Hussein on Air; His Location Is Still Unknown

The voice of Saddam Hussein was heard on Iraqi Radio on Sunday for the first time since the deluge of missiles and bombs descended upon his military machine. His location is still unknown, but U.S. officials suggested that he has taken refuge within the civilian populace.

He called upon Iraqis and their Arab brethren to mount a jihad, or holy war, and promised he will use massive forces that he has held in reserve.

“When the deaths and dead mount on them, the infidels will leave, and the ‘God is Great’ banner will fly over the mother of all battles,” Hussein said in the seven-minute message. There was no way to tell whether it was live or recorded earlier.

The rhetoric was more like that of Iran’s late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini than the secular leader of a modern army, and Hussein-watchers called the content uncharacteristic. But the belligerence was vintage Hussein. It was undiminished even though his army and military facilities have been pounded by more than 7,000 sorties and even though, U.S. officials say, the heart of his command and control center has been decimated by laser-guided smart bombs and his air defenses continue to be thinned out by the hour.

Analysts took it as further evidence that he hopes to salvage personal martyrdom from the military disaster settling upon him.

“He has to know the kind of shape his forces are in,” said Jerrold Post, a professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University and a former chief of psychological analysis for the CIA. “On the other hand, he seems to be psychologically on a roll. He’s launched missiles into Israel, he’s survived the attacks and he’s still making major threatening statements.”

Post said videotapes of Hussein’s recent appearances show him putting on a “good face,” in which he “doesn’t seem to be in a state of great angst or anguish.”

Observers likened Sunday’s bellicosity to speeches that Hussein made in the middle of Iraq’s long war with Iran. Time after time in that eight-year struggle, he warned of new weapons. Most of the threats were bluff and bluster, although midway through the war he began using chemical weapons and nearer the end he began firing Scud missiles at Iranian cities.

One analyst said Hussein must know his days are numbered.

“The air attacks have left him strategically defanged and attacks on his ground forces will leave him tactically declawed,” said Edward Peck, a former U.S. chief of mission in Baghdad.

“He knows he is going to go, but to go down with your troops behind you and your sword out is not a bad way to go. He’s very shrewd. He wants to become a legend in his own time. Then he can go to his grave a happy man.”

Post suggested, however, that Hussein’s strategy to achieve martyrdom among radical Arabs may not require him to surrender his life. Instead, he may intend to dig in and force the United States and its coalition allies to launch a ground offensive, giving him an opportunity to inflict damage on the hated Americans.

“I think he really is optimistic about the ground war,” Post said. “I’d be very surprised to see him give up before the ground war begins. One of his basic goals is to inflict some casualties on us.

“My sense is of Saddam hunkering down, in it for the long haul.”

For years, Hussein has tried to cast himself in the mold of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and succeed Nasser as the dominant figure in the Arab world. Post suggested that Hussein need only survive to fulfill at least part of that goal.

“Remember that Nasser was clobbered in 1967 and emerged a hero,” he said, referring to the Six-Day War between Israel and Arab nations.

American officials say there is no concerted effort to hunt down and kill Hussein, although they have bombed many places where one might reasonably expect him to be. The first round of bombing targeted the Presidential Palace and military headquarters. Iraqi Radio claimed that bombers also attacked Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, 95 miles north of Baghdad.

A suggestion of a “decapitation” strike against Hussein led to the firing of Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Dugan last year. Since then, U.S. officials have addressed the possibility of hunting down Hussein in carefully constructed responses.

“We don’t have a policy of trying to kill any particular individual,” Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the Desert Storm offensive, told an interviewer on the Cable News Network on Sunday. “What we are trying to do is sever the leadership from the lower units. They are very much motivated by that leadership, and I think when that leadership is no longer available to them, it will seriously affect their motivation.”

Schwarzkopf said reports indicate that Hussein “is moving about now in the civilian areas because he knows very well that it is not our intention to target the civilian areas.”

In spite of Hussein’s surfacing to try and rally Iraqi spirits in the broadcast, American military officials insist that he has already been denied much of his ability to direct and control his armed forces.

Pilots returning from air raids Sunday reported that those air defenses still in operation in Iraq and Kuwait are becoming increasingly disorganized.

Sources said that despite Sunday’s threat, they do not believe Hussein has some secret weapon, although they remain concerned about the possibility of chemical attacks.

“When something doesn’t work, he is resourceful enough to try something else,” said Riad Ajamai, a political economist who toured Iraq extensively last year. “He hasn’t used chemical weapons yet. That might not change the direction of the war militarily but it will keep him in the game.”

The official position that the United States will not track Hussein explicitly may be an outgrowth of the U.S. experience in Panama in December, 1989, when a weeklong hunt was conducted for dictator Manuel A. Noriega, only to have him slip away when the invasion came.

Besides, officials contend that separating Hussein from his armed forces would be as successful as a heavy commitment to his personal destruction.

“When you cut him off, you bring home his weakness to him,” said a senior Bush Administration official. “If he’s not in touch with his troops, he knows how out of control he is.”

Times staff writers Doyle McManus and Robin Wright in Washington and Nick B. Williams Jr. in Amman contributed to this report.