Iraqis flee as Baghdad mobilizes defenses

Clues to the dislocation of the regime's leadership are clearly found in Foreign Minister Naji Sabri's diatribe Tuesday against the "despot dictator" and "idiot" Bush, who with British premier Tony Blair was a "warmonger" whose war was an abuse of human rights - words that are often used, outside Iraq, to describe his own leader.

But it is often what goes unspoken here that tells most. "I have a lot to say, but I can't," says an educated Iraqi on in the southern holy city of Karbala. "It is dangerous - they are looking at me," the man adds, noting the growing interest of people nearby. "I don't know what will happen to me now. We are not free."

Still, Iraqis are free enough to defend their nation from American troops, regardless of their private views of Hussein. "We can use everything in war," says one black-robed guardian at Karbala's Al Abbas Mosque. "Even this," he says, holding up a small shard of wood in his hand, "I can plunge into America's heart. We want you to see the graves of Americans - they won't have time to bury them."

The mosque guardian, who refused to give his name, spoke after putting away in a blue-tiled side room a collection of curved swords that had been brought out and dusted off for use in a pro-government demonstration.

"It represents that we are ready for fighting - it is the traditional Arab weapon," the guardian says, with a nod of his maroon velvet hat. "It belongs to the situation we are in."

Hussein has tapped into a militant Arab history like few other Arab leaders to maintain a brutal regime that has never loosened its grip on its people in a generation. In recent years, he has worked had to cultivate one other defensive shield as well: Islam. A common image is Hussein, wrapped in white pilgrim's robes, praying at the holy Kabah in Mecca.

At the Mother of All Battles mosque in Baghdad - where the minarets are designed to resemble Scud missiles - one imam confirms that all the talk of war has drawn Iraqis, and their leader, to renewed faith.

"All religions live naturally with love, but if God believes that war is going to begin, then that is God's way," says the young-faced imam Abdullah Mohamed. "People will defend - it's natural - even chickens do it."

And after years of leading a fiercely secular Baathist state, what is Hussein's commitment to Islam? A 605-page Koran handwritten over a two-year period with 24 liters of the leader's own blood. It is on display in a special room at the mosque, and "is an expression of gratitude for God," Mr. Mohamed says.

Are there any plans to move the Koran to a safer place, or to defend it in the way that Baghdad is now ringed with guns? "None at all," Mohamed says.

Material from wire services was used in this report.

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