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Brownback, Hon. Sam, U.S. Senator from Kansas, news release from March
1, 2001, entitled “Brownback Chairs Hearing on U.S. Policy Toward Iraq.” .. 3
Cordesman, Anthony H., Arleigh A. Burke Chair for Strategy, Center for
Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC ..................................... 14
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 17
Halperin, Dr. Morton H., senior fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, Wash-
ington, DC ............................................................................................................. 22
epared statement .......................................................................................... 25
Kerrey, Hon. Robert J., former U.S. Senator from Nebraska, and President,
New School University, New York, NY .............................................................. 9
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 12
Perle, Hon. Richard N., former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Internatioal
Security, Washington, DC ................................................................................... 28
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 33
Wellstone, Hon. Paul, U.S. Senator from Minnesota:
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 8
Letter to President Clinton regarding existing sanctions regime ................ 4
(III)


2
assume that in the absence of inspectors for over 2 years he has
seized the opportunity to beef up his WMD programs.
For our part, according to press reports about Secretary Powell's
trip to the Middle East, the administration now supports using the
existing sanctions and instituting so-called smarter sanctions, and
I look forward to discussing this with the Secretary next week.
As we listen to all this talk about smarter sanctions, I have to
wonder whether we can put the horse back in the barn at all. The
sanction regime and the international coalition against Iraq have
been completely unraveled. The steady stream of international
flights, kicked off by the Russians and the French, have headed
into Baghdad since August without monitoring or inspection. The
Chinese are working illegally in Baghdad without fear of repercus-
sions, and press reports indicate that oil is once again flowing in
the Iraqi-Syrian pipeline to the tune of 150,000 barrels per day.
The profits from those illegal transfers of oil go straight into
Saddam's pockets. To top it off, U.S.-British strikes on Iraqi air de-
fense targets 2 weeks ago, intended to protect allied pilots from in-
creased Iraqi threats, drew fire, not only from the usual suspects,
but also from the Arab States we are ostensibly protecting, and are
our partners on the Security Council.
I think we need to face it, Saddam has won a good portion of the
propaganda war. He is and remains a ruthless despot who refuses
to spend all he is allowed for his people's well-being. Notwith-
standing, the United States seems to be blamed for the suffering
of the Iraqi people.
Now, what do we do? Will we get inspectors back into Iraq'? What
sacrifices on sanctions will need to be made to get them in, and will
any such inspections be worth those sacrifices? I rather doubt it.
We are going to have to bite this bullet. After 10 years, sanctions
have not achieved their intended goal, denying Iraq weapons of
mass destruction being the goal that we intended to achieve.
If that remains our goal today, and I certainly hope it does, then
we need to ask whether any refinement to these sanctions systems
will achieve that goal, and I would certainly like to hear our pan-
el's opinions on that question.
I believe that any tradeoff for weakening sanctions must be a
more robust U.S. policy toward Iraq. The Republican platform in
2000 called for the full implementation of the Iraq Liberation Act
and support for the Iraqi opposition. I, along with many of my col-
leagues, have long supported that policy, and hope the administra-
tion will work toward it. The threat that Iraq poses to its own peo-
ple and to the decent nations of this world will remain for as long
as Saddam Hussein is in power.
To my mind, there is only one answer to solving this problem,
and the answer is, Saddam Hussein, and getting him out of power.
What do we do? Well, we make several suggestions here, and I look
forward to those from our panelists. One, I think we can use the
resources at our finger tips in the form of a drawdown and eco-
nomic support to bolster the opposition and to fully implement the
Iraq Liberation Act. We have Dr. Chalabi here with the Iraq Na-
tional Congress. I am delighted to note your attendance in the au-
dience as well.


6
tribution of aid to its own people. You should also insist on greater transparency
in the deliberations and decisions of the Sanctions Committee. While we recognize
there May be circumstances in which decisions of the committee must remain inter-
nal matters, we believe its decision-making process should be made more trans-
parent, and thus less susceptible to charges of politicization.
Third, we urge you to press the Security Council to establish an international
criminal tribunal mandated to investigate, indict, and prosecute Iraqi leaders and
former officials against whom credible evidence exists of war crimes, crimes against
humanity, and genocide. Such an initiative will at a minimum help enforce the con-
tinued political isolation of the government, even as steps are tº: to lessen the
economic isolation that has impoverished much of the population. It represents the
kind of targeted sanction that should be directed against those responsible for those
Iraqi policies we want to change. In addition, we believe you should press for multi-
lateral steps to further isolate regime officials by freezing any of their remaining
assets abroad, restricting their travel and that of their family members, increasing
political and diplomatic pressure on any nations who May be allowing, directly or
indirectly, transfers of sanctioned materials, and taking any other similar steps you
deem necessary.
