Bush’s Signal: Iraqis Should Oust Hussein

As he prepares to decide whether to commit American forces to a ground war, President Bush sent a signal to Iraqi military leaders Tuesday that they have a last chance to avoid huge casualties and a crushing defeat--by overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

During his televised press conference, the President went to considerable lengths to question Saddam Hussein’s judgment and his compassion for Iraqi troops. At the same time, Bush refrained from criticizing the Iraqi officers and soldiers who are waging battle under Hussein’s leadership.

While insisting that the United States has not added the overthrow of the Iraqi leader to its war objectives, Bush then quickly added: “Now, would I weep? Would I mourn if somehow Saddam Hussein did not remain as head of his country? . . . There will be no sorrow if he is not there.”

Moments later, the President stopped a questioner and returned to this same theme with more emphasis. “It would be a lot easier to see a successful conclusion (to the war), because I don’t believe anybody other than Saddam Hussein is going to want to continue to subject his army to the pounding they are taking, or his people to the pounding that is going on.”

These overtures call to mind the Bush Administration’s unsuccessful effort in May, 1989, to persuade the Panamanian Defense Forces to overthrow Manuel Noriega.

At that time, the President issued a more direct, public invitation to foreign military leaders to initiate a coup d’etat. “They (Panamanian Defense Forces) ought to just do everything they can to get Mr. Noriega out of there,” the President said. “ . . . He’s one man, and they have a well-trained force.”

A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, maintained that rather than trying to foment an uprising among Iraqi troops, Bush’s remarks Tuesday were aimed “more at correcting the impression we’re out to pound Iraq into rubble.” He said the idea that the United States was trying to remove Hussein from power “doesn’t play well in the Arab world and it’s not true.”

Although the Administration would be happy if Iraqi soldiers put down their arms and walked across the border, this Administration official said, Bush isn’t trying to incite a rebellion against Saddam Hussein. Nevertheless, he acknowledged, “I’m sure he (Bush) would want it.”

Some Mideast analysts contend that no matter how badly Iraq is faring in the war, the United States has little realistic chance of fostering or inspiring an Iraqi military coup against Hussein.

“Even those Iraqi officers who question the wisdom of occupying Kuwait and trying to defend it do not want to cede to the United States the right to treat Iraq like Panama and to install new regimes at whim,” asserted Yahya M. Sadowski, a Middle East specialist at the Brookings Institution.

The Bush Administration, Sadowski said, may not understand the intensity of Iraqi nationalism and patriotism. “Saddam Hussein may be an ugly dictator, but to most Iraqis, he’s our dictator,” he said.

Bush’s public exhortation to the Panamanian Defense Forces to overthrow their leader was made in peacetime, well before the Administration committed American troops to Panama. Now, by contrast, the oblique invitation to Iraqi leaders comes in the midst of battle.

Further, Bush’s efforts to encourage a Panamanian overthrow of Noriega failed, and seven months later, it took U.S. military force to oust him from power.

Throughout history, there have been numerous cases in which armed forces have intervened--successfully and, in some cases, violently--to overthrow a national leader. The most recent example was in December, 1989, when Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu was toppled from power by his own military and was then quickly put to death.

The best-known instance in this century of an attempted military coup against a wartime leader was the attempt by German military leaders led by Count Claus von Stauffenberg to overthrow Adolf Hitler.

In July, 1944, with Allied forces beginning to advance against German troops on both Western and Eastern fronts, Von Stauffenberg and other German army leaders conspired to assassinate Hitler in a plot they called Operation Valkyrie. A bomb concealed in a briefcase by Von Stauffenberg exploded in a room where Hitler was meeting with his generals. Four officers were killed in the blast, but Hitler survived.

At Tuesday’s press conference, Bush questioned whether Hussein cares about his troops.

” . . . Saddam Hussein should be concerned about the Iraqi forces,” Bush went on. “But how concerned he is, I don’t know, because when you shove people into battle pushing them from behind to be defeated clearly and surely . . . you have to wonder how he feels about that.”

An Administration official later said the President’s remarks were not aimed at Iraqi military officers or troops.

“The type of information you can get to them (Iraqi troops) is propaganda through leaflets, and anything you can get to the other side during a war situation they know is propaganda,” he said.

Since the beginning of the war, U.S. allies have voiced concern that the Administration might be going beyond its original, oft-stated objective of ending the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait to the broader, unstated objectives of destroying Iraq’s war-making capacity and toppling Hussein.

Bush told reporters Tuesday that the war objectives remain unchanged.

However, he depicted Hussein in ways that left unclear whether the President could ever accept a solution in which the Iraqi leader remains in power.

“Here is a man that used chemical weapons on his own people. Here is a man that gassed the Kurds. Here is a man that has no hesitancy to recklessly throw city-busting Scuds, population-busting Scuds, into Israel or into Saudi Arabia. Here is a man that brutally parades prisoners of war. Here is a man that has launched environmental terrorism,” Bush said.

“I can’t figure out what he’s thinking.”