Clinton Wows Angry Electorate--in Iraq, That Is : Politics: In a defeated nation where Bush is the devil, Democrat wins by default.

As clocks counted down the final hours of the U.S. presidential campaign Sunday afternoon, there were no undecideds left among the shoppers at Haider Abbas’ little fruit stand in Baghdad’s Al Kasaba neighborhood.

“I will cut off the head of my baby and swallow it if it would make Bush lose,” housewife Zainab Ismael said calmly as she bought a few eggplants and peaches.

Shopkeeper Abbas was a bit more circumspect. “I will just dance in the streets if Clinton wins,” he said, weighing a sack of Iraqi dates for another customer beside a small portrait of a smiling President Saddam Hussein.

“For us, you see, Bush is not a human being,” added Saddiq Mahmud, a barber just down the street. “We don’t know Clinton. But we know Bush. Bush bombed our factories, our buildings, our bridges. Bush, well, he is the devil for us.”

An unscientific sampling, to be sure. But after dozens of other such interviews here in the land the United States and its allies bombed heavily 1 1/2 years ago to end Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait, it is fairly safe to say that Iraq is Bill Clinton country--at least at the grass-roots level--if for no other reason than by default.

What was also clear as the U.S. campaign neared its end over the weekend was that, regardless of the outcome, the Iraqis may well have followed it even more intently than most Americans.

Never before in Iraqi history has a U.S. election been so closely watched by so many--the 18 million men, women and children of Iraq for whom despair has become daily routine after more than two years of international trade sanctions that have crippled their economy and cut their daily food intake in half.

Every evening for weeks now, most Iraqis have craned over battered transistor radios, wincing or smiling as the latest opinion polls were announced on the Voice of America Arabic-language service. Each morning, they have pored over Baghdad’s state-run newspapers, laughing heartily over the daily political cartoons that depict a sweating George Bush falling off cliffs, crumbling under rocks or jogging into black abysses with his running shoes and shorts blowing off.

So keen is the interest in the U.S. presidential race here in Baghdad that the value of the Iraqi dinar on the currency black market has become something of a bellwether of subtle shifts in the political polls thousands of miles away. After a year of holding stable at 30 dinars to a dollar, last month the dinar’s value surged to less than 20. The reason: Democrat Clinton was far ahead of President Bush in the opinion polls. Suddenly last week, the dinar fell back to 25: Bush apparently had narrowed the margin to just a few points.

Behind such fluctuations is a logic that Iraqi officials and intellectuals reject--that Clinton and a new Administration would soften on the sanctions and ultimately permit Iraqi oil exports, which would restore the dinar’s value and drive down prices.

“We are under no illusions,” one senior government official said. “The Democrats are backed by the Zionists. They are even more pro-Israeli and anti-Iraq than Bush. We don’t want a change of presidents in America. We want a change of policy. But, of course, it is an emotional issue for most Iraqis. After all, Bush destroyed our country.”

In the words of Qasim Bakri, a director general in the ministry that has made extraordinary progress in rebuilding Iraq’s bomb-battered power plants, telecommunications buildings, roads, bridges and factories: “To us, America is damaging Iraq, damaging the people of Iraq, damaging everything living in Iraq. So we don’t care who is going to come as President to the United States. . . . America is the enemy of Iraq.”

Perhaps the closest reflection of the personal election view of Hussein--who, despite his personal hatred for Bush, has not publicly endorsed any of the candidates--came from his eldest son a few days ago in a lengthy discourse on the polls in his daily newspaper, Babil.

“We can hardly hope that the American Administration will change its stand toward Arab issues, whether George Bush stays or goes,” declared Uday Hussein, the paper’s owner. “The American Administration will continue its hostile policies against the Arabs. And Clinton has gone so far as to announce that he will support the Israeli state unconditionally.”

Uday Hussein took the official line on the elections a step further, though, using the widespread popular discontent in the United States that has formed Clinton’s popular base to liken Bush to a Third World dictator.

“It is well-known to us that the West and the United States hate any dictator, and they hate a strong personality to come to power because such a person would rule a country as he likes. But Bush is becoming this sort of person. His ideas don’t go in line with Congress and the aspirations of the American people.”

In Iraq’s tightly controlled society, however, where the people already have such a ruler in Saddam Hussein, such analyses take deep hold not only at the grass-roots level but equally among the merchant class, professors and senior bureaucrats--even some who were educated in the United States.

Abbas Shaiya, a street vendor who sells cigarettes by the hundreds at Baghdad’s Shorja Market, for example, said he has concluded from weeks of listening to the Voice of America that the United States is not a democracy.

“This election is just a show, a cover,” he told a rare American customer Sunday. “If you look closely, you have no real choice. Perot is a millionaire. Bush and Clinton are millionaires. Only the rich can become President of the United States. Why don’t you choose a leader from your general population? Isn’t that what democracy is?

“Also for Iraq, it is the same in this election. There is no difference between the candidates. The American policy is one. It is fixed. If someone does not follow this policy, he will be overthrown.

“Nobody here can really be helped by this election. America is against us for a long time. And it will be for a long time to come,” Shaiya said.

As for last-minute weekend predictions of the election’s outcome, most of Baghdad’s armchair observers gave Clinton the edge. It was only at the new Museum of Solidarity and Challenge, a vast collection of photographs and models depicting the allied war destruction and Iraq’s postwar reconstruction, that an articulate, U.S.-educated bureaucrat named Ahmed Angurli emphatically predicted that Bush will be reelected.

“I think Bush will win because there is a large silent majority in America,” said Angurli, who graduated with economics degrees from a small college in Texas when Lyndon B. Johnson was President. “When they go to the polls on Tuesday, this silent majority will vote for Bush.”

Asked whether that would be good for Iraq, he smiled.

“No. But actually it makes no difference. Some people think if Clinton becomes President, there will be a change. Many will celebrate. But I know it’s just not true. Both men are very hard on Iraq. So either way, there is no hope for us.”