If this happens, then the US will have transformed him from the hated oppressor into the romantic, almostmythological hero of Arab and Muslim resistance, the Salah al-Din of his dreams. He will be seen as the manwho could do to the United States what the mujahideen of Afghanistan did to the Soviet Union: drawing it sofar into an unwinnable war that its economy and its popular support collapse. The longer he survives, the morethe population - not just of Iraq, but of all Muslim countries - will turn towards him, and the less likely awestern victory becomes. The US will almost certainly then have engineered the improbable chimaera it claimsto be chasing: the marriage of Saddam's well-armed secular brutality and Al Qaeda's global insurrection. Evenif, having held out for many weeks or months, Saddam Hussein is found and killed, his spirit may continue toinspire a revolt throughout the Muslim world, against the Americans, the British and, of course, Israel.Pakistan's unpopular leader, Pervez Musharraf, would then find himself in serious trouble. If, as seems likelyin these circumstances, he is overthrown in an Islamic revolt, then a fundamentalist regime, deeply hostile tothe West, would possess real nuclear weapons, primed and ready to fire.