U.S. May Add Removal of Hussein to Its War Goals : Policy: Until now, this has not been a primary aim. But anger over treatment of POWs could change that.

Saddam Hussein’s decision to use prisoners of war as human shields, coming on the heels of other actions that U.S. officials see as the equivalent of Nuremberg war crimes, has intensified discussion within the Bush Administration over whether U.S. war aims should expand to include removing the Iraqi leader from power, officials said Monday.

Officially, the Administration says it will still deal with Hussein as a chief of state if he complies with United Nations resolutions and withdraws his army from Kuwait. But President Bush has already gone beyond that original, narrow goal by ordering U.S. warplanes to attack Iraq’s nuclear and chemical weapons facilities.

Now, after terror attacks by Iraqi Scud missiles and Baghdad’s announcement that allied prisoners of war will be held at military targets inside Iraq as human shields, the grim logic of events is pushing the Administration toward toughening its terms still further.

“America is angry, and I think the rest of the world (is also),” Bush said. Asked whether he would hold Hussein personally accountable for the fate of American prisoners, Bush replied: “You can count on it.”

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney added that Iraq’s actions constitute “a war crime, and those people who carry out those kind of acts would be held accountable.”

For the moment, the warning of punishment for war crimes is intended to deter Hussein from carrying out his human-shield plan, not as a formal expansion of U.S. war aims. But senior officials said Monday that capturing Hussein and putting him on trial is an option that the Administration is actively considering.

“We probably won’t decide until we get to the point that it would affect the end of the war or the ultimate peace and security of the region,” said one military official.

A senior State Department official, asked whether U.S. war aims now include removing Hussein from power, paused for a long moment and chose his words carefully. “Let’s just say we’re consulting the allies and talking among ourselves about what a postwar security structure will require,” he said. “And those discussions aren’t over yet.”

Still, after the events of the past week, the Administration has expanded its objectives to ensure at the very least that, if Hussein somehow manages to keep his job, he will still lose most of his power.

“If he’s still intact as the head of government at the end of the war, we’d still have to deal with him,” a State Department official said. “Our aim hasn’t been to remove him. But we do intend to defeat him in some kind of humiliating fashion. We don’t plan to treat him with any respect. We intend to strip him of any allure he might have in the Arab world.”

Even that relatively modest goal goes distinctly beyond the objectives of the U.N. Security Council resolutions under which the United States and its allies are fighting. The U.N. resolutions merely demand that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait, release all detainees and pay for damages caused by its invasion.

Throughout history, nations have found that the realities of battle transformed their war aims. In the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln entered the White House with the limited goal of preserving the Union; the Emancipation Proclamation did not come until 1863--after two years of increasingly bloody fighting.

In World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill kept open the possibility of a negotiated settlement with Nazi Germany until 1943, when they proclaimed a goal of “unconditional surrender.”

Today, the question of war aims is critical to deciding how long--and how bloody--the rest of the war against Iraq will be, for it determines the point at which Bush and his allies will be satisfied that they have won.

After five days days of fierce combat and charges of war crimes, it may seem paradoxical to envision a postwar order that would leave Saddam Hussein in control of his army and his country--and once again dealing with Washington through diplomatic channels. But even now, some officials and outside experts argue that the cost of pursuing Hussein--protected, as he is, by hand-picked military units and sheltered in an underground bunker--could exceed the benefits to the U.S.-led coalition.

“If it would cost 10,000 lives,” a military official said, “then the policy-makers would probably decide not to.”

“If we achieve the strategic objective of crippling his military might and getting his forces out of Kuwait, why bother going after him personally?” asked William B. Quandt, a former National Security Council aide now at the Brookings Institution. “Do we really care which particular thug is in power in Baghdad?”

Also, argued Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Hussein’s capture or death could backfire politically against the United States. “It’s a debatable point whether you want to make a martyr out of him,” Aspin said. “. . . What you really want is Saddam Hussein chastened, contained and put down.”

Others argue that, if the war turns more costly in American lives, it may become politically difficult or impossible for Bush to negotiate a peace that embraces Hussein’s continuance in power.

It may also be difficult, if not impossible, to create a stable postwar security structure in the region if Hussein is still in power in Baghdad, some experts feel.

“We don’t want to see him emerge as an Arab hero simply because he survived the war,” a State Department official said.

“The Saudis and the Egyptians have been especially concerned that if he’s there, he’s going to be a continuing threat,” former Undersecretary of State Joseph J. Sisco noted. “But as a pragmatic matter, the question has to be kept open. . . . What the Administration does has to depend on how the war goes, what kind of defeat Saddam suffers, whether any of his military power is left, what you need to do to stabilize the area.”

Perhaps the best outcome from the Administration’s point of view, several officials and outside experts said privately, would be for disgruntled officers in the Iraqi military to remove Hussein from power themselves--dead or alive.

“But you can’t count on that,” Sisco said.

Meanwhile, the Administration is keeping its options open--to the point that, when White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said last week that he hoped Hussein would “surrender,” other officials hastily told reporters that the word had been a slip of the tongue. A “surrender,” legal scholars explained, would mean much more than merely a cease-fire and an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait; normally, it would mean putting the Iraqi army--and Hussein himself--under allied control.