The Gulf: Are Saddam's Days Numbered?

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

SADDAM HUSSEIN STILL HAS HIS JOB. DO YOU?

Sightings of that bumper sticker in California and New Hampshire probably go farther than any deep-think analysis to unravel a Washington mystery. Why is the Bush Administration starting to leak hints of a new scheme to dethrone the Iraqi strongman, despite the derision of virtually everyone who knows anything about the Middle East?

In its most extreme version, the operation would begin with covert CIA stimulation of a new revolt by Saddam's Kurdish and Shi'ite opponents and proceed to very overt bombing of the forces the Iraqi dictator sent to smash the rebellion. That, goes the plan, would so weaken the regime that either the rebels or Saddam's military commanders, or both, would get rid of him. In another version, the U.S. would covertly incite a military coup by Saddam's lieutenants, in part by letting them know Washington stood ready to back them up with air power, if need be.

Either way, Middle East experts overwhelmingly consider the idea a harebrained plot likely to end in disaster -- not only if it failed, which it probably would, but even if it succeeded. Allies are appalled: the British government has strongly warned George Bush against any such scheme. Pentagon leaders and some high State Department officials also want no part of it.

Indeed, Administration officials say they are only taking a new look at some long-standing contingency plans. They give two principal reasons. Though their analysis is strongly disputed, they believe Saddam's hold on power is weakening; rumors of a new American plot to bring him down just might throw him off balance and embolden his opponents to try something. Such rumors also might encourage some allies who Washington fears might soon be ready to do business with Saddam -- notably Turkey -- to reconsider and hang tough in keeping the Iraqi regime isolated. Says an Administration official: "It's a comedy of errors. Those stories ((of a well-advanced plot)) are inaccurate, but they suit our policy."

Another reason undoubtedly is campaign politics. As those bumper stickers symbolize, the glow of victory in the gulf war has faded faster than the yellow ribbons that still cling to trees here and there; it no longer ! distracts voters from their worries about the recession. And as long as Saddam maintains his bloody totalitarian rule, efforts by Bush and his campaigners to revive memories of the glorious triumph are likely to ring false to many voters. Pat Buchanan and the Democrats can claim, misleadingly but perhaps effectively, that Desert Storm won at best a hollow victory.

Suppose, though, the Administration keeps dropping hints that Saddam after all might soon be thrown out, dead or alive, and that in fact the U.S. has a hush-hush operation under way to get rid of him. That just might defuse the issue long enough to get Bush past Election Day -- without the need to actually do anything. Still, the leaks and hints could do some damage by leading the public to believe the U.S. has far more chance of finally finishing off Saddam, and a much better developed strategy for doing so, than is really the case, thus setting the stage for disillusionment. To indicate just how limited the options are, the plot-that-really-isn't deserves close analysis.

THE SCENARIOS. To some reporters, and to the British government, Administration officials have represented the most detailed and extreme plan as one urged by Saudi Arabia. Could be: Riyadh is worried about a possible resurgence of Iraqi aggression, and more immediately by the rising power of Islamic fundamentalists who hail Saddam as their hero (forgetting his persecution of their brethren in Iraq because of his in-your-face attitude toward the West). But analysts raise two questions: Why would King Fahd invite the reintroduction of American power into the gulf that the plan presupposes, since he has been reluctant even to let the U.S. stockpile military supplies in his country? And why would the Saudis want Iraq's Shi'ites to win power, since the Saudis detest Iran and its Shi'ite allies quite as much as they hate Saddam? It is possible that Washington hawks have sold some Saudis on the idea, but not yet the King.

Whoever wrote it, the scenario begins with CIA encouragement of a coordinated revolt by Shi'ites in southern Iraq, Kurdish guerrillas in the north and possibly even some Sunni Muslim opponents of Saddam in the central area around Baghdad. The rebels, supplied by the U.S. and Saudis with modern weapons, overcome the poorly armed and trained Iraqi troops facing them. To put down the rebellion, Saddam has to dispatch army and Republican Guard units from the Baghdad area, as he did successfully last March and April. But this time, U.S. and possibly allied warplanes strafe their tanks and shoot down their helicopter gunships. With the Guard defeated, Saddam's commanders realize the game is up and dispatch him, by exile or execution. The generals then join hands with the Kurds and Shi'ites in a new government granting wide autonomy, though not independence, to the rebels, and they live happily ever after.

An alternative plan, and one that Administration officials say they have seriously discussed, is to encourage a coup by Saddam's officers without a preceding Kurdish-Shi'ite rebellion. Dissidents could, at least in theory, be identified, slipped some money and assured of U.S. backing in a crunch. For example, they could be told that if shooting broke out between rebellious factions of the Iraqi army and troops loyal to Saddam, American warplanes would bomb the loyalist units.

THE ODDS AGAINST. For openers, the chance that Saddam's enemies can form a united front seems remote. Kurds and Shi'ites dislike each other as much as they despise the dictator, and there are factional divisions within each camp to boot. Moreover, the failed revolts of 1991, and the massacres by Saddam's troops that followed, have left a legacy of bitter distrust toward the U.S., since it stood aside and watched. The Kurds in addition remember what they regard as American betrayals of their quest for independence going back to the 1970s. It is hard to imagine any guarantees of American support so ironclad as to spur the rebels into renewed fighting.

