Is Saddam winning the fight, thanks to weapons of ‘mass destruction’?

It’s not Saddam Hussein they hate in the United Nations Security Council. The way things look, in the wake of the reports of UN Arms Inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei (who "found no weapons"), it’s the United States – symbolized by George W. Bush and Colin Powell – they dislike in the Security Council.

Saddam has cleverly squirmed out of danger once again — as he has, so deftly, in the past 12 years. He didn’t even have to work up a sweat. All he did was throw a few sops to Blix, ElBaradei, the Refuseniks in the Council, the Arab Street and the "peace marchers" all over the world – namely, a bit more cooperation here and there. Then he sat back and enjoyed watching long-existing hostilities and resentments go to work. As was expected, even before the Blix and ElBaradei show, France, Germany, China and Syria ganged up on the US and its "coalition of the willing".

Blix asked for some more months of "inspecting". ElBaradei, the chief of nuclear inspection, told the Council his searchers had found no evidence that Iraq had resumed its nuclear weapons program.

The French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, went in for the kill. He asserted that UN inspections, resumed last November after a four-year break, were "producing results" and should continue. His words were rewarded with applause, not usually accorded UN Security Council speeches – while US State Secretary Powell looked on glumly from across the aisle. Nobody gave the Americans or the Brits credit, or conceded one teeny bit that it might have been their sabre-rattling that "moved" Saddam to cooperate.

It was never a possibility, as we’ve said in this corner a few times before, that either the US or Britain would ever secure a "second resolution" in the Security Council approving an attack on Baghdad to punish Saddam’s so-called perfidy. France, Russia or China would have vetoed any such proposal out of hand – even more quickly than they moved to declare last Friday that inspections should go on.

Never wait for the UN – it takes forever to act. The UN temporized while Bosnian Muslims were being slaughtered, even in the UN-declared "safe haven" of Srebenica, with UN Dutch peacekeepers on stand-by. The UN looked the other way while 800,000 Tutsis were being massacred by Hutus in Rwanda – despite the presence of UN peacekeeping forces, including the French.

The UN wavered when Muslim Kosovars were being killed by the hundreds and being pushed out of their burning villages by Orthodox Christian Serbs and ruthless Yugoslav military and police.

It took the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its aircraft and armor – led, by the way, by America and the United Kingdom – to bust in and stop the Serbs, bomb Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital almost to rubble – and, Sus, the Yanks even destroyed the Chinese Embassy there by "mistake".

Now the same Muslims hate America with venom and jihad. I remember kidding a US official at the time, with the words: "The Muslim whose life and whose Mosque you save today will bomb our embassy tomorrow!" That was just before Osama bin Laden and his naughty boys bombed the US embassies on August 7, 1998, in Kenya and Tanzania. No, I’ve never claimed either the gift or the curse of prophecy, and that was a sorrowful jest indeed, for 220 Americans, Kenyans, and Tanzanians were slain in those blasts, plus another 5,000 men, women and children wounded, or maimed beyond "repair".

At the time, a $5 million "reward" had been placed on bin Laden’s head, and this was long before 9/11. The reward has never been collected, while bin Laden is still loudly exhorting on television, lately on Al-Jezeera TV, all Muslims to unite and destroy America.

This is what Saddam has been bragging about, too. In the wake of such attacks, including September 11, 2001, Americans feel very paranoid – and now they’re being condemned as warmongers. They’re not the "victims" or "targets", they’re the bullies.

No wonder Saddam must be chuckling into his moustache.

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For, indeed, Muslims haven’t forgiven and will never forgive America for Israel. Nor for the "crusades" which began on November 25, 1055, when they were launched by Christian knights, priests and laymen, on the urging and "blessing" of Pope Urban I – the exact opposite of our present Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, who’s declaring for "peace" and receive Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s deputy prime minister last Friday to bestow his benediction on him.

About 100,000 men – knights, nobles, robbers, peasants and priests – joined the "holy war" (a Christian jihad) in the 11th century to free the Holy Land from the Muslim Infidels. On 15 July 1099, during the holy month of Ramadan, the Crusader army of Godfrey de Bouillon, stormed into Jerusalem — thundering Deus vult! (God wills it). For three days, Muslims and Jews were put to the sword, including women and children. Ten thousand Muslims were slain in the sanctuary of the Al Aqsa mosque (yes, the famous Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, from which the Prophet Mohammed is said to have ascended to heaven on a bolt of lightning). Jews were slaughtered, to, in the temple and in their synagogues.

Incidentally, you’ll find a noble statue of Crusader Godfrey of Bouillon, the "King of Jerusalem", in one of the main squares of Brussels (Belgium), the NATO headquarters city of NATO. It took the great Saladdin – a Kurd – to unite the Muslims in 1183 and eject the Crusaders from all their conquests.

As M. J. Akbar, founder and editor of The Asian Age, pungently described the Good Friday massacres in Jerusalem: "The rotting bodies had not been removed till Christmas; their stench has not gone nine hundred years later."

