-Caveat Lector- http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi? template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=87062
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com U.S. ponders worst-case scenarios David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker/NYT The New York Times Tuesday, February 18, 2003 WASHINGTON Senior Bush administration officials are for the first time openly discussing a subject they have sidestepped during the massive buildup of forces around Iraq: what could go wrong not only during an attack, but especially in the aftermath of an invasion. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has a four-to-five-page typewritten catalog of risks he keeps in his desk drawer. He refers to it constantly, updates it regularly and has incorporated suggestions from senior military commanders into it and discussed it with President George W. Bush. The list includes a "concern about Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction against his own people and blaming it on us, which would fit a pattern," Rumsfeld said. The document also notes "that he could do what he did to the Kuwaiti oil fields and explode them, detonate, in a way that lost that important revenue for the Iraqi people," Rumsfeld said. That item is of particular concern to the administration teams planning postwar reconstruction, as Iraqi oil revenues would be required for speedily rebuilding the nation. A senior Bush administration official confirmed that fundamental uncertainties remain even after months of internal studies, advance planning and the insertion of Central Intelligence Agency officers and Special Operations Forces into some corners of Iraq. "We still do not know how U.S. forces will be received - will it be cheers, jeers or shots?" the senior official said. "And the fact is, we won't know until we get there." In an administration that strives to sound bold and optimistic - especially when discussing the political, economic and military power of the United States and its ideas - such cautionary notes being sounded from the White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence community may well be intended for political inoculation. No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, according to one military maxim that is no less accurate for its being a cliché. It is better to warn the American public of these dangers in advance, officials note. According to his aides, Bush has to prepare the country for what one senior official calls "the very real possibility that this will not look like Afghanistan," a military victory that came with greater speed than any had predicted, and with fewer casualties. And if Bush decides to begin military action without explicit United Nations approval, it is very possible that other nations will withhold support for what promises to be the far more complex operation: stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq, while preventing religious and political score-settling, seeking out well-hidden weapons stores before others find them, keeping the lid on Taliban activity in Afghanistan and pre- empting acts of terror against American targets at home and abroad. "There is a lot to keep us awake at night," said one senior administration official. The level of uncertainty over the length of the battle in Iraq is high, the senior administration official said, despite the confident assertions of some enthusiasts for military action that the resistance will be over in a flash. "How long will this go on?" the official asked. "Three days, three weeks, three months, three years?" Even some of this senior official's aides winced as they contemplated the last time frame on the list. As America's intelligence assets focus on Iraq and tracking terrorist activity worldwide, senior officials worry that they may be less thorough in tracking threats to the United States elsewhere around the globe. Just last week on Capitol Hill, Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said that his ability to detect the proliferation of nuclear weapons or missiles around the world was being "stretched thin," leaving vast swaths of the world, including South Asia and North Korea, with less coverage than he would like. And the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, hinted at one of the deepest worries heard in the hallways of the intelligence agency, the Pentagon and the White House: that a successful removal of Saddam Hussein could be followed by a scramble for the tools he wielded to remain in power, including his military arsenal. "The country cannot be carved up," Tenet said of Iraq. "The country gets carved up and people believe they have license to take parts of the country for themselves. "That will make this a heck of a lot harder," Tenet said. At the White House, officials acknowledge that they have been late in focusing on the question of how to bring enough aid to the region in the days after an attack begins, which could mean that even those celebrating liberation could quickly turn against the liberators. Bush's political aides are acutely aware that if Iraq turns into a lengthy military operation, or if stabilization efforts are viewed by the Iraqi people as foreign occupation, those events will quickly be seized upon by Bush's opponents. Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune Forwarded for your information. 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