Within the U.S., the arguments against an Iraqi invasion are piling up. The public is ambivalent about it; the administration is reportedly deeply divided; the Pentagon is worrying about the prospect of American soldiers getting dragged into bloody urban warfare. It might destabilize the Middle East and turn the Muslim world against the U.S.; it could leave an anarchic mess in Iraq which U.S. troops would have to clean up. To top it all off, it still appears unlikely that the United Nations Security Council will give the White House the mandate for swift action.

Faced with such a myriad of obstacles, the planning of such an invasion is being delayed. In this context, the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is playing for time and, so far, doing it effectively. His immediate goal is to slow things down so that an invasion cannot take place this winter, the ideal time for an American assault. This will give his regime a new lease on life, if a only short one. Yet while the practical concerns militating against an Iraqi invasion are serious, there remains a moral case against a U.S.-led operation against Saddam Hussein. The American government, led by President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, constantly reminds us that Saddam Hussein is an evil man who has invaded his neighbors, terrorized his own people and used chemical weapons. Why then can anyone object to the plan to "take him out?"

We can because there is a ring of hypocrisy to these denunciations. A well-worn story from the 1980s has resurfaced in recent weeks in Washington, causing some embarrassment to the government, for the government helped create the beast it now decries. There cannot be a claim that this as a case of Frankenstein's monster gone awry, for it knew full well the beast it was dealing with in the 1980s. Then, America's sworn enemy in the Middle East was Iran, where an Islamic Revolution had sent a key U.S. ally, Shah Reza Pahlavi, into exile. The revolutionaries, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, were eager to send the Islamist tide sweeping through the Middle East, threatening both secular governments and U.S. oil interests. In this context, politics created strange bedfellows. Hussein hated the Ayatollah as much as Washington did.

With Iran weakened by the internal disruption of its Revolution, Hussein saw an opportunity to strike. In 1980 he launched an invasion of Iran. However, the anticipated Iranian collapse failed to materialize. Driven by religious fervor, the Iranians fought back ruthlessly and the war settled into a bloody stalemate that endured until 1988. In the midst of it, the American government approached Baghdad. When the Iraqi military used chemical and biological weapons against its own people, U.S. intelligence monitored troop movements and relayed that essential information back to the Iraqis. Moreover, according to a 1994 Senate Banking Committee report, the U.S. apparently even sold biological and chemical weapons to Iraq at this time. Yet what is probably most unsettling about American policy towards Iraq in this period is that despite Saddam's war crimes, not to mention his government's atrocious human rights record, the U.S. administration called for a normalization of relations. It sent a delegate to Baghdad in 1983 to initiate these discussions. That delegate was none other than Donald Rumsfeld, the man who now demonizes Iraq.

What is curious is that this story is now making the rounds in the U.S. not only on the American left, where one would expect it to circulate, but on the right as well. I think it testifies to the deep ambivalence within the U.S. about the Bush administration's determination to go after Hussein. When coupled with the resistance among most American allies to an invasion, it is frustrating the hawks in Washington, D.C. On top of this, recent warnings and events, including this past week's bomb attack in Indonesia, have raised the specter of a possible new wave of attacks by al Qaeda. Should this come to pass, it is sure to take the focus back off Iraq and put it back on al Qaeda (which is proving to be a far more elusive foe). My sense is that Hussein may just squeak through yet again, even if the weeks ahead are tense for him.