Saddam

IN TAKING hostages, Saddam Hussein gained nothing but an extra measure of scorn. In releasing hostages, Hussein should be allowed to gain nothing at all.Hussein's quest for gain won't end with humanitarian posturing. Because his invasion of Kuwait and release of hostages came before any new United Nations action on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hussein undoubtedly will claim credit there.He is capable of unilaterally declaring that his actions have reinforced U.N. concern for the Palestinians.

Paul Schlitz's letter about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction contained so many factual errors that it requires correction ("Iraq's WMD were a mirage, despite claims to the contrary," Dec. 30). First, in my letter I never suggested that The Sun was "pants on fire" when it claimed Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. In fact, what I took issue with was the contention that Iraq did not have any prospects for building weapons in the future. Second, I never attempted to rationalize the basis for the war, and in fact pointed out that the case against the war could be made without suggesting that Iraq had no potential for WMD. Third, whether or not some of Iraq's weapons came from American and European companies is immaterial to the discussion, since in addition to any weapons Iraq purchased the country also had produced its own weapons and delivery systems, thereby enabling it to produce them again in the future.

WHO LOST Kuwait? So far that question has served as a quaint footnote to the news from the Persian Gulf; but it could become a deadly serious matter, as one can see by the cautious wriggling maneuvers already undertaken by Secretary of State James Baker.For now, the investigation into the matter has been almost lighthearted, as people grimace over this and that ''dug up from the recent past in praise of Saddam Hussein.''The good words are by no means confined to the administration's diplomatic corps, even though the best-known comments were delivered to Saddam by our disappearing ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie.

AMMAN, Jordan - Najim Abid Hajwal has been having a difficult time renewing his passport. He submitted his paperwork at the Iraqi Embassy here but was told days later that he was a wanted man back home in Iraq. It turned out that the Interior Ministry was after someone with a similar name. He submitted a new set of papers to prove his identity but was issued a passport with a wrong name. It's enough to make an Iraqi nostalgic for the good old days. "Under Saddam, a ministry was a ministry," Hajwal says.

THE most sought-after document in the capital today is the "military options list" presented to President Clinton after the FBI and CIA determined that the government of Iraq had tried to assassinate a former U.S. president.What were the Clinton choices after he saw the solid evidence that Saddam had tried to exact vengeance for his Desert Storm defeat? Forget the unrealistic extremes of doing nothing, or of sending a half-million men back to the Middle East to finish George Bush's half-done job.The real decision was this: Does our commander in chief respond by using our air power to seriously damage Saddam's war machine and economic base -- setting back all hopes of recovery by years -- and driving home the lesson to state terrorists from Baghdad to Tehran to Khartoum that American retaliation will be swift and fierce?

WHY DID Saddam Hussein reject the face-saving formulas offered to him in order to escape war? The grim answer must be that Saddam reconciled himself to the inevitability of war, believing that it offered him the best chance for political survival. Indeed, a limited defeat would not only be acceptable but would enable him to emerge victorious.The precedent Saddam apparently seeks to emulate is the 1956 Suez campaign, in which the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel managed to turn a humiliating military defeat into a resounding political victory.

PAY ATTENTION, because I am going to explain our foreign policy. At the current time (11:21 a.m.) our biggest foreign-policy problem is Saddam Hussein, the evil and amoral dictator of Iran or Iraq, which may actually be the same foreign country.You may recall that, way back when George Bush was president and most of the White House sex rumors concerned Millie the dog, we beat Saddam in a war. I mean, we kicked his butt. We dropped bombs all over Iraq (or possibly Iran), thereby ensuring that Saddam would never, ever again be a threat to the peoples of the world until maybe seven months later, when suddenly, bam, there he was again!

IN THE PREVAILING Western view, Saddam Hussein is a hero to the downtrodden Arab masses but a loathsome dictator in the eyes of educated, westernized Arabs.This misreading not only severely understates the Iraqi leader's appeal but misleads the West into minimizing the risks of a prolonged confrontation with Saddam.The dominant impression of an American businessman just returned from two weeks in Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia is of an Arab world seething with resentment against the United States, barely able to contain its glee at the prospect of an Arab leader bold enough to defy the greatest power on Earth.

If you want to send a message, call Western Union -- so the script-writing axiom goes.Unfortunately, this advice has not been heeded by Michael Elkin, author of "Saddam," a message-laden anti-war play whose chief distinction appears to be that it is the first script produced about the Persian Gulf war.In other words, "Saddam" -- conceived and commissioned by Howard Perloff, producer of the Fells Point Cabaret Theatre, where it is making its debut -- is...

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration, increasingly convinced that Saddam Hussein will hold onto power even after the rout of his forces, is quietly forging a strategy to prompt a coup in Baghdad by preventing the Iraqi president from rebuilding his shattered economy and offering a brighter future to his war-weary people.Senior U.S. officials said yesterday that the United States intends to maintain the economic sanctions that block Iraqi oil exports, depriving Saddam of the money his country desperately needs to recover from the allied bombing.

