His End Must Come Quickly.(Saddam Hussein)

Saddam Hussein has granted himself a unique seven-star rank, staff field marshal, but it will do little to remedy his ineptitude as a military strategist. In 1991 he bet the United States wouldn't attack and lost. Now Saddam apparently believes he can win by deploying his best troops to defend Baghdad as another Stalingrad, house by house, street by street.

A method of war that deliberately begins in the way that most wars end, with a street-fighting defense of the capital city, is certainly original. It is also undoubtedly appropriate for Saddam, whose everyday security system in Baghdad already includes an urban-defense force in the Special Republican Guard, which has 13,000 men. It is not clear how many additional street fighters Saddam could draw from his five separate and competing security forces, whose 25,000 to 30,000 men are distributed throughout Iraq. But if he wants numbers, the Fedayeen Saddam organized by his sons has more than 15,000 men recruited from trusted tribes, and the Jaysh al-Shaabi Popular Army, a Baath party militia, has at least 150,000 men and women in Baghdad alone.

Numbers are not enough, however. Street fighting requires more training, cohesion and leadership than open-field combat--even in heroic Stalingrad, the workers' militia collapsed at the beginning of the battle. Saddam's party militia mostly consists of civilians with small arms they scarcely know how to fire. The five brands of secret police contain many clerks, executioners and torturers but few trained soldiers. The Fedayeen Saddam are village ruffians, unfamiliar with the streets of Baghdad. While a spontaneous revolt is unlikely, it is also improbable that thousands of rifles distributed by the Baath Party would be used to defend Saddam.

The Special Republican Guard are supposed to be especially loyal because they are largely recruited from Saddam's own al-Bu Nasir tribe and home region around Tikrit. But they are a true praetorian guard, just like their Roman predecessors, with better uniforms and pay than ordinary soldiers --and officers much too close to the brutality of palace politics to remain unthinkingly devoted to Saddam. Quite a few have been executed for plotting coups, and not all were innocent. The regular Republican Guard, with at least 100,000 men, is tougher than the regular Army and likely to put up a fight. But in 1991 its tank and gun crews were just too unskilled to inflict casualties. Besides, their armored ...