The case against war.

As the United States geared up to bomb Iraq, the war talk trampled logic and morality.

Amid all the bellicose rhetoric in Congress and in the press, the American people barely heard a single argument opposing the war, even though the case for war is so weak.

First, this is a U.N. issue, not a U.S. issue, since Saddam Hussein is disobeying U.N. sanctions. But no one designated the United States to be the U.N. enforcer. In fact, China, France, and Russia opposed a U.S. attack. So if the U.N. Security Council doesn't favor military action, then what right does the United States have to wage war against Iraq?

Second, Saddam Hussein does not pose a military threat to the United States. He does not have missiles that can reach Washington, even if he possesses chemical or biological weapons. And he is much less of a threat today than he was during the Gulf War. The U.N. inspectors have incapacitated his nuclear program and downgraded his chemical and biological programs, and his much-vaunted Republican Guard did not pose a serious challenge back in 1991. Even George Tenet, the head of the CIA, acknowledges that Iraq's military has deteriorated.

If ever there is a legitimate reason for war, it certainly does not exist in this case. Iraq is not poised to attack the United States or its citizens. There is no credible "self-defense" argument that the United States could make. And the precipitating event in this crisis--Iraq's failure to cooperate with U.N. inspectors--does not come close to a classical justification for war.

Third, going to war against Iraq could actually imperil the United States. When Boris Yeltsin in early February warned repeatedly that a U.S. attack on Iraq "would mean world war," U.S. officials tended to write it off as the mere rumblings of a loose cannon. This is the height of imprudence.

Russia has longstanding ties with Iraq, and Russia still has thousands of nuclear weapons that could hit the United States. While it is unlikely that Russia would retaliate against the United States, no threat of a nuclear world war should be dismissed. We have not heard this kind of nuclear saber-rattling in more than a decade, and it might herald the dawn of a new Cold War. That is a real security threat, which we dismiss at our peril.

Fourth, for the United States to threaten nuclear war against Iraq is a gross provocation, one that should disturb not only Yeltsin but all Americans. In late January, the Pentagon went out of its way to raise the nuclear option. When reporters asked Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon whether the United States was considering using nuclear weapons to go after Iraq's underground bunkers, he responded: "I don't think we've ruled anything in or out. We will respond decisively with devastating force." Newsday reported that "Pentagon officials said Bacon had deliberately left open" the possibility of a nuclear attack.

This reckless talk shows the disregard for the lives of Iraqis that lies at the bottom of U.S. policy. And note the peculiar reasoning: The United States so objects to Iraq having weapons of mass destruction that Washington will use the ultimate weapon of mass destruction to prove it.

Fifth, bombing even with conventional weapons would have devastating effects. Sustained bombing raids could kill vast numbers of Iraqi people. And the very targets of these bombings--Iraq's chemical and biological weapons stashes--put millions at risk. What happens if the bombs hit the targets and disperse the chemical or biological agents? Is the United States prepared to spread plagues throughout Iraq?

Sixth, even as the Clinton Administration tried to prepare the American public for war, it admitted that bombing Iraq could not eliminate that country's biological or chemical programs. It admitted that the U.N. inspections had reduced Saddam Hussein's arsenals more than all the bombs the United States dropped on Iraq in 1991. And it admitted that new bombings would probably make Saddam Hussein less inclined to cooperate with the U.N. inspectors in the future. So why bomb?

The United States is willing to kill thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilians, it is willing to risk reigniting the Cold War, and its stated reason for doing so doesn't even make sense.

Then there are the hypocrisies that mock U.S. policy toward Iraq.

Clinton is demanding that Saddam Hussein do something that U.S. law excuses the President from doing. As Laura Flanders pointed out in The Nation of December 22, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has attached provisions to the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention that sound strangely like Saddam Hussein's. One provision says: "The President may deny a request to inspect any facility in the United States in cases where the President determines that the inspection may pose a threat to national security interests." It further states that "any objection by the President to an individual serving as an inspector shall not be reviewable in any court."

