U.S. Would Pay Heavy Price, Hussein Warns : Broadcast: In a rambling videotaped message to American people, Iraq’s leader says that war would be like Vietnam, only more costly.

WASHINGTON —  An American attack on Iraq would “repeat the Vietnam experience” but would be “more violent and (cause) more casualties,” Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said Tuesday in a taped message to the United States.

President Bush, Hussein warned, is “sending your sons to war for no purpose save fatal arrogance.”

In the often-rambling 76-minute videotaped speech, Hussein offered no new proposals for ending the eight-week-old standoff in the Persian Gulf. And he gave no sign that he is considering a withdrawal from Kuwait as Bush has demanded.

Cable News Network ran excerpts from the tape on its evening news and planned to broadcast the tape in full later, but the other three U.S. television networks aired only brief excerpts.

As he usually does, the Iraqi leader waited until the end of his speech for his main message, which was clear and direct: Iraq believes it has the capability to ensure that any war would be long, brutal and costly to the United States.

U.S. officials talk about a “quick strike,” he said. But “you should know that if Bush decides to start a war, it would not be up to him to stop it.”

Before that message, the bulk of Hussein’s broadcast was a lengthy complaint about the history of “oppression” directed against Arabs in general and Iraq in particular. Kuwait, he charged, was part of a “conspiracy” aimed at undermining Iraq’s economy, a conspiracy joined by Saudi Arabia and the United States.

American politicians were determined to follow an anti-Iraqi path because of the strength of the “Zionist lobby” that can sway U.S. elections, he asserted. He called Bush’s assertion that he leads an international effort against Iraq a “form of neo-Nazism.”

Iraq, Hussein said, “had no other alternative” but to attack Kuwait on Aug. 2. “We thank God for what has happened,” he said.

The videotape, prepared last week by Iraq in response to President Bush’s taped message to the Iraqi people Sept. 16, showed Hussein dressed in a dark suit with a red pocket handkerchief, rather than the military uniform he uses for most public appearances. The Iraqi leader sat at a desk, bare except for a microphone, flanked by a large bowl of flowers and an Iraqi flag.

Hussein spoke in Arabic, accompanied by sometimes-ungrammatical English subtitles supplied by the Iraqi government. CNN included an audio English translation that differed in some parts from the written version. Bush’s address to the Iraqi people was accompanied by audio dubbing into Arabic and Arabic subtitles, both supplied by the U.S. government.

Much of Hussein’s message was an attempt to justify Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, which largely repeated past Iraqi statements. Kuwait, he said, is legitimately part of Iraq and was unjustly “severed” from the “Iraqi motherland” by British colonialism earlier in this century.