The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq

Rating:
Summary: Excellent case for invasion, but maybe not this one
Review: I just finished reading The Threatening Storm, and Mr. Pollack makes a powerful and richly documented case for regime change in Iraq at the earliest feasible date. As he says, invasion does seem like the best of a set of bad choices, if it is done with the proper preparation. And there's the rub: in Pollack's terms, several essential elements are missing at the present moment to proceed with invasion:

1) He sees it as essential that there is a sense that the war against Al Queda is well in hand. He specifically says that we should be beyond periodic alerts for terrorist attack in the U.S. Thank God I have plenty of duct tape.

2) Also essential from his perspective is at least a ceasefire in the Iraeli-Palestinian conflict with real positive momentum towards a settlement. We have never been further from this, with no daylight showing between Bush and Sharon.

3) The U.S. electorate must be prepared for the burden of nation building in Iraq. According to Pollack, this would involve an occupation of over five years, with at least 200,000 troops initially, tapering down to about 100,000 after five years, and with a semi-permanent presence of at least a division. He says the model must be Bosnia, not Afghanistan.

These are, from his perspective, essential criteria for a successful outcome for an invasion of Iraq. I'll let you be the judge as to whether these have been met.

(BTW, I think he would have advised focusing on these issues, rather than seeking Security Council support. His view of the fecklessness of the French is very prescient.)

Rating:
Summary: Leaves no doubt
Review: Hopefully some of the decision makers within the beltway have the ability to look at this crucial situation as dispassionately as Kenneth Pollack manages to. I found no anti-Arab or pro-Israeli sentiments creeping thru, but rather an attempt to let the reader know how things work in the Gulf region at the present. The decision to engage in any war must be made based on threats as they exist at the time, not on some collection of preconceived social notions or prior acts which may expose some culpability on our own part. These factors, given their existence, do not serve as meaningful additions to the dialogue of decision making, but rather as clouds obstructing a clear view of the facts as they currently exist, hence their omission from this work. For a real gage of the power of The Threatening Storm, don't read the positive reviews, but rather, focus your attention on the negative ones and take note of how many of them even attempt to seriously challenge the veracity of Pollack's facts or conclusions, versus the number of them who simply regurgitate the canned drivel of "peace at any cost". Perhaps an additional chapter, devoted wholly to "America the Evil" and our role in creating and sustaining this mass murdering monster would convince today's marchers that we have a moral responsiblilty to rid the world and the Iraqi people of this manifestation of American wrong-doing. After all, isn't the far left all about moral and social responsibility and self professed enlightenment, while the rest of us are only about greed and ignorance? So much for my diatribe. Read this book. You may not agree with Dr. Pollack's conclusions as I do, but, if it doesn't at least provoke some serious thought, then sue the government. There's a good chance you're a victim of one of those secret lobotomies the CIA is so notorious for.

Rating:
Summary: Well written and more objective than most
Review: The author clearly knows a lot about Iraq and the middle east. He makes a strong case that the choice is war now or war later, and that invading in the next year is the best of a bunch of bad choices. This case rests on a number of beliefs. The first is that containment (embargoes and weapons and inspectors) may not prevent Saddam from building nuclear weapons. The lack of faith in containment partially stems from the memory of a continuing Iraqi nuclear program after the Persian Gulf war, under the noses of UN inspectors noses, which was dismantled only after Saddam's son-in-law defected. The author also finds it unlikely that the UN and US can muster the will to effectively maintain containment for more than a year or two before Saddam backslides again, and seems worried that war may not be politically feasible in the future. Given past history, this seems sadly reasonable.
Deterrance is frightening because Saddam has a long and bloody history of responding to perceived weakness at home with aggression abroad, by invading Iran, Kuwait (1990 and perhaps intending to in 1994) , and parts of Kurdistan. In addition, Saddam has always been strongly motivated by revenge and has blood grudges afainst Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, and the US. Covert action and the Afghan approach don't seem workable either (nobody really disputes that). Therefore, invading is the best of a bad set of choices.
The book does a convincing job of justifying invasion; certainly it's a LOT more convincing than anything heard recently from the administration. However, it does nothing to convince me that the US needs to invade in the next month, just sometime before Saddam may get nuclear weapons (which the CIA estimated to be between 2004 and 2008 with an uninterrupted program began in 1998). And the book itself highlights the importance of having allies to assist in the reconstruction period. So why is the administration in such a hurry, and so disrespectful of world opinion and the world leaders that represent it?
Regardless of how one feels about the issue, the book is well written by someone who has spent much of his life dealing with the problems. Reading it -- along with Kiddir Hamza's remarkable book "Saddam's bombmaker" -- has taught me alot more about this crucial issue than everything I've heard or read in the press over the past 5 years.

