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Iraq’s Talk of Peace Replaced by Words of War

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

The Iraqi leadership girded itself Saturday for a looming allied ground offensive to drive it from occupied Kuwait as Baghdad’s talk of peace gave way to the rhetoric of war.

Top Iraqi generals boasted of their war preparations, baiting the allies to abandon their “cowardly” air war. And Iraq’s Revolutionary Command Council, President Saddam Hussein’s inner ruling circle, which announced a heavily conditional withdrawal offer just a day earlier, returned to its hard-line stand, even with its own people. The council announced that it is now a capital offense for Iraqi government employees to fail to show up for work.

And, as the allies’ air war continued to pound targets in the Iraqi capital, Jordanian doctors and aid workers returning to Amman said the weeks’ events in Baghdad have left the Iraqi people “horrified and deeply traumatized.”

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“Nobody believes the war is a solution,” said Dr. Mamoun Hneidi, a volunteer with the Jordan Red Crescent, a humanitarian group.

Hneidi left the Iraqi capital late Thursday after helping Iraqi doctors treat survivors of Wednesday’s allied air raid on a reinforced structure claimed by Iraq to have been a bomb shelter and by the allies to have been a military communications center.

Hneidi, who is among several dozen Jordanian professionals providing humanitarian assistance to their eastern neighbor, insisted that Iraqi morale remains high, but he said the destruction of the reinforced building had left the civilian residents of the capital deeply scarred, physically and emotionally.

“It’s a really hard and harsh feeling, and you can see it on every face,” he said. “I have seen with my own eyes a mother, dead, still holding her babies tightly. They were all carbonized, deeply burned.

“They (the Iraqis) are ready to sacrifice more. But they feel very sorry for what happened to them. . . . They think people are trying to demoralize them.”

To deal with the threat of sinking public confidence, Hussein’s ruling council and his top generals followed Friday’s surprise withdrawal proposal with a propaganda offensive directed at the Iraqi people on Saturday.

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The Revolutionary Command Council decree, published in Baghdad’s official newspapers, ordered that all government employees report for work or face the wartime penalty equivalent to that of army deserters, who are subject to execution on the spot.

Analysts viewed the decree as an attempt by the Iraqi regime to strengthen its image and to remind its 17 million citizens that it remains firmly in charge.

The decree was coupled with a message on Baghdad Radio announcing that the Iraqi people “remain faithfully behind the banner of their leader, President Saddam Hussein,” which the analysts interpreted as a similar effort by Baghdad to end a flurry of rumors that the Iraqi president had been overthrown.

Baghdad Radio also rebroadcast the Command Council’s “historic” conditional offer to withdraw from Kuwait more than a dozen times Saturday as the regime intensified its public relations campaign.

After a week in which many analysts said Iraq had scored major propaganda points with grim videotape footage of civilians killed in the bombed structure having appeared on the world’s television screens, Baghdad permitted nearly two dozen additional Western journalists to enter the country.

The journalists were mainly television crews, representing networks in the United States, France, Turkey and other allies.

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Iraq’s official daily newspapers returned to the tough, wartime rhetoric that had preceded the softer line expressed in the Command Council’s conditional withdrawal offer the previous day.

Although Al Jumhuriyah, Iraq’s military newspaper, reported the withdrawal offer as a “historic initiative that reflects Iraq’s true wish to lead a secure and stable life,” the organ of Hussein’s ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party focused almost entirely on the war.

Quoting Iraq’s armed forces chief of staff, the newspaper Al Thawra declared, “Our armed forces are prepared for the duel to put a decisive end to the infidels.” The chief of staff then repeated Iraq’s periodic assertion that allied commanders are “cowardly,” avoiding a ground battle with Iraq’s occupation troops in Kuwait.

Maj. Gen. Tarik Abdullah, revered by many Iraqis as a hero from Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran, added his voice to the discussion, asserting that the allies are casting about for new strategies that would justify continuing the air war.

“The American enemy depends upon the air force and fears the ground battle, which makes him recalculate his plans every day,” Abdullah said. “The weak morale of the American soldier is being compensated by high technology, to balance the great courage of the Iraqi fighter.”

Iraq’s civilian population appears to be facing the allied challenge with courage, according to the returning Jordanian doctors, but they also stressed that it is taking an increasingly heavy toll on the civilian psyche.

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“The psychological impact (of the bombing) is really very bad, especially on the children,” Hneidi, a gynecologist, told a group of journalists in Amman.

“Mothers, like mothers all over the world, are keen to protect their children, and I have seen many mothers who lost their children. They are distressed, incoherent. They are pained from losing their children for nothing.”

The most critical problem facing the Iraqis, Jordan Red Crescent officials said, are acute shortages of medicine, surgical equipment and blood for transfusions.

SADDAM HUSSEIN’S KEY AIDES

Chief of Staff Hussein Rashid:

Believed to come from Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit. Rashid led the Republican Guards during most of the war with Iraq. Credited with upgrading these troops to their current elite status. Promoted to present position when former chief of staff was fired by Hussein last November.

First Deputy Prime Minister Taha Yassin Ramadan:

Born in the city of Mosul. Leading member of Hussein’s select Revolutionary Command Council since 1969. In 1972, headed a revolutionary court that ordered hundreds of executions. The 52-year-old now in charge of 850,000-member Baath militia.

Deputy Prime Minister Sadoun Hammadi:

60 years old. Has backed Hussein since the early 1970s. One of the few Shiite Muslims in the primarily Sunni government. Graduate of the American University of Beirut with degree in economics. Served as foreign minister from 1973 until 1981, when he stepped down for health reasons.

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Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz:

Relationship with Hussein dates back to the late 1950s, when both worked to launch underground Baath movement. Aziz, 54, is only Christian in Hussein’s 25-member Cabinet. In April, 1980, narrowly avoided assassination by a pro-Iranian Shiite terrorist group. Since 1981, has held dual posts of foreign minister and deputy prime minister.

Minister of Defense Saadi Tuma Abbas Jubouri:

Defense minister rose to prominence during the Iran-Iraq War, when he commanded three different army groups. Extensive battle experience, particularly in defensive tactics such as digging fortifications before ground assaults. Appointed to post in December, 1990, when predecessor retired.

Minister of Industry and Military Industrialization Hussein Kamel Majid:

Blood cousin of Hussein. Married to Iraqi president’s eldest daughter Raghad. Reportedly responsible for acquiring much of Iraq’s missile technology and supervising its secret nuclear weapons program. Like Hussein, he advanced through ranks of intelligence service rather than military. In his mid-40s.

Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council Izzat Ibrahim:

Father-in-law of Hussein’s eldest son, Uday. Hussein reportedly has been careful to keep this important leader largely anonymous. The 43-year-old is one of few veteran political leaders to have survived Hussein’s periodic purges.

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