A Show of Strength

By NANCY GIBBS

Restless, reckless and tired of being rebuffed, Saddam Hussein once again looked poised to carry out an epic feat of self-destruction. By sending 20,000 fresh troops to breathe heavily across Kuwait's border and then withdrawing them after America clenched its fist, he managed to remind the world that he was a loose cannon, derail the momentum toward lifting the U.N. sanctions that are bleeding his people dry and burnish the prestige of an American President sorely in need of a foreign-policy success. "It was a godsend," said a U.N. diplomat at the Security Council. Exulted a State Department official: "Saddam blinked, he turned tail, and if he tries it again, we're going to whack 'em."

The President stood tall, in Iraq as in Haiti, and the tyrants backed down -- it all should have made for a happy ending. Someone even faxed the White House the headline from the New York Daily News: CLINTON 2, BULLIES 0! Clinton liked it so much he asked chief of staff Leon Panetta to get him a copy. So how was it that even as the forces of Operation Vigilant Warrior steamed into the Persian Gulf, Clinton's sweet victory became so sticky? The President won near universal praise for a fast and firm response to Saddam's latest challenge to Kuwait's security. But the minute the enemy seemed to be tamed, he had to contend with rambunctious allies: France and Russia, having condemned Saddam's latest gambit, tried to block any effort to punish him for it. Iraqi troops did pull back, but not all the way. That left Clinton searching for some way to secure victory without firing a shot, while ensuring that this time Saddam stays put for good. It has not been easy. On Saturday, the U.S. had to negotiate carefully to avoid a Russian veto before winning a unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution demanding that Iraq withdraw its troops from the Kuwaiti border.

The Administration took Saddam's threats seriously from the start. A congressional investigation last year found that Iraq had rebuilt most of its conventional Gulf War arsenal, including 200 munitions factories, and that much of its war machine -- some 2,500 tanks, 1,800 artillery pieces and 300 combat planes -- had survived Desert Storm. Two weeks ago, when Saddam dispatched 20,000 of his elite Republican Guard south to join 50,000 regular army troops on the Kuwaiti border, Pentagon officials did not share the view of many diplomats that it was all part of a bluff to pressure the U.N. to ease economic sanctions. They were surprised at how efficiently the troops could be deployed. "This just wasn't some innocent exercise," argued General John Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The Iraqis' heavy ammunitions loads and the presence of extensive supplies convinced officials that Saddam was thinking of invading Kuwait.

Clinton's bold response actually carried little risk, at least politically. By dispatching thousands of troops and hundreds of planes, the President made clear the U.S. intention to defend Kuwait's sovereignty by whatever means necessary. To charges that he overreacted, he had a sturdy alibi; the mixed messages sent by the Bush Administration in 1990 were widely blamed for encouraging Saddam to overrun Kuwait without fear of reprisal. For once Congress was united in support; Clinton phoned Bush on Monday and got his blessing as well. Even Saddam's onetime allies, like Jordan and the P.L.O., supported the President's stance.

In a sense Saddam granted Clinton a reprieve, and just in time. The U.S. faced growing pressure in its efforts to keep Saddam in his cage. American and British officials have long argued that there could be no easing of the sanctions imposed after the Gulf War unless Saddam abided by all U.N. resolutions. That would mean at minimum allowing an intrusive monitoring system to ensure that he built no more weapons of mass destruction and recognizing Kuwait's sovereignty and borders. Administration officials also called on Baghdad to halt its attacks on the Kurds in the north and Shi'ites in the south, return Kuwaiti prisoners and property and improve its human- rights record.

In private U.S. officials go even further: the sanctions must stay until Saddam goes. Better to continue a pattern of confrontation and standoff, U.S. officials argued, than allow Iraq to rebuild its economy and weapons capabilities. The U.S. hard line inspired sympathy for Iraq among some foreign diplomats, who agreed with Iraqi U.N. Ambassador Nizar Hamdoon's assertion that "the U.S. keeps moving the goalposts."

