The question of whether Saddam is a threat also carries with it the assumption that he wants to attack his neighbors. After his experience in Kuwait and in Iran, which had disastrous results, and considering his recent enthusiastic efforts at mending fences with his neighbors -- including Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and his calls for Muslim and Arab unity -- this is an unlikely scenario.

The Europeans have asked for some kind of concrete evidence showing that he's producing WMD's, but no one can produce any evidence. And in terms of chemical weapons, why would he suddenly start using them now, if he didn't use them in the Gulf War? We [the U.N.-backed coalition that fought against Iraq] used chemical weapons during that war, remember? We dropped tons of depleted uranium on Iraq -- which has had devastating effects on the health of its civilian population.

The whole weapons inspection issue is really just a ruse. The real agenda of the Bush administration is a regime change -- which is just a polite word for assassination. It has nothing to do with the U.N. or weapons inspectors or even human rights. I read recently that one of the generals whom the Pentagon is thinking of as a "replacement" for Saddam Hussein is the same one who ran the brutal military campaign against the Kurds.

What effect would an American invasion have on the Iraqi people?

This expression of [Colin] Powell and others -- "regime change" -- it's really a nice word for murder and chaos and killing. And as we've seen in the case of Afghanistan, this killing takes the form of U.S. bombers dropping cluster bombs and other ghastly weapons from 15,000 feet. There's no likelihood, it seems to me, of U.S. troops actually wanting to get involved. The consequence of that kind of (air assault) would be massive civilian casualties in the towns and cities of Iraq, remembering that Iraq is an urban country -- over 70 percent of the population live in towns and cities. So I see a catastrophic impact in terms of civilians and people throughout the country.

What about the territorial integrity of Iraq? How might that be affected by such U.S. military action?

The integrity of Iraq would seem to be under attack because the Turks, who are opposed to this military venture by the Americans and have already said that, would likely invade Iraq if the Kurds were to show interest in independence -- they would invade Iraq and take over Mosul and Kirkuk. In the south, the fear might be that the Shi'ah majority might take over the country, which perhaps might be OK -- after all they do represent 65 percent of Iraqis -- but there's a fear in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states that Iran and the Shi'ah majority might present a kind of united theocratic front. This would certainly be threatening to those Sunni-ruled Gulf states.

What do you think about the Bush administration's attempt to link the war on terrorism to Iraq? [Note: Halliday answered this question before the publication of Jeffrey Goldberg's report in the New Yorker, claiming Iraqi intelligence has been in close contact with al-Qaida leaders for years.]

It's a fiction. It's a very large fiction, which has failed, certainly outside of the U.S., because clearly there is no linkage to Mr. bin Laden or his fundamentalist thinking nor to the al-Qaida network. It just isn't there. I've been trying to challenge people to think through what is happening in Iraq and try to encourage Washington to do things differently. This impending attack on Iraq doesn't serve the interests of the Iraqis of course, but it also doesn't serve the interests of the U.S. I firmly believe that nothing will change in Washington until it's understood that the vested interests of the U.S. are best served by a different approach to Iraq.

They need to invest in terms of poverty, in terms of the problems of the Middle East, the issues of Palestinian refugees. These are the issues that are creating the fear and the vulnerability in this country for the first time -- the fear that terrorism is going to rise again and get Americans right in their homeland. Let them understand that the way to deal with that is not through violence, but by investing in the alleviation of poverty, the introduction of education and healthcare -- all the good things that most North Americans take for granted. That's what the world needs; without that we will never be free of this sense of vulnerability.

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