The Road to Baghdad

WASHINGTON: Before the war, the charm offensive. As his poll numbers slip over an Iraq attack, President Clinton laid it on the line in a televised address to Pentagon staff: "No military action," he said, "is risk-free. I know that the people we may call upon in uniform are ready. The American people have to be ready as well." To that end, his top officials step into the information age Wednesday — with, of all things, an interactive town hall meeting. Cohen, Albright and Berger will be live in Ohio taking questions from U.S., European and Mideast citizens via satellite, in what they no doubt hope will be the greatest show of wartime accountability since FDR's 1944 re-election campaign. Said White House spokesman P.J. Crowley: "We will be increasing the pace of the dialogue with the American people and the international community."

But what will that dialogue be about, and just what will we be attacking anyway? There's still no clear answer. The President hinted at a one-off bombing campaign which would leave Saddam "significantly worse off," but gave no clue as to how. Military strike plans leaking into the newspapers offer simple targets: Tanks, military headquarters, fuel depots. What nobody is suggesting is that the Presidential palace complexes, the cause of all this grief, be bombed. Or that the Iraqi leader himself faces a hail of cruise missiles. "If he rebuilds, we will strike again," said Clinton — accepting that Saddam and his Washington-D.C.-size palaces will still be here when the smoke clears.

Certainly, nothing will happen while Kofi Annan books his ticket to Baghdad. An embarrassing little glitch there Tuesday — the Security Council told the secretary general they needed a "little more time" Monday to OK his visit — prompted Iraq to cry foul. "His excellency [Cohen] likes Annan to be a mere official at the Pentagon," said the official al-Qadissiya newspaper. Diplomats are already comparing Annan's trip to the last, fruitless mission of then-secretary general Perez de Cuellar before the 1991 conflict. So far, Saddam seems no more likely to listen. Perhaps some interactivity might help.