- The Bush administration's plans to go to war against
Iraq are causing growing disquiet among eminent members of the President's
Republican Party, including congressmen, foreign policy veterans and one
close confidant of the first President Bush who was deeply involved in
the war against Iraq a decade ago.
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- The names who have come forward this week to express
scepticism or outright opposition to a military invasion could not be more
high-profile: Henry Kissinger, the primary architect of American foreign
and security policy during the second half of the Cold War, who is considered
something of a Delphic oracle by many Americans; Brent Scowcroft, who served
as national security adviser to George Bush Snr and is still close to the
whole Bush family; and Lawrence Eagleburger, another veteran from the Reagan-Bush
era who briefly served as Secretary of State after the 1991 Gulf War.
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- The congressional critics are no slouches either. They
include Dick Armey, the influential House majority leader and noted Texas
oil lobbyist, and Chuck Hagel, a senator from Nebraska seen as an expert
on intelligence and security.
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- All of these voices are asking the same set of questions:
whether the administration has thought through the knock-on effects of
an invasion; whether an attack might make Saddam Hussein more inclined
to use weapons of mass destruction ö if he has them; and what plans,
if any, have been drawn up for a post-war settlement to stop America being
drawn into a colonial occupation.
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- All of them are pressing the Bush administration to make
its case more clearly and rely less on demonising President Saddam, as
Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser, did in an interview with
BBC Radio 4 this week. Mr Scowcroft, writing in The Wall Street Journal,
was perhaps bluntest, saying a war risked undoing all the administration
had set out to do since 11 September. An attack on Iraq "would seriously
jeopardise, if not destroy, the global counter-terrorist campaign we have
undertaken". It also opened the possibility of an exchange of chemical
and nuclear weapons between Iraq and Israel, he argued, warning of "Armageddon
in the Middle East".
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- Because of his closeness to the first Bush administration,
speculation is widespread that Mr Scowcroft was acting as an ambassador
for the President's father, begging the younger George Bush to think again.
The New York Times called his intervention "an extraordinary challenge
to the Bush administration". The paper added: "Mr Scowcroft's
concerns about attacking Iraq were the equivalent of a cannon shot across
the White House lawn."
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- Almost as striking were Mr Eagleburger's remarks, which
pointed to the lack of evidence that the Iraqis are close to having or
using weapons of mass destruction. "I don't know why we have to do
it [the invasion] now, when all our allies are opposed to it," Mr
Eagleburger told ABC Television.
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- Mr Kissinger, writing in The Washington Post, was more
sympathetic to the administration's desire to end President Saddam's regime,
but he too had criticisms of the administration's apparent proclivity for
solving geopolitical problems with military might alone. "America's
special responsibility is to work toward an international system that rests
on more than military power ö indeed, that strives to translate power
into co-operation," Mr Kissinger wrote. "Any other attitude will
gradually isolate and exhaust America."
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- What effect such criticisms are having on the President's
inner circle of advisers is not clear. Reports have been numerous that
Colin Powell, the relatively moderate Secretary of State, has urged the
President to develop a more detailed plan for a post-invasion settlement.
But how much of the President's confidence Mr Powell enjoys is not certain.
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- www.news.independent.co.uk
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