Finally, we urge you to endorse a relaxation and restructuring of the economic
embargo on Iraq, while continuing and even tightening where possible strict prohibi-
tions on military imports. Such a restructuring would permit import of a j.
range of jä. goods in order to allow the revival of the civilian economy. We
recognize that an important goal of the present sanctions is to block the govern-
ment's access to foreign exchange which could be used to finance imports for mili-
tary and weapons-development purposes. We support that objective, but we do not
believe the current approach is justifiable, or even sustainable. Instead, we believe
the administration should, while maintaining current commercial and military flight
restrictions, work with its Security Council partners to establish a new regime.
Some variation of a proposal made recently by Human Rights Watch, which would
make Iraqi imports 1. to inspection at all major ports of entry, seems to us wor-
thy of consideration. We recognize that some new expense would be required by
such an effort, and would assume that it would be funded out of Iraq's export reve-
nues, just as UNSCOM expenses have been since 1991.
Rather than a system geared primarily to deciding what to allow in, the efforts
and resources of the international community under an alternative approach like
this would be redirected primarily to keeping out of Iraq military goods and prod-
ucts likely to be used for mili urposes. While the current lists of prohibited
items—from the Missile Control º: Regime, the Schedules of Chemicals of
the Chemical Weapons Convention, or the List of Dual Use Goods and Technologies
and the Munitions List of the Wassenaar Arrangement, for example—should be
maintained, relaxing import restrictions on certain categories of civilian-use items
not on such lists would be an important step. Maintaining close yet transparent Se-
curity Council scrutiny of contracts to import items that have dual-use applications,
coupled with a strong end-use monitoring regime, would further help. §. assumne
such an approach would require development of an expanded list of items which,
once the general category is licensed for import, need not be further approved by
the Sanctions Committee, but rather only by the Secretariat under its routine re-
view process. Of course, this would have to be coupled with an end-use monitoring
program which includes UN monitoring teams on the ground, in order to prevent
diversion of such items for nefarious purposes.
This new approach does not represent a fail-safe means of containing Iraq's pro-
liferation threat, or ensuring compliance with relevant Security Council obligations.
But we must point out that neither does the present arrangement. Baghdad still has
access to limited amounts of foreign exchange, and we understand that there are
no border inspections of goods entering the country except, ironically, those already
cleared by the Sanctions Committee. We understand further that any such changes
to the current regime would require a considerable investment, politically as well
as financially. There is no painless or cost-free way of addressing the Iraq's govern-
ment's unwillingness to abide by its disarmament commitments. The point is that
the pain and cost should not continue to be borne primarily by millions of ordinary
innocent Iraqis.
Mr. President, you and Secretary Albright have repeatedly observed that our
quarrel is not with the Iraqi people. We agree. But regrettably our Iraq policy has
too often had its most devastating impact on those Iraqis who bear no responsibility
for the policies that we are trying to sanction, and change. We have an obligation,
under iſ: UN Charter and the §. Declaration of Human Rights, not to de-
stroy or undermine the right of a people to an adequate standard of living, freedom
from hunger, and the highest attainable standa of health. For this reason we


8
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR PAUL WELLSTONE
I welcome this hearing on our jº. toward Iraq as the Administration initiates
a comprehensive review that could have far-reaching consequences for U.S. relations
with the Arab world. The beginning of a new Administration is an appropriate time
to review our policies and, where necessary, to recraft them in a way that meets
the changing political and humanitarian concerns in the Middle East. A year ago,
in the midst of the Clinton Administration's own Iraq policy review, I posed several
ideas about how to apply the existing sanctions regime more flexibly while pre-
serving strict monitoring of any weapons-related activity. I would like to insert into
. Committee record a copy of the letter I wrote to the President outlining those
10 leas.
In this regard, Secretary Powell's trip last week to consult with our friends and
allies in the Middle East was an extremely important initiative. The ideas that he
discussed—a stronger international effort to block Iraqi imports of arms and mili-
tary-related items coupled with an easing of non-military items and a more flexible
approach to items that serve essential civilian needs—could form the basis of a new
international consensus on Iraq sanctions. I hope that this hearing will help us put
these ideas into perspective.
