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underestimate the power of his adversaries. His speeches, and the commentaries in the Iraqi press in the days before the expiration of the UN deadline, made plain that Saddam seemed oblivious to Bush’s promise that he faced an imminent choice between withdrawal and destruction.
    Saddam sometimes insisted that the issue was not Kuwait at all but the liberation of Palestine. He said he was engaged in a crusade to eliminate the terrible injustice of Israeli occupation that had been inflicted on the Arab world. The Iraqi army, he told his people, would “achieve several aims in one battle,” eliminating injustice, poverty, and foreign hegemony. 48 As Saddam saw it, liberating Kuwait from Iraq’s aggression was but a pretext, a smokescreen to obscure the real U.S. goal, which was to establish its hegemony over the Gulf and its oil and to dominate the world. According to Al Qadisiya , a Baghdad newspaper, “America wants to control oil resources in such a way that will make the oil resources needed by the rest of the world come under its hegemony. Thus, America will regain its lost influence by governing all other countries; it will give oil to anyone it wants and deprive anyone it wants.” 49 The choice, as Saddam described it, was between American dominance of Gulf oil, on one hand, and the elimination of global injustice, poverty, and occupation on the other. It would not be a local or regional war, Baghdad radio insisted. “In one way or another, it will spread all over the world, where more than a billion Muslims from Indonesia to West Africa will view this battle as a war against colonialism.” 50
    Meanwhile, Saddam’s state-controlled press told him that “[a] lot of Arabs consider President Saddam Hussein the only Arab leader who dares to challenge Israeli occupation of Arab territories and believe he might rescue them.” 51 It seemed clear from Baghdad that, because America’s objectives were so ignoble, God would be on the side of Iraq, as promised in the Koran: “To those against whom war is made, permissionis given to fight, because they are wronged, and verily, God is most powerful for their aid.” 52
    Saddam and his lieutenants threatened blood and destruction. They promised to burn their enemies with “a great fire that does not go out,” to “drown them in rivers of blood,” and to destroy Israel. Saddam saw himself as the fearless champion of the Arab nation who would rally the faithful to the ultimate jihad. He saw the American president as facing a defeat “terrible and total.” 53 But Bush had a different plan.
    Saddam understood that he was no match for the United States militarily. In October he opened a new front, this time against the Americans’ will. He understood that it was Bush’s determination to confront Iraq that was primarily responsible for the forces assembling against him. He sought to frighten his adversaries with talk of jihad, threats of terrorism, and predictions of heavy casualties. He tried to split the heterogeneous anti-Iraq coalition—accusing the Saudis of defiling Muslim holy places, charging Morocco with being a Zionist agent, and seeking tirelessly to inflame the Palestinian issue.
    Then, in mid-October, came new hints of an interest in peace—just two days after the Iraqi minister of information had said there was no room for any compromise and one day after the New York Times published a series of interviews in which Jordan’s king Hussein warned that war would be catastrophic for the region. 54 Iraqi officials began to encourage hopes for a diplomatic solution, hinting that Iraq might withdraw from Kuwait and retain only the strategic island of Bubiyan, an oil field at the Iraq-Kuwait border, and a few other special privileges over Kuwaiti territory.
    Presumably, Iraqi officials understood that there was no better way to prevent the United States and its allies from using their