Getting Saddam, Part II

The last time Dick Cheney visited the Middle East as a Cabinet member in a Bush Administration, he was trying to sell wavering Arab states on a U.S.-led war against Saddam Hussein. Some things never change. Briefing reporters before his 10-day trip--which will include stops in Britain, Turkey, Israel and nine Arab states--Cheney did not mention Iraq, saying only that his discussions would focus on America's campaign against al-Qaeda. But aides later acknowledged what everybody suspected: Cheney this week will present his hosts with the Administration's case against Saddam and inform them that the U.S. is preparing to go to war with him again.

The message will not come as a surprise. "The feeling in the region is that a strike is definitely coming," says an Arab diplomat. Cheney isn't expected to provide details of the U.S. strategy against Saddam, though that may be because the Bush camp hasn't yet reached a consensus. "The dirty little secret of Iraq is that there is no plan," says a senior Administration official. "Where our thinking is on Iraq is all out in the public." The Administration is in no rush to act. A British diplomat says "all the vibes from Washington" suggest that any military operation against Saddam would not start until the fall.

Still, preparations have begun. One option for ousting Saddam entails using a broad-based Iraqi rebel force. The Iraqi opposition, though, is a thicket of political rivalries and ethnic divisions. The U.S. is taking steps to organize various groups. Earlier this year Washington reached past its main client, Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, and re-engaged with defectors from the Iraqi army who, like Saddam and the country's ruling elite, are Sunni Muslims. The U.S. plans to convene a conference of more than 300 Iraqi opposition leaders in Europe this spring.

America's willingness to work with a wide spectrum of opposition forces should help provide some diplomatic cover for an eventual offensive against Saddam. The U.S. needs it. European allies who joined the war in Afghanistan aren't interested in taking on Iraq. Bush has angered some NATO leaders by dismissing their objections to the U.S.'s treatment of detainees captured in Afghanistan, dithering about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and unilaterally raising tariffs last week on steel imports. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has begun to harden his line on Iraq and suggest he might support a U.S. campaign there, but he faces howling opposition within his own party on the issue.

Washington can count on even less assent from Arab leaders, who fear that with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict raging and Washington widely seen as Israel's abettor, a U.S. campaign against Iraq would incite unrest in their streets. "Emotions are already boiling," says an Arab diplomat. "A second war will be more than the region can take." Turkey and Syria, which border Iraq, are worried that Saddam's fall could tempt the Kurds who live in Iraq's north to secede, thereby emboldening their Kurdish populations to agitate for autonomy.