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A L S O+T O D A Y
Covering Kosovo like Monica Captives face trial
T A B L E+T A L K The new Ms.: Feminism redefined or glossy new packaging of the same old? Elaborate in the Politics area of Table Talk
R E C E N T L Y Arm the KLA? Limp Willy? "Pec is burning! Where are the ground troops?" Humanitarian enclave? Beginner's guide to the Balkans - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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From Baghdad to Belgrade
BY JEFF STEIN | Who will be the Scott Ritter of the unfolding Kosovo disaster? That is, who is going to fully expose the Clinton administration's bungling in the Balkans? As the tragedy in Kosovo overshadows the ongoing fiasco in Iraq, readers may not readily recall the name of Ritter, the Marine captain who noisily quit his United Nations inspection post last fall with charges that the Clinton administration had sabotaged his mission in Iraq. But Ritter, a grim young man, has kept his finger in the news flow since then, testifying before Congress and backgrounding a series of stories on Iraq, including last week's bombshell by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, which exposed the Clinton administration at its amateuristic, dissembling, poll-driven worst. The headlines focused on Hersh's evidence that Iraq had wired an $800,000 bribe to Russian Prime Minister Primakov, ensuring Russian support in his fight with the Americans. But the meat of the piece lay in Hersh's spellbinding account of the CIA's subversion and ham-handed sabotage of the U.N. weapons inspection program in Iraq, a disgraceful episode, which Ritter recounts, in different fashion, in his just-released "Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem Once and For All" (Simon & Schuster). "Endgame" is an invaluable expose, a virtual X-ray of administration decision-making on Iraq that would be garnering front page headlines if it weren't for the new mess in Kosovo. Ritter's j'accuse: First, that Clinton allowed the CIA to spy on Iraq under the cover of the U.N. inspection teams, eventually giving proof to Saddam Hussein's suspicions, and handing the dictator a global propaganda victory. Second, when Saddam stiff-armed Ritter's aggressive hunt for Iraq's hidden chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missile programs, the White House abandoned all efforts in favor of a doomed conspiracies to overthrow Saddam. Although Saddam has been replaced in the headlines by Slobodan Milosevic, he's still there growling away. Freed from U.N. inspections because of White House bungling, Saddam's busily rebuilding his program of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, Ritter says, and, oh, by the way, advising Milosevic on how to defeat U.S. bombers. The administration snickers that Saddam helping Belgrade thwart U.S. jets doesn't count for much, but after nearly a decade of fighting the U.S., the Iraqi dictator is still standing. Now comes Milosevic. The new crisis shows that this is an administration that can't think straight, much less shoot straight, when it comes to foreign policy. Absent the "decapitation" of both Milosevic and Saddam -- goals that the White House has now embraced because all of its previous maneuvers have proven bankrupt -- President Clinton is on the verge of handing the next White House occupant two third-rate thugs he managed to turn into first-class threats. How did he manage to do that? "The administration could win in the Balkans -- who knows?" Scott Ritter told me with a hollow chuckle Thursday, on the phone from New York. He then he ticked off the parallels between the Clinton administration's handling of Iraq and Yugoslavia. "The failure to realistically asses the situation, from the regional context to the realities on the ground; oversimplifying the problem; coming up with oversimplified solutions; and then, when our diplomacy fails, because we didn't adequately think it out, the reliance on military force to bail ourselves out." The looming trial of the three captured U.S. soldiers is just a Serbian propaganda ploy, Ritter added. "I don't think these guys are in any immediate danger ... They haven't committed any war crimes and the Serbs know this. If [the Serbs] do something stupid like execute these guys, that's it, all the gloves come off. America doesn't stand for that. What they want right now is a debate, to get the media spun up ..." N E X T+P A G E+| The knives are already drawn - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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