U.S. Response:  Coast Guard Chief Says WMD Key Mission

By Bryan Bender

Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The United States Coast Guard plans to play a growing role in preventing illicit delivery of weapons of mass destruction into the United States, its top officer said yesterday.  The force is undertaking specialized training, acquiring detection equipment and introducing tighter screening procedures for vessels headed for U.S. ports, he said (see GSN, Dec. 7, 2001).

With new focus on homeland defense — half of its resources are expected to be dedicated to the mission — the Coast Guard now places the threat of weapons of mass destruction at the top of its list of threat priorities, Adm. Thomas Collins said at a forum sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  The Coast Guard, the nation’s maritime safety and security force, will be moved from the Transportation Department into the proposed homeland security department under current Bush Administration plans (see GSN, July 22).

Security officials consider the maritime domain as highly vulnerable to terrorist activities, including the illicit delivery of chemical, biological, nuclear or radiological materials.  It is also a means of entry for terrorists themselves, while ports make an attractive target because of their economic value.  The United States is placing heavy emphasis on improving its monitoring of its 95,000 miles of shoreline, with a primary objective of identifying what is entering the country.

“Containers are an indispensable but vulnerable link in the chain of global trade; approximately 90 percent of the world’s trade moves by container,” according to the Homeland Security Strategy, published last month.  “Each year, nearly 50 percent of the value of all U.S. imports arrives via 16 million containers.  The U.S. must “establish security criteria to identify high-risk containers; pre-screen containers before they arrive at U.S. ports; and develop and use smart and secure containers.”

An estimated 90 percent of all imports in the United States enter by sea and Collins outlined a series of new initiatives he said the Coast Guard has undertaken or will soon implement to strengthen its ability to prevent catastrophic weapons from being smuggled into the United States or used to disable a major U.S. port of entry.

Collins said the Coast Guard plans to cooperate with the U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. Customs Service — both of which are also expected to be folded into the new homeland security department — in “pushing the borders out” so threats can be neutralized “as far from our shores as possible.”

One way it is doing that is through what Collins called “controlled movement of high-interest vessels.”  As part of its homeland security efforts, the Coast Guard has already begun screening all seagoing vessels over 300 gross tons, requiring them to provide crew and passenger lists and at least 96 hours notice before arriving at a U.S. port of entry.  Other measures include more frequent boarding of vessels farther from U.S. shores (see GSN, June 7).

Collins said the Coast Guard is also acquiring a variety of chemical, biological and radiological equipment and personnel highly trained in such areas, including purchasing detection equipment to be used when boarding ships at sea and at port facilities, currently being considered for nationwide security standards and regulations in the Port Security Act now being considered in Congress (see GSN, March 21).

The Coast Guard has already re-trained its three so-called strike teams, located on the east and west coasts of the United States and one responsible for the Gulf of Mexico, so they can shift from environmental protection missions to WMD detection at ports of entry and along U.S. shores.

Another possible change in the Coast Guard WMD preparedness might be changes to the Deepwater Project, a multibillion-dollar investment in ships, aircraft and upgraded communications over the next decade and beyond.   “We may have to do some tweaking in terms of chemical, biological and radiological” capabilities, he said of the Deepwater effort.

The Coast Guard is particularly suited for the WMD mission, according to Collins, because of its dual role as a domestic maritime security force and member of the armed force in times of war.  The WMD problem is one place where both missions intersect, he said.

He added that Coast Guard’s expanded role in intelligence — it is now included in government-wide deliberations — will sharpen its expanded homeland security duties.

“We can add value as an [intelligence] collector,” Collins said.

Still, the Coast Guard will have to defend the homeland, while fulfilling its numerous other responsibilities, Collins said, including national defense, maritime safety, maritime mobility, and protection of natural resources.

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Iraq:  Senate Hearings Open; Rumsfeld Questions U.N. Inspections

Iraq is continuing to actively pursue development and acquisition of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, a panel of experts testified this morning before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Furthermore, evidence is emerging that Iraq has had extensive contact with al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden, one expert said (see GSN, July 29).

Iraqi programs are active and well concealed, said former U.N. Special Commission on Iraq Chairman Richard Butler and former Iraqi nuclear weapons engineer Khidir Hamza.  For example, one Iraqi nuclear weapon design facility is located within a hospital, Hamza said (see GSN, Dec. 20, 2001).

Hamza also reported that Iraqi officials met frequently with bin Laden in Khartoum, Sudan, in the 1990s (Greg Webb, GSN, July 31).

