Saddam is the next US target

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The news of the American military losses on the Pakistan/Afghan border will have come as a blow to more than their immediate relatives. The Pentagon has been too accustomed to a daily "casualty-free" briefing.

Public opinion was also becoming used to a war without pain. And then, not often included in the circuit of compassion, one might spare a thought for those who hope to see American troops in their own far-off front-lines. Consider Ahmed Chalaby. He has been for some years the symbolic and actual head of the Iraqi opposition. In Kurdistan, he has stood between contending factions at the risk of his own life. His supporters, in the nightmare city of Baghdad, have produced and distributed newspapers which mimic the official masthead on the front page and contain witty and subversive abuse of the Saddam Hussein regime on the inside pages.

His other supporters, risking a frightful death, have been collecting information rather than distributing it, and have amassed some information concerning the whereabouts of the Ba'ath party's weapons of mass destruction or, as we now laconically refer to such things, WMDs.

Why should it be, then, that during Chalaby's most recent visit to Washington, the Bush administration should behave as if he does not exist? One or two reporters were willing to meet with him, but the attitude of officialdom was to affect a polite surprise that he should have turned up in the capital of the free world at all. (At least this may have helped Chalaby to escape the earlier insult hurled at him - namely that he was a pliant tool of the CIA and a puppet of American design.) As far as anyone is allowed to know, or tell, he left town with no more than a promise that Washington would help him with a radio station on which to broadcast some anti-Saddam propaganda.

But what a contrast between this almost shame-faced policy and the operatic, grandiose themes of official Bush administration bombast. To hear the off-the-record whispers and promises is to give ear to the most splendid themes. An army of 200,000 Americans and Europeans, slowly forming on the old frontier of Mesopotamia. A bold stroke across the border, taking the capital and rousing the masses. Depending upon which briefing you hear, a possible Turkish incursion from the north, bringing Nato troops into possession of the oilfields of Kirkuk and Mosul (and thus at last allowing the West to wave two fingers at the gruesome Saudis and their oilblackmail).

These and many other fantasies are eagerly debated in the District of Columbia. But one has to inquire how it is that an American government, so apparently decided on a new Iraqi regime, can afford to be so indifferent to the actual Iraqi opposition. One could phrase the question in this way: what does America want? The options are these. Suppose you design an Iraqi dictatorship tailored to the requirements of the West. This would be a Sunni Muslim military government, based on a strong and centralised Baghdad system, and preferably organised through and by a secular and nationalist political party.

Everybody in Washington, and I mean everybody, has long thought that this is the ideal solution. Well, the problem - moral and diplomatic - is that this is the Ba'ath Party system as it exists today. Except that the ideal regime is led by a megalomaniac with a potential Saladin complex. "The Bush administration," one Iraqi dissident put it to me," wants Saddamism without Saddam." Let us hope that this is not true.

However, it would partly explain the bizarre box on which American policy now finds itself. Do the Bush people want a revolution, in which the Kurds of the north and the Shi'a Muslims of the South finally take the revenge on the central government that has oppressed them and massacred them? Evidently not.

Do they want a shift of power between the confessional factions, in which sympathisers with Iran might gain the advantage? Again, evidently not. Do they want an invasion, during which Saddam Hussein might deploy his weapons of mass destruction against Israel? Or do they want a military coup, to instal a system that merely does their bidding?

One asks these questions because the Bush family, pere et fils, has now had more than a decade in which to answer them. And because much depends on the answer. Most analysts agree that Saddam Hussein is within a measurable distance of acquiring doomsday materials. Given the margin of calculation that has been operating since 11 September, few prudent governments would bet against the idea of "first use". But then, these same prudent governments have also bet that a Saddam-like system is the most stable solution both for Iraq and the region. Anyone who has ever played a "prisoner's dilemma" game will recognise the conundrum.

The Bush administration has now passed the point of no return. It has staked its manhood and credibility on the boast that the Saddam Hussein regime cannot outlast this year. Only this week, the figure of Baroness Thatcher was produced in Washington to amplify the point. But, if Thatcherite fortitude was all that was needed, Baghdad would have been a sea of cheering faces welcoming Western troops 12 years ago. It may be a sea of cheering faces a few months from now, for all one knows. But in that case, why are the faces of Iraqi democrats now so glum?

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.