DUBAI, 25 March 2003 — Iraqi President Saddam Hussein taunted his tormentors once again yesterday suggesting not only that he is alive but also very much kicking.

Attempts by London and Washington to bury the man who has wielded brute power in Baghdad for three decades, proved premature as he popped up on Iraqi state television for the second time since the war began last Thursday.

The 65-year-old survivor offered clear evidence that he had witnessed at least the early stages of the US-led war to oust his regime.

Saddam made repeated references to continuing battles with invading US and British forces in the southern Iraqi town of Umm Qasr, congratulating Iraqi troops on their stiff resistance, and to the advance of allied troops toward Baghdad.

US experts already conceded a first speech aired Thursday shortly after an attempt to “decapitate” him with cruise missiles appeared to have been the real Saddam, and not one of several suspected doubles.

However, with security a life-or-death concern in Baghdad, it has never been clear whether such speeches are live or recorded.

But that mattered little as the latest battle references were enough to mock the repeated affirmations of British and US officials that Saddam had been at least hurt if not finished off in Thursday’s pre-emptive strike.

Even late Sunday, as the United States backed off on assertions he might be dead, British Foreign Office Minister Mike O’Brien was still announcing that London had information that Saddam had been carted off in an ambulance.

Not only did the “great leader” show himself to the world, he boldly predicted “victory is near”.

His crowing will have done nothing to reassure US and British generals who have found the going tough in the first five days of a war which many expected to be a swift campaign.

Saddam offered a promise of worse to come.

“The more they advance into Iraqi territory, the more they head into a dead end,” he said amid reports that US and British forces were 150 km (90 miles) from the capital.

The war would be “long and with heavy consequences” for coalition forces, he warned. “Hit your enemy with force and precision,” Saddam told the troops. “Cut their throats. The enemy is stuck in Iraqi territory. Hit it.”

“Victory is near,” he assured them.

The whole televised show only added to the growing impression that the world’s mightiest army faces an enemy who will not surrender.

Indeed, Saddam has been a master of deception in somehow turning defeat into victory. Terrible bloodshed in the stalemated 1980-1988 war with Iran and the disastrous invasion of Kuwait in 1990 are today celebrated with great state pomp by the nationalist Baath regime.

A life spent avoiding would-be assassins, a prison escape dressed up as a woman, temporary exile and a long battle to win over total power present a picture of a redoubtable foe.

His survival instincts have become infamous.

Saddam has repeatedly been written off, by diplomats and foreign doctors queuing up to tell how the Iraqi president was riddled with cancer or opposition figures relating coup attempts and shootouts.

A rare public appearance at a huge military parade in Baghdad in January 2001 saw Saddam fire off a shotgun held in one hand, defying rumors he was weak and dying.

It nonetheless led elements of the Iraqi opposition to claim Saddam had over-exerted himself, suffered a stroke and died.

Early predictions that the war would be a four-day romp have been confounded, and even if victory for the American-led forces still seems assured it looks like a long slog ahead.

While the first allied casualties and the parading of POWs on Iraqi television have brought home war’s reality to Western living-rooms, for many commentators more relevant is what has so far not happened: the much-predicted spontaneous uprising in “liberated” areas.

“The initial Rumsfeld plan, which banked on the rapid collapse of the regime and on American troops being welcomed as liberators, has failed. Even in the south the Shiites, who are supposed to be hostile to Saddam Hussein, are putting up resistance,” said former French chief of staff Jacques Lanxade.

French interpretations of the conflict need to be weighed in the light of the country’s deep-seated opposition to it: politicians and analysts have an interest in seeing their doubts fulfilled.

But corroborating reports from the ground in southern Iraq suggest that the reaction of ordinary people in areas taken by the advancing forces has been wary rather than rapturous — certainly a far cry from the waving crowds lining the streets that many hoped for.

This may of course be because Iraqis want clear evidence of a Western victory before they demonstrate their joy, or because they are intimidated by Saddam loyalists in their midst, but the fact remains that the allied push has not so far been a triumphal procession.

Some analysts of the war — again they tend to be its critics — say that by its high-handed determination to make war the US administration has succeeded in boosting a sense of nationalism among Iraqis that transcends religious and clan affiliations or even opposition to Saddam Hussein.

This matters because much of Washington’s justification for the war rests on its being seen as a moral campaign to free 24 million people from oppression.

“The American strategy is a gamble,” senior Pentagon adviser Edward Luttwak told the BBC. He pointed out that the 250,000 coalition troops in the arena are far fewer than would normally be needed to invade a foreign country. “They are banking on the cheering crowds.”

The official American and British view is that popular reaction will change once it is clear Saddam Hussein’s defeat is imminent.

However in the meantime the allies have to contend with a regime that seems content to surrender vast amounts of empty desert terrain in the apparent hope of luring the enemy into costly street-fighting in the towns and cities.

“The Iraqis have based their strategy on refusing combat in open country. They want to steer the American advance in order to draw the enemy into the towns, which is the only place the Anglo-Saxon technological advantage cannot find expression,” said French military analyst Jean-Louis Dufour.

The Anglo-American forces would then have the classic dilemma of liberal democracies that embark on war: How far are they prepared to go in lives lost and images of mass destruction beamed around the world in order to achieve their objective?

By use of its new hi-tech guided missiles, the United States has so far targeted its massive fire-power with awesome precision — to the point where correspondents based in Baghdad report daily life continuing almost as normal despite the obliteration of government buildings. But without the longed-for uprising from within, concluding the war may require more ruthless tactics, and Saddam Hussein is undoubtedly counting on public opinion in the West not having the stomach to see it through. Strong nerves may soon be required.

Making clever use of guerrilla warfare and flanking tactics, Iraqi forces have shattered confident predictions of an easy victory. In a pronounced shift in strategy from the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam has abandoned static, Soviet-style warfare to allow his ground forces maximum autonomy to lure their adversaries into messy street battles.

As commander-in-chief, Saddam earlier this month divided Iraq into four military zones --— each having substantial powers — in order to avoid the communications breakdown that proved disastrous to Iraqi forces in their 1991 war.

Heavy weapons are no longer concentrated in large centers easily detectable by allied warplanes. In each of the cities they have attempted to secure in the war to date, Umm Qasr, Nasiriyah and Basra, US and British forces have come up against spirited resistance from small groups of fast-moving Iraqi units capable of setting ambushes despite the intervention of US aircraft and artillery batteries.

At Umm Qasr, a strategic Iraqi Gulf port, US and British troops have been struggling over the past four days to neutralize lingering pockets of Iraqi resistance.

Allied troops operating near the southern city of Nassiriyah on Sunday found their rear positions under attack by Iraqis wielding rocket propelled grenades. A US logistical support unit on the outskirts of the city sustained heavy fire from the Iraqis and ended up with 12 of its members unaccounted for.