Hussein Sees War Forcing GIs to ‘Swim in Their Own Blood’

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declared Wednesday that his country would not bow to American threats and warned that U.S. soldiers would “swim in their own blood” in a war with Baghdad.

The bellicose words were delivered at a meeting in Baghdad with several hundred officials of the ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party shortly after Secretary of State James A. Baker III told reporters in Geneva that his talks with Iraq’s Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz had failed to produce a breakthrough. But the Iraqi president made no reference to the last-ditch political talks, and it was not clear whether Hussein was aware of the results when he spoke.

“We are not of the type that bows to threats, and you will see the trap that America will fall into,” Hussein told the party conclave in remarks broadcast on Baghdad television.

“If the Americans are involved in a gulf conflict, you will see how we will make them swim in their own blood.”

In contrast to the relatively moderate tone taken by Aziz at his press conference in Geneva after his talks with Baker, the Iraqi leader, speaking to a domestic audience, railed in his familiar martial rhetoric. He said that a war with the American-led forces--a conflict that he once again termed “the mother of battles” in an Army Day address on Sunday--would “lift oppression from the whole of humanity.”

The party faithful vowed to “battle the enemy to defend the honor of the Arab nation,” the television report said.

Next Tuesday is the U.N.-mandated deadline for Hussein’s army to withdraw from Kuwait or face the prospect of war.