[R-G] Bush will begin war on Iraq 'within weeks' (Guardian, UK)

[DavidMcR at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/24/03 1:35:22 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
scottmclarty at yahoo.com writes:

<< The Message from the Bush Camp: 'It's War Within
 Weeks'
 · Washington now concentrating on timing
 · State of union address to 'turn up the heat' 
 · Blair faces nightmare scenario over war
 decision
  
 by Julian Borger in Washington, Ewen MacAskill
 and Simon Tisdall
 
 The Guardian (UK), Friday, January 24, 2003
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,881215,00.html
 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0124-01.htm
 
   
 President George Bush is determined to go to war
 with Saddam Hussein in the next few weeks,
 without UN backing if necessary, according to
 authoritative sources in Washington and London. 
 
 The US president is "to turn up the heat" in his
 state of the union address on Tuesday. 
 
 "The pressure comes from President Bush and it is
 felt all the way down," a European official said.
 "They're talking about weeks, not months. Months
 is a banned word now." 
 
 Mr Bush wanted the US secretary of state, Colin
 Powell, to force the issue of military action by
 presenting evidence of Saddam Hussein's
 violations of UN resolutions immediately after
 weapons inspectors give their report to the UN on
 Monday. In Washington circles such an event is
 being referred to as the Adlai Stevenson moment. 
 
 The "Adlai Stevenson moment" has become
 Washington shorthand for the US presentation of
 its intelligence case. Stevenson was the US
 ambassador to the UN at the time of the 1962
 Cuban missile crisis, who dramatically confronted
 the Soviet envoy with vivid aerial photographs of
 nuclear missiles being unloaded in Cuba. 
 
 Downing Street was alarmed by the Bush
 administration's sudden haste in moving towards a
 climax. It was adamant that the decision to go to
 war should not be declared before Tony Blair
 flies to Camp David for talks with Mr Bush next
 Friday. 
 
 An informed source in Washington said: "Blair is
 a good guy. They won't want to do that to him.
 They want it to look like he played a part in the
 policy-making but the decision has been made." 
 
 A key moment will now be the state of the union
 address. According to a Washington source, the US
 administration remains divided along old fault
 lines about the precise timescale of war. The US
 secretary of state, Donald Rumsfeld, wants Mr
 Bush to set a clear and imminent deadline. But Mr
 Powell, is resisting, asking for a little more
 time for diplomatic coalition-building. 
 
 But both sides of the divide are making it
 increasingly clear that the end result will be
 military action, with or without UN backing. 
 
 The chief White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer,
 yesterday brushed off mounting anti-war feeling
 across Europe, led by France. It was "entirely
 possible that France won't be on the line", he
 said, adding that Britain, Australia, Italy,
 Spain and "virtually all of the eastern European
 countries" would provide support. 
 
 Mr Powell echoed this, saying: "I don't think we
 will have to worry about going it alone." 
 
 The impatience within the White House for action
 against Iraq came on a day in which the cracks in
 the international coalition against Iraq widened.
 China and Russia joined France and Germany in
 warning the US against precipitate action and
 calling for Washington to work within the UN. 
 
 The German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer,
 revealed the extent of European anger over the US
 position when he told Washington to "cool down".
 The Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, said:
 "Russia deems that there is no evidence that
 would justify a war in Iraq." 
 
 Mr Blair now finds himself perilously close to
 his nightmare scenario - sandwiched between a US
 administration bent on war and the rest of Europe
 either openly hostile to military action or
 passively resistant. 
 
 Britain believes it has won a short reprieve
 before the US presents its own intelligence
 evidence against Saddam Hussein, in effect a
 declaration of war, but only for a fortnight at
 most. 
 
 Mr Bush will lay out the broad case for toppling
 President Saddam next Tuesday but White House
 officials insist the speech, a year after the
 president coined the phrase, "axis of evil", will
 stop short of being a declaration of war. That
 will await a more detailed presentation of
 intelligence evidence in the next few weeks,
 after Mr Blair visits Camp David. 
 
 "We said that has to be a substantive
 consultation, not a fait accompli," one British
 official said. The British argument is that the
 longer the US waits before showing its hand, the
 better the case it will have to put before the UN
 security council, as the inspectors come across
 more Iraqi infringements. 
 
 The Foreign Office had initially sought to defuse
 the rising tension around next Monday's
 inspectors' report by denying that it represented
 a "moment of truth", but in recent days a source
 conceded: "That was never going to be realistic.
 Of course it's important." 
 
 At his meeting with Mr Powell yesterday, the
 foreign secretary, Jack Straw, clung to the
 official line. "There are still ways that this
 can be resolved peacefully," he said. Mr Straw
 repeated that the British preference is for a
 second UN resolution before any further action
 against Iraq but Mr Powell, in a change of tack,
 refused to commit himself to seeking a second
 resolution. 
 
 One of the factors behind Washington's haste
 appears to be the annual rise in temperatures in
 the Iraqi desert over the next few months. In
 theory, US and some allied troops have the
 capacity to fight in any weather but the
 effectiveness of both soldiers and equipment
 diminishes rapidly when the temperature rises
 over 35C. 
 
 "The planes have been designed for the cold war.
 They start losing lift, carry lighter loads, and
 must make shorter runs when the temperature goes
 over 35," said one government official involved
 in Anglo-American debates over the timing of an
 attack. 
 
 
 © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
 
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