Saddam's new game

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is perhaps the world's most unpredictable leader -- after North Korea's late Kim Il Sung -- and seems to enjoy being so. Four days after he deployed his troops along his country's border with Kuwait, the world is still trying to figure out what the real intention behind the move is.

Many analysts believe that by demonstrating old-fashioned gun- boat diplomacy Iraq wants to gain leverage for its demands for the lifting of trade sanctions imposed by the United Nations after its rape of Kuwait in August 1990.

If that is indeed Saddam's objective, the question now is whether the United States has been too hasty and overreacted in facing the Iraqi leader's game? Saddam has made a lot of stupid mistakes, but surely he is not stupid enough to repeat his 1990 mistake, especially not when his troops are in almost complete disarray.

Although the crack Republic Guards are said to still be usable, Saddam no longer possesses enough machinery to invade any neighboring country. The most muscle he has is perhaps his ability to send young people out to shout their support for him in front of the West's TV cameras.

On most days Saddam's whereabouts are a mystery even to the Iraqis. He is said to have surrounded himself with his relatives, whose positions in the regime he has elevated since he lost trust in the officers from At Takriti, his birthplace.

For the above reasons, many people here believe that U.S. President Bill Clinton is intentionally dramatizing the situation to make the best use of the confusion to boost the American presence in the Middle East. With more Arab countries just beginning to come to terms with Israel, Washington might believe that although all is quiet on the Mideast's western front, the eastern front needs a closer watch.

From America's point of view, Saddam remains dangerous to the region despite his apparent low profile at home. The U.S. believes the Middle East will never achieve a lasting peace as long as the man in Baghdad still rules supreme. Saddam's military force might have been brought to its knees, but this clearly has not brought him to his senses.

The portrait of Saddam Hussein painted by the commander of Operation Desert Storm of 1990-1991, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, after the war ended, still contains much veracity. The general said after Iraqi troops had been defeated that Saddam "is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the art of war, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier."

So what is he if not dangerously unpredictable?

It is widely believed among Americans now that the 1990-1991 Gulf War was ended prematurely before the Coalition had been able to spell certain doom for Saddam. Schwarzkopf is said to have failed to get the message across to Washington that he needed more time to teach Iraq the lesson it needed. Apparently the White House had already concluded that continuing the war would draw accusations that the United States was on a turkey shoot, targeting panicked human beings who were no longer fighting, but just trying to get out of Kuwait.

What this means now is that militarily Iraq may still have the capability to frighten, if not to harass, its neighbors.

Whatever the current rational behind sending U.S. troops to the region and whether Washington's fear is justifiable, and whether the mobilization of Saddam's troops is no more than a hoax, or whether Iraq is sincere about withdrawing them from the border areas if sanctions are lifted, one thing is certain: Saddam is sure to wake up from this bad dream of his own making to find the sanctions still firmly in place and that he has no more friends in the Middle East, or perhaps even the entire world.