All through the years that Saddam was doing for Washington what Washington could not do for itself, not a humanitarian flutter about what he was doing was to be heard in the world's human rights capital

I write this from what must be the world's most arbitrary capital -- Washington DC. The week has been witness to the comic opera reaction of the US establishment to yet another turn that the meandering Iraq-Kurd conflict has taken in recent days.

Since long before Saddam and his Arab Ba'ath Party seized power in Baghdad in 1968, the Kurds have been fighting for their independence not only from Iraq but from Iran and Turkey where also their territories lie. All borders are happenstance but few more so than the frontiers at which Iraq, Iran and Turkey meet.

At this trijunction, there are hardly any Iraqis, Iranians or Turks to be seen. Sensibly, they have pushed their borders as remote from their main habitations as possible. The intersection is effected in the high, barren, inhospitable mountain ranges of Kurdistan.

And if this means the Kurds find themselves divided between three countries, none of which has any particular affection for them and in all of which they are treated as savage aliens rather than honoured citizens, well that's tough luck on the Kurds and the one element that unites the security perceptions of the three countries concerned. All three of them have been fighting off Kurdish insurgency all through their existence as modern nation-states.

The insurgency in Turkish Kurdistan goes back to Ataturk's day. As Turkey lies stretched along the southern borders of what once used to be the Soviet Union, Turkey's adherence to various military pacts devised by the United States became a crucial line of defence against godless Communism in the bad old days of the Cold War. And if the price of securing that adherence meant closing US eyes to the brutal excesses of the Turkish suppression of the irrepressible Kurdish rebellion, the United States was only too ready to close its eyes.

Even as the Shah of Iran's excesses against the Kurds of his country led only to the US closing its eyes also to what Iran was doing to its Kurds. His Imperial Majesty was, after all, another ally and Iran's borders, like Turkey's, also lay along the southern borders of godless Communism.

And when the Shah of Iran fell to the prayers of the Ayatollah, the US found in Saddam the perfect surrogate to invade Iran and finish for the United States the job on which Jimmy Carter had so hopelessly fallen on his face. So all through the years that Saddam was doing for Washington what Washington could not do for itselt, not a humanitarian flutter about what Saddam was doing to his Kurds was to be heard in the world's human rights capital -- Washington DC.

All this tends to be forgotten as Clinton decides to crown his second coronation with yet another get-tough act with Saddam. Especially as the Marquess of Queensbury rules governing presidential elections say that in times of foreign policy crisis, the challenger has to back the incumbent. Dole has, therefore, been compelled -- albeit quite reluctantly -- to endorse his Democratic opponent's military incursion into Iraq even as the opponent has secured by acclamation from the Democratic Convention the right to run for a second term. The bombing of Iraq thus becomes a kind of telegenic fireworks to accompany the Democratic Convention.