Inside Saddam's New Charm Offensive

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Saddam is everywhere. Though he never appears in public, his face and figure are inescapable. At traffic circles, you see little stone Saddams and big cast-metal Saddams, right arm raised to embrace his people. In front of a ministry, a brand-new bronze Saddam stands 20 ft. tall in the prow of a boat: the idea is that Saddam will steer his people to the shining shore on the other side of sanctions. On a wall, a white-suited Saddam is painted holding flowers; on another, a uniformed Saddam is staring through binoculars at a battlefield; on a third, he wears a business suit and smiles. He always smiles.

At the Al-Rashid Hotel, the famous hostelry with the snarling face of former President Bush set into the entryway floor, a 10-ft. photo of Saddam looms high over Bush's head. Inside are 22 more images: Saddam smoking a cigar in Iraqi national dress; Saddam in Jordanian headdress, in Palestinian kaffiyeh, in Saudi robes, in a crested aristocrat's jacket with the Dome of the Rock floating overhead. Never before when I've been here has Saddam been so omnipresent.

I am in Baghdad for April 28, better known as the birthday of Iraq's eternal President, which the country celebrates with great ceremony, a cross between Christmas (suddenly all the blinking neon lights on the street are lighted as the government turns on regular electricity) and the Fourth of July (with the obligatory patriotic parades). Journalists who usually never get visas fill the press center. Handsomely dressed Arabs crowd the Al-Rashid lobby, all invited to witness how much the Iraqi people love their leader. For Saddam, it is time for another charm offensive: he is using all his old diplomatic wiles and faux hospitality to put off the threatened day of reckoning with the U.S. He is busily embracing Arab leaders so they won't sign up for Bush II's get-Saddam campaign. He is dickering with the U.N.--again--over revised sanctions and weapons inspections. He is trading on his role as patron of the Palestinian uprising, sending cash to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers instead of spending it to feed and house long-suffering Iraqis. Most of them despair. But they celebrate his birthday nonetheless. Karim, 36, who asked that I give him a pseudonym, runs a car-alarm business: the nouveau riche at the top of this corrupt society can easily afford his $45 systems to protect their new Nissans and Protons. But Karim cannot feed his family of four on his meager monthly food ration. His earnings at the shop let him buy a little meat, a bit of chicken, to supplement the basics. When I ask him if anyone avoids the birthday parade, he looks at me as if I were daft. Anyone in Baghdad who has a job and wants to keep it shows up at the local parade and eats Saddam birthday cake.

Smart people, says a woman I will call Layla, who quit her $2-a-month office job because it wasn't worth getting up in the morning, know they have to go. Smart people, she says, want to live. Layla has a Malaysian-cloned computer in her house, paid for by her brother in Florida. In the past year, Iraqis have been permitted to buy up-to-date computers if they have the cash. Layla can e-mail her brother, but she can't surf the Net: ordinary citizens are not allowed.