Kenneth Pollack

On Iraq

In his book, The Threatening Storm, Pollack advocated heavily for this use of force in Iraq, citing Iraq's supposed stash of WMD's, which did not in fact exist. Pollak wrote in his book "the only prudent and realistic course of action left to the United States is to mount a full-scale invasion of Iraq to smash the Iraqi armed forces, depose Saddam’s regime, and rid the country of weapons of mass destruction.” Pollack predicted, “It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars.” Likewise, he wrote, “we should not exaggerate the danger of casualties among American troops. U.S. forces in Bosnia have not suffered a single casualty from hostile action because they have become so attentive and skillful at force protection.”

"Those who argue that the United States would inevitably become the target of unhappy Iraqis generally also assume that the Iraqi population would be hostile to U.S. forces from the outset. However, the best evidence we have suggests that the Iraqi people would be pleased to be liberated, and over the longer term, their acceptance of U.S. forces would likely be determined by the efforts the United States undertook." [[1]]

In an NPR interview in Nov. 2002, Pollak talked about why the U.S needed to intervene in Iraq. "I believe that we are going to have to go war with Iraq sooner rather than later. The reason that it has to be sooner rather than later is because of Iraq's development of nuclear weapons. What we've heard from all of the intelligence communities in the West--there seems to be a consensus among our own, the British, the French, the Germans, the Israelis--they all believe that Saddam Hussein has effectively everything that he needs to build nuclear weapons.

"He's got the uranium. He hasn't enriched it yet. But what that says is that we do have a window. We don't want Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons. If he were to acquire them, it would be tremendously dangerous, possibly tragic for the entire world."

"I do agree with the view that it is likely that if we invade Iraq, we will trigger their use of weapons of mass destruction. But I think there are a number of very important caveats to keep in mind. First, our ability, our military capabilities to deal with those threats is actually quite high. Our forces are well-prepared to deal in that kind of environment. And what's more, our offensive capabilities are very good, and chances are we can prevent the Iraqis from using a lot of that if we handle the operation correctly. And I noted the most recent newspaper article suggesting that this is going to be a massive invasion force; I think that's absolutely right. The bigger the force we bring to bear, the better our capabilities to prevent the Iraqis from using these weapons.

"At some point down the road, Saddam Hussein is going to acquire a nuclear weapon." [[2]]

In 2003, Pollack wrote an article for New York Times entitled "Saddam's Bombs? We'll Find Them." He argues that "There has long been an extremely strong case -- based on evidence that largely predates the Bush administration -- that Iraq maintained programs in weapons of mass destruction." [[3]]