'We will be martyrs'

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The defiant rhetoric of the Gulf War was revived Friday on the streets of Iraq's capital as war-weary Iraqis declared themselves ready to fight, but prayed still for peace.

Official Iraq spoke hotly on the day after Congress authorized President Bush to use force against Iraq. Broadcast live on state TV, a prayer leader denounced Bush as an "idiot" and the U.S. administration as "a band of terrorists."

People on the shuttered, grimy streets of Baghdad spoke of dying for President Saddam Hussein's government -- but as a grim likelihood, and without waving their fists or raising their voices.

"We will be martyrs. All of us, children, women, the old," said Haji Sudi Norhan, a 64-year-old merchant who said six family members died in the bombing of Baghdad in 1991, when a U.S.-led coalition forced Iraq to reverse its 1990 invasion of neighboring Kuwait.

"I will be the first to defend this country," Norhan added quietly in the shadowed overhang of a marbled mosque.

Iraqi leaders familiar to the West since the Gulf War revived familiar terms for the new showdown.

"We do not set the timing, but we are prepared for it at all times, even if it comes in one hour," said Iraqi Deputy Premier Tariq Aziz, speaking in Beirut, Lebanon.

"We have had the experience of a war with the U.S. in 1991," Aziz added. He noted that then -- unlike now -- Washington had the support of NATO nations and dozens of other countries.

"Bush is an idiot, a stubborn dictator, and his government a band of terrorists," prayer leader Sheik Abdul-Latif Humein declared in his Friday sermon, televised live.

"The tyrant wants us to change our religion and our values. But we tell him in the name of Islam that we are ready to die for the sake of out country, and we will defeat him," he said.

Reaction came more quietly in mosques away from TVs, and in streets and markets.

'Yes to Saddam'

"Yes, yes, yes to Saddam," an old woman muttered flatly in a city market, walking brusquely past reporters, barely slowing to mouth the slogan.

Around her in an awninged mall in the heart of Baghdad, Iraqis shopped for spaghetti, oil and spices -- goods only recently becoming a little more plentiful and affordable in Saddam's isolated regime.

Iraqis say life has gotten slightly easier in the past three or four years. More money and goods have been coming in under a U.N. program easing sanctions imposed since the Gulf War to try to force Saddam to stop cultivating banned weapons.

The Iraqi government, thanks to oil revenue from the U.N. program, has lifted salaries for engineers and some others slightly beyond the longtime national average of $25 a month.

Baghdad boasts a few more BMWs and other luxury cars on the streets these days, with those bearing connections to the Iraqi leadership at the wheels.

The size of the monthly ration box the government offers ordinary Iraqis has increased as well, Baghdad's people say.

Preoccupied with survival, Iraqis offer a range of theories for why the new threat of war with the United States is coming now.

The United States says it is acting to force Saddam to give up an arsenal of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons cultivated since before the Gulf War.

Iraqis and others in the Mideast dismiss that as a pretext.

"It's not about weapons. It's all about laying their hands on Iraq's petroleum," said Abdel Latif Abou Seid, an import-export specialist in Egypt's capital.

"They want our oil. We have no weapons of mass destruction, but we have the oil," Madros Sibal, an Iraqi Christian, said in Baghdad, carrying a half-full shopping bag home.