Joe Conason takes off from a Washington Post report this week that Saddam, believing that the anti-war demonstrations last week expressed support for his regime, has been emboldened to stall any cooperation with the inspection process.

That is precisely the opposite of what the peace movement should want.

The Post report is highly credible because this kind of lethal illusion is characteristic of Saddam. Wily but unwise, he mistakenly assumed that the West and the U.N. would do nothing if he invaded Kuwait in 1990, and like many dictators, he is reportedly isolated from the truth about negative world opinion of him. Apparently he also shares the Bush administration’s jaundiced view of the antiwar movement as “defenders of Saddam,” which could well be his fatal error. International ANSWER and other “radical” stooges for fascism may well support Saddam, but the millions who turned out to endorse inspections rather than war don’t share ANSWER’s politics.

Although time is terribly short, there is a real answer to this problem. The Iraqi tyrant must be made to understand that the enormous crowds that turned out to oppose war don’t support him — in fact, despise him — and demand his full, complete, immediate cooperation with U.N. Resolution 1441. Salon

Conason proposes that the next venue for anti-war demonstrations be the Iraqi embassies throughout the world, and that there be a flood of emails to the Iraqi U.N. mission (MissionOfIraq@nyc.rr.com) and the Iraq News Agency (ina@uruklink.net) demanding Iraqi compliance and disarmament. I’m not sure, however, on reading this, whether Conason is making a realistic, if desperate, strategy proposal, or if he is more interested in rehabilitating the credibility of the anti-war movements with its critics.