In the week since a terrorist attack tore a gaping hole in the USS Cole and killed 17 sailors, President Clinton and his military commanders have made one thing clear: America will strike back.
Yet, since U.S. cruise missiles in 1998 flattened a Sudanese factory in Khartoum on apparently faulty intelligence that it manufactured chemical weapons, America’s quick-strike policy has come under question, forcing the government to gather more conclusive evidence of responsible parties and to justify any targets.
As a sign of the seriousness the U.S. is attaching to this issue, FBI Director Louis Freeh arrived in Aden, Yemen, on Thursday.
He will coordinate the investigation with Yemeni authorities in hopes of finding out who masterminded the apparent suicide attack on the $1 billion destroyer as it pulled into the port at Aden on Oct. 12 for refueling.
Members of Congress on Thursday grilled the military about the refueling decision.
Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, who selected Yemen as a Navy refueling stop in 1998, defended his decision before the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying there was no better alternative in a region full of terrorist “rats’ nests.”
The fact that Zinni was called to testify indicates that Congress not only is taking a close look at security issues in connection with the bombing attack, but also is likely to scrutinize any retaliatory steps that the government may take if and when the investigation in Yemen yields results.
“The legacy of the Sudanese bombing is that people are going to ask more penetrating questions,” said James Lindsay, a Brookings Institution scholar who formerly served on Clinton’s national security staff. “They want to know, `What kind of evidence do you have, and have you gotten it right?'”
Beyond this, said foreign policy analyst James Phillips at the Heritage Foundation, trying to stage pinpoint cruise-missile attacks on suspected terrorists has not worked to deter terrorism. He favors putting more pressure on governments that harbor terrorists, notably Afghanistan, as the wisest reaction.
U.S. missiles rained on suspected Afghan terrorist camps of Osama bin Laden in 1998, with results that also were controversial.
The Afghanistan attack came after an apparent terrorist meeting had broken up in one camp, and it was unclear how much damage the missiles did to bin Laden’s terrorist network.
A former U.S. official involved in the decisions leading up to those attacks said they were justified after terrorist bombings on U.S. Embassies in Africa, but he acknowledged that both had become so controversial that now the American government must act with greater evidence and precision when it stages such strikes.
“The bar has gone up since Khartoum and the last round of bombings in Afghanistan,” said this former official, who asked not to be quoted by name. “There is enormous public skepticism of this kind of action. You have to have the ducks lined up and have the action appropriate and justified.”
Despite its rhetoric, the former official said, “I don’t think the administration is going to do just anything” to respond.
President Clinton said at a memorial service in Norfolk, Va., on Wednesday that there is no safe harbor for those guilty of the bombing on the USS Cole, and that “justice will prevail.”
On NBC’s “Today” show, Adm. Robert Natter, commander of the Atlantic fleet, also said he was confident the perpetrators would be punished.
“We have got to go and attack the enemy,” Natter said. “There has been an attack on U.S. sovereign territory–that U.S. Navy warship. . . . You cannot continue to allow yourself to be attacked …”
Brookings’ Lindsay said such a policy harks back to the days of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, when he said of terrorists: “You can run, but you can’t hide.”
“In reality,” Lindsay said, “that is extraordinarily hard. It is hard because these people are very committed, and they have places to hide. They have countries that will harbor them.”
While the public and Congress surely will question any retaliatory steps by the government, Lindsay said the administration itself will have to pay close attention to whether its intelligence is accurate in selecting targets and make sure that officials “don’t jump to the wrong conclusion.”
The Heritage Foundation’s Phillips criticized the government’s policy of punishing terrorism as a criminal act by launching cruise missiles or bombs designed to take out those responsible. He described this as “chuck and duck” policy: “You launch a few missiles, declare victory, then try to duck the future bombs coming your way.”
Instead, Phillips said, anti-terrorism policy would pay greater dividends if the U.S. adopted a “more engaged policy against the backers of the terrorists, such as the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.”
The U.S. and the United Nations have imposed economic sanctions against the Taliban regime for failing to turn over bin Laden, a Saudi national who remains in exile in Afghanistan.
Phillips favors supporting the Taliban opposition and putting the regime on the official State Department list of countries that back terrorists.
In Aden, the Yemeni investigation appears to be yielding some results.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh disclosed Wednesday that the probe had discovered a rented house where two people “who carried out the crime” were living. He said investigators found the car that transported the boat that pulled up alongside the USS Cole, as well as the launcher that lowered the boat.
Saleh said the men spoke in what appeared to be Saudi accents, although they could have come from other Arab countries.
Freeh’s high-profile role in Aden was seen as one to lend credibility to the Yemeni investigation and to ensure that the dozens of FBI agents and CIA investigators on the ground carry out their work smoothly with the Yemenis.
The director told reporters the probe is being run by Yemeni police and security and added the U.S. is the “junior partner” in the investigation.
At a news conference in Aden, Freeh was asked if he though Muslim militants from Afghanistan might have played a role in the bombing.
“It is certainly a valid theory, and also a valid point of inquiry, based on experience and some of the other events that we’ve seen,” Freeh said.
Meantime, the last four missing bodies were recovered from the wreckage inside the Cole. Not all of the remains have been identified.
On Capitol Hill, Zinni denied that the military overlooked security problems at Aden to establish better relations with Yemen.
When he chose Aden as a refueling port, he said, it was clear the government there was sincere in wanting U.S. help to fight terrorism. Even at that, he said, Yemen is a transit route for terrorists. “The coast is a sieve,” he said.
The retired general said the U.S. faces an “asymmetrical” conflict with terrorists who will develop an increasing capacity to use more sophisticated weapons.
“There are no rear areas out there,” he said. “There are no safe places you could move.”
The USS Cole attack, in which a powerful explosion tore a hole in the hull estimated at 40 by 45 feet, demonstrated that terrorists are developing more powerful weapons, he said.
He offered a chilling scenario: “We will eventually see a weapon of mass destruction used in a terrorist act, somewhere, in this mode.” America, he said, is “woefully unprepared for that event.”