Rating:
Summary: An unbiased opinion regarding the case for invastion
Review: Pollack delivers a convincing case for invasion without bringing in partisan bias. Thouroughly researched, the book provides historical background and a complete discussion on the current political situation in the Middle East and Iraq. Pollack weighs various options and points out the advantages and disadvantages of each option. If you are looking for a book to help you understand the situation that the world is facing in Iraq, I would recommend this book without any reservations.

***********************

I wrote the above review before the war started. Now that it is practically over, I am amazed at how much Pollack was right on in his assessment. This book is still a must read if you want to understand the situation in Iraq and what the future might hold for the Middle East.

Rating:
Summary: Essential and Timely Reading
Review: The Threatening Storm provides the most unique of opportunities, a thorough analysis of the most urgent and fluid issue in the world. For anyone who wants to firmly understand the arguments for an invasion, all one needs to do is read this book.

Mr. Pollack, while favoring an invasion, is sincere in his contention that it is really the last and only option before us. Pollack goes through every possible option for disarming Iraq. His arguments are convincing and, more importantly, he critiques the weaker arguments that favor his position (e.g. Hussein's link to terrorism). The result is a reasoned analysis that does not throw the kitchen sink at you and instead provides the most concise and powerful argument possible for an invasion.

As strong as the analysis is, I don't think he anticipated the situation unfolding quite as it has. He provides relatively short shrift to a new attempt at inspections, believing that it is such a weak option that it does not require an extensive review. He also does not anticipate the resistance that is coming from France and Germany.

What he does get right is the assessment that Hussein's strategy is clearly to divide the U.N. and the international community. His arguments for action are largely based on the weakening of sanctions and the failure of containment. The inability of the U.N. to be tough on containment is what on one hand provides the reason for invasion and at the same time demonstrates the inability of the international community to muster the will to take action.

Reading this book will enable the reader to fully appreciate the politics of the situation (particularly the extent that France and Russia are literally profiting from the current situation) and the stakes that the casual observer will not understand.

Rating:
Summary: careful analysis may not equal ground truth
Review: This book makes an interesting contrast to Robert Baer's "See No Evil". Careful analysis of mountains of facts versus the on-the-street experience of a seasoned case officer. My take is that if you got Pollack and Baer in a room together, they would agree in principle, but would end up in a brawl over the details. Try this book if you want a crash course on Iraq that is less boring than you'd expect. Try Baer's book to get a flavor for a grunt in the trenches of the spy wars. Try both to be even less clear on what to do about Iraq than ever--no matter what your political stripe.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling Case for Defensive War
Review: In game theory the game called "Bully" is one in which a non agressive, peace loving, country (the US) gets bullied by another country (Iraq) that knows the other country would prefer to avoid war. The bully relentlessly pushes in the face of little resistance. Oddly, the bully can be the weaker of the two, taking advantage of the peaceful ethics of the stronger nation. Only persuasive action will stop the bully. The biggest kid in the schoolyard can't stand passively by while a smaller and weaker kid pokes out his eye. Mr. Pollack brilliantly makes that case.

I recently heard Tavakoli talk on this topic. While the topic was convertibility risk and distressed economies due to internal upheaval from her book "Credit Derivatives", she drew on her experiences in the Middle East to reinforce Mr. Pollack's case. It isn't a question of whether we should confront the bully, but of finding the most efficient way - in what will inevitably be a messy and complicated solution - to deal with the bully or bullies.

Rating:
Summary: To Topple a Tyrant
Review: In July 1990, Kenneth Pollack was an Iran-Iraq military analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. Using satellite reconnaissance photographs of Iraqi military movements combined with Saddam Hussein's belligerent anti-Kuwaiti rhetoric and his history of aggression, Pollack's unit became convinced that Saddam was about to launch an attack on Kuwait. They tried to warn their superiors about Saddam's intentions but were stonewalled by Bush administration personnel until 1 August when the CIA was granted permission to brief the National Security Council. Later that day Iraqi troops stormed Kuwait and overran the Kuwaiti defense forces. It was too late to prevent an invasion, now we had to roll it back.