Iraq poses a series of complex questions for policy makers. On the one hand, we
are confronted with the Iraqi government's persistent refusal to meet its obligations
with regard to Weapons of #. Destruction (WMD), as well as its record of whole-
sale human rights abuses. At the same time, the comprehensive UN sanctions re-
#. has contributed to a longstanding humanitarian crisis that has seriously af-
ected the health and well-being of millions of innocent Iraqis. It is clear that the
policies of the Iraqi ſº have greatly compounded and magnified the hu-
manitarian crisis, and that the government has not made the welfare of its civilian
population a priority. Even so, it has long seemed to me that a new approach on
sanctions which allows much greater flexibility in the sanctions regime for obviously
humanitarian goods and for certain dual use goods makes a lot of sense.
It is true that the Iraqi government bears the lion's share of responsibility for un-
necessary civilian suffering due to its persistent refusal to comply with the UN
weapons inspection program. This refusal is underscored by widespread media re-
ports about Iraq's possible effort to rebuild certain of its WMD capacities. However,
the callous behavior of the Iraqi government does not excuse the international com-
munity from its own humanitarian obligations.
I believe that we ought to explore further Secretary Powell's initiative, refine it,
and see if constructive alternative approaches can be developed in place of the cur-
rent stalemate. We need some hard thinking on Iraq. Our policy of overlying Iraq
has been in place for years and puts our pilots in danger on a daily basis but has
not changed the government of Iraq's º: I know that Senator Kerrey has
been outspoken in his support for the Iraq Liberation Act, but we need to think
carefully whether to support providing lethal military weapons to the Iraqi opposi-
tion. We risk overcommiting ourselves and leading the º; to believe that the
United States military will intervene if its fledgling efforts should falter. Are we
prepared to rescue the Iraqi opposition? Are we prepared to let it die again?
If the current government in Iraq should implode, certainly we should be prepared
to move ahead with a generous assistance package to help Iraq develop a .
and democratic society. But, by most informed accounts, the opposition appears
splintered and weak and May have little realistic chance of removing Saddam Hus-
sein from power.
I welcome Senator Kerrey, Mort Halpern, Richard Perle, and Tony Cordesman to
the hearing today and look forward to hearing their views.
Senator BROWNBACK. Thank you, Senator Wellstone.
Senator Thomas.
Senator THOMAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will look forward
to it also. Therefore, I will pass to let the panelists begin. Thank
you.
Senator BROWNBACK. Thank you. I think this is your first time
back to the Senate, Bob. The first witness up will be Hon. Bob
Kerrey, former Senator from the great State of Nebraska, second
best basketball team in the States between Kansas and Nebraska,
and current President of the New School University in New York.
Bob, welcome back. We are delighted to have you here.


13
is strong. The argument against military forces encourages us to ignore the hun-
dreds of millions spent each year to contain Iraq and the 47 American lives lost
since containment began. The argument that Arabs cannot govern themselves is
racist and encourages us to ignore a million Arab Americans who exercise their
rights when they are protected by constitution and law. The argument against the
I.N.C. is little more than a parroting of Saddam Hussein's propaganda.
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee I am very much aware that domes-
tic and international support has been steadily eroding for continuing sanctions
against Iraq let alone a new military strategy to end the nightmare of this dictator-
ship. I have watched with growing sadness as Iraq has exploited the public's lack
of memory, the Clinton administration's silence, and the world's appetite for its pro-
duction of 4 million barrels of oil a day.
I have read the reports of Secretary of State Colin Powell's return to Kuwait this
week and the difficulty he is having convincing our allies that we must stay the
course in opposing the Iraqi regime. I have read proposals by informed commenta-
tors to try to get the best deal we can at this point including one by Mr. Tom Fried-
man that would offer an end to sanctions and U.S. recognition in exchange for al-
º: U.S. inspectors to verify that weapons of mass destruction are not being built
In Iraq.
Mr. Chairman and members of the committee I urge you not to go along with the
flow of public opinion. The United States push back hard in the opposite direction.
The reason is simple: Saddam Hussein's Iraq represents a triple threat to us, to our
allies in the region and to the 20 million people who have the misfortune to live
in a country where torture and killing of political opposition has become so routine
it is rarely reported.
Iraq is a threat to us because they have the wealth and the will to build weapons
of mass destruction: chemical, biological and nuclear. Since the end of the Gulf War
in 1991 Saddam Hussein has lied and cheated his way out of the inspection regime
and has succeeded in convincing too many world leaders to overlook the danger he
poses to them. Iraq is a threat to allies in the region because they have displayed
no remorse or regret for their invasion of Kuwait. Instead they continue to justify
their illegal act and condemn the U.S. led effort which forced them to surrender the
territory of their neighbor after inflicting inestimable damage to Kuwait.
