Pentagon hawks hasten Iraq attack

WASHINGTON, July 18 (UPI) -- When will the Bush administration launch U.S. armed forces against Iraq in a bid to topple President Saddam Hussein? Bet on this year rather than next and sooner rather than later.

The conventional wisdom in Washington in recent months has been that no such attack is likely until well into next year. Of course, that may well be the case. Several detailed articles have appeared in major U.S. newspapers citing senior, unnamed Department of Defense officials as saying that this is their understanding.

These reports may be accurate, or they may be the American version of masrilovka -- the old Soviet term for strategic disinformation to misdirect an enemy. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, who championed the actual creation of an explicit information unit in the Pentagon that would spread misleading stories as well as accurate ones, is known to have a passion for such things.

What is remarkable is that, if they are the latter, it is one of the leading hawks pushing for a pre-emptive offensive war against Iraq who may have blown the whistle on it.

Speaking on a PBS network documentary about Iraq last week, Richard Perle, the former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration who is also immensely influential with civilian Pentagon hawks in the current administration one, confidently predicted that when President George W. Bush gives his State of the Union message next year he would have "good news" to give the American people about Iraq.

For almost all the American people, the best news they could be given about Iraq would be that they did not have to go to war against it. But that clearly was not what Perle was thinking at all. By "good news" about Iraq he mean the elimination of Saddam and his government by the U.S. armed forces.

There are quite a number of straws in the wind to suggest that Perle, who enjoys immense influence with and access to Feith and to Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, knows what he is talking about.

First, the British government, the only major European ally that is enthusiastically supporting the Bush administration in its determination to bring down Saddam by direct military means, is quietly acting as if a war will come this fall or winter rather than not until next year.