The administration wants no part of another war with Saddam, even with Iraq in a weakened condition. Instead, Washington decided to ratchet up the rhetoric last week. Bush complained about helicopter attack on the rebels by Saddam’s forces and said he was “warning them: do not do this.” Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the allied commander in the region, warned Baghdad not to send fixed-wing warplanes aloft for any reason. U.S officials said they were not likely to resume hostilities over helicopter flights. But if other Iraqi combat aircraft take to the skies, U.S. planes may shoot them down.

“Frankly, we don’t want to have any more fighting,” Bush said. But White House staffers concede that if Saddam’s forces do something really hideous, such as turning chemical weapons on their enemies, Washington may have no option but to lash back, at least with air power. Renewed warfare on those terms might not be unpopular. In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, a large majority of the Americans surveyed favored resuming the war if Saddam resorts to weapons of mass destruction. A smaller majority backed military action to force Saddam out of power (chart).

He’s not necessarily going to fall any time soon. Ironically, the United States has a short-term stake in the survival of Saddam’s iron-fisted regime, if not of the dictator himself. Only strong central authority can save Iraq from Lebanonization. If Saddam’s government is defeated by the Kurds and other separatists, the country could fall apart, threatening the stability of the entire gulf region. A different but equally ironic possibility is that post-Saddam Iraq might succumb to majority rule, in the form of a takeover by the pro-Iranian Shiite Muslims, who account for more than half of the population.

Many of Washington’s Arab allies are more afraid of a fundamentalist regime in Iraq than they are of a weakened Saddam. And even Israeli leaders have stopped calling for Saddam’s downfall. The chances are that Saddam’s government will survive at least the next few weeks. Richard Murphy, the top Mideast hand in the Reagan administration, says the regime “still has more organized power than the Kurds or the Shiites. It still has the edge to keep the state from fragmenting.” If Murphy is wrong, Iraq could quickly become the next Lebanon. If he’s right, Saddam’s survival is a decidedly mixed blessing.

The American desire for stability in Iraq conflicts with Washington’s unrelenting quest to get rid of the dictator, eventually. “I find it very difficult to see a situation in which we would have normalized relations with Saddam Hussein still in power,” Bush said last Saturday in Bermuda, where he met with British Prime Minister John Major. “His credibility is zilch, zero, zed,” the president said of Saddam, using the British term for the letter “z.” But Washington thinks Iraq can be held together only by another strongman, probably from the Iraqi military or the ruling Baath Party.

In yet another policy contradiction, the administration thinks it cannot sit idly by if Saddam or his henchmen try to preserve the regime by massacring their opponents. It wants to let Iraq’s rulers know what they can and cannot get away with. Last summer the administration failed to warn Saddam in no uncertain terms not to invade Kuwait. “They’re not going to make the April Glaspie mistake twice,” says a State Department official, referring to the U.S. ambassador who met with Saddam eight days before the invasion and reportedly told him that Washington had “no opinion” on his dispute with Kuwait.

Formally, the gulf war is not over. It was merely suspended under a temporary cease-fire arranged by Schwarzkopf on March 3. The agreement allows Iraq to fly helicopters, though U.S. officials expected them to be used only for peaceful purposes. The use of fixed-wing warplanes is forbidden, according to the Americans. Sources told NEWSWEEK the Iraqis were not even allowed to move them from north to south. Last Saturday a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Riyadh said the Iraqis had “indicated that they intend to fly more airplanes and to move them around inside Iraq,” which he said would be “a clear violation” of the agreement. The spokesman said “a representative of the U.S. military” would meet with the Iraqis soon to discuss the problem.

A movement by U.S. ground forces back into the northern part of the occupied zone was intended as another message to the Iraqis, White House officials said. The troops, elements of the 101st Airborne and First Cavalry divisions, had been pulled back 30 miles to the rear, leaving the area to be patrolled by helicopters. “I want you on the ground up there,” Schwarzkopf was quoted as telling the commanders. Because Iraq has no aerial reconnaissance, Saddam may not have been aware of the move until it was reported by the Western news media.

“We could go to offensive operations in a heartbeat,” Brig. Gen. Richard Neal, a U.S. military spokesman, said in Riyadh. “People are looking at contingencies, particularly in the air, but they’re not forming up columns to Baghdad,” said another U.S. official in the Saudi capital. In fact, a renewed ground war seemed almost unthinkable, given the potential for getting bogged down in an unwinnable situation. Even an air campaign was problematic. “How are you going to make sure you target the right guys?” asked a Pentagon officer. “We can punish Saddam with air power,” he added. “But will it be enough to make him change his behavior toward his own people?” U.S. officials also wanted to avoid alienating the Iraqi military, which could be the source of a regime to succeed Saddam.

The United States lacks a clear mandate for military intervention in Iraq’s civil war. French President Francois Mitterrand, who met with Bush in Martinique last week, and Soviet leaders, who talked to Secretary of State James Baker in Moscow, argued that U.N. resolutions empowered the allies to expel Saddam from Kuwait, but not to pacify all of Iraq. “At the outset, we said we weren’t heading for Baghdad,” Mitterrand told reporters, and Bush quickly chimed in his agreement.

Bush said some U.S. troops will remain on Iraqi soil until a formal cease-fire is arranged. That could take months, given the chaos in Iraq. And even if U.S. forces stay within the bounds of the territory they control now, they will be forced to function as something like an army of occupation. If refugees flood in from elsewhere in Iraq, the Americans will have to care for them and provide somehow for law and order. And the longer U.S. forces remain in Iraq, the likelier it is that some Iraqis will expect them to help find a solution to the country’s Levantine problems.

OPINION WATCH READY TO RESUME? Would you support or oppose having U.S. forces resume military action against Iraq if Saddam Hussein’s forces use chemical or biological weapons against rebel groups?

77% Support; 18% Oppose

Would you support or oppose resumed military action to force Saddam Hussein from power?

57% Support; 38% Oppose

For this NEWSWEEK Poll, The Gallup Organization interviewed a national sample of 763 adults by telephone March 14-15. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points. “Don’t know” and other responses not shown. The NEWSWEEK Poll c 1991 by NEWSWEEK, Inc.