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THE ROVING
EYE
THE RAT
TRAP
Part 1: How Saddam may still nail
Bush
By Pepe Escobar
BAKU -
The Christmas blockbuster from the Pentagon studios was
a dream. This was the new Roman Empire at its peak -
better than Ridleys Scott's Gladiator: a
real, captive barbarian emperor, paraded on the
Circus Maximus of world television. The barbarian was
not a valiant warrior - but a bum. He was not hiding in
a nuclear-proof bunker armed to his teeth - he was
caught like "a rat" in a "spider hole". He was nothing
but a pathetic ghost taking a medical for the world to
see. What the bluish pictures did not show, though, is
that former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asset
Saddam Hussein is a reader of the great Russian writer
Fyodor Dostoevsky. An Arabic copy of Crime and
Punishment was found in a shack near the "spider
hole" where he was captured.
Saddam surely now
know very well what he needs to do. He won't be consumed
with remorse like Dostoevsky's character Raskolnikov,
who committed murder. For the moment Saddam may be
"taking the Fifth" - in the words of an American
interrogator, referring the the fifth amendment of the
US constitution under which a person has the right to
remain silent until charged in court. But Saddam will
wait until he gets some rest, a very good lawyer, and
then he will start talking.
The capture of
Saddam was the best Christmas gift that President George
W Bush could expect from his foreign policy adviser -
God. Or was it? AlJazeera television has quoted Egyptian
writer Sayyid Nassar saying that "by shaving his beard,
a symbol of virility in Iraq and in the Arab world, the
Americans committed an act that symbolizes humiliation
in our region". Revenge could be imminent - and it will
pour in avalanches, not from Saddam of course, but from
wounded Iraqi and Arab pride.
Holes big enough
to accommodate armies of spiders remain in the
carefully-choreographed Pentagon screenplay. Suppose
Saddam - well versed in the treachery levels in the Arab
world and well aware that a close family friend had
denounced his sons Uday and Qusay - had indeed chosen to
hide in a hole in the ground only a few hours before his
capture. It's still remarkable how the "rat" managed to
elude capture when thousands of American soldiers were
combing every inch of the Sunni triangle for months. And
if he really had US$750,000 with him in $100 bills, it
wouldn't take a lot of human intelligence to just follow
the money.
It's also remarkable that someone who
foiled all sorts of assassination plots chose to be
holed up in a farm near his hometown - the most obvious
place where he could be found - and without any
protection. Only two of his cousins from the al-Douria
tribe were with him at the time of the arrest. Unlike
the Pentagon version, sources tell Asia Times Online
that they were simply peasants, not Saddam's bodyguards.
Where were the protecting hordes of paramilitary
Fedayeen of Saddam, and the still-loyal Mukhabarat
intelligence agents?
Not only one of his
daughters, but local villagers, are absolutely convinced
that he was drugged before the capture, a vital element
in the Pentagon choreography to show to the world -
especially the Arab world - the picture of a disoriented
bum. Saddam was carrying his pistol. So no one will ever
know whether he had any intention of using it - against
his attackers or against himself. The "documentation"
found with Saddam is also very suspicious, as it might
conveniently contain a list of names of people leading
the Iraqi resistance in the Sunni triangle.
But
all of this is speculation. The reality is that Saddam
is in US custody, so what now? From Saddam's point of
view, he has a better chance to tell his side of the
story - including the real circumstances of his capture
- now that his legacy as a courageous Saladinesque
warrior facing up to America is in ruins. Living the
rest of his life as a nightmarish remake of The
Fugitive was definitely not an option. He may not
have chosen it, but he may not regret public humiliation
in an American commercial instead of doing a James
Cagney in White Heat under a hail of bullets.
