- Saddam Hussein, former employee of the American federal
government, was captured near a farmhouse in Tikrit in a raid performed
by other employees of the American federal government. That sounds pretty
deranged, right? Perhaps, but it is also accurate. The unifying thread
binding together everyone assembled at that Tikrit farmhouse is the simple
fact that all of them - the soldiers as well as Hussein - have received
pay from the United States for services rendered.
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- It is no small irony that Hussein, the Butcher of Baghdad,
the monster under your bed lo these last twelve years, was paid probably
ten thousand times more during his time as an American employee than the
soldiers who caught him on Saturday night. The boys in the Reagan White
House were generous with your tax dollars, and Hussein was a recipient
of their largesse for the better part of a decade.
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- If this were a Tom Clancy movie, we would be watching
the dramatic capture of Hussein somewhere in the last ten minutes of the
tale. The bedraggled dictator would be put on public trial for his crimes,
sentenced to several thousand concurrent life sentences, and dragged off
to prison in chains. The anti-American insurgents in Iraq, seeing the
sudden futility of their fight to place Hussein back into power, would
lay down their arms and melt back into the countryside. For dramatic effect,
more than a few would be cornered by SEAL teams in black facepaint and
discreetly shot in the back of the head. The President would speak with
eloquence as the martial score swelled around him. Fade to black, roll
credits, get off my plane.
-
- The real-world version is certainly not lacking in
drama. The streets of Baghdad were thronged on Sunday with mobs of Iraqi
people celebrating the final removal of a despot who had haunted their
lives since 1979. Their joy was utterly unfettered. Images on CNN of Hussein,
looking for all the world like a Muslim version of Charles Manson while
getting checked for head lice by an American medic, were as surreal as
anything one might ever see on a television.
-
- Unfortunately, the real-world script has a lot of pages
left to be turned. Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, reached
at his home on Sunday, said, "It's great that they caught him. The
man was a brutal dictator who committed terrible crimes against his people.
But now we come to rest of story. We didn't go to war to capture Saddam
Hussein. We went to war to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. Those
weapons have not been found." Ray McGovern, senior analyst and 27-year
veteran of the CIA, echoed Ritter's perspective on Sunday. "It's wonderful
that he was captured, because now we'll find out where the weapons of mass
destruction are," said McGovern with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
"We killed his sons before they could tell us."
-
- Indeed, reality intrudes. The push for war before March
was based upon Hussein's possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000
liters of botulinum toxin, 1,000,000 pounds of sarin gas, mustard gas,
and VX nerve gas, along with 30,000 munitions to deliver these agents,
uranium from Niger to be used in nuclear bombs, and let us not forget the
al Qaeda terrorists closely associated with Hussein who would take this
stuff and use it against us on the main streets and back roads of the United
States.
-
- When they found Hussein hiding in that dirt hole in
the ground, none of this stuff was down there with him. The full force
of the American military has been likewise unable to locate it anywhere
else. There is no evidence of al al Qaeda agents working with Hussein,
and Bush was forced some weeks ago to publicly acknowledge that Hussein
had nothing to do with September 11. The Niger uranium story was debunked
last summer.
-
- Conventional wisdom now holds that none of this stuff
was there to begin with, and all the clear statements from virtually everyone
in the Bush administration squatting on the public record describing the
existence of this stuff looks now like what it was then: A lot of overblown
rhetoric and outright lies, designed to terrify the American people into
supporting an unnecessary go-it-alone war. Said war made a few Bush cronies
rich beyond the dreams of avarice while allowing some hawks in the Defense
Department to play at empire-building, something they have been craving
for more than ten years.
-
- Of course, the rhetoric mutated as the weapons stubbornly
refused to be found. By the time Bush did his little 'Mission Accomplished'
strut across the aircraft carrier, the occupation was about the removal
of Saddam Hussein and the liberation of the Iraqi people. No longer were
we informed on a daily basis of the "sinister nexus between Hussein
and al Qaeda," as described by Colin Powell before the United Nations
in February. No longer were we fed the insinuations that Hussein was involved
in the attacks of September 11. Certainly, any and all mention of weapons
of mass destruction ceased completely. We were, instead, embarking on some
noble democratic experiment.
-
- The capture of Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqis dancing
in the streets of Baghdad, feeds nicely into these newly-minted explanations.
Mr. Bush and his people will use this as the propaganda coup it is, and
to great effect. But a poet once said something about tomorrow, and tomorrow
and tomorrow.
-
- "We are not fighting for Saddam," said an
Iraqi named Kashid Ahmad Saleh in a New York Times report from a week ago.
"We are fighting for freedom and because the Americans are Jews. The
Governing Council is a bunch of looters and criminals and mercenaries.
We cannot expect that stability in this country will ever come from them.
The principle is based on religion and tribal loyalties," continued
Saleh. "The religious principle is that we cannot accept to live with
infidels. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be on him, said, `Hit the infidels
wherever you find them.' We are also a tribal people. We cannot allow strangers
to rule over us."
-
- Welcome to the new Iraq. The theme that the 455 Americans
killed there, and the thousands of others who have been wounded, fell at
the hands of pro-Hussein loyalists is now gone. The Bush administration
celebrations over this capture will appear quite silly and premature when
the dying continues. Whatever Hussein bitter-enders there are will be joined
by Iraqi nationalists who will now see no good reason for American forces
to remain. After all, the new rhetoric highlighted the removal of Hussein
as the reason for this invasion, and that task has been completed. Yet
American forces are not leaving, and will not leave. The killing of our
troops will continue because of people like Kashid Ahmad Saleh. All Hussein's
capture did for Saleh was remove from the table the idea that he was fighting
for the dictator. He is free now, and the war will begin in earnest.
-
- The dying will continue because America's presence
in Iraq is a wonderful opportunity for a man named Osama bin Laden, who
was not captured on Saturday. Bin Laden, it has been reported, is thrilled
by what is happening in Iraq, and plans to throw as much violence as he
can muster at American forces there. The Bush administration spent hundreds
of billions of dollars on this Iraq invasion, not one dime of which went
towards the capture or death of the fellow who brought down the Towers
a couple of years ago. For bin Laden and his devotees, Iraq is better than
Disneyland.
-
- For all the pomp and circumstance that has surrounded
the extraction of the former Iraqi dictator from a hole in the ground,
the reality is that the United States is not one bit safer now that the
man is in chains.
-
- There will be no trial for Hussein, at least nothing
in public, because he might start shouting about the back pay he is owed
from his days as an employee of the American government. Because another
former employee of the American government named Osama is still alive and
free, our troops are still in mortal danger in Iraq.
-
- Hussein was never a threat to the United States. His
capture means nothing to the safety and security of the American people.
The money we spent to put the bag on him might have gone towards capturing
bin Laden, who is a threat, but that did not happen. We can be happy for
the people of Iraq, because their Hussein problem is over. Here in America,
our Hussein problem is just beginning. The other problem, that Osama fellow
we should have been trying to capture this whole time, remains perched
over our door like the raven.
-
- ______
-
- William Rivers Pitt is the Managing Editor of truthout.org.
He is a New York Times and international best-selling author of three books
- "War On Iraq," available from Context Books, "The Greatest
Sedition is Silence," available from Pluto Press, and "Our Flag,
Too: The Paradox of Patriotism," available in August from Context
Books.
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- © : t r u t h o u t 2003
- http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/121503A.shtml
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