This morning’s testimony opened two days of scheduled hearings to examine the Iraqi threat and possible U.S. responses.  Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and the committee’s leading Republican Senator Richard Lugar (Ind.) said they hope to address several key objectives, including assessing the threat posed by Iraq, exploring a wide range of possible U.S. response policies and forecasting the regional and global effects of removing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power (Biden/Lugar, New York Times, July 31).

With more hearings planned for later this year, the current set will not include witnesses from the Bush administration, committee spokeswoman Lynne Weil said (George Edmonson, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 31).

Military Plans Undecided

Although President George W. Bush has repeatedly reaffirmed the U.S. policy of seeking an end to Hussein’s leadership — and several developing military plans have been leaked to the press recently — he has not yet decided that an invasion is the proper course of action, Biden said (see GSN, July 26).

“I’m convinced the administration has not made up their mind yet,” Biden told the Associated Press.  “Now they may have made up their mind about a regime change, but I’d be very, very, very surprised if the president has made a decision on how to attempt to change that regime” (Associated Press/New York Times, July 31).

Rumsfeld Ruminates

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld indicated yesterday that Iraq’s WMD capabilities have become increasingly difficult to detect as Baghdad has buried or mobilized many facilities (see GSN, July 30).

“They move around a lot of things to avoid detection or, if not detection, at least to avoid having them attacked,” Rumsfeld said at press briefing.  Asked whether Iraq has developed mobile biological weapons laboratories, he replied, “That’s a reasonable conclusion.”

Rumsfeld questioned the value of restarting U.N. inspections in Iraq.

“It would take such a thoroughly intrusive inspection regime, agreed to and then lived up to by Iraq, that it’s difficult to comprehend — even begin to think that they might accept such a regime,” he said (see GSN, April 16).

Meanwhile, Rumsfeld acknowledged that the United States has not pursued the same policy toward Iraq as it has toward the other countries — Iran and North Korea — that Bush identified within an “axis of evil” (see GSN, Jan. 30).

“The policy of the government of the United States has been to regime change for Iraq.  That’s the Congress and the executive branch both.  It has not been that for some other countries.  And I guess life’s just untidy,” he said (Defense Department release, July 30).

Europe Is Reluctant

Although British Prime Minister Tony Blair has suggested that the United States would not require U.N. approval to initiate military action against Iraq, two of his European counterparts disagreed yesterday (see GSN, July 25).

“I do not want to imagine an attack against Iraq, an attack which — were it to happen — could only be justified if it were decided on by the (U.N.) Security Council,” said French President Jacques Chirac following a meeting in Germany with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (Geir Moulson, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, July 31).

Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said he opposes any U.S. military action — U.N.-approved or not.

“We are trying to deter the United States administration from a military operation,” Ecevit told the newspaper Sabah today.  His comments followed two days of diplomatic activity in Ankara, including two visits to the Foreign Ministry today from the U.S. ambassador to Turkey (Reuters, July 31).

For further information, see:

UNMOVIC

U.N. Resolution 687 (Sanctions Regime)

U.N. Resolution 1409 (“Smart Sanctions”)

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Export Controls:  Bush Wrongly Eased Computer Controls, Analyst Says

Congressional investigators have found evidence indicating that the Bush administration relaxed export controls on high-performance computers based on false information provided by the computer industry, arms control expert Gary Milhollin said in a column in today’s Los Angeles Times (see GSN, Jan. 3).

In August 2001, a computer industry lobbying group told the administration that by early 2002, a new generation of advanced computers would be on the market that could perform 190 billion operations per second, twice as many as the computers then under controls, said Milhollin, executive director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.  The group asked the White House to relax export control levels to 190 billon operations per second so U.S. manufacturers could stay competitive, he said.

The U.S. General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that the industry’s claims were false, Milhollin said.  Out of 10 companies that the group said would be ready to sell advanced servers, nine “would not introduce these servers in 2002 or had no plans to manufacture these servers due to the lack of software and a market for such powerful servers,” the GAO reported, according to Milhollin.

According to Milhollin, the GAO report says that the White House’s eventual decision to reduce the export controls “was based not on an independent analysis but rather on information provided by industry.”  Milhollin also said that U.S. Commerce Department officials did not try to verify the lobbying group’s claims and that the GAO found that the White House had relied on the group’s letter for its decision.

According to Milhollin, the GAO also found that the United States decided to relax its export controls on high-performance computers without consent from the other members of the Wassenaar Arrangment — an informal export control regime that regulates computing technologies (see GSN, March 22).