Even U.S. allies like France and Turkey that had helped fight the Gulf War were eager to welcome Iraq back into the fold. For months Baghdad had been negotiating deals with former trading partners, all of them hoping to reopen a hugely lucrative market. And Iraq was making progress on other fronts: Rolf Ekeus, the U.N. official charged with setting up the system to monitor weapons building inside Iraq, was about to report to the Security Council that Iraq was in provisional compliance with that significant U.N. requirement.

Thus Hamdoon himself was apparently caught off guard by Saddam's sudden belligerence. Intelligence sources told TIME that the senior Iraqi leadership split over the decision to shift from a diplomatic offensive to a military one. Hawks on Saddam's revolutionary council persuaded Saddam to send the soldiers south. But a State Department official says Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz "is not happy with this muscle flexing. He thinks it's counterproductive and it just gets the back up of the international community." A U.N. official standing near both Aziz and Hamdoon when the news of troop movements came says, "They had a look of shock on their faces. Hamdoon actually seemed to pale."

Saddam's move was so baldly self-defeating that it left even seasoned Iraq experts wondering what he could have been thinking. Many analysts argue that he had watched dictators from Bosnia to North Korea turn threats into concessions from an unsteady American President and assumed that he could do likewise. Successfully menacing Kuwait would have shown his neighbors that he was ready to take by force what he couldn't win by diplomacy, and that they had better play along. By confronting the West he could convince his own people that he was fighting to relieve their suffering. The deployment of troops coincided with a new domestic austerity program, which cut each citizen's rations for sugar, rice and flour up to 50%. A UNICEF report revealed that 2.5 million Iraqi women and children were suffering from malnutrition because of the sanctions. "The feeling here is that the Americans will try to maintain the sanctions come hell or high water, to achieve their unstated objective of overthrowing the government," says a Western diplomat in Baghdad. "Saddam probably thought he had nothing to lose."

Though this latest showdown did highlight the suffering of the Iraqi population, it also confirmed that Saddam has become their worst enemy. A U.N. resolution back in 1991 permitted Saddam to sell $1.6 billion in oil and keep $962 million of it to spend on humanitarian aid as long as the rest went to Gulf War reparations and to fund the U.N. monitors in Iraq. Saddam refused even that limited offer, on the ground that foreign control of the spending was a humiliating violation of Iraqi sovereignty. "Saddam does not want to see sanctions lifted in part, because he thinks it undercuts lifting them in whole," says Patrick Clawson of the National Defense University. "So he holds his own people hostage."

Clinton's next move will be much harder to choreograph. "This is not over," said a senior U.S. official. "I think ((Saddam)) will try to find a way to say to the U.S. and the international community that neither we nor he can win the game according to its existing rules, so that we must change the rules and give him what he wants." As the U.S. began floating possible options, some allies insisted that it might be more dangerous to keep Saddam a pariah than try to come to terms with him. For one thing, there are still huge financial stakes involved. The moment Iraqi troops began to pull back, French Defense Minister Francois Leotard distanced himself from Clinton's position. Leotard said Iraq had not violated any U.N. sanctions or done anything illegal. Clinton's massive deployment, he added, was "not unconnected with domestic politics." Neither, of course, were Leotard's comments; the Gulf War and subsequent embargo have cost French taxpayers an estimated $8.7 billion in unpaid government-guaranteed loans.

Moscow, an ally of Iraq's until the end of the cold war, is also eager to rebuild economic ties. Iraq owes Russia at least $7 billion, money that Moscow desperately needs. A month ago, Russia and Iraq negotiated an economic protocol that could be worth $10 billion, which could go into effect as soon as U.N. sanctions are lifted. On Monday, Boris Yeltsin called Clinton to tell him that Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev was heading off on a mission to Baghdad. Clinton said fine, so long as he delivered the message to Saddam that Iraq was in trouble and the international community was united, and to pull his troops back immediately. So the White House was distressed when, on Thursday, Russia and Iraq issued a joint declaration in which Russia would seek a timetable for the lifting of sanctions, once Iraq recognized Kuwait's sovereignty and borders. U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher was blunt that there could be no quid pro quo. "Iraq's efforts to intimidate Kuwait and the United Nations must not be rewarded," he said on his way home from visiting troops in the gulf.