Osama bin Laden continues to exploit this hatred engendered over nine centuries ago by continually declaring that his war is against Jews and Crusaders. Saddam has latched onto the "anti-Crusader" bandwagon.

Just as the Crusaders began quarrelling among themselves, betraying each other for loot and glory, murdering or imprisoning each other – behold the present state of the Western Alliance! What alliance? Saddam, by simply being Saddam and standing pat, has succeeded in breaking up the Transatlantic Alliance.

Is NATO dead? With France, Germany and Belgium "postponing" their pledge to guarantee their defense of their fellow NATO member, Turkey, in case of an Iraqi attack, NATO has suffered a blow to its credibility from which it may never recover.

Certainly, the 16 other NATO member-countries, some of them ironically NATO’s former foes in the defunct Soviet Bloc, are now wondering whether NATO will come to their rescue if ever they’re threatened, too.

The only offshoot of this disappointing tussle which might conceivably benefit the US, has been to drive a reluctant Istanbul, and Washington DC, into each others’ arms. (The foreign and economic ministers of Turkey are now in DC, to iron out the financial and logistical details).

As for NATO, in the long run, the US will probably reduce participation in it – without abandoning its more "faithful" NATO partners, like the UK, Italy, Spain and the other members of the 16 (versus three) who’ve opted, unquestioningly, to defend their comrade, Turkey. It’s possible the break between Washington DC and Paris, Berlin, Brussels may be irreparable. As for Moscow, although relations have now grown strained, that’s still in another compartment. With his own fanatical Islamic "terrorists,{ the Chechens, to contend with, Vladimir Putin (it’s seen) may yet come aboard.

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The rift between Berlin and Washington DC has brought to the fore the fact, long forgotten by many, that almost 80,000 US military personnel are stationed in bases around Germany _ with 44,000 Americans, as one report reminded us the other day, both military personnel and their dependents, living in the region around Ramstein, a small town in southwestern Germany.

They provide the region with an annual income of about Euros 1 billion or $1.07 billion. The Ramstein base alone employs 6,000 Germans. Over the years, this writer was visited US bases in Germany, from Wiesbaden to Rom??? to Frankfurt, and frequently crossed over into East Berlin at the old "Checkpoint when that city was under Four-Power supervision Charlie" (We lived in Bad Godesburg, a suburb of Bonn, the Bundesdorf, in those good old days). I didn’t realize until yesterday that there were still so many Americans based in Germany – where they once helped defend that state from the Soviet menace. I guess it will soon be time for Aufwiedersehn.

Now, NATO has no "enemy" or threat from the East – in fact the Warsaw Pact "hostiles" of the past have even joined NATO. If Moscow had its druthers, but will never admit it, perhaps even the Russians, Ukrainians and Belaruskies might have affiliated with NATO, too. But wait: NATO may be on the verge of evaporating.

The Americans may, when the dust settles, withdraw from Europe – and from Bosnia, Kosovo or other "peacekeeping" duties as well. It hurts to be snubbed and insulted as war-mongers and bullies.

An American withdrawal from Europe would have the ghost of our late President Manuel L. Quezon suddenly surfacing, and the apparition intoning… "It’s about time!" Quezon, after all, trapped and assailed by the Japanese Imperial Forces along – with Douglas MacArthur – on Corregidor had raged at the non-arrival of an American relief and rescue convoy in January 1942. He had been outraged to hear that Franklin D. Roosevelt was giving priority to fighting the Nazi Germans and the Axis in Europe, to saving Great Britain, and beginning to hurl what forces could be mustered into a drive through North Africa, to Italy, and eventually the Liberation of France. What? Hadn’t Pearl Harbor been attacked by the Japanese?

"How American!" MLQ had cried out, "to worry about their cousins in Europe, while a daughter (the Philippines)is being raped in the back-room!"

We lost one million Filipinos in that war and Japanese occupation, at least 100,000 of them in the rape and torching of Manila in the month of February, 1945.

Will the US, despite the setback in the UN, the fraying of the NATO alliance, and the mounting outcry against its "war", attack Baghdad? I saw a photograph yesterday of US President Bush walking confidently past sailors from the Aegis Cruiser USS Philippine Sea, waving jauntily at the "troops" at the Mayport Naval Station. That was a marvelously evocative photograph by Reuters, published on the front page of another newspaper, and I wish we’d run it, too. For it speaks volumes. Sure, Saddam as won this round — let’s face it. Many are down on America. That was an immense anti-war, anti-Blair and anti-US rally yesterday around Picadilly circus in central London. Fifty-nine percent of Americans, in the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, have said they believe their president must give the United Nations more time. Sixty-three percent say Washington should not act without the support of its allies, and 56 percent stress Bush should wait for UN approval.

In fact, Bush’s approval rating is down to 54 percent from 64 percent only a month ago.

His leadership is being questioned and sorely tested. But don’t forget. He’s from Texas. And when the bugle sounds for all the dim of debate, America goes.

Saddam may be insane, cruel and ruthless. But he’s smart, too!

Yet, who knows? Bush may be both crazier – and smarter – than he is.