Pollack went on to become a Clinton administration Iraq expert and persistently supported a strong response against Saddam's repeated violations of the United Nations' resolutions demanding that he dismantle his chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. He is now a Middle East expert for the Brookings Institution and rejoins the Iraq fray with "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq".

Pollack starts from the assumption that Saddam must be disarmed of his most dangerous weapons either voluntarily or by force. "The Threatening Storm" is Pollack's explanation of why an invasion of Iraq is the best way to prevent Saddam from acquiring or developing nuclear weapons. He believes that a future nuclear-armed Saddam is a far greater threat to international stability than any destabilizing effect an invasion might have in the present. On pages 273-4 he writes, "At a future date when U.S. forces have been drawn down...and Gulf state politics are sensitive to charges of pandering to Washington, Saddam could again mass his forces near Kuwait, counting on the political climate to delay a G[ulf] C[ooperation] C[ouncil] invitation to the United States to reinforce its presence in the region. Saddam could then invade Kuwait and continue on to the Saudi oil fields, threatening to wipe out the oil fields with one or more well-placed nuclear explosions if the United States intervened. This would certainly be in keeping with our understanding of his views regarding the mistakes he made during the Gulf War. The United States and its allies would be faced with the choice of intervening anyway and risking the loss of 22 percent of global oil production, possibly permanently, or giving Saddam control of that same share of the world's oil wealth."

Neither of the above options is very appealing; but, that is one of the potential prospects we are faced with by not dealing with Saddam now. Estimates on when Iraq will develop a nuclear weapon vary from 2004 to 2008. The only problem that Iraq has in building a nuclear missile is producing fissile material. Being that close, they may even be able to purchase their way to a nuclear weapon earlier than they could develop one.
Would Saddam really be so nuts as to order the detonation of a nuclear device in such a circumstance? The answer to that is, while Saddam is far from crazy, his is a decision making process that is far from the conservative, risk-averse one that we are used to dealing with in other nuclear-armed states. He has shown from his invasions of Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990 to his relentless persecution of Iraq's Kurdish and Shia populations that his first response to almost any crisis is shoot first and don't ask any questions ever. It is naive to think that Saddam will become a pacifist once he acquires nuclear weapons and will just let his neighbors be.

While it is unlikely that Saddam would launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack, especially against the likewise nuclear-armed Israel, his possession of such weapons will probably lead him to believe that his freedom of action regarding conventional military operations has increased. A nuclear-armed Iraq will become more of a danger to its neighbors all around, not less. The destruction and loss of life will be far greater when we act to dispel him of that notion than if we move on him now. So long as Saddam remains in control it is not a matter of if we go to war against Iraq, but when and under what conditions. Do we fight Saddam's army when it has regained its strength and morale and has nuclear weapons; or, do we fight it now, when it is a shell of its former self and and is equipped with, at worst, chemical and biological weapons, which are far more difficult to successfully employ than nuclear ones?

One last thing about Pollack's case is that he unabashedly states that oil is an important consideration regarding Iraq. It is not just the United States' economy that has come to rely on a cheap, steady flow of oil as the backbone of our prosperity, but the entire industrialized and industrializing world's economies also. Many of these countries, like Japan and Germany, rely on it far more than we do because they have virtually no domestic sources of petroleum. If that flow of oil were to become seriously endangered or restricted because Saddam Hussein either conquered or destroyed the vast Middle Eastern oil fields, then a return to the 1970s energy crisis would be seen as a best case scenario. More likely it would throw the world economy into a depression not seen since the 1930s and we all know how that depression ended.

By invading Iraq now we can prevent Saddam from ever having that effect on world politics. Saddam is not Adolf Hitler; but, if we do nothing about him now (like Britain and France did nothing about Hitler when he re-militarized the Rhineland in 1936), then we risk allowing him to become as dangerous to the world as Hitler became in 1939. As far as I'm concerned, the world has seen too many Hitlers already.

Rating:
Summary: Only the braindead could disagree
Review: This book is a thorough, detailed, non-partisan approach to the problem of dealing with Iraq. Ken Pollack leaves no stone unturned as he provides mountain upon mountain of evidence to support the immediate removal of Saddam Hussein. I'd already supported invasion, so I admit I read this book with a bias. But even I was blindsided by the strength of the case laid out by Pollack.

