Saddam is where he wants to be

That humiliation would be unthinkable, analysts say, for a man convinced he is destined to unite and lead the Arab world and sees himself as a modern-day Saladin, the warrior who defeated the Crusaders and regained Jerusalem in 1187.

Western and Arab diplomats see no chance that Saddam would accept exile nor much likelihood that he will destroy any weapons of mass destruction that allegedly fortify his dreams of power. With more than 200,000 US troops at his doorstep, diplomats expect him to play for time, his ego fed by shouts of support from the Arab street and fractures on the UN Security Council. He is, after all, exactly where he believes he belongs — on centrestage, in the spotlight of world attention.

Iraqi television in recent days has repeatedly shown the leader meeting with military commanders, appearing calm and puffing on cigars as he receives their praise and offers folksy advice in exchange. His every statement underlines his determination to remain in power and his conviction that Iraq will fiercely fight any onslaught, that Iraqis will not allow themselves to be ruled by foreigners and that the US and Britain will pay a very high price if they dare to invade.

‘‘While he is not a martyr, he certainly has his eye on history, and to cut and run would be a major blow to his historical image,’’ said Jerrold Post, a Bethesda psychiatrist who wrote an analysis of Saddam’s political and personal behaviour for the CIA.

‘‘When conflict begins, and not before, I think he will probably use chemical weapons against allied forces in the field as well as against Israel. He could set Iraqi oil fields afire, as he did Kuwait’s in 1991. ‘If I can’t have the oil, no one can,’ he’d say. Then the question becomes: To what degree would his senior officers follow his orders?’’

Pushed into a corner, Saddam and the Iraqi leadership will defend themselves to the last breath, but pragmatists within the regime may seek other options for their survival, especially after honour has been served by at least initially resisting the invaders.

Through a Western lens, Saddam seems foolhardy, unpredictable, perhaps unbalanced, certainly ruthless. But to dismiss him to the realm of madness, Post said, would be a misinterpretation. Saddam shows no symptoms of psychiatric disorders and over 34 years of leadership has revealed himself to be quite predictable and ‘‘a judicious political calculator, who is by no means irrational, but is dangerous to the extreme.’’

An Arab ambassador in Washington added: ‘‘This is Russian roulette, and what he is doing is quite rational. I don’t support it, but it’s rational. On one hand, he believes he’s America’s target, no matter what he does. Therefore, there’s no logical reason to cooperate quickly. On the other, he knows if he doesn’t cooperate by disarming, he becomes everyone’s target. So he manoeuvres to keep from falling into the cracks between the two. He presents himself as the macho warrior who stands up to a superior force.’’

At 6-foot-2, 210 pounds, Saddam towers over his shorter, chubbier generals and sycophantic aides. Image is everything. He dyes his hair jet black and won’t wear his reading glasses in public. He swims daily to keep fit and doesn’t let Iraqi TV film him walking more than a few steps, to camouflage a slight limp that is the result of a slipped disc. Paranoid — for good reason — about security, he has not been seen in public since a military parade in January 2001.

Post refers to Saddam’s infatuation with image and messianic beliefs as ‘‘malignant narcissism.’’ The Stalinist-style dictator believes his destiny and that of Iraq are one. Thus any excess — even the deaths of more than a million people during his rule — is justified in the name of protecting Iraq. What the world calls terror, he calls expediency. What others call betrayal, he calls enforcing the perimeters of loyalty. When the Iran-Iraq war was going badly for Iraq in 1982, Saddam asked his ministers for their candid advice.

The Minister of Health suggested the President step down until peace could be negotiated. The President thanked him and ordered his arrest. In response to pleas from the minister’s wife, Saddam promised to return him to his family. The next day a plastic bag was delivered to the minister’s home. It contained his body parts.

‘‘Saddam learned early on the first rule of street politics,’’ during his years as a young tough in Baghdad, the late Tahseen Bashir, an Egyptian diplomat, once said. ‘‘Advancement by violence was the name of the game. In the context of Iraqi politics, survival of the fittest meant survival of the most brutal, the most cunning and, above all, the most violent.’’

The man Saddam would become was cast in the first years of his life. Born into a family of peasants in the tiny mud-hut village of Al Auja on the Tigris River, 100 miles north of Baghdad, Saddam (the name means ‘‘the one who confronts’’) grew into childhood with wounded self-esteem that impaired his capacity for empathy with others, Post said. According to the CIA analysis, his mother tried to abort him. He never knew his father, who died of cancer. His mother, depressed and impoverished, attempted suicide. His stepfather abused him physically and emotionally. His brother died of cancer at the age of 12 years.

‘‘One course in the face of such traumatising experiences is to sink into despair, passivity and hopelessness,’’ Post said in his CIA profile. ‘‘But another is to etch a psychological template of compensatory grandiosity, as if to vow, ‘never again shall I submit to superior force’. This is the developmental psychological path Saddam followed.’’

Saddam ran away from home at the age of 10 years and went to live with his maternal uncle, Khayrallah Tulfah. The uncle was a vehemently anti-Western fascist, who filled the boy with legends of the great Arab warrior-heroes. By his late teens, Saddam was leading a street gang in Baghdad. By 20, he was a strong-arm enforcer for the Baath Party, a Socialist, pan-Arab party that today rules Iraq. At 22, he was given the mission by Baathist leaders to assassinate the Prime Minister. (He botched the job.) At 27, he was in prison. He helped overthrow the Iraqi Government when he was 31 and became President of Iraq when he was 42. Now 65, he is neither well-travelled nor well-read — ‘‘that helps explain why he’s often out of touch with political reality,’’ one analyst said. (LAT-WP)