While we're on the subject of Iraq, consider the words of Martin Indyk, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Asian affairs: "Our view is that sooner or later, Saddam Hussein should go, and we believe it should be sooner, and we believe it may be sooner than you and I think."

Indyk has a lot of evidence to support this claim. Recently Clinton stated that removing Saddam Hussein from power is now a major U.S. foreign policy goal. Late last year, Congress passed the "Iraq Liberation Act" to provide $97 million in aid for Iraqi dissidents. The funds will not be used to provide humanitarian assistance or resettlement aid; they're specifically earmarked for setting up an Iraqi government in exile and training dissident groups to overthrow Saddam. Back in the 1970s, such efforts were deemed immoral and illegal by presidential order; in the 1990s, they're accepted as a matter of course, receive scant attention in the press, and lead to little or no discussion among policy makers or the general public.

Evidently, that $97 million will be needed desperately, if the U.S. wants to meet this foreign policy goal. According to a recent Agence France Presse article, Saddam is more popular than ever among the Iraqi middle class and the Iraqi elite who have grown rich off the Gulf War and the black market trading that's flourished since the sanctions were put in place. Saddam has survived numerous coup attempts and reshuffles his leading military staff nearly as often as Boris Yeltsin replaces his cabinet ministers. Even high-ranking State Department officials and members of the U.S. military elite have said that no Iraqi opposition group could make a dent in Saddam's iron grip.

That hasn't kept U.S. policy makers from trying. One of Congress's leading candidates to replace Saddam is a man named Ahmed Chalabi, a 54-year-old graduate of MIT and the University of Chicago, and the scion of a wealthy banking family. Chalabi is no chair-bound academic, however; his main accomplishments include running a disastrous CIA operation in U.S.-protected northern Iraq from 1993 to 1996. Prior to that, he fled Jordan in 1989 to escape imprisonment on charges of embezzling millions of dollars in a banking scam. In 1992 he was convicted in absentia by Jordan's State Security Court--which of course made him the perfect criminal material for running a CIA operation.

Now a British citizen, Chalabi was--until just recently--the executive director of the Iraqi National Congress, a coalition of Iraqi opposition groups in exile, and the source of much conflicting information about events happening inside Iraq. The INC has fallen from its glory days during the early to mid 1990s when it received close to $100 million in aid and training from the CIA to fund a headquarters, a radio station, and Chalabi's army in northern Iraq. In 1995, when Chalabi's group went on the offensive against the Iraqi army, hundreds--if not thousands--of Iraqis and Kurds died. Chalabi was forced to flee the country and the CIA yanked its support. Chalabi had his chance and he blew it.

But now the money is flowing again, and the U.S. is in search of someone else to replace Saddam. So far, Chalabi is still on the outside of the CIA's good graces, but he's lobbying hard to become The Man. His organization, the INC, is pegged to become a major recipient of U.S. aid once again. In early April, a two-day meeting of Iraqi dissident groups was held in London. This meeting, hailed as an "important development" by Asst. Secretary Indyk, led to the election of new leadership for the INC, which is now clearly the opposition of choice for the U.S. and British governments.

This comes on the heels of a report that U.S. and British representatives on the U.N. sanctions committee have been routinely denying Iraq's requests for legal shipments of spare parts for its oil industry. Add to this the continuing bombing campaign over Iraq, which has targeted communications and oil-related infrastructure, and the pattern is clear: overthrow Saddam at all costs, and replace him with the U.S.'s criminal of choice. As Indyk said, the U.S. will do "what we can to ensure that once Saddam goes, there will be a stable future for Iraq." Not prosperous, not free, not open, not democratic. Just "stable," as defined by U.S. policy wonks ... a true nightmare in the making.

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Sources used: "Saddam rides unprecedented personality cult," AFP, 4/27/99; "Congress's Candidate to Overthrow Saddam Hussein," by Dana Priest and David B. Ottaway, Washington Post, 4/21/99; "U.S. Envoy: Saddam Could Be Toppled," AP, 4/14/99; "Oil spares for Iraq just four percent of target figure," AFP, 4/26/99 (based on a U.N. report released by U.N. spokesman in Iraq George Somerwill).