In Baghdad, Slogans of War, Talk of Hardships : Iraq: People appear fiercely loyal to Saddam Hussein. But there are bread lines and a growing black market.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — In a dusty field at sunset Sunday, hundreds of balding Iraqi teachers, white-haired office workers and paunchy professionals practiced going to war with America.

Dressed in fatigues and armed to the teeth, they practiced firing mortars. They shouldered powerful new rocket launchers, and they charged invisible enemies with empty machine guns, shouting all the while such slogans as “Ask the sky: Saddam is beloved. Ask the sky: We will fight. Ask the sky until we die.”

Meet Saddam Hussein’s reservists, Iraq’s volunteer Popular Army that is among the sights and sounds of a city preparing for war--perhaps against the entire Western world.

It was a publicity event, to be sure, a photo opportunity organized by the Iraqi government for the handful of Western television crews and newspaper reporters who have been permitted to report on the Persian Gulf crisis from inside the country at the heart of it.

But the Popular Army’s evening training camp was among the stark images that a Times reporter saw during the first day behind what may well become enemy lines, and it helped illustrate the depth of control President Hussein and his monolithic Arab Baath Socialist Party still appear to enjoy in this sprawling capital of 5 million people.

There certainly was no shortage of symbolic imagery of that omnipresence. Hussein’s first larger-than-life portrait appears on the roadside just a few miles out of Saddam International Airport, his right arm outstretched in greeting a few hundred feet from a second billboard that declares, “Welcome to Baghdad. Capital of Arab Saddam.”

And throughout Baghdad, there are literally hundreds of Saddam Hussein billboards, some picturing the Iraqi leader in uniform and beret, others in a traditional Arab kaffiyeh, still others in a business suit, but, in all of them, smiling and relaxed.

Even at the Ishtar Sheraton Hotel, where the journalists are staying, a 6-foot-high portrait of the Iraqi president smiles down on the lobby, and the only hint of crisis is a sign outside the rooftop elevator announcing, “Please be informed that the nightclub will be closed until further notice.”

Outside, in the souks and shopping centers that provide the Iraqis’ daily bread, there are few signs on the surface that the world’s economic stranglehold on Iraq is having an immediate effect.

Most shops were well-stocked with dry goods, canned food and general consumer products, and traffic appeared to be moving normally on the city’s broad lanes and boulevards.

Just beneath the surface, though, there was talk of growing hardship. Bread lines were seen in parts of the city, a byproduct of a strict government policy warning that food hoarders will be shot. There was evidence that the black-market economy is growing. And, in sunbaked Baghdad, where day temperatures soar to well over 100 degrees, one of the biggest sacrifices of daily life is ice cream--the Arab summer staple that requires two key commodities that are running low, sugar and powdered milk.

But there is little evidence of any dissent against an iron-willed president who has led Iraq in war during most of the past decade. Taxi drivers, shopkeepers and civilians approached on the street all voiced strong support for Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, for his image of defiance and for the tough stand he is taking against the West.

“You can ask any Iraqi, and he will tell you that we feel Kuwait is a part of our country that was taken away from us,” said Moyat Sayed, a 55-year-old English teacher, who similarly said he believes Iraq should possess chemical weapons because the Americans and Soviets possess them.

“The mentality is different here,” he added, in explaining that Iraq also feels justified in keeping Westerners as virtual hostages in Baghdad and Kuwait because the Americans forced Japanese into U.S. internment camps during World War II. “The Arab people support Iraq’s invasion,” he said, “only some Arab governments don’t agree because they don’t represent their people.”

Perhaps not by coincidence, that is the same line broadcast several times daily on government radio and television and carried in the state-run newspapers in what, taken together, ranks among the world’s most effective propaganda machines.

A case in point was Sunday’s edition of the government’s English-language daily, The Baghdad Observer, which led with the headline: “President Hussein Says U.S. Occupation of Arab Sacred Land Is a Crime.” Another prominent story reported the government’s decision to permit the 52 wives and children of American diplomats stopped here en route from Kuwait to Turkey to leave Iraq. And, throughout the paper, the editors clearly sought to whip up anti-American sentiment.

“Arab-Americans Harassed, Threatened With Death,” shouted a front-page headline over an obscure wire story from Boston reporting on a 41-year-old American of Arab descent who received death threats in that city. Another front-page story reported on anti-American demonstrations in many Arab and European capitals and quoted a Jordanian Islamic leader as shouting “Death to America, death to Israel, death to the emirs (Kuwait’s exiled rulers)!” Surprisingly, though, very little such sentiment seems to have reached Baghdad’s grass-roots. A taxi driver at the airport, for example, asked The Times reporter his nationality.

“American,” he answered.

The driver beamed and held out his hand. “America very good. America good. Welcome. Welcome.”

Then he paused for a second and added, “Well, America so-so. There are some problems there, but inshallah (if God wills) they will soon be gone, and we will be friends.”

Although hardly as effusive, even members of Hussein’s Popular Army took time out from their training exercises Sunday night to explain that the gulf crisis is not yet a confrontation between Iraqis and Americans, but between governments.

Modhaffar Abad, a 48-year-old professor at Baghdad College, leaned his AK-47 assault rifle against his leg and said, in fluent English, that he spent two enjoyable years in New York on a scholarship in the early 1980s. “American people are very friendly,” he said.

“Would you now fight America?” Abad was asked.

“In fact, yes,” he said.

“Would you kill Americans?”

“If the soldier will come to my country, yes. If somebody should come to your house and try to enter by force, you must kill him.

“Look, I’ll be frank with you. We are not against anybody. We are not against any person. We are against anyone who says Iraq is going to get put down. Personally, we have to defend our country.

“And if my friend in the United States is going to be a certain person invading my country, I will kill this friend to defend my brother. You are my friend now, but if you are going to take this machine gun and kill me, my brother will use it to kill you. That is the way here.”

More on Gulf Crisis

SOVIET STANCE--Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze said the Soviet Union will let other countries enforce the blockade.:A6

MISJUDGMENT--Observers suggest Hussein has miscalculated Western and Arab responses to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.:A6

WAR OF WORDS--Iraq appears to have the upper hand in a propaganda battle that is being waged in the Mideast.:A7

WALDHEIM CRITICIZED--Kurt Waldheim returned from Baghdad to praise in Austria but criticism from the West.:A7