Suddenly, Saddam Again

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur finds his path blocked by the Black Knight, a belligerent fellow who happens to be no good at fighting. The Knight loses an arm, then another, then both legs to Arthur's superior swordsmanship. He is left in pieces on the ground, screaming to the departing King, "You yellow bastard, come back here and take what's coming to you!"

That was the image of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, bloodied but unbowed -- and unenlightened -- after his humiliation in the 1991 Gulf War, when a U.N. mission led by the U.S. drove his troops out of Kuwait and kindled a holocaust of as many as 100,000 Iraqis. Last week Saddam gave hints he wanted a rematch, massing 64,000 troops, including two Republican Guard units, on the Kuwaiti border. "It's pretty much the same scenario that unfolded two weeks before he invaded Kuwait," noted a senior Clinton Administration official. "It's unlikely they could reach Kuwait City, but they could certainly get across the border."

The U.S. is determined to keep that from happening. The Pentagon, in its sternest tones, announced that 4,000 U.S. troops would immediately be dispatched to Kuwait to beef up forces already in the area. The carrier U.S.S. George Washington and a clutch of cruise missile-carrying warships were moved into the Persian Gulf. Secretary of State Warren Christopher added a Kuwait stop to his Middle East tour this week to reaffirm U.S. support for the beleaguered emirate. And to avoid the sort of misunderstandings that may have led to the Gulf War, Bill Clinton issued a clear warning to Saddam: "It would be a grave error for Iraq to repeat the mistakes of the past or to misjudge either American will or American power."

Saddam, alas, is a slow learner who rarely gets the point of any lesson. Apparently his main intent in moving the troops was to pressure the U.N. into lifting its draconian sanctions on Iraq in a forthcoming vote. And he might have achieved this if he had just kept quiet. The U.S. and Britain were the only two permanent members of the Security Council bound to vote to sustain the sanctions. Russia wants Iraq to repay $6 billion in prewar military debts; France seeks to resume lucrative commercial ties with Baghdad; China has weapons to sell to Iraq. "You think they'd be on their best behavior when the U.N. has their fate in their hands," a Navy officer said, "but no, the Iraqis do just the opposite." The feisty speech given at the U.N. by Saddam's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz seemed to cinch the vote against the Iraqis. A U.N. official commented, "The Americans could not have had a better stroke of luck than Tariq Aziz's speech."

If the U.S. luck and the U.N. embargo hold, the pain in Iraq will continue, as will the internal pressure on Saddam. The country is crippled. Such basic goods as medicine and farm supplies cannot come in, and an annual $15 billion worth of oil cannot go out. Malnutrition is rampant; last month the government cut food rations in half. "The people of Iraq are being destroyed by the sanctions," says an Iraqi now living in the U.S. "The social fabric is being torn apart. Iraq has been wounded for four years, and nobody cares."