Will Saddam let Bush back down from war on Iraq?

Bush is feeling the pressures in Washington as much as Blair is in Westminster

Is that the sound of splashing one hears as America and Britain row back from an invasion of Iraq to unseat Saddam Hussein? George Bush was in a very dismissive mood about the subject after a day of talks with his senior advisers at his Texas ranch on Wednesday, saying that the word "Iraq" had never come up in the discussions (if you believe that you'll believe anything).

The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, went even further yesterday morning. "The idea of military action," he declared on the Today programme, "is crazy, because it would lead to a bloodbath. It would lead to the immediate declaration of him as a hero of the whole of the region. There would be no coalition for it."

He was actually talking about Mugabe, not Saddam. But the same argument pertains, as Straw knew full well as he said it. He also knew full well what he was saying when he moved the debate over Iraq firmly on to the ground of allowing the inspectors back in. No talk of regime changes, then.

Aha, says Menzies Campbell of the Liberal Democrats, spying clear water between Washington and London. No, says the Foreign Office, hastily denying any rift. And for once I agree with them. Bush is feeling the pressures in Washington as much as Blair is in Westminster. The US military don't see how it can be done without a full invasion, with all the attendant risks. The State Department feels it will set the Arab world against the US. America's allies are openly critical. A return of the inspectors would provide Bush with a way out under which he could claim at least some progress in the fight against terror.

The question is, will Saddam Hussein let them back? His capacity for miscalculation at the brink of disaster is well attested by now. If he does let the inspectors back, any thought of internationally sanctioned military action evaporates. If he doesn't? Well then the possibility of war is still very much there.

The really extraordinary thing about all the discussion however – and indeed Jack Straw's musing on Mugabe – is that all this open talk of enforced regime changes is taking place without any mention of the rights or wrongs of marching into other countries in this way. International law, political morality just don't seem to figure at all in the calculations. Instead, a new and far more insidious moral justification is being adduced – that regimes you wish to remove should be changed because they are "brutal" to their own people. This is a gross hypocrisy, and a complete rewriting of history.

I nearly fell off my chair this week when Lord Wright, the former head of the Foreign Office, came on the radio and declared that he'd changed his mind about Saddam Hussein when Iraq invaded Iran. The Foreign Office against Saddam Hussein from 1980? He must be joking.

The British government quietly welcomed the Iraqis trying to unseat a fundamentalist Iran and discreetly helped the Baghdad dictator when he appeared to be losing the war. At the time of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait our ambassador there was arguing that Saddam would never do it and that he'd withdraw if we were nice to him.

Even more extraordinary are the arguments used to justify the latest object of Washington demonisation – Saudi Arabia. Earlier in the week, Ken Adelman, an influential member of the US Defence Policy Board, declared that 11 September had altered his and the Administration's view of the Saudis. They had always known that the country had an "11th-century government", but they never understood how bad it was. "A lot of people," said the interviewer, Eddie Mair, "will find it refreshing that you're prepared to put your hand up and say: Before 11 September, I had a different view of this country."

Refreshing, be damned. What's changed is not Washington's understanding of the regime, but its view of its threat to America. If it weren't for Saudi links with al-Qa'ida, no amount of stoning for adultery would make any difference to US attitudes. The same with Iraq. Saddam could be still gassing the Kurds and starving the Marsh Arabs for all London or Washington care, were it not for the potential threat of his access to weapons of mass destruction.

Governments have always masked brute self-interest with moral purpose, of course. But such blatant hypocrisy has done much to undermine the international goodwill that America garnered in the first months after the twin towers, particularly in the Arab world.

In a deeper sense, self-deceit also corrupts ourselves and our intentions. The fact is that we didn't send troops to Afghanistan to stop women being made to wear the burqa. We sent them to remove a regime that was harbouring a group that had launched a vile and bloody attack on civilians in America. Now that this has been achieved, the great plans for the rebuilding of Afghanistan have been let quietly slip from the table. The same would happen if we ever acted to remove Saddam Hussein or the Saudi regime. The US oil companies would be given the oil concessions and the future of Iraqi society would be pushed into the "not our responsibility" tray.

If Bush and Blair are growing cool towards an invasion of Iraq, it is for practical reasons, not through moral suasion. Would that it were otherwise.

a.hamilton@independent.co.uk