US embassy cable - 03OTTAWA658

UNCLAS OTTAWA 000658 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR WHA/CAN, WHA/PDA 
WHITE HOUSE PASS NSC/WEUROPE 
 
E.O. 12958:  N/A 
TAGS: KPAO, KMDR, OIIP, OPRC, CA, TFUS01, TFUS02, TFUS03 
SUBJECT:  MEDIA REACTION: IRAQ 
 
 
IRAQ 
1.   "The American 'dream palace'" 
Columnist Jeffrey Simpson commented in the leading 
Globe and Mail (3/4): "...The 'dream palace' will be 
one in which the Americans are led by their political 
and military leaders through unfamiliar cultural 
territory, using largely inappropriate means toward 
long-term engagements for which Americans are not 
prepared, financially or psychologically. An 
administration with revolutionary objectives is running 
U.S. policy. The realists have been 
banished or marginalized, considered wimps too inclined 
to compromise. The ideologues believe they are the 
terrorists' nightmare, but, instead, they 
are the terrorists' dream, because they have 
overreacted. By pursuing 'regime change,' starting with 
a U.S. general running Iraq for two years or 
more, the U.S. will turn even more people against them 
and provide the best recruiting ground yet for militant 
fundamentalism. The shock sought by the Americans, 
therefore, will more likely be to 
themselves. Unless, of course, the U.S. does an 
Afghanistan, and turns Iraq, once conquered, from last 
year's headlines to today's back pages. In which 
case, Iraq, an artificial country, will fall apart in 
chaos." 
 
2.   "The real reasons for deposing Saddam" 
Columnist Paul Stanway wrote in the conservative 
tabloid Edmonton Sun (3/1): "...Promoting democracy in 
the Middle East. In a nutshell, that's what the 
conflict with Iraq is all about. Yes, it's an argument 
over weapons of mass destruction and the crumbling 
authority of the United Nations, but in the long run it 
is, as Bush so eloquently explained, about promoting 
the spread of democratic values to create a more stable 
and peaceful world. One in which despots like Saddam 
Hussein are not able to seize the wealth of a nation 
and use it to fund aggressive wars against their 
neighbours - which in his case have already taken the 
lives of over a million people." 
 
3.   "War of ideas" 
Under the sub-heading, "U.S. values of liberty, 
democracy and free institutions could work with Islam," 
the right-of-center Calgary Herald (3/1) commented: 
"...Those who saw in the rubble the just, if 
regrettable, fruits of U.S. foreign policy, required 
Americans to don sackcloth and ashes to atone for the 
poverty and hopelessness in the tyrannies of the Middle 
East. They prescribed understanding, conciliation, 
repentance and ultimately, appeasement. Retaliation, 
they supposed, would harden attitudes and further 
compound those ineffable root causes. Such thinking was 
patently absurd. Certainly, poverty can be the petri- 
dish of resentment, but it was not the poor who 
attacked America. It was the sons of the affluent. And 
the more one understands what inspired al-Qaeda and its 
Taliban hosts, the less one is inclined to conciliate: 
How does one placate somebody who wants nothing of you 
but your life?... The U.S. failure to depose Saddam 
Hussein in the Gulf War was taken in the Arab world as 
weakness, not restraint. Now, Saddam's continued 
survival, the symbolism of an Arab dictator defying the 
Great Satan, sustains the terrorist hope of ultimate 
victory. Saddam with nuclear weapons would much 
encourage it. The reverse is also true: His removal 
will cause alarm and despondency among the militants. 
Saddam, therefore, must go." 
 
CELLUCCI