Six Deadly Fears
The U.S. military is confident of victory in Iraq-but at what price?
5 Terrorists acquire Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
Whether or not Saddam is currently allied with al Qaeda, a war could push them closer. Indeed, the CIA has assessed that Saddam may well deliver chemical or biological weapons to terrorists as his "last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."
Even if this didn't happen, the chemical and biological weapons stocks could still slip out of the country in the chaos following an invasion. "You can take one of the mobile biological labs and drive it across the border," says Pollack. "The greater possibility is they get across into the open arms of Syrian and Iranian border guards." These regimes already have their own programs to build weapons of mass destruction (WMD). But terrorists could well obtain smaller quantities of harmful agents, especially if, as U.S. officials allege, the stocks have been secreted all over the country. "There's nothing to say that an Iraqi bioscientist doesn't have a pile of the stuff in his freezer," says one former defense official.
For the U.S. military, anything connected to WMD is a top-priority target. Air Force planners have spent months trying to locate these stockpiles and determine whether or not they are safe to bomb. U.S. ground forces would blanket the country as quickly as possible, using defectors and scientists to locate the stockpiles.
Even short of a WMD attack, the risk of terrorism would be much higher if there is war. Iraq, for one, would try to hit U.S. targets. "They're putting terror teams out there," says one source with access to intelligence. More broadly, al Qaeda and other groups could use the war as further motivation to go after Americans.
6 Once Saddam is ousted, Iraq descends into chaos.
After war, Iraq could prove hard to control. The fate of Saddam himself is perhaps least worrisome because, even if he somehow escaped, few experts believe he could ever mount much of a guerrilla campaign. "If he is able to thumb his nose at us like Osama bin Laden, the United States is going to look ridiculous," says Edward Walker, a former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. "But he won't be a threat once he's out of power, so it's more symbolic."
But Iraqis, freed from Saddam's repressive grip, could unleash a wave of revenge killings that could spin out of control. "After a period of bloodletting, there will have to be law and order," says one U.S. official. This would most likely take thousands of U.S. soldiers camping out in Iraq for many months. While most Iraqis probably would be happy to be rid of Saddam, there is great resentment after years of American-led sanctions. If the Iraqi death toll in a war is high, U.S. forces could be greeted very coldly.
American planners have devised a process for ruling Iraq that begins with an American general in charge and evolves over a period of more than 18 months into an Iraqi government. But no decisions have been made about who exactly would govern Iraq then. Iraq's numerous tribes, for example, could end up battling one another in a power struggle. U.S. officials think they can control it. "If we're the most powerful player in the region, they will want to be allied with us," says one planner. "If we have to pay for it, so be it."
Experts can spin out countless other scary scenarios. Kurdish parties could be tempted to push for independence. The country could split between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Or neighbor Iran could meddle. "On some days, I get up thinking this will be relatively quick and we will be left with a pretty good situation afterwards," says one U.S. official involved in the planning. "On other days, I wake up and think, `Holy sh - -.' "
With Marianne Lavelle
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