|
Will
Saddam's capture prove to be a trap for Bush?
By
Mathew Maavak
Online
Journal Contributing Writer
December
14, 2003�It was pretty much of a shock to learn of Saddam Hussein's
capture so soon. Then again, come to think of it, no! George W.
Bush's popularity is dipping badly and those niggling questions
about Sept 11 are now gaining feverish momentum.
This
capture comes timely for the incumbent, and the immediate propaganda
value will be enormous. But has Bush walked into a trap? Pretty
likely, and the next few weeks or months are going to be crucial.
Saddam's fate must now either be decided quickly (through an Iraqi
bullet to his head?) or be prolonged long enough after the 2004
elections, through a series of legal wrangling. If the second
scenario works out, there is there every likelihood of an
uncustomary "adherence to international law" with teams of amici
curiae given a free hand to wrangle over his legal rights. It
will buy lots of time, provided the man shuts up.
This
capture runs against the grain of obvious logic. Saddam is no Manual
Noriega and he will command far more attention than Slobodan
Milosevic. The video clip of him being examined by a doctor was
typical of both US bravado and myopia. With him in "expert" medical
hands, there will be some very hard explaining to do if anything
untoward happened�a death or an unusually cooperative ex-dictator
known for his wily tricks. Maybe a Soviet-style psychiatric
institutionalization might jog his memory, one that will suit his
hospitable hosts.
According
to the BBC, Saddam was found holed up in a tiny cellar, not the
secret command bunker we were implicitly led to believe, on and off.
An argument can be made that this 'spider hole' contributed to his
elusiveness. He just needed a food chain, from very few sources.
Still, it is not a good one. For one, it will smash the Saddam
in-the-secret bunker image that his Fedayeen found to be way
over-hyped. There is something wrong here. Saddam may have indeed
chosen a six by eight feet hole for safety as he knew only too well
about the pandemic Arab treachery and the US$25 million bounty,
especially after his sons died under a hail of US bullets, and his
sons-in-law earlier, with his own blessings.
In Victor
Ostrovsky's book By Way of Deception, a planned Palestinian
terror attack was once thwarted by the discovery of an out-of-place
order for quality beef. The scent of a pre-attack feast was too
strong to ignore. With thousands of US troops�many of them from
elite units�combing through Tikrit, how this genocidal criminal
avoided capture until now is a mystery. They only needed 600
for this operation. No one in Tikrit knew where he was? Follow the
money the trail, follow the food take-aways! There was US$750,000
with him. The trails were aplenty; all were leading to the same
man.
This is
indeed good news for the Iraqis and bad news for the
Americans. Thus far, he has served the raison d'etre for the
war, a tenuous one, it can be argued. Now what? The propaganda value
of a shadowy Saddam, capable of wreaking havoc was inestimable. Much
of that locus standi has now vanished. The Iraqis can now
rise up to say, "The dictator is gone. Thank you, now please leave .
. ." Is this going to happen? No! The US wasn't there for Saddam,
and I don't think it was there for the oil, either. Sabotaged oil
pipelines do create a literal smokescreen and a justification for
continued occupation. Now, we shall see the true face of Iraqi
guerrillas�a combination of nationalists and Islamists that the
American media conveniently blamed on mastermind Saddam.
The
euphoria will die down; the pot shots will get more frenzied. A car
bomb killed at least 17 people near Baghdad yesterday. The joyous
staccatos seen in the city just show how many weapons of celebration
are around. They can be trained in a different direction another day
soon. Are these the first salvoes that will shatter the myth of a
"liberation" project?
It was in
the White House's best interest to have had Saddam killed during the
capture. Maybe US soldiers were still sore after the turkey dinner
fiasco, or they were zealously carrying out their duty. Hardly any
sane person would have wept for Saddam under any circumstances. He
could have been handed over�quite innocently�to the Iraqis for a
summary, Ceausescu-style execution. Gen Douglas MacArthur's quick
disposal of Gen Tomoyski Yamashita in WWII is no longer quite
possible. Like Gen MacArthur's macho posturing during his first
meeting with a humbled Emperor Hirohito, the sight of a medic
clinically examining a beaten, disheveled Saddam, instead of a
defiant maniac, was really a bad propaganda shot . . . So,
this was the one who struck fear into the hearts of
"freedom-loving" people until 24 hours back?
What can
Saddam do? He just needs to open his big mouth, after a shave, a
good brush and gargles with Listerine He will recount all those
scummy collusions with the US, which went right through the Kuwaiti
occupation. Why were those Shi'ites betrayed? Who talked to whom?
What was the deal? What about the other deals? Clips of exhumed
bodies from that bloody crackdown more than a decade back was shown
alongside Saddam's ignominious capture on BBC. Another pictorial
blunder for the coalition! Was the BBC acting sneaky again? Those
bodies incriminate Saddam and the Anglo-American
alliance.
In fact,
the incriminating evidence will be immeasurable. Civilian deaths,
supply of arms, the semi-proxy war on Iran, will all come out of the
horse's mouth. For every allegation, Saddam can retort, "Tu
quoque (you too)!" It's a time-honored legal tactic,
valid and destructive to the point that Hermann Goering was able to
put up a brilliant defense during the Nuremberg trials. The man,
much known for his follies and bizarre vanities, was just cured of a
morphine addiction before being marched into the defendant's box.
Even dope heads can pile up rebuttals to every allegation. Goering's
statements are now memorable; they still linger in the minds of
those caught in this New World Disorder. A defense by any tyrant can
be slow poison. It can dent the gratitude of "liberated" peoples for
ages to come. The Soviet General R.A. Rudenko's rape of Poland, and
the subsequent Katyn forest massacre can make many Europeans
skeptical about any war of liberation. Nazi war criminals repeatedly
pointed to this famous allied cover up in their defense. How this
led to many of them missing the hangman's noose is a little
uncertain.
If Bush
needs to win the next election, he needs to silence Saddam,
Guantanamo-style, in seclusion. That will raise suspicions. Any
medical mishap or anomaly will also raise suspicions. Not a very
good situation, is it?
How are
they going to answer their former ally, when every meeting with
Donald Rumsfeld alone is going to be recounted in detail? Bribe and
intimidate all those who can corroborate those shady minutiae? One
possibility but a lot of it is already out in the public domain. If
the dictator was ever that good in understanding power, he would
have prepared for this day long back, with stashes of documents
secreted away for his eventual defense. There is a likelihood, as
early newscasts indicate, that Saddam might be handed over to the
Iraqis, neither the ones brutalized nor the rational ones, but the
ones most likely to parade him to the execution grounds, a brief
stop before the onward journey to one of his former palaces, where,
they will set their collaboration with US authorities firmly in
stone. The sands of Arabia are a bit too fickle for that.
There is
another possibility that whoever thought this through had done his
homework very well, and the timing was impeccable. If true, students
of propaganda will be using this incident as a case study for
decades to come. Yet, it's too early to say anything for sure . . .
We don't know all the facts yet.
Copyright � 2003 Mathew
Maavak |
