War Against Iraq

KUWAIT CITY -- In choosing inauguration week for his latest challenge to the United States, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein appears to be gambling on two things: that by demonstrating that the Persian Gulf war alliance is not likely to go to war against Iraq again, he can weaken the U.S.-led coalition that crushed his forces two years ago, and that in the long run, this high-stakes gambit may enable him to break the back of the sanctions that have damaged the...

WASHINGTON - President Bush plans today to call the leaders of Russia, France and China, three veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council, as he tries to overcome international resistance to a possible war against Iraq. "I will remind them that history has called us into action," Bush said yesterday. "We can't let the world's worst leaders blackmail, threaten, hold freedom-loving nations hostage with the world's worst weapons." The phone calls - to Presidents Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Jiang Zemin of China and Jacques Chirac of France - are part of a stepped-up campaign by the administration, at home and abroad, to build support for confronting Saddam Hussein's regime.

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney delivered the Bush administration's most comprehensive case for war against Iraq yesterday, warning that the world faces grave danger if it stands by while Saddam Hussein develops nuclear weapons. "The risk of inaction is greater than the risk of action," Cheney said in a speech in Nashville, Tenn. He cautioned against "wishful thinking or willful blindness" about the threat posed by the Iraqi dictator. Cheney's address to a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars was an effort to counter a flurry of criticism - from leading Republicans as well as Democrats - that the administration has not made a compelling case for a pre-emptive strike against Iraq.

As the U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf accelerates, Americans are growing increasingly apprehensive about the prospect of war and want both Congress and the United Nations to approve any offensive military action, according to a poll by the Los Angeles Times.Though Americans continue to support the deployment of troops to the region, a majority of those surveyed disapproved of President Bush's recent decision to nearly double the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia.And a larger majority agreed that the United States should continue to rely on economic sanctions to force Iraq from Kuwait and not resort to war, "no matter how long it takes."

NOW IT STARTS to get real. All across America, thousands of families are going to be saying their good-byes in the weeks and months to come. At least 30,000 and maybe as many as 200,000 members of the Reserves and National Guard are being called up in anticipation of a war against Iraq. They'll be leaving their jobs and businesses, their spouses and parents and children, their homes and neighborhoods, to do what's expected of them. These thousands of men and women are answering the call to duty just as millions have in the generations that have come before.

AL KHARANAH, Jordan - At first glance, the squat brown buildings and interlocking carports at this sprawling border crossing with Iraq appear abandoned, as empty as the vast, stony desert of eastern Jordan and western Iraq. Idling tanker trucks carrying oil pumped from Iraqi oil fields fill the air with exhaust fumes, but only a few workers brave the suffocatingly hot air by venturing outside. The Iraqi drivers patiently wait for Jordanian police to conduct cursory inspections and stamp their passports.

Military top brass have been messing around in civilian politics since George Washington became president. This, however, does not prevent a bit of eye-rolling at the spectacle of Adm. William J. Crowe, a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, endorsing Bill Clinton's White House bid, or Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, hero of the Persian Gulf war, questioning the Democratic candidate's qualifications to be commander-in-chief.Both of these four-star fellows have moved on to carve out lucrative careers in mufti -- Admiral Crowe as a television military commentator and General Schwarzkopf as author of a guaranteed best-seller soon to hit the book stores.

MOSCOW -- The Soviet Union thinks Saddam Hussein did not fully believe that the U.S.-led alliance would launch a war against Iraq, a high Soviet official said yesterday.Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander M. Belonogov told the parliament that Moscow continued intensive diplomatic contacts with Iraq in a last-minute attempt to head off war.From many hours of meetings with the Iraqi president in recent weeks, many of them conducted by him, Mr. Belonogov said, Soviet officials report that Mr. Hussein appeared to view U.S. war threats as psychological gamesmanship.

With the Iraqi crisis reigniting the historic struggle between the presidency and the Congress over war powers, federal Judge Harold H. Greene has made the startling claim that the judiciary can intervene under certain circumstances when "action by the courts would appear to be the only available means to break the stalemate." Another federal judge, Royce Lamberth, sticking to tradition, has issued a contradictory ruling that the courts lack the "expertise, resources and authority" to intrude in such a "political" question.

COLIN POWELL is blowing it. The task handed to the secretary of state was to convince the world, and in particular America's allies, of the justice of the U.S. case against Iraq. On Feb. 5, at the United Nations, he gave it his best shot - but since then hopes of forging an international consensus have shriveled. In recent days it has come to seem as if Mr. Powell is grasping at straws - or, more accurately, at one straw. The al-Qaida straw. On Tuesday, he claimed that an apparent tape of Osama bin Laden cheering on the Iraqis proved an actual connection between them.