The Iraqi government is a threat to their own peoples especially the Kurds in the
northern provinces and the Shia in the south. Without our willingness to maintain
no-fly zones in the north and south thousands more innocents would have died from
Iraqi military assaults. It is by no means clear-cut that Iraqi civilians are suffering
as a consequence of sanctions. What is clear cut is that the Iraqi people are suf-
fering as a consequence of Saddam Hussein's policy of diverting United Nations
: away from much needed food and medicine to rebuilding his palaces and his
military.
So, I have come here today to urge you to stay the course. Join with President
Bush and tell him to imagine returning to Baghdad ten years from now to celebrate
the liberation of Iraq. In my view it is possible. In the view of the Iraqi people, the
jºins in the region and the people of the United States of America it is also
eSiraole.
What specifically can we do? In the spirit of bi-partisan foreign policy and in the
words a group of now senior Bush administration officials used in a 1998 letter to
then President Clinton here are three things that would be the beginning of the end
of Saddam Hussein's reign of terror:
1. Recognize a provisional government of Iraq based on the principles and
leaders of the Iraq National Congress (INC) that is representative of all the peo-
ples of Iraq;
2. Restore and enhance the safe haven in northern Iraq to allow a provisional
government to extend its authority there and establish a zone in southern Iraq
from which Saddam's ground forces would also be excluded;
3. Lift sanctions in the liberated areas.
Mr. Chairman and members of the foreign relations committee these three moves
would signal that the United States will not yield ground to the world's worse and
most dangerous dictator. And we would signal to the people of Iraq that we will not
be satisfied until they are free to determine their own fate.
Senator BROWNBACK. Thank you very much. Thank you for the
powerful statement and the clarity of it, and I look forward to hav-
ing a good discussion on these points as we go on through.
71-541 D-00--2


14
Mr. Cordesman, let us hear your testimony next if we could.
Thank you for joining us.
STATEMENT OF ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN, ARLEIGH A. BURKE
CHAIR FOR STRATEGY, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND
INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. CORDESMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to
thank you and the subcommittee for the opportunity to testify this
afternoon. I do have a formal statement which I would appreciate
it if it could be incorporated into the record, but I would make only
a brief statement.
Senator BROWNBACK. It will be included in the record.
Mr. CORDESMAN. I think I should preface my remarks with the
fact that you cannot have an Iraq policy that works without a new
policy in dealing with the Arab-Israeli peace issue, without rethink-
ing your policy toward Iran, and without broadening our diplo-
macy, which has focused in the last 2 years almost exclusively on
the peace process to consider how you can buildup a stronger basis
of support in the southern gulf.
But if I May address your question, is Saddam better off today,
the answer is yes, in some ways. There is one area where he is
clearly not better off. If you look back at the rate of arms imports
that he had until the embargo in mid-1990, by now he would have
spent anywhere from $22 to $45 billion on arms imports. He has
not had any major imports of arms since mid-1990, although there
has been smuggling, and some technology transfer.
In spite of demonstrations of prototypes, there has been no serial
production of a single major weapons system within Iraq. There
has been the assembly of some T-72 kits. I think we have only to
think what would happen in the United States if we froze the tech-
nology base for 10 years, if we could not have reacted to the lessons
of the gulf war, and if our military establishment consisted of worn
equipment that was used in the Iraq-Iran war, in large part, before
it was certainly worn in the gulf war.
In terms of weapons of mass destruction, it is an unfortunate re-
ality that during the gulf war we had only a limited number of suc-
cessful strikes on these facilities. Nevertheless, the gulf war forced
UNSCOM into Iraq, and we should not discount what happened.
Several billion dollars’ worth of manufacturing facilities, weapons,
and technology, was physically destroyed.
As you pointed out, however, his technology base remains. It is
virtually certain that he has had a decade in which to improve that
technology base. Certain key aspects of that base, particularly the
production of centrifuges and advanced biological weapons, could
never be traced by UNSCOM, which raises further questions about
UNMOVIC. He has the stockpiles to probably create a significant
break-out capability, and rapidly deploy some of these weapons.