“We can’t ask our allies to keep dangerous equipment away from terrorists and the countries that support them if we don’t control our own sales,” Milhollin said.  “All the other countries in this pact still control computers at much lower operating levels, which makes the United States a rogue exporter as well as a unilateralist” (Gary Milhollin, Los Angeles Times, July 30).

For further information, see:

Wassenaar Arrangement Web site

Participating States of Wassenaar Arrangement

Pentagon Executive Summary of Wassenaar Arrangement

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Iraq:  U.S. Tried to Manipulate Inspectors, Says Former UNSCOM Head

A former U.N. official has said that the United States and some U.N. Security Council members tried to use weapons inspectors in Iraq for their own purposes, including obtaining intelligence information, the Financial Times reported today (see GSN, July 12).

The United States tried to use inspectors to collect information on the location of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, said Rolf Ekeus — who headed the U.N. Special Commission for weapons inspections in Iraq from 1991 to 1997 — on Swedish radio.  Ekeus said he rebuffed U.S. attempts to use the inspectors to collect information, but pressure increased after he left the commission in 1997.

“As time went on, some countries, especially the U.S., wanted to learn more about other parts of Iraq’s capacity,” Ekeus said.

The United States and other countries also tried to persuade the inspectors to investigate sensitive areas such as the Iraqi defense ministry when they wanted to create a crisis, Ekeus said.

“They [Security Council members] pressed the inspections leadership to carry out inspections which were controversial from the Iraqis’ view and thereby created a blockage that could be used as a justification for a direct military action,” he said.

Iraq has refused to allow inspectors to return to the country, citing in part concern that they would be used to gather information or to provoke crisis (see GSN, March 11).  Ekeus’ statements are certain to support Iraq’s argument, according to the Times (Financial Times, July 30).

Air Strikes Not Enough, Rumsfeld Says

Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that if the United States decides to attack, it could not rely on air strikes alone to destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, July 29).  Iraq’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons sites are buried too deep or are too mobile to destroy with air power, he said (see GSN, July 24).

Iraq has learned how to hide its military assets, Rumsfeld said.  For example, a biological weapons laboratory might be in a mobile trailer.

“It’s movable, and it looks like most any other trailer,” he said.

Rumsfeld refused to say how the United States might destroy WMD sites (BBC, July 30).

No Military Near Kuwait

Meanwhile, there has been no indication of an Iraqi military buildup along the border with Kuwait, the U.N. Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission, which is responsible for monitoring the border since the 1991 Gulf War, reported today.

“There is nothing in the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone between Iraq and Kuwait) or close to it.  We have no confirmation of that,” UNIKOM spokesman Daljeet Bagga said.

Kuwaiti authorities have been holding internal meetings over the last few days to update emergency plans in preparation for a potential military conflict, Reuters reported (Reuters/Yahoo.com, July 30).

For further information, see:

UNSCOM

UNMOVIC

UNIKOM

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Iraq:  Al-Qaeda Link Could Justify U.S. Attack, Experts Say

White House lawyers have decided that a demonstrated link between Iraq and al-Qaeda would provide the legal justification needed for a U.S. attack against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, USA Today reported today (see GSN, July 11).

Bush administration and Defense Department legal experts believe that a link between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks would allow the administration to bypass debates in the U.S. Congress and the United Nations over what some critics would call an unprovoked attack, USA Today reported.  White House experts are considering using U.N. Security Council Resolution 1373 and Senate Joint Resolution 23 as the legal foundation for an attack on Iraq.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.) said senior Bush administration officials have often asked him what congressional authorization, if any, would be required for U.S. military action against Iraq.  Biden, who is expected to hold hearings on Iraq this week, has said President George W. Bush must come before Congress on the issue, but if a link can be established between Iraq and al-Qaeda, then “he has the authority” to attack (see GSN, June 11).

Bush nonetheless will not be able to avoid a debate in Congress over whether to attack Iraq, said Senator John Warner (R-Va.).

“He’ll have to come to Congress,” Warner said.  “No existing resolutions of a general nature would suffice to meet that political — not legal — requirement” (John Diamond, USA Today, July 29).

Possible Options

Some White House and Pentagon officials are advocating a military campaign against Iraq that would target Baghdad and one or two other command centers to cut off the Iraqi leadership and cause a quick collapse of Hussein’s regime, the New York Times reported today.