Pollack is a man of unquestionable credibility. A CIA analyst who's specialty is Iraq, he was one of only three analysts in 1990 to predict the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Every prediction he's made since then concerning Iraq has also been correct.

Not only was I unaware of just how much of a threat Saddam has been to his neighbors and the world, I also wasn't aware of just how tightly controlled his own people are and what a menace he is to them. Pollack goes into brief detail about the torture methods used against Iraqi prisoners, which I feel are justification alone for Saddam's ousting. But while Pollack rightfully despises Saddam, he does not misjudge him. Saddam is not crazy, as the media portrays him as. He is ruthless, taking whatever action necessary to hold his grip on power, including the slaughter of his own people.

Read about how Saddam uses the UN sanctions placed on his regime to intentionally starve his own people and subsequently gain world sympathy from do-good liberals. Pollack goes into extreme detail how the UN sanctions allow the Iraqi government with more than enough money to properly feed it's population. Saddam instead has used this money to buy WMD. Pollack also details how medicine and food, given to Iraq via the Oil For Food program, have been found for sale on the black market. So even the food and medicine being GIVEN to Iraq is intentionally being withheld from the people. Pollack makes a clear-cut, undeniable case that it is Saddam who is starving Iraqi children, not UN sanctions or George Bush. Pollack also points out the interesting fact that the Iraqis who make up Saddam's support base (the Sunnis) are NOT starving, while the Iraqis who Saddam considers dissidents (the Shi'a) ARE starving. Also, the Kurds in the north, who receive the same oil-for-food benefits but are not under Saddam's control, are also NOT starving.

If you're looking to reinforce political views with this book, you will not be happy. Pollack's arguments are strictly objective. He criticizes both Democrat and Republican administrations for their approaches to Iraq. Pollack is not anti-Arab either. One of his arguments for invasion is for the freedom of the Iraqi people and the security of their Arab neighbors.

I suspect any reviewer who gives this book one star has simply not read the book. Only a reader so absolutely prejudiced and entrenched in an anti-war stance would rate the book so low. With the one star rating I'm sure will come anti-American attacks on how America is responsible for Saddam's rise to power and blah blah blah. To the America-haters' dismay, Pollack points out with plain facts that while America did support Saddam as the lesser evil in his fight against Iran's Ayatollah, Saddam also had the support of the Arab world and much of Europe. Germany and France provided Saddam with shipment after shipment of weaponry, along with the technology to build a nuclear reactor (which was destroyed by Israel in 1981). Knowing that if Iraq fell, Shi'ite fundamentalism would sweep westward, almost the entire Arab world threw their weight behind Saddam. America's support for Iraq is the modern day equivalent to our support for the Soviets against Nazi Germany in 1943.

So read this book with an open mind, and I think any reasonable human being will agree that Saddam is a menace who cannot be contained, deterred, or otherwise dealt with in any means other than militarily. And if you're one of these people who think we should not meddle in foreign affairs, I suspect there are millions of Iraqis who disagree, if secretly, with you.

Rating:
Summary: No irrationality, just the facts
Review: This books greatest virtue is its well reasoned and comprehensive approach to the problem. It examines both the pros and cons of action -- and sadly lacking from most debate -- the pros and cons of inaction.

Others have faulted the book for its failure to catalogue the use of chemical weapons by others in the past, or the support lent Saddam by Western powers in his war with Iran. Mr. Pollack does not go into these issues at any length because they are irrelevant. The question is not what has been done in the past (other than how that might help us predict what will happen in the future), the issue is what is happening now, what level of threat does this pose, and how might we best deal with it.

In fact, one could say the "you helped him in the past" statement is actually an argument for the USA to take unilateral action against Saddam -- as in "you created the problem, you take care of it without bothering us."

That Saddam was viewed as a lesser threat than Iran in the past, does not mean he is benign now.

Mr. Pollack presents an outstanding (and at times astonishingly prescient -- see his comments on North Korea) analysis of the current situation. If this appears to lead to the conclusion that an invasion is our best answer, then so be it. He says quite clearly that he has come to this reluctantly. Those who disagree with that conclusion will have to come up with better responses than "war is a terrible thing" (who said it wasn't?), George Bush is a corporate lacky and cretin (debatable but irrelevant), other folks have done bad things in the past (true but irrelevant), and any number of other similar statements.

If you truly want to understand what is at stake, the arguments for action (or inaction) against Iraq -- stripped of emotional irrelevancy, and what those actions might be, then this is the book for you.