If the Kurds and Shi'ites did rise again, British analysts warn, it is by no means certain that they could overcome the Iraqi regulars facing them. Saddam has 400,000 fresh troops that he kept out of the gulf war standing by, as well as two Republican Guard divisions confronting potential rebels in the north and south. He might never have to call on the three or four Guard divisions he keeps around Baghdad as a kind of personal army. Nor is it certain that American air power could turn the tide -- or even that it could be fully employed. The U.S. has only about 150 ground-based warplanes left in the area, less than a tenth of those that flew in Desert Storm, and some of those operate out of Incirlik in Turkey. The Turks might never let them take off. Ankara's top priority is to prevent formation of anything resembling an independent Kurdish state inside Iraq that inevitably would try to break off a piece of Turkey; Turkish troops already have exchanged fire with Turkish Kurd + guerrillas operating out of Iraq.

The potential clincher: Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has told the White House that the only way to make sure of Saddam's defeat would be once more to commit American ground troops. British military sources estimate that as many as 100,000 to 200,000 would be required -- and that if they had to be sent into combat, they would take far heavier casualties than last year. Moreover, this time the casualties would be all American: London and such U.S. allies as France and Egypt want no part of the reported scheme. More flag-draped coffins are the last thing Bush needs when he is trying to win a second term.

Fomenting a military coup against Saddam seems a slightly more promising option. Some of the dictator's officers regard him as a bungler who has brought disaster on Iraq; British intelligence in fact hears there have been three unsuccessful coup attempts since the end of the gulf war. Americans add that Saddam has had 80-odd officers executed, and there are stories of gun battles in the streets of Baghdad between supporters of an ousted intelligence chief and followers of his successor.

But does all that indicate that Saddam's grip is faltering? British intelligence analysts take exactly the opposite view: the boss of Baghdad has been able to liquidate his chief opponents, real or imagined. They add that Saddam has been playing an adroit game: doling out to the masses just enough of the food that comes through the United Nations-mandated blockade to keep them from starvation, while permitting privation that he can blame on the allies. Meanwhile he has rewarded the Republican Guard and other loyal forces with abundant rations and fat pay increases.

The officers and troops remaining may be more afraid of the Iraqi masses -- and the Kurdish and Shi'ite dissidents -- than they are of Saddam. An Arab diplomat relates a conversation that occurred when the Iraqi dictator visited his capital well before the invasion of Kuwait. Saddam, says the diplomat, told his hosts that he had no illusions: if he ever fell from power, the mobs would so shred his body that not a piece of him larger than a fingertip would survive. But, he added, he had warned his subordinates that exactly the same thing would happen to them -- so they had better not join in any plots to depose him. In any case, a coup would succeed or not pretty much irrespective of what the U.S. did or failed to do. Those American officials most eager to incite a coup confess they have no idea at this point who might lead it, and thus whom to approach with money, promises of military backing or any other blandishments.

WHAT PRICE VICTORY? What would the U.S. gain if it did succeed in speeding Saddam's demise? Take the most favorable case, which an American official describes as "two officers walking into Saddam's office and putting a bullet in his head." They might be bullies only slightly less obnoxious than the dictator himself; Saddam's inner circle is not exactly crawling with liberal democratic reformers. Minus Saddam, Iraq would have a better chance of getting out from under intrusive U.N. sanctions, building the nuclear weapons that Saddam got close to, and becoming a regional menace once more.

The effect could be even worse if Saddam were toppled by an American- supported Kurdish-Shi'ite rebellion. Far from clasping hands in a new regime, the guerrillas would be more likely to wage a bloody civil war for supremacy -- and not only against each other. They might join in slaughtering the Sunni Muslims in central Iraq from whom Saddam has drawn the elite of his regime. "It would make Kuwaiti brutality against the Palestinians ((who supported Iraqi occupation or were suspected of doing so)) seem mild," says a senior British diplomat.

To prevent or stop massacres, the U.S. might be forced into an indefinite occupation and installation of a kind of puppet government in Baghdad (shades of Vietnam!). Absent some gross new provocation from Saddam, much of the Arab world would regard this as a neo-colonial occupation; the outbreaks of anti- Western fury that were predicted but failed to occur during the gulf war might really happen this time. At minimum, the U.S. would lose the leverage that has enabled it to get Arab-Israeli peace talks started.

And all for what? At least for now, Saddam's continued presence in Baghdad is only an annoyance, not a menace (except to his unfortunate subjects). Despite the criticisms from Bush's political opponents, the U.S. and its allies did accomplish their principal goals in the gulf war: they decisively punished an act of naked and unprovoked aggression, kept Saddam's hands off vital oil supplies, wrecked his military machine enough to keep him from threatening his neighbors again anytime soon, and decisively set back if not eliminated his attempts to develop nuclear weapons.

True enough, maintaining indefinitely the U.N. sanctions and worldwide embargo that keep Saddam caged will be no small trick. But the difficulties of doing so pale beside the potential disasters of either a failed or a successful attempt to get rid of him. Some of Bush's advisers doubt that Saddam's survival even bothers American voters enough to make much difference in the campaign. For the loftiest global strategic reasons and the crudest motives of down-and-dirty domestic politics, there are times when it is best to leave well enough -- or, for that matter, bad enough -- alone.

With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington, Dean Fischer/Cairo and William Mader/London