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Clinton claims 'mission accomplished' in Iraq -- but is it?
September 4, 1996
Web posted at: 10:40 p.m. EDT (0240 GMT)From Correspondent Wolf Blitzer
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Following the second cruise missile strike against Iraqi air defense targets, President Clinton quickly returned to the Oval Office to declare the operation a success.
"The targets were either destroyed or sufficiently damaged, so that we can say that our mission has been achieved," Clinton told reporters Wednesday.
Clinton claimed that expanding the "no-fly zone" south of Baghdad has altered the strategic equation, reducing Saddam Hussein's ability to threaten oil-rich Persian Gulf states.
"He is strategically worse off than he was before these strikes began, and I am satisfied that this was an appropriate, measured response," Clinton said.
The president's advisers say the United States has three strategic objectives: to contain Saddam's ability to threaten his neighbors, to stop the repression of his own people and to eliminate his weapons of mass destruction.
But critics both in and out of the administration suggested the president may rue the day he declared this mission accomplished. They claimed the mission remains unfocused and could easily escalate, depending on the unpredictable Iraqi leader's response.
"I hope that the president will explain what the end game is here, as far as what the ultimate objectives are," said Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona.
Other critics charged that while U.S. cruise missiles were destroying some of Iraq's air defense sites in the south, Saddam's forces were ruthlessly consolidating their grip in the Kurdish north.
In the process, they said the big losers have been those Kurds and Iraqis who have cooperated with the U.S. and the West -- scores of whom reportedly have been rounded up and summarily executed in recent days by Saddam's troops.
Some critics also suggested the latest crisis could have been avoided.
"We should have been doing more -- a lot of it's now after the barn door is locked -- to produce peace among the Kurds, said Paul Wolfowitz, foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole.
"That should be a major effort. Now it's much, much more difficult, but something should be done. We shouldn't have ignored it in June when Saddam started closing the door to U.N. inspectors."
But the White House said direct U.S. intervention in the north was simply not worth the price.
"We deliberately did not enter into the equation in north Iraq on behalf of either of the warring factions within the Kurds," said White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry.
"Our national interests were not sufficiently engaged to attach ourselves to one side or the other in that fight."
For U.S. pilots, patrolling the "no-fly zone" is hardly risk-free. For Clinton, especially during these final weeks of the campaign, Iraq represents a potential political mine field.
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