The “inside-out” strategy, as some have labeled the Baghdad-first plan, would utilize the U.S. military’s ability to conduct long-distance strikes, according to the Times.  The main focus of the strategy would be to kill or isolate Hussein and prevent Iraq from using its suspected WMD arsenal.  It might be possible to cripple the Iraqi military’s command-and-control system since it its highly centralized and authoritarian, officials said.

Any military action against Iraq would probably require 70,000-250,000 troops, according to the Times.  Strategists could conduct the inside-out plan with troops at the low end of the estimate, the Times reported.  If the military could carry out a strike with less than the earlier-estimated 250,000 troops, support for the plan might increase among U.S. allies in the Middle East, according to the Times (Sanger/Shanker, New York Times, July 29).

On the Other Hand …

Other senior U.S. military officials, however, have said that Hussein does not pose a threat to the United States, according to the Washington Post.  They advocate the current containment strategy rather than a military campaign, the Post reported.

According to some Pentagon officials, the earliest that the United States would attack Hussein would be next spring.  The Bush administration might achieve its goal of removing Hussein from power by waiting for Hussein to fall ill or conducting covert CIA operations, they said (see GSN, June 17).  The U.S. military shares support for containment with senior State Department and CIA officials, according to people familiar with interagency discussions.

Senior U.S. military officers believe containment policy has been more effective against Iraq than is widely known, officials said.  One sign of its effectiveness is that Hussein has been deterred from threatening his neighbors or from supporting terrorist groups, senior officers said.

While there is no doubt that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, it lacks long-range missiles to use them against Israel or other U.S. allies in the Middle East, defense officials said.  Senior officers believe the containment approach is a better plan that invading an Iraq armed with biological and chemical weapons, officials said.

Some military officers have questioned Bush’s reasoning for his repeated calls for the removal of Hussein, according to the Post.

“I’m not aware of any linkage to al-Qaeda or terrorism, so I have to wonder if this has something to do with his father being targeted by Saddam,” said a U.S. general involved in the war in Afghanistan.

Retired U.S. officers have been more forthcoming about their support for the current containment policy, the Post reported.

“I’d argue that containment is certainly a better approach than either marching on Baghdad or destabilizing the Iraqi government by killing Saddam,” said retired Col. Richard Dunn, a former Army strategist.  “It only has to work until something happens to him — he’s either killed or dies.”

Senior White House and Pentagon civilian officials, however, disagree with the containment approach, according to the Post.  They have said that Hussein is still attempting to intimidate other countries and is still attempting to obtain weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, July 25).

“The whole question is, how long do you wait with Saddam Hussein in possession of the capabilities he has and would like to have?” said Richard Perle, head of the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory group.

Supporters of U.S. military action against Iraq have said Iraq is more able to obtain long-range ballistic missiles than supporters of the containment policy have indicated.  For example, he might be able to obtain missiles from Islamic extremists based in Pakistan, said retired Air Force Lt.-Gen. Thomas McInerney.

Other military action supporters have said Iraq could conduct a biological or chemical weapons attack without missiles.

“You don’t have to have a long-range missile necessarily to deliver a deadly weapons, especially if it’s powdered anthrax,” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said recently.

It would be wrong to think that Hussein would only use the conventional methods he has used in the past to carry out an attack with biological or chemical weapons, Perle said.

“Saddam could decide at any time to hand anthrax to terrorists,” he said (Thomas Ricks, Washington Post, July 28).

United States Invites Iraqi Opposition Leaders

The United States has invited six top Iraqi opposition leaders to Washington to discuss a post-Hussein Iraq, a State spokesman said Saturday (see GSN, March 20).

“Some opposition leaders have been invited to Washington for a meeting on either Aug. 9 or 16, co-hosted by Undersecretary of State (Marc) Grossman and Undersecretary of Defense (Douglas) Feith,” State spokesman Frederick Jones said, adding that the talks will probably last three to four days.

The six invited opposition leaders are:

*         Al-Sharif Ali Ben Hussein of the Constitutional Monarchy Movement;

*         Iyad Allawi of the Iraqi National Accord;

*         Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq;

*         Massoud Barzani of the Kurdish Democratic Party;

*         Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress;

*         and Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

“The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the next steps in coordinating our work with the Iraqi opposition,” Jones said (Jordan Times, July 28).

For further information, see:

UNMOVIC

U.N. Resolution 687 (Sanctions Regime)

U.N. Resolution 1409 (“Smart Sanctions”)

U.S. State Department Fact Sheet on Iraqi Sanctions Revisions

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