Only three months ago, this correspondent met
scores of people in Baghdad and the Sunni triangle whom
were absolutely convinced that former CIA friend Saddam
and Washington were still involved in some sort of
secret deal. Now European, Asian and Arab diplomats and
businessmen are commenting off the record that there's
every possibility that the CIA, or even Bush himself,
may have struck a deal with his number two embodiment of
evil - number one being the still elusive Osama bin
Laden. They are all suspicious of the impeccable timing:
and if a deal was not in the cards, then the CIA knew
exactly where Saddam was for days or weeks, and were
just waiting for the moment of maximum impact. Saddam
was captured exactly when Halliburton was under extreme
pressure for effectively swindling American taxpayers.
Bush himself said on the record that if there was any
proof of wrongdoing - and there is conclusive proof of
overcharging - the company would face consequences. It
didn't: the story - too dangerous, too close to vice
president and former Halliburton boss Dick Cheney -
simply disappeared from the news.
Whatever his
ghastly criminal record, already debated to exhaustion,
Saddam understands power extremely well: that's how he
managed to keep it for three decades. He had plenty of
time to prepare his exit - before the "fall" of Baghdad
- and he certainly had plenty of time to prepare his
re-entry in case he was caught. He may well have piles
of compromising documents to use in his defense in what
will certainly be the trial of the centuries - current
and previous.
World leaders are now falling over
themselves calling for a fair trail, in Iraq, under
international standards. The Iraqi occupation is
absolutely illegal, so Washington will not even consider
trying Saddam in the Hague, like Slobodan Milosevic.
Unlike George W Bush - whose Texas state allowed
executions when he was governor - United Nations
secretary general Kofi Annan was quick to say that the
UN never sets up a court which carries the death
penalty. Amnesty International insists that Saddam
should "not be subjected to torture or ill-treatment"
and must "receive a fair trial". An Iraqi version of the
post-World War 2 Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals
will be totally illegitimate and a political disaster
for the Americans. So the consensus is moving towards a
public trial, in an Iraqi court, conducted by Iraqis,
with some international judges, and meeting
international standards. The Iraqi Governing Council
(IGC) is also in favor of this latter option. But
there's a huge problem: a tribunal in Iraq, like
everything else at the moment, will have no legitimacy
in the eyes of the Iraqis and the Arab world because it
will be subservient to the occupying power. One can
already see the daily guerrilla attacks outside the
courtroom. The trial will only make sense if there is a
real representative Iraqi government in place, which
will not happen until June next year at the earliest.
Saddam's j'accuse
Saddam then
will finally have an international platform. Everybody
knows in advance the heinous crimes of which he will be
accused. But at least then he could finally expose the
hypocrisy and double standards of the West as a whole,
and specifically America.
With the help of a
battery of legal eagles, he can prove that there were
never any weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and he can
prove there's no evidence to support Bush's claims, last
March, that he had "trained and financed al-Qaeda".
He can expand on how, in February, slightly
before the onset of "shock and awe", his negotiators
were delivering everything to Washington on a plate:
free access to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to
look for WMD anywhere in Iraq; full support for the
American-penned road map in the Middle East; and the
right for American companies to exploit Iraq's oil. The
neo-conservative "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle, who
had been calling for an invasion of Iraq for years, was
one of the contacts of Saddam's negotiators. The defense
will certainly call Perle to testify.
On March
17, Bush said that "should Saddam Hussein choose
confrontation, the American people can know that every
measure has been taken to avoid war". Bush lied - and it
would be very easy for Saddam to prove that he did
everything to find a diplomatic alternative, while
Washington did everything to prevent it. He can prove
that Bush and his European allies - Britain's Tony
Blair, Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and President Jose
Aznar of Spain - lied to a world public opinion which
was overwhelmingly against the war.
He can talk
of endless collusions with Washington, right up to the
day he invaded Kuwait in August 1990. Still today,
nobody has told the real story preceding the invasion of
Kuwait. He will say how at the time Washington led him
to the conclusion that an invasion was "acceptable". The
defense will certainly call April Glaspie, the American
ambassador in Baghdad and the last American official to
see Saddam eye-to-eye five days before the invasion. She
was "retired" by the State Department and has been
conveniently silent ever since.
