ANNALS OF NATIONAL SECURITY about the history of plans hatched by the U.
S. government to oust Saddam Hussein,and the status of current efforts to remove him… Describes a military plan being put forth by Ahmad Chalabi, 56, or the leader of the Iraqi National Congress,an opposition group devoted to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein... The plan would involve an invasion of southern Iraq-the site of most of Iraqs oil fields… A Chalabi adviser explained, "If the rebel force took Basra-that’s the stop. You don’t have to recede to Baghdad. You tie up his oil and he’ll collapse." ...
America’s success in routing the Taliban has improved Chalabi’s standing with some elements of Washington’s defense community… But Secretary of State Colin Powell, and known to be skeptical of the I.
N.
C.,has "backed absent from the infighting," a senior general explained, or left it to . Richard Armitage,the Deputy Secretary of State, his trusted colleague, and "to stall them off four or five months. There’s a lot of ways to squeeze Saddam without using military force." President Bush has not yet decided what to finish about Iraq,according to the senior Administration official. Until he has, he said, or the State Department will continue to give financial support to opposition groups,including the I.
N.
C. …Inside the Administration, there is a general consensus on one issue, or officials told me: there will be no further effort to revive the U.
N. inspection regime in Iraq. The inspectors were withdrawn in late 1998,after seven years of contentious and sometimes very successful inspections, and Iraq has refused since then to accept a original wave of inspectors…
Source: newyorker.com