Bush Defends Policy, Rejects Iraqi Charges : Home front: Defense officials tell him the buildup in Arabia could cost an extra $1.5 billion over 2 months.

President Bush defended his Persian Gulf policy Wednesday, rejecting accusations by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that the United States has created a “struggle between Arabs and Americans” and charges by critics at home that he has risked lives solely over the price of gasoline.

Bush spoke at the Pentagon after a briefing from top defense officials, who told him that the huge U.S. military buildup in Saudi Arabia and the surrounding waters could cost an extra $1.5 billion over the next 60 days, even if no shots are fired, or about 3% more than the Defense Department was planning to spend before the crisis began.

Afterward, the President left Washington to return to Kennebunkport, Me., where he plans to meet today with Jordan’s King Hussein, who may be carrying a message from Iraq’s leader. Bush also plans to meet with Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Saud al Faisal.

Bush and his aides have sought to lower expectations surrounding King Hussein’s trip, suggesting that it is merely a chance for the two men to talk, rather than the prelude to a possible breakthrough.

As the crisis approaches the two-week point, Administration officials seemed generally pleased with how the U.S.-led effort against Iraq has progressed.

Saddam Hussein’s unexpected proposal to surrender to Iran all the fruits of the eight-year war between the two countries, officials said, seemed to be a sign that the Iraqi leader is feeling the pinch of the U.S. military buildup and international economic sanctions.

The buildup escalated Wednesday as the Pentagon announced that the Air Force’s high-tech F-117 Stealth fighter would be sent to the Middle East. The government did not say how many of the planes would be deployed or where they would be based.

Despite the overall optimism, officials conceded that time and stalemate could erode the U.S. position both in the Middle East, where President Hussein has tried to position himself as a defender of Arab nationalism against Western interlopers, and at home, where American patience for foreign military ventures has often been short.

Bush’s harshly worded speech, laced with references to “atrocities” and “sordid brutality,” seemed designed to stave off both of those potential threats and to focus blame for the standoff in the Persian Gulf on “that one man, Saddam Hussein,” rather than on Iraq as a nation. In so doing, Bush tried to advance the Administration’s publicly unstated goal of using the crisis to push the Iraqi leader out of power.

“Saddam has claimed that this is a holy war of Arab against infidel,” Bush said, following the widespread practice of referring to the Iraqi strongman by his first name. “This from the man who has used poison gas against the men and women and children of his own country” and who started a war against Iran “that cost the lives of more than half a million Muslims.”

“It is Saddam who lied to his Arab neighbors. It is Saddam who invaded an Arab state. It is Saddam who now threatens the Arab nation,” Bush said. “We, by contrast, seek to assist our Arab friends in their hour of need.”

The Iraqi leader, Bush noted, has tried to portray the conflict “as a struggle between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots.’ ”

“But Iraq is one of the ‘haves,’ ” he noted, a country that has the second-largest oil reserves in the world but which is poor today because of Hussein’s “ruinous policies of war against other Muslims.”

Bush also vigorously rebutted domestic critics who have charged that only minor economic interests, not truly fundamental national interests, are at stake in the anti-Iraq campaign.

“What is at stake is truly vital,” Bush said. “Energy resources are key--not just to the functioning of this country but to the entire world. Our jobs, our way of life, our own freedom and the freedom of friendly countries all around the world would all suffer if control of the world’s great oil reserves fell into the hands of that one man, Saddam Hussein.”

In addition, said Bush, the U.S. effort is needed “not simply to protect resources or real estate, but to protect the freedom of nations.”

“Our action in the gulf is about fighting aggression” and “keeping our solemn word of honor,” Bush said.

As Bush spoke, King Hussein, who arrived in Washington Wednesday morning piloting his private jet, was resting at a downtown luxury hotel. Today, Hussein plans to fly to Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth, N.H. From there, he will travel by helicopter to Bush’s Kennebunkport vacation home, arriving about noon for a meeting of 1 1/2 or two hours, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said.

The Administration has had no indication that the king is bearing a message from Saddam Hussein, Fitzwater added, saying: “We have no expectations one way or the other.” Talking to reporters aboard Air Force One as the President returned to Kennebunkport, Fitzwater said that Bush would discuss with the king U.S. concerns about Jordan’s being used as a conduit for Iraqi trade, in defiance of the U.N.-ordered sanctions against Iraq.

“We’ll tell him what our problems are,” Fitzwater said.

Bush, speaking briefly to reporters as he played golf after returning to Kennebunkport on Wednesday afternoon, avoided questions about the meeting. “Just wait and see what happens,” he said. “Don’t want to answer any questions.”

In Washington, Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed Mashat said that the Jordanian king is carrying a message to Bush from Iraq but that Mashat did not know the content.

The U.S. military buildup in and around Saudi Arabia now includes about 25,000 troops on the ground. Another 35,000 sailors, airmen and Marines are on the armada of ships in the waters surrounding the region, with tens of thousands still on the way.

Pentagon officials presented Bush with a series of estimates of how much the military deployment will cost, depending on how many troops eventually are sent, how long they stay and, most important, whether they actually have to fight.

Because the bulk of the military’s costs come from paying its soldiers, whether they are in Saudi Arabia or the United States, the immediate budget impact is not huge. But for the Pentagon, already under orders to find ways to cut spending, the strain is noticeable.

The cost will balloon if fighting breaks out. Pentagon planners have long assumed that a full-scale battle could cost $1 billion a day or more.

Pentagon officials also informed Navy captains Wednesday of the rules that will govern the U.S. “interdiction” of ships carrying goods to Iraq. The rules authorize Navy vessels to use force to stop blockade runners.

Separately, Customs Service officials announced the arrest in Florida of a German and a Spaniard indicted on charges of having tried to buy TOW anti-tank missiles for Libya.

According to the indictment, the two men tried to arrange the export of 10,000 armor-piercing TOW missiles and 20,000 artillery shells, half of them capable of releasing poison gas upon impact. The weapons, according to the indictment, were to be shipped to Libya for eventual use by Iraq, Iran or another Middle Eastern country. The purchase price was $160 million, Customs Commissioner Carol Hallett said.

The case is part of a continuing Customs effort to intercept illegal weapons shipments.

Staff writers James Gerstenzang in Kennebunkport and Melissa Healy in Washington contributed to this story.

U.S. MILITARY AID TO MIDDLE EAST Value of U.S. weaponry transferred to each country in past 20 years. Israel: $11 billion Egypt: $6 billion Saudi Arabia: $23 billion Kuwait: $1.5 billion Israel and Egypt are the world’s biggest recipients of aid financed by low-interest, long-term U.S. loans. Other nations such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait pay cash for U.S. weapons.