Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 28, 1991 TAG: 9102280380
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"Saddam Hussein is not the kind of guy to cry uncle," said Patrick Clawson of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.
President Bush, addressing the nation Wednesday night, said "Kuwait is liberated, Iraq's army is defeated" and announced that the allies were suspending combat operations at midnight EST. It is up to Iraq whether the cease-fire becomes permanent, he said.
Pentagon officials said troops continued to exchange fire with Iraqi forces after Bush's speech and expected to fight up until midnight.
A Pentagon source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said allied forces would drop leaflets with the cease-fire message on Iraqi troops and blast the news over loudspeakers - much as they have urged the troops to surrender in recent weeks.
They also expect the news to come from Baghdad, either over state radio or through military communications. "We've always believed they've had some form of command-and-control capability intact," said the source.
Analysts said earlier Wednesday the lack of a formal surrender by Saddam could leave U.S.-led forces with hundreds of thousands of disarmed Iraqi troops on their hands and vast expanses of Iraqi territory to administer. It could leave Saddam in power, battered but venerated by the Arab masses.
Ideally from the U.S. vantage point, the Iraqis would overthrow the man who has led them into two disastrous wars in the past decade. There is precedent: Napoleon was exiled, twice, for his military misadventures; Italian partisans executed Benito Mussolini in 1945.
If captured, Saddam could also be turned over to the coalition or another international body to face a war tribunal. At the World War II Nuremberg trials, 24 German Nazis were indicted and 12 sentenced to die. Seven Japanese militarists were convicted in Tokyo and executed for committing war crimes.
"Even if he survives and continues to rule he will always be at risk of prosecution for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity," said David Scheffer, an international law expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Saddam would never be safe, either at home or abroad, Scheffer said, citing the case of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, captured by the Israelis in Argentina in 1960 and executed two years later.
Retired Adm. Eugene Carroll of the Center for Defense Information warned, however, that to put Saddam on trial and "parade witnesses against his evil deeds would make a martyr of him" in the Arab world.
The option of waiting for the Iraqis to depose Saddam is equally dubious, Carroll said. "He is closely surrounded by people who had to commit so many violent acts themselves they are a mutual support society."
by CNB