T A B L E+T A L K California has outlawed smoking in bars. Should other states follow their lead? Speak out in the Headlines area of Table Talk D A I L Y+Q U O T E What's the condom etiquette for sex with the undead? R E C E N T L Y Now what? By Jonathan Broder Time may be running out for Kenneth Starr if he wants his investigation to result in anything but political impasse. (03/06/98) Pol Pot sends his regrets By Andrew Ross Some of the world's movers and shakers couldn't attend Time's gala 75th birthday party (03/05/98) Hillary Clinton is a traitor By Neera Sohoni In the Third World, where she has traveled widely, Hillary Rodham Clinton has become something of an icon of feminism (03/04/98) Size isn't everything By David Corn With poll numbers like President Clinton's, you'd think he could do something bold and important. Then why doesn't he? (03/03/98) Turkish delight By Jonathan Broder The Clinton administration says a huge arms-for-human-rights deal is important for Turkey's stability, but opponents say it's arming the torturers (03/02/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		tag team THE GREAT SATAN AND THE GREAT SPONSOR OF INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM ARE TEAMING UP TO TAKE ON THE GREAT DICTATOR. BY LOREN JENKINS | WASHINGTON --They're back. The American weapons inspector whose presence helped ignite the last crisis between Iraq and the United States returned to Baghdad just before the weekend, picking up where he left off, trying to check out Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. But while all eyes remain fixed on the American, Scott Ridder, his team of United Nations weapons inspectors and the U.S. armada that remains poised to strike Baghdad from the Persian Gulf, few noticed that the real battle to topple Saddam Hussein quietly began late last month. It was waged by five burly U.S. wrestlers competing in a little-heralded international meet in the Iranian capital of Tehran. For two days, the U.S. wrestlers grappled with their Iranian counterparts and those of 18 other nations in a sporting event dear to the Iranian heart. The Americans won some matches, lost others, but it wasn't the tournament scorecard that mattered. It was the fact that for the first time since radical Islamic students occupied the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, burned American flags and humiliated the "Great Satan" for 444 days, an American delegation was back in Tehran, performing under the Stars and Stripes to the cheers of an Iranian crowd. Both American and Iranian officials have been quick to play down any political significance of the sporting contest, but for anyone who recalls how a simple ping-pong match in Beijing in 1971 opened the door to U.S. recognition of communist China, there is little doubt the event represented an important, if still tenuous, step toward rapprochement between the United States and Iran. If realized, it will have enormous strategic implications for Saddam Hussein's future. U.S. policy makers still insist that their increasingly unsuccessful policy of "dual containment" of both Iran and Iraq remains in place. But behind closed doors at the White House and the State Department, a debate is raging on whether to continue such an unrewarding policy. The main reason, of course, is Saddam. A full-scale war in 1991, occasional air strikes, at least five failed CIA operations and seven harsh years of economic sanctions have failed to topple the Iraqi tyrant. Despite all efforts to oust him, he remains ensconced in power, playing a masterful cat-and-mouse game with U.N. arms inspectors trying -- still -- to find what's left of Iraq's deadly armory of biological and chemical weapons. If this latest showdown with Baghdad showed nothing else, it was that our allies -- in Europe as well as in the region -- no longer have the stomach to use military force. More to the point, even the most sanguine bomb-'em-back-to-the-Stone-Age strategists seem to have concluded that without the land bases denied by our Arab allies -- and without the land forces the American public has no intention of sending to the gulf again -- any U.S. bombing campaign would be more punitive than transformative. N E X T+P A G E+| Nowhere else to turn