Firing Blanks

The plot to oust Saddam and the constant pounding from U.S. jets are going nowhere

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Saddam's neighbors, however, have concluded that Washington is not serious about getting rid of him, so they have begun rearranging their foreign policies to live with him and are pressing for the economic sanctions to be lifted. Most Arab governments refuse to deal with Chalabi or allow him to use their countries as staging areas for any guerrilla force he might assemble. Jordan has convicted him in absentia on banking-fraud charges. (Chalabi says the allegations were trumped up.) Though the loyalty of many divisions in Saddam's 400,000-man armed forces is questionable, U.S. intelligence believes that enough of the elite Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard units would stand and fight. And those well-trained divisions, with thousands of tanks and artillery pieces, would maul the guerrillas in what intelligence analysts believe would become a Middle East version of the Bay of Pigs. Faced with that possibility, it is no wonder the Clinton Administration seems content to let Public Enemy No. 1 remain at large.

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