When Frontier Justice Becomes Foreign Policy

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/weekinreview/13POWE.html?ex=1058673600&en=78bb599514c9839f&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

American intelligence organizations and military forces, once forbidden from attempts to assassinate foreign leaders by the executive orders of two recent presidents, have now embarked on an open, all-out effort to find and kill Saddam Hussein in a campaign with no precedents in American history.

Despite three strikes aimed at Mr. Hussein since the opening night of the American war on Iraq, intelligence officials have conceded that a recent broadcast of Mr. Hussein's voice is probably genuine. A concession that the Iraqi leader remains alive is also implicit in Washington's offer of a $25 million reward for his capture or proof of his death.

Since President Bush announced the end of major military operations on May 1, it has become increasingly clear that the Iraq war is not over, that there is a concerted campaign of resistance and that Mr. Hussein remains a formidable foe. Over the last 10 days the chief American official in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, has frequently stressed the importance of capturing or killing Mr. Hussein. snip

Realists may scoff that war is war and that things have always been this way, but in fact personalized killing has a way of deepening the bitterness of war without bringing conflict closer to resolution. In April 1986 President Reagan authorized an air raid on the home of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya that spared him but killed his daughter. The Reagan administration never acknowledged that Colonel Qaddafi, personally, was the target, nor did it publicly speculate two years later that Libya's bombing of an American jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, was Colonel Qaddafi's revenge for the death of his daughter. But the administration got the message: after Lockerbie, Washington relied on legal action to settle the score.

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