Using equipment
bought from National Security Council chief Brent
Scowcroft's company, Kuwait was involved in
slant-drilling in Iraq in 1989, and was pumping out
something like US$14 billion in oil from underneath
Iraqi territory. The territory from which Kuwait was
drilling had indeed been Iraqi territory. Saddam will
say that Glaspie told him the US was neutral in the
dispute. Saddam will also say that in 1989, while the
CIA was advising Kuwait to put pressure on Iraq, a
CIA-affiliated think tank was advising him to put
pressure on Kuwait. And at the same time, Bush senior's
administration was issuing a secret directive that
resulted in billions of dollars of arm sales to Saddam.
He can talk about how, why and by whom the
Shi'ite intifada was betrayed after the end of the first
Gulf War in 1991. He will give American names. He will
detail the American deal under which the US was to have
helped the Shi'ites. He will prove that those exhumed
bodies incriminate the Anglo-American alliance as much
as himself.
He will keep talking all the way
back to 1989, to the famous meeting on December 20, 1983
in Baghdad with his friend Donald Rumsfeld, now Pentagon
chief. The fuzzy photo of Rumsfeld eagerly shaking hands
with Saddam Hussein, observed by foreign minister Tarik
Aziz - which simply vanished from corporate media - will
be one of the stars of the trial. Rumsfeld was sent by
then president Ronald Reagan to mend relations between
the US and Iraq only one month after Reagan had adopted
a secret directive - still partly classified - to help
Saddam fight the Islamic revolution in Iran. Saddam will
detail how this close cooperation led to Washington
selling loads of military equipment and also chemical
precursors, insecticides, aluminum tubes, missile
components and anthrax to him. Of course he will be
condemned for using the lot to gas Iranian soldiers and
then civilian Kurds in Halabja, northern Iraq, in 1988.
But he will also prove that the selling of these
chemical weapons was organized by Rumsfeld.
He
will prove that American - and European - companies
exported biological viruses for at least four years to
various Iraqi government agencies and other companies,
with licenses from the US Commerce Department, and thus
helped him to build up his crude weapons of mass
destruction program - totally dissolved after the first
Gulf War.
He will prove that Washington was
perfectly aware at the time that he was using chemical
weapons. He will remind anyone how, after the Halabja
massacre, the Pentagon engaged in a massive
disinformation campaign, spinning that the massacre was
caused by Iran. He will prove how Dick Cheney, as
Pentagon chief from March 1989 onwards, continued to
cooperate very closely with him. He will prove how the
military aid - secretly organized by Rumsfeld - also
enabled him to invade Kuwait in 1990. He will remind
anyone again of how, between 1991 and 1998, UN weapons
inspectors conclusively established that the US - as
well as British, German and French firms - had sold
missile parts and chemical and bacteriological material
to him.
He will recall the Iran-Iraq war in
great detail, and how, during the war, the CIA always
sent him a team to deliver battlefield intelligence
obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance planes. The
defense will call CIA officials who signed documents
sharing US satellite intelligence with both Iraq and
Iran - so Washington could be sure of a permanent
military stalemate.
Incriminating evidence
against all levers of power in Washington will be
immeasurable. There will be a non-stop roll-call of
civilian deaths and non-stop supply of arms. It will go
all the way back to 1959, when a young Saddam was part
of a CIA-authorized six-man squad which botched the
assassination of then Iraqi prime minister General
Abdul-Karim Qasim.
Saddam on his way to the
courtroom does not mean democracy has arrived in Iraq.
Let's make it absolutely clear. The last thing that the
White House, the euphemistic Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA) and the ICG (dubbed "the imported
government" by Iraqis) want is real democracy in Iraq.
Shi'ite and Sunni alike are in the streets shouting
"free elections now!" - leading to the formation of a
constituent assembly. The occupiers and their local
collaborators know very well that an elected constituent
assembly would naturally demand what the overwhelming
majority of Iraqis want: the immediate end to the
occupation, total Iraqi control of Iraqi oil and first
choice for Iraