Was it ever. Ten years ago, when Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all he had to do was to oust Iraq’s Army from Kuwait. Now he faces a battle on several fronts as he tries to revive some semblance of the U.N. sanctions regime that has penned in Saddam Hussein for a decade. First he must outgame the Iraqi leader, who has turned himself into an Arab folk hero while scouring world markets for parts to build weapons of mass destruction. As Powell noted in an interview, the restrictions on dealing with Iraq have grown so loose that Saddam “is getting more money now than he was getting in 1990.” He said Saddam’s smuggling revenues are about $2 billion annually–roughly double previous estimates. “We’re cleaning up the battlefield,” Powell said of his new approach.
But Powell faces a tough fight on another front, in Washington. Hawks in his own administration want any shift on sanctions to be matched by a renewed push to oust Saddam by throwing money and equipment at Iraqi dissidents–a policy Powell thinks is nonsense. “It is not an army,” he says of the Iraqi opposition in exile Predicts one U.S. official: “There will be a hellacious fight.” Nearly every appointee to a top State or Defense department post–except Powell–signed a letter in 1998 calling for “a comprehensive political and military strategy for bringing down Saddam.” But Powell didn’t even broach that idea in his meetings with Arab leaders.
The White House is ostentatiously leaving Powell to lead the charge up Capitol Hill to sell the shift to skeptical Republicans. Rep. Henry Hyde, the new chairman of the House International Relations Committee, wants Powell to testify this week on the apparent policy shift. “The rationale for sanctions is to prevent production of weapons of mass destruction,” a Hyde aide said. “Is weakening sanctions helping to achieve this goal?”
Powell’s popular public persona may be his best weapon. “This trip will give him credibility,” said a Western diplomat in Damascus. But Powell still must win support among other Arab states; Syria, Jordan and Turkey have come to depend on cheap oil from Iraq and will need financial help if they are to get onboard, diplomatic sources say. Powell may be helped by new reports that Indian firms are supplying Saddam with chemical and other potential WMD components. German intelligence estimates that Saddam might be able to fire missiles with a 2,000-mile range by 2005. For now only one course seems certain, and that was reflected in the ex-general’s parting words as he left Damascus: “I’ll be back.”
