We Caught The Wrong Guy
Published on: December 15th, 2003
Modified on: December 15th, 2003
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout Perspective
12-15-3
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.
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.
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.
© : t r u t h o u t 2003
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/121503A.shtml
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