bombs.

That attack was seen as a likely prelude to ground action in western Iraq to suppress Scud missiles aimed at Israel.

Observers in the Middle East, however, believe that Bush is “going to attack Iraq eventually”. They also cited the absence of consultations with Arab moderate countries recently, referring that to one of two scenarios. The first may be due to the fact that “Bush knows the sensitivity of the situation to Arab countries, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia. So, he wants to save them the embarrassment before their peoples, given that they will not actually do anything to stop him”.

The second scenario, according to political analysts, could be that “Arab countries, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia, made their points of rejection (to U.S. strikes on Iraq) in a way too strong to be altered, one way or the other. So, Bush decided just to ignore them, for now”.

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