Rumsfeld Knocks Iraq Inspections
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld doubts that new U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq would be worth the effort. His view seems to contrast with the position of the State Department.
Speaking to reporters Monday about the prospect of resuming efforts to inspect for evidence that Iraq is illicitly developing nuclear weapons and means to deliver them, Rumsfeld made clear that he thinks Iraq inevitably would find ways to deny access or deceive the inspectors.
Rumsfeld voiced doubt about inspections unless they are "enormously intrusive."
Noting that inspectors had not been in Iraq since 1998, Rumsfeld said he was skeptical that new U.N. searches, which could resume this year, would build confidence, saying "What one would want is an inspection regime that could give the rest of the world reasonable confidence that in fact (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein was not doing that which everyone knows he has been trying to do."
"I just can't quite picture how intrusive something would have to be that it could offset the ease with which they have previously been able to deny and deceive, and which today one would think they would be vastly more skillful, having had all this time without inspectors there," Rumsfeld said.
His remarks contrasted with comments made separately by State Department spokesman Philip Reeker, who told reporters it is the Bush administration's policy to insist that Iraq permit unfettered inspections.
"Iraq has to comply fully and unconditionally with all applicable United Nations Security Council resolutions, including the return of U.N. weapons inspectors, and cooperate fully with them," Reeker said. He gave no indication the State Department shares Rumsfeld's view that inspections cannot succeed.
Rumsfeld did not say what should be done if effective inspections should prove impossible. In the past he has endorsed the view that if the goal is to stop Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction, then military action would be more effective than diplomacy.
In January 1998, Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, who is now deputy secretary of defense, signed an open letter to then-President Bill Clinton, stating it was nearly impossible to adequately monitor Saddam's weapons programs. They said the only acceptable strategy is to "eliminate the possibility" that Iraq could use or threaten to use a weapon of mass destruction, and this would require military action.
"Everyone knows" Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is pressing ahead with a nuclear program and striving to improve and expand his chemical and biological weapons arsenal, Rumsfeld said on Monday.
Amid growing speculation that the United States may launch a military offensive in Iraq to oust Saddam, the Iraqi government is negotiating with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on a resumption of weapons inspections, which ended in 1998 after Saddam refused to cooperate with the inspectors' demands.
Rumsfeld said U.N. inspections in Iraq that began after the 1991 Gulf War were inadequate.
"For the most part," he said, "anything they found was a result of having been cued to something as a result of a defector giving them a heads-up."
In the years since inspectors left Iraq in 1998, the Iraqis have increased their ability to hide their work, he said. He cited an "enormous amount" of equipment that Iraq has acquired "enabling them to become more mobile, enabling them to go underground to a greater extent than they had been previously."