LONDON/NEW YORK: In London a Jordanian prince attends a meeting of Iraqi army defectors who are discussing what to do with their country once Saddam is dead and gone. In northern Iraq American intelligence operatives gather information on minefields and Iraqi troop dispositions. In Baghdad Saddam Hussein’s eldest son Uday warns of a meltdown in the Middle East when war comes. And officials reveal that Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon’s second most senior figure, will visit Turkey next week to talk tactics and that Tony Blair has been invited to travel to Camp David later this week to meet President George Bush and discuss plans for war. The signs appear unambiguous. This weekend the message is clear. Get ready for war.

Or is it? Last week’s frenzied speculation about imminent conflict has raised as many questions as it has provided answers. Why were officials at the Pentagon, the State Department or London’s Ministry of Defence leaking so liberally? Was it a smoke screen for some secret hitherto undisclosed strategy? Was the war fever engineered to destabilize Saddam Hussein? Or were Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and company merely distracting attention from domestic difficulties?

The first leaks came 10 days ago when a five-inch thick dossier detailing plans for an invasion of Iraq involving 250,000 men was handed to the New York Times. The story went swiftly around the world. Last Sunday, The Observer published the results of our own investigation: into the growing indications that the Americans hoped to use Jordan as a jumping-off point for at least some units in the assault. For the rest of the week a series of stories indicating that a war with Iraq in the new year was certain shared the headlines with the appalling news from the world’s stock markets.

To some it was proof of cynical manipulation. In recent weeks there has been a plunge in public confidence in the ability of the President and his party to manage the economy and the administration’s own personal honesty.

Critics of Bush point out that the battle plan was leaked just as the sleaze scandals reached a climax and began to implicate the President himself.

But The Observer has been told that the leak did not come from the White House. Instead it came from within the Pentagon, from the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top professional soldiers and planners who drew it up in the first place. That opens up another possible angle entirely.

It may well be that the leak was from soldiers opposed to a war the President and their civilian political masters, led by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, want them to fight.

Powell and Cheney have despised each other ever since. Powell is known to be opposed to another war against Iraq. According to senior officials serving under Powell at the State Department, as well as others in the Pentagon, the leaks are part of a sophisticated campaign to raise the stakes before a war could be declared with their approval. Thus another mid-week leak suggesting there was no casus belli that would allow America to commence hostilities. Saddam would have — for instance, say officials — to invade a neighbour, re-commence the genocide against Shia Muslims or Kurdish minorities or field a nuclear weapon.

To those who oppose the war the leaks serve a useful secondary purpose. As the reports of American intentions were read in Baghdad there were signs that, despite Uday and his father’s rhetoric, unease was growing among the Iraqi elite. The Iraqi Foreign Ministry was swift to point out that it had not been to blame for the collapse nine days ago of the talks with the UN over the readmission of inspectors searching for the nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry Saddam is suspected of holding — or trying to build.

The Iraqis said they were willing to talk again and offered to provide the Americans with information about airmen shot down during the Gulf war. Washington dismissed the offer as a ‘PR stunt’.

But if Powell and his allies are trying to bluff the Iraqis into concessions while simultaneously undercutting the hawks in the administration, it is a dangerous game.

So if it comes to war, what are the Americans’ options? Plan- A, the one that was leaked, involves the big battalions. More than 200,000 men, in three major battle groups backed by thousands of aircraft, effectively invade Iraq.

Quite where they do it from is largely dependent on regional power politics, but if just two of the nations surrounding Saddam’s state decide to take a risk to help America then it is feasible. From Turkey, the most secular of the states that neighbour Iraq, large numbers of troops could push through into the northern part of the country currently run by the Kurds.

For the Turks the fear is that their own Kurdish minority will try to use the opportunity of a war to carve out their own state. Wolfowitz’s visit is designed to allay those concerns.

If Turkey is on board then all the Americans have to do is convince one of the Gulf states to risk domestic unrest by helping Washington. The most likely candidate is Kuwait from where a second battle group, bolstered by some of the 300 tanks propositioned there, would start pushing up from the south, perhaps aided by amphibious landings.

From Jordan, special forces units would launch lightning raids to knock out non-conventional weapons installations, any missiles Saddam might be deploying and, it is hoped, find and incapacitate the Iraqi dictator himself. US military planners reckon they have 48 hours from the start of hostilities to get to Saddam before he decides to use whatever nuclear, biological or chemical weapons he might have.

And throughout the whole operation more than 1,000 aircraft, including B52 Stratofortresses, B2 Spirit stealth bombers and drones would attack command and control centres. It would be the first genuine ‘network centric’ war — as strategists are now calling it. Ground troops would be left without orders while hi-tech missiles destroy everything that is needed to keep an army going.

In such circumstances the Iraqi military forces, considerably weakened after 11 years of sanctions, are expected to disintegrate rapidly. Last week Iraqi opposition figures in London told The Observer of their confidence that the army would not fight — not even the feared 100,000-strong Republican Guard.

So Plan-B: the Surgical Strike — may be preferred. That involves a series of strikes by precision munitions and special forces that effectively disarm the dictator. While Saddam and his 300,000 men are disorientated more special forces units would help locals and defecting soldiers to take over.

“What is most worrying is that there is no clear map through to the endgame,” said Hollis, ‘the prognosis for stability is not great. How do we avoid a bloody settling of scores? How do we stop the Iraqi people turning against the Americans?’

At the London conference last week what would happen after Saddam went was the main topic of conversation. “Given Iraq’s 40-year history of repression, it is highly likely that blood will fill the streets,” said Major-General Saad Obeidi, in charge of psychological warfare before defecting in 1986. “We have to prevent this.”

As yet no one seems to know how.—Dawn/The Observer News Service.