U.S. Discounts Iraq's Missile Move
The White House Friday dismissed Iraq's promise to destroy its prohibited Al Samoud missiles, saying it's "not enough" and nothing more than another tactic of deception.
"That's the problem with Saddam Hussein. Every time he's under pressure, he tries to relieve the pressure by disarming just a touch, just a little, playing the game, playing the deception," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
If he hopes to avoid war, White House officials say, Saddam needs to undertake a "big and dramatic" gesture, not a "show destruction" of a few missiles in a parking lot.
But for chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who Friday delivered a written interim report on the progress of disarmament, the Iraqi pledge is both big and dramatic.
"It's a very big chunk of things," said Blix. "There are very many of these missiles … so it is a very significant piece of real disarmament."
That pronouncement, reports CBS News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts, is bound to complicate negotiations at the Security Council on a new resolution authorizing force against Iraq.
The French foreign minister Friday said the destruction of the Al Samouds, "confirms that inspectors are getting results." And Russia's foreign minister, in contrast to what the White House said were positive statements from President Vladimir Putin Thursday, threatened to veto the U.S.-backed resolution "if necessary, in the interests of international stability."
But the White House is unflinching in its schedule for military action. It will press ahead with negotiations on a new resolution next week; then, shortly after Blix's formal report to the Security Council on March – sometime between March 10 and 14 – the U.S. will call for a vote authorizing war.
If the measure passes, the White House will give Saddam a final deadline to leave before the shooting starts. If it doesn't, President Bush will quickly assemble his "coalition of the willing." Either way, it appears likely that by the end of March, Saddam will either be in exile, or the U.S. will be at war.
The announced destruction of the Al Samouds – to begin Saturday – will be a detailed and painstaking process, reports CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips. There is a long laundry list of what has to go:
It's a destruction program that would take months – if the Iraqis had months.
At the same time, the Iraqis are also trying to convince the U.N. that they have already destroyed their chemical and biological weapons program by burying it at al-Aziziya southeast of Baghdad. Blix's chief deputy, Demetrius Perricos, has flown in to try to verify whether that rusting shells and other unearthed fragments really do account for the massive illegal weapons program Iraq is known to have had.
At the site, bulldozers moved mounds of earth to reveal rusty, dirt-caked warheads and bomb fragments, some as large as cars. Nearby, missiles bearing U.N. identification tags rusted in a parched field.
Overhead, an American U-2 reconnaissance plane flew over Iraq for more than six hours Friday — the fourth such flight in support of the U.N. inspections, Iraq said. The U-2 flights had been another key demand of the inspectors until Iraq agreed to them this month.
Meanwhile, CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports there have been some suspicious movements by Iraqi warplanes. Three times in the past week, Iraqi MiGs have violated the no-fly zone by flying deeper and deeper into southern Iraq, in one case going all the way to Saudia Arabia and actually into Saudi air space. American aircraft tracked the MiGs but never got in range to fire a shot.
The Pentagon is not sure what the Iraqis are up to, but one explanation is that they are probing American defenses as part of an effort to launch a preemptive attack with chemical or biological weapons before a war starts.
In his briefing at the U.S., Secretary of State Colin Powell showed video of an Iraqi jet dispensing a spray that he said was simulated anthrax. Powell also said Iraq has built spray tanks that could be mounted on unmanned aircraft. In recent weeks, U.S. intelligence has detected signs the Iraqis may be trying to position those aircraft within range of the more than 100,000 American troops in Kuwait.
Iraq has already tried to move surface-to-surface missile launchers in range of both Kuwait and Turkey, where American troops could soon be arriving in large numbers, but U.S. jets attacked the launchers as soon as they were spotted.
Until now, Saddam appeared to be repeating the same mistake he made in the first gulf war – doing nothing to interfere with the steady buildup of U.S. forces on his borders. On Friday it was troops from the 101st Airborne Division boarding planes bound for Kuwait. Saddam knows his best chance for survival is to avoid war, but if that doesn't work, he may try to sneak in the first shot.