In economic terms, the benefits to him are clear. Since 1990 eco-
nomic sanctions have eroded to the point where Iraq has at least
$1 billion worth of uncontrolled income from smuggled petroleum
exports. Its legal oil revenues in 2000 are estimated at roughly $22
billion, which is about 90 percent higher than they were the pre-
vious year, and 170 percent higher than the year before that.


21
two years in office, but “smart sanctions” require a clear and detailed plan of
action.
• Third, the US must face the reality of the ineffectiveness of the Iraqi opposition,
shift to a long-term covert operations effort, and focus on the continuing need for
military containment. The Bush Administration threatens to repeat the mis-
takes of the Clinton Administration and Congress, and go on backing weak and
unpopular elements of the Iraqi opposition like the Iraqi National Congress.
These movements have no meaningful support from any friendly government in
the region, and they have no military potential beyond dragging the US into
a “Bay of Kuwait” or “Bay of Kurdistan” disaster. The Turks fear them as a
way of dividing Iraq and creating a Kurdistan, and the Arabs fear them as a
way of bringing Iraq under Shi'ite control and-or Iranian influence. Worse, they
are no substitute for a major covert effort to overthrow Saddam from within,
and overt US funding of such movement tends to label the Iraqi opposition as
US sponsored traitors. We need to understand that containing Iraq is far more
important than legislating the funding of a forlorn hope.
• Fourth. the US must launch an actite truth campaign to confront Saddam on
oil for food and all of the other issues where he relies on lies and exploitation
of tensions in the region. The Clinton Administration committed a massive for-
eign policy mistake by failing to engage Saddam over his lies and propaganda.
Aside from some sporadic and truly inept press efforts, it allowed him to cap-
ture Arab and world opinion in lying about the problems in oil for food and the
true causes of the suffering of the Iraq people. It did not engage him actively
on human rights inside Iraq, his attacks on Iraq's Shi'ites, his continuing claims
to Kuwait, or his threats to Iraq's Kurds. It postured about palaces to the Amer-
ican media, and allowed Saddam to turn UN reporting into a propaganda de-
feat. “Smart sanctions” will not work without a massive and continued truth
campaign to fully explain the true character of the Iraqi regime that is tailored
to Gulf, Arab, and world audiences.
• Fifth, the US must think now about the ultimate future of Iraq's Kurds. The ero-
sion of sanctions poses immediate threats to Iraq's Kurds. While the Clinton
Administration chose to ignore it, Iraq has been “cleansing” oil-rich areas in
Northern Iraq of Kurds and forcing them into other areas or the Kurdish secu-
rity zone. It is not clear we can prevent this, but getting support for “smart
sanctions” and protecting the Kurds means we need a clear US policy on the
future of the Kurdish Security zone and a definition of Kurdish autonomy that
will set policy goals to protect the Kurds while defusing fears Iraq will divide
or break up.
Sixth, the US must have a clear energy policy towards Iraq. Iraq is a nation that
has some 11% of all the world's oil reserves and that has not had any coherent
energy development efforts since the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980.
US government projections call for Iraqi oil production capacity to more than
double from around 2.8 million barrels a day to 6.2 million barrels in 2020.
These increases in Iraq’s oil exports are also critical to any hope of its economic
development. Massive energy investments are required, and take years to a dec-
ade to pay off. They also can provide the Iraqi regime with major new resources.
“Smart sanctions” must be coupled to a clear energy development policy.
Finally, the US must revitalize the other aspects of military containment. The
true subtext of a “smart sanctions” policy is that we will need a major forward
military presence, rapid deployment capability, and war fighting ability to check
an Iraqi attack on Kuwait or threat to use weapons of mass destruction indefi-
nitely into the future. The Clinton Administration spoke stickly and carried a
big soft. It “nickel and dimed” its use of force to contain Iraq, issued a series
of abortive threats over UN inspections, launched Desert Fox, and then halted
it before it could be effective. Two years of pin-prick strikes over the “No Fly
Zones” have done as much to give Saddam a propaganda victory as they have
to hurt his air defenses.
We need a formal Bush Doctrine that States our redlines, that says quite clearly
that Gulf Security and the continued flow of oil is a vital US national Security inter-
est, and that we will remain committed to military containment and close coopera-
tion with our Gulf allies as long as there is a threat from either Iraq or Iran. We
need to define the kind of Iraqi action that will lead us to launch military action,
and if Iraq takes such action, we need to strike so hard and so decisively that the
military and personal cost to Saddam is so unaffordable that any political propa-
ganda gains he makes are minor in comparison. The one round of half-successful
strikes the Bush Administration launched on February 16th is Clintonesque at best.