By Adel Darwish

If I had a time machine, I would point the dial to an evening in 1975 in Baghdad to watch Saddam Hussein puffing his cigar dishes of Homous and olives as he steadily out-drank a group of much drink-hardened Journalists. I was the youngest among them, and not sober enough to pick up the clues that would have pointed to a day in 1998 when President Bill Clinton manoeuvred himself into the quicksand of Middle East politics.

Like in February and November of 1998, in December The Clinton administration found itself faced with a peculiar logic: A compromised solution over the Unscom inspectors stand-off(the root of the trouble is in a clause within the 1991 UN-Iraqi agreement over UNSCOM work) meant a victory parade in Baghdad. Smart bombs and cruise missile always means carried the possibility - now reality- of marking the end of UN weapons inspection and also prompt Arabs, from Casablanca to Muscat, would sing Saddam's praises, while CNN screens display burnt bodies of women and children to world audience.

The difference this time, was the timing. Contrary to that pathetic argument about the Islamic months of Ramadan (which no one buys since Iran and Iraq fought each other every Ramadan for 8 years0, the timing was to do with the Congress about to impeach the president, who has failed to pull a satisfactory dove out of the hat during his Israel/Gaza trip.

The president convinced himself that the cruise missiles are smart enough this time to spare Iraqi civilians - which they did not. Even if the strike had been so clean that no civilians would have been hit by some miracle, Saddam wouldn't shy away from bombing his own hospitals to create the same effect.

Saddam has figured it out long time ago. I could see it from my time machine twenty four years ago observing the poker-player face Mr Deputy - as Saddam was known then- over endless rounds of Black Label Whisky, boasting about putting the Kurds' orchards and villages to the torch.

Back then I was to luxuriate in the thought that the ferocious hangover was a small price for the privilege of having all doors open to me. The whisper of '' this young man was photographed with Mr Deputy'' would slice into the scary silence of Baath party commissars' offices, to the envy of other western journalists who were barred from many places in Iraq.

Fifteen years later I was to sober up to the chilling echo of Mr Deputy's words, gestures and jokes making a lot of horrifying sense. The man has become the personification of the character of Michael Corleone - the godfather character, played by Al- Pacino in Francis Ford Coppola's film as his own, including his sense of humour.

In March 1990 the then British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, appealed to Saddam to pardon the Observer Reporter Farzad Bazoft - wrongly accused of spying.

'' The English prime-minister wanted the spy,'' said Saddam in a speech, '' she will have him alright,'' pausing to puff on his cigar then exhaled the smoke saying, '' in a box.''

Nine hours later, the first secretary of the British embassy in Baghdad was signing for the box containing the body of Mr Bazoft, whose hanging he had to watch.

Back in 1975, Saddam was talking to the same group at his table about the Film ' The Godfather'. He explained the higher ethics of the scene when the Michael, the new godfather ordered the killing of his own brother in law, minutes after assuring his sister that he would never make her a widow. '' Once loyalty to the family and its head is in doubt,'' Saddam said, '' then the life of the individual concerned becomes worthless''.

The words echoed again in 1996. Saddam pardoned his son in law Hussein Kamel, who had defected, to Amman. Upon his return, Mr Kamel was killed by Saddam's son Uday. Perhaps a re-make of a 1989 event when Saddam arranged the assassination of his brother in law General Adnan Khirallah the defence minister and the son of the uncle who gave Saddam home from the age of 10. Adnan the war hero became too popular for Saddam's own comfort.

Like in Steven Spilberg's trilogy ' Back to the Future,' when each film they return to the same night in 1955, I too find a lot of clues by turning my mind to that That evening in Baghdad in 1975. Saddam, Mr Deputy, still balanced and steady while we struggled to avoid falling over went on about the film. The shooting of the godfather and his subsequent absence from the scene, he said, has thrown the mini empire into anarchy, confusion and bloodshed. -Western leaders take heed: the disappearance of Saddam the Godfather from the scene would turn the region into a large blood bath with no end.

Like Michael Corleone' take over his father's business, Saddam cleansed half of the Baath party family in a bloodbath after ousting President Ahmad Hassan e-l Bakr in 1979. The criteria for eliminating people were their intentions, he said, to avoid the harm they might cause the family in the future.

In 1984, at the private screening of 'The Long Days' - a film depicting his life, President Saddam Hussein lectured the selected guests. This time we sat at the end of a table some 30 feet long - as he suddenly appeared flanked by his bodyguards at the other end after a brief blackout. Referring to his then prosperous subjects, he said: ' all Iraqis are one family, and I am the [god] father; any form of dissent or opposition is an act of treason.' '

Saddam has created a system to cleans the family from the would be traitors. His son Uday is in charge of the terror machine of Tasfiyat (liquidating) the 'traitors' in the family.

Saddam once described how his wife Sajeda proudly helped him dress and loaded his submachine gun on the night of 1968 successful coup while the toddler Uday played with hand grenades.

Saddam's child hood was miserable; his stepfather was brutal and illiterate who denied him education and forced him to work as a farmhand from the age of five. Teased about his mother's reputation, the eight years old Saddam - the name in Arabic means the clasher - learnt to walk in the village with an iron bar making him more than a match to a boy of sixteen- an early lesson in survival. He was barely 15 when assisted his uncle in murdering a local rival, and started his own killing at the age of 19. He grew to regard killing as a normal profession. He would excuse himself at the middle of a game of dominoes, disappearing for a while, to carry out a 'liquidation' for the Baath party, subsequently appearing to continue the game. By 1980s Saddam matured from a hired-gun picking individuals to kill into a mass murderer.

His gang of assassins - all thugs, psychopaths and killers from his own clan- became the core of a special security apparatus that he moulded in 1960's on the Nazi SS style. Now over 15,000 strong, Saddam showed them the video of the Romanian dictator Nicolai Ceausescu's fall and execution reminding them that they could meet an end similar to that of the securitate if the regime was to fall.

Saddam thrives on crisis and loves to make every one dance to his threats. Like many megalomaniac tyrants his real strength drives from their enemies' weaknesses, in this case the West's democracy.

As no journalist is allowed near Saddam's bottle- since he no longer shares a drink with strangers- here is a sobering thought: Washington and London debate the question: Will we fight until Saddam is eliminated? And if not at what point will we stop?

There is always the question of human cost and protests, with people expressing their views openly - including British and American pilots captured during the Gulf war and now they argue that war will hardly achieve any meaningful political results.

Meanwhile, Saddam who continues to gain impetus from the apparent martyrdom of his people, calculates that many dead civilians or, worse, body bags coming home is too much of a gamble for President Clinton and Prime Minister Blair. Saddam's gambit is simpler: His enemy doesn't have the stomach to fight him to his death. He relishes the belief that he is wining this game of brinkmanship, regardless of the outcome of the standoff.