But faced with wavering allies, Clinton had limited options because he has not given up his passion for multilateral action. Some officials made the case that the Iraqi troop movements constituted a violation of the 1991 cease-fire agreement, and that the U.S. had the right to respond with or without U.N. consent. From Washington and neighboring states like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, there came a chorus of hawks suggesting that the U.S. decide how it preferred to dispose of Saddam and then let the allies decide for themselves which side they are on. "When you're dealing with repeat offenders returning to the scene of a crime," said a State Department official, "we feel we have the right to pre-empt before they get to Kuwait."

At the extreme were those who urged that the U.S. should finish the job, either pushing forward into Baghdad or targeting Saddam for assassination. Such sentiments are shared by many of the troops of the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division, particularly those who fought the Iraqis in the Gulf War four years ago. "I think we should cross the border and put them out of business," said Army Specialist John Cannito of Orlando, Florida, who had recently arrived in Kuwait. But reconstructing the huge Desert Storm armada and occupying Iraq would be impractical, and killing Saddam -- aside from moral and legal counterarguments -- presents practical problems too. First, targeting Saddam would not be easy; security is extremely tight, and multiple coup attempts have already failed. Second, it would not be cheap. If Iraq were beheaded, the U.S. would be forced to install new leadership and help rebuild a large, broken country.

Early in the week the most frequently floated proposal was a U.N. resolution to create some kind of "exclusion zone" that would extend the no-fly zone south of the 32nd parallel into a "no-drive" or "no-walk" zone. Iraqi planes are already barred from flying over the border area; a new exclusion zone would bar heavy equipment, tanks and artillery from southern Iraq. But France was adamant that it would not accept such measures, which could lead to the effective partitioning of the country, and by midweek officials in Washington had come up with a more modest plan. Saddam would have to withdraw the 20,000-strong Republican Guard that he had moved into the border zone, but he could leave the 50,000 regular-army troops there. Any future redeployment of the Guard would be taken as provocation and grounds for a U.S. response. When the retreating Republican Guard looked to be hunkering down within 100 miles of the border, Defense Secretary William Perry, just arrived in Kuwait, warned of the consequences. "If these forces stay in the south, we will expand our current deployment plans and take appropriate action to deal with this threat," he said. "We're talking about military action," he added, lest there be any misunderstanding.

American military planners noted that there were indeed advantages in focusing on the Republican Guard rather than trying to enforce a complete demilitarized zone. A hair-trigger exclusion zone, where every tank and artillery piece that sneaks in constitutes a violation, would allow Saddam to keep U.S. troops busy with cat-and-mouse games or, worse, force them to turn a blind eye. Furthermore, creating a military vacuum below the 32nd parallel could lead to a collapse of Baghdad's authority in the territory and possibly invite an incursion by Iran -- an even less appetizing prospect.

U.S. officials were also eager to find some solution that would at least superficially hold the alliance together. In fact, the best policy, most analysts in Washington agree, is to do exactly what the U.S. has been doing all along: wait Saddam out and wear him down. Saddam, they note, is much weaker than he was five or 10 years ago. He remains powerful in Iraq because he has crushed his opposition, but on an absolute scale, his power is shrinking, his military is smaller, his money has run out.

But he is still a threat. "If Saddam ever thinks the sanctions are never going to be lifted, he could say to hell with this, I'm not going to be the nice guy anymore," admits a State Department official. "But if the sanctions are lifted soon, then it also removes his incentive for being a nice guy. In a way we're caught in the same bind." So far, two American Presidents have not found a way to eliminate Saddam or civilize him. Washington may have to settle for finding the least objectionable way of living with him.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 800 adult Americans taken for TIME/CNN on Oct. 11-12 by Yankelovich Partners Inc. Sampling error is plus or minus 3.5% Not Sures omitted

CAPTION: Is President Clinton doing a good job or a bad job handling the situation with Iraq?

With reporting by Dean Fischer/Kuwait City, Lara Marlowe/Baghdad, J.F.O. McAllister and Mark Thompson/Washington