Letter from America: "Who really wants this war?" Michael Kinsley, the Washington Post columnist asked yesterday of the prospects of a US confrontation with Iraq.
"Ask around at work," Kinsley urges, "or among your family: Is anyone truly gung-ho? It seems as if true enthusiasm for all-out war against Iraq is limited to the Bush Administration and a subset of the Washington establishment." Yet even among that select group the mood may be changing.
Quoting anonymous sources in the State Department and Pentagon, USA Today on Thursday ran a lead story suggesting the Administration now believes an all-out attack on Iraq would not be politically feasible, domestically or internationally, without significant new provocation on the part of Saddam Hussein.
To date the prevailing view in the administration has been the hawkish contention that the US already has all the justification it needs in Iraq's refusal, confirmed again last week at the UN, to collaborate with weapons inspectors. Now the argument that allies matter and should get a more convincing case is generally accepted, the paper claims, leading some to renewed attempts to establish a plausible connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden.
If the report is true - and it may well be contradicted by another media outlet within days, fed by another faction in the administration - America's allies will heave a sigh of relief.
Publicly, the President and his senior advisers have been insisting regularly that a regime change in Baghdad remains at the top of their list of priorities but a number of straws in the wind suggest that a reappraisal of intentions may well be under way.
Pat Cox, who was here this week on the first visit by a President of the European Parliament in 10 years, got wide access to senior members of the Administration and from them a message that the timeframe for any action against Iraq is still undecided. If there is a timeframe, he feels, it stretches into next year. He met senior State Department officials, as well as Vice-President Dick Cheney, and the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Under growing political pressure from the WorldCom collapse fallout, President Bush may well be watching signs that poll support for a major offensive against Iraq has fallen sharply. While a large majority favour covert CIA action against Saddam, a Gallup poll published on June 21st showed that support for a US invasion has declined from some 74 per cent in November to 59 per cent today.
Opposition to military action against Iraq has grown from 20 per cent to 34 per cent.
What is more, a small majority of the US public believes, according to a more recent USA Today poll, the US should use military force only if there is support from some allies.
Such growing reticence may in part reflect reports that not only the wimps of the State Department are opposed but that there are divisions within the army about the advisability of an invasion. The Joint Chiefs have insisted to the President that an invasion force of at least 200,000 would be needed (some generals are said to be against the whole project).
In doing so they have rejected the view of one of the most hawkish advisers to the President, Gen Wayne Downing, who argued in the National Security Council that the task could be performed using relatively small numbers of special forces, assisted by air support, to back internal forces and trigger popular uprisings. Gen Downing resigned his post at the end of June.
Moreover, disagreements within the administration about the wisdom of a military attack with relatively thin if any international and local support are reported to have been compounded by differences between State and Defence on war aims. The former insists that simply overthrowing Saddam without staying to root in a democratic successor regime would be pointless.
Some commentators only last weekend were predicting, from the evidence of US intransigence at the UN over the war crimes court, that Colin Powell's benign influence had terminally waned, and even that he was about to resign. However, multilateralists will have taken heart from the abrupt, conciliatory US U-turn on the issue on Wednesday night. Though there's still many slip between cup and lip.
USA Today's report contrasts dramatically with that of the New York Times on July 5th, when the paper reported the existence of a detailed military plan for a US invasion. Said to be five inches thick and listing extensive logistical and tactical preparations, the plan is said to propose a massive invasion through Kuwait, backed by air power based in some eight local friendly states.
The timing of the leak, however, as Iraq again faced a meeting at the UN and pressure on inspectors, and the paper's admission that the report had not yet been seen by the Joint Chiefs, let alone the President, took away somewhat from the implied imminence of the threat to Iraq.
That is not to say the administration does not want to go to war with Iraq. Some suggest it would be just the thing to rally the voters for the November elections. But the truth is that this hyper-power is as confused as the rest of us about how to face into the challenges of the new world.
The die has not yet been cast.