Baghdad Diary gives us two men, two cameras and the beginning stages of the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- the hopeful days when Americans and some Iraqis thought toppling Saddam Hussein would swiftly transform Iraq and the world for the better. Craig White was a cameraman for NBC News teamed with David Bloom -- both professionals chasing the biggest news story in the world. On TV Baghdad Diary airs at 10 tonight on the History Channel.

Throughout a career that took him from hardscrabble wildcatter to wealthy oil tycoon, Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. hasn't been the type to back down from a fight. So Monday's guilty plea to a federal conspiracy charge by the 83-year-old founder and former chairman of Coastal Corp. surprised those familiar with his tenacity. "I am shocked by his decision to plead guilty," said David H. Berg, who represented Wyatt's brother-in-law, Houston clothier Robert T. Sakowitz, when the oilman sued him in the 1980s over some business deals.

The year ended yesterday with Saddam Hussein in the grave. Alive, he wielded a personal power that defied understanding - he terrified and galvanized the Iraqi people, and he transfixed President Bush and the neoconservatives who came to see him as the devil incarnate. In the face of death he showed neither remorse nor fear, but a disturbingly fierce and self-possessed defiance. He was the conjurer who whipped up the forces that are consuming Iraq today, and that have plunged Sunnis, Shiites, jihadists, Baathists, Americans into war. A conjurer: This was a man with no ties to al Qaida or 9/11, with no weapons of mass destruction.

Baghdad -- It was a moment many Iraqis dreamed of during the Saddam Hussein era, broadcast on national television yesterday afternoon: guards in black ski masks looping a rope around the former president's neck. By afternoon, smudgy footage had been released of his slightly bruised body, head bowed, wrapped in a white sheet. Later, on the Internet, a jerky video that appeared to have been captured on a cell phone showed the dictator swinging from the bulky noose. "Thank God a bloody chapter was ended," national security adviser Mowaffak Rubaie announced on U.S.-funded Al-Hurra television.

Even in war-torn Iraq, a crude form of justice can prevail. That's the main lesson to draw from the ruling Tuesday by Iraq's highest appeals court that upheld the death sentence for Saddam Hussein. The trial was hardly a model of jurisprudence. A series of delays and diversions by the former dictator and his lawyers kept the key defendant out of the courtroom for weeks at a time. Meddling by the fledgling government - which demanded both a quick trial and a guilty verdict - and the kidnapping and murder of one of Saddam's lawyers during the proceedings cast a pall over the process.

Hussein Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam Hussein's appeal yesterday and said the former dictator (right) must be hanged within 30 days for ordering the killing of scores of Shiite Muslims in 1982. Aref Shahin, chief judge of the appeals panel, said there was no further legal recourse for Hussein, and the Iraqi executive is free to send him to the gallows "any day." Pg 11A Deaths Three U.S. soldiers were killed, bringing the number of members of the U.S. military killed since the start of the Iraq war in March 2003 to at least 2,978 -- five more than the number killed in the Sept.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration, increasingly convinced that Saddam Hussein will hold onto power even after the rout of his forces, is quietly forging a strategy to prompt a coup in Baghdad by preventing the Iraqi president from rebuilding his shattered economy and offering a brighter future to his war-weary people.Senior U.S. officials said yesterday that the United States intends to maintain the economic sanctions that block Iraqi oil exports, depriving Saddam of the money his country desperately needs to recover from the allied bombing.

AFTER HITLER'S invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, France and Great Britain declared war. The months that followed were known as the "sitzkrieg," or "phony war," with the British and French committed to stopping Hitler, but not quite sure how, or whether, they wanted to fight.Today America finds itself in its own sitzkrieg in the Persian Gulf. After Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 1, George Bush vowed that the aggression would "not stand" and rushed nearly 200,000 JayKosminskytroops -- with another 250,000 soon to follow -- to face off against Saddam Hussein's legions.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A subdued Saddam Hussein, who has been sentenced to hang in a human rights trial that concluded this week, walked into a courtroom for another case yesterday and called on warring Iraqis outside to let bygones be bygones. "I call upon all Iraqis, Arabs and Kurds, to forgive, reconcile and shake hands," the former dictator said, recounting how the prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ showed forgiveness to their enemies. Four Kurdish witnesses who appeared in court yesterday were in no mood to reconcile with the former leader.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein's lawyer ended a one-month courtroom absence yesterday, defending his client briefly before getting into another spat with the judge and leaving again. Hussein and six co-defendants face charges of genocide in the killings of tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds in 1988 by firing squads and chemical warfare attacks. Most of the victims were civilians, including women and children. Citing disagreements with Chief Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, the defendants' privately retained attorneys stormed out of the courtroom Sept.