And Clinton is acting as though Iraq is the only nation in the Middle East with weapons of mass destruction. Israel has nuclear weapons and perhaps chemical and biological weapons. Egypt and Saudi Arabia also have chemical weapons programs. But we don't hear about them. It's not that their human-rights records are perfect. It's simply that they are our allies.

Even nations in the region that are not our allies, such as Iran and Syria, have chemical or biological weapons programs. But we don't hear about them, either. That would detract from the uniquely diabolical portrait of Saddam Hussein.

So, too, would any glance at Suharto, whose record of brutality stacks up to Saddam. Hussein's. Suharto's forces killed between 500,000 and one million people after seizing power in 1965, and Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in 1975 resulted in 200,000 more deaths. But U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen flew to Jakarta in January to show U.S. support for Suharto.

And what about China? It occupies Tibet, represses its own people, and has nuclear weapons that can reach Los Angeles. So Cohen jetted off to Beijing to suggest military cooperation with China.

Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator. But he's not the only brutal dictator on the world stage. And the innocent people of Iraq, whose only sin is to live in a country ruled by a despot, should not have to pay with their lives.

Ironically, bombing Iraq may give Saddam Hussein just what he wants.

A U.S. attack could shore up his nationalist base, which is all he has left. As the bombs fall, he could demonstrate that the United States is the aggressor he constantly says it is. Many people in Iraq, even some who despise Saddam Hussein, might respond to the bombings not by blaming him but by blaming Washington.

Since the rationale for bombing is so flawed, you have to wonder what lies behind it.

Certainly there are always domestic reasons for a President to attack a demonized Third World country: It's guaranteed to give him a jump in the opinion polls. And Clinton needs to deflect domestic attention away from his personal scandals. Plus, he's boxed himself in with his own rhetoric: He can't paint Saddam Hussein as Hitler one day, and then ignore him the next.

There is a more sinister possibility: that the United States secretly wants Saddam's party in power anyway, just led by someone with a less sanguinary r6sum6. Bombing Iraq might be a way to provoke a coup within the ruling party, with some new general taking over.

That would be fine by Washington, for what it fears more than Iraq with Saddam is Iraq without a Saddam-like figure. Then the dreaded "instability" would set in. Washington has for decades played Iran against Iraq; it doesn't want a weak Iraq because that would mean Iran would become a regional powerhouse. Nor does it want Islamic fundamentalists to take over in Iraq. Nor, for that matter, does it want Kurds to rule the country, for that would pose a threat to NATO ally Turkey, which has a nettlesome problem with its own Kurds (which it is trying to solve the old-fashioned way, by killing them).

The goals of U.S. policy are not the high-minded ones that spill from the mouths of Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright. They are the old, low goals of realpolitik.

And if Iraqi civilians die as the United States pursues these goals, c'est la guerre.

There must be another way. For more than six years, Iraq has had to contend with the most punitive peace settlement since Versailles. Hundreds of thousands of children and old people have died as a result of blanket economic sanctions.

Washington has given Saddam Hussein little reason to hope that it would lift these sanctions, no matter what he did. It's time for a new strategy.

The United States should shelve the military approach, tone down the rhetoric, and adopt a much more sensible sanctions policy. Immediately, it should allow Iraq to sell as much oil as necessary to pay for food and medical supplies. That is a humanitarian necessity; to do anything less is to be complicit in the deaths of innocent people.

Then, Washington should provide some incentives for cooperation, conditioning the gradual lifting of other economic sanctions upon inspections. But these inspections need to have a final date attached. Iraq can't be expected to put up with the kind of endless intrusions that no other nation in the world has to endure.

If Saddam Hussein refuses to cooperate, the diplomatic sanctions against him should be maintained. So, too, should the arms embargo. And it is appropriate to restrict the sale of commercial items that have military use.

These are options the Clinton Administration has at its disposal, but it has chosen the more belligerent course.

That is not a wise course. And that is not a moral course.