Today's Column Jude Wanniski November 4, 2002

 From: Jude Wanniski [mailto:jwanniski@polyconomics.com]
Sent: Monday, November 04, 2002 10:13 AM
To: Bartley, Bob
Subject: today's column

Bob:

Do you recall who supported a march to Baghdad in 1991 to get rid of Saddam? I know that has been your argument for several years, but in the course of researching a book on the Middle East, I find nobody in power advocating such a march. Schwartzkopf comes closest, but in a later book he says he was misinterpreted. I don't find any record of Wohlstetter/Perle/Wolfowitz urging a march to Baghdad either. I saw Perle on tv the other day and he was recollecting that he wrote at the time that there should be NO advance once Saddam had been kicked out, but that he had hoped the Republican Guard could be caught and demolished.

All I can find is that Saddam sent up the white flag before the allied ground troops began the "turkey shoot," which is the reason almost all the US 148 casualties in the "war" were by friendly fire or by accident. There were 28 US troops killed in their barracks by an Iraqi SCUD, but there is some question about that, as Iraq was not firing SCUDS randomly in the desert, as they didn't have that many of them. That too could have been "friendly fire."

Do you remember writing anything in 1991 urging an on-to-Baghdad campaign? I do assume that Wolfowitz was making that argument inside the Pentagon and maybe Albert was from his outside perch. But they do not show up in any of the official memoirs I have been going through. Nixon, by the way, is the most forthright in arguing that under no circumstances should the sanctions on Iraq be lifted as long as Saddam is in power. But in the same book (1994) he insists Israel must give the Palestinians a state -- which the Likud Party opposes.

Jude

PS  If Reagan were the same fellow he was years ago, he would have been arguing for a gold standard. No?