FACING DOWN A DESPOT

Ever had a nightmare that you're back in school taking the big exam? Bill Clinton is having one of those right now: he's trying to pass a test in which every possible answer seems wrong. But the President's bad dream is all too real. And it has a name: Saddam Hussein. When the Iraqi nemesis bared his fangs at Clinton and the U.N. last week--expelling American weapons inspectors from Iraq, threatening to shoot down U-2 surveillance planes and daring the world to do something about it--he precipitated the gravest international crisis of Clinton's presidency. American and U.N. officials believe Saddam blocked the Special Commission inspection teams because they were closing in on his secret stores of biological weapons, some held by the elite Republican Guard. For example, Iraq reportedly has some 900 lbs. of the anthrax bacterium, a single gram of which can kill millions. Clinton's mission is clear: get the inspectors back into Iraq. But no policy available to him--either diplomacy or war--can readily achieve that goal.

With the exception of Britain, America's key Gulf War allies--notably France, Russia and Egypt--all oppose the use of force this time around. They urge Clinton to pursue an ill-defined diplomatic solution, ratcheting up the pressure until Saddam blinks. Clinton would love to prevail in that fashion, but he's not holding his breath. He knows that Saddam responds to diplomatic wrist slaps the way a tank does to toy guns. The watered-down resolution passed last week by the U.N. Security Council, which hit Iraq with a ban on official travel, must be laughable to a dictator who rarely leaves his country.

If Clinton can't persuade the Security Council to back the idea of military action, he may have to go it almost alone, with just a few allies--Britain, Kuwait, perhaps Saudi Arabia and Turkey--by his side. Aides say the President is comfortable with the idea. "He has understood for some time that we have to do the hard work of boxing [Saddam] in," says spokesman Mike McCurry. "He is clearly prepared to do it."

Clinton's choice would be simplified the moment Iraq launched a missile at a U-2 on a U.N. surveillance mission--or merely locked the plane in its radar-tracking sights. "If he lights up a plane with radar or takes a shot, that'll open the door to attack," a senior Pentagon official told Time. "We're just waiting for him to do something stupid so we can whack him." But as long as Saddam avoids that rash move, the President's options will remain less than perfect.