Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday that the Bush administration was considering several options to topple Saddam Hussein, amid indications that President Bush and his top advisers are close to settling on a plan.
“This is not an argument about whether to get rid of Saddam Hussein. That debate is over. This is . . . how you do it,” a senior administration official said in an interview with Knight Ridder.
The CIA, senior officials told Knight Ridder, recently presented Bush with a plan to destabilize Hussein’s well-entrenched regime in Baghdad. The plan proposed a massive covert action campaign, sabotage, information warfare and significantly more aggressive bombing of the “no fly” zones over northern and southern Iraq.
Bush reportedly was enthusiastic, and although it could not be determined whether he OKd the plan, the CIA has begun assigning officers to the task.
While taking an unusually tough tone Tuesday toward Iraq, Powell was careful to draw a distinction between Baghdad on one hand and Iran and North Korea on the other. President Bush had lumped these three countries together as an “axis of evil” because of their quest for weapons of mass destruction.
“With respect to Iran and with respect to North Korea, there is no plan to start a war with these nations,” Powell said. “With respect to Iraq, it has long been, for several years now, a policy of the United States government that regime change would be in the best interests of the region, the best interests of the Iraqi people.”
Powell emphasized that Bush had not made any final decisions and that military action was not imminent. One senior administration official, who asked not to be named, said the Pentagon still needs time to wind up the campaign in Afghanistan.
Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled to visit a number of nations that border Iraq, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey. Cheney also plans to visit Britain, Egypt, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman, all of which are nations whose support might be useful.
Among the difficult issues officials are wrestling with are the possibility that Hussein would respond to an attack by using weapons of mass destruction against U.S. forces and possibly Israel, the extent to which U.S. ground forces would be needed, and how Iraq would be administered after Hussein is toppled.
Use of force against Iraq could receive bipartisan support: ex-Vice President Al Gore said Tuesday that “a final reckoning with that government should be on the table.”
Gore told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York that Iraq “represents a virulent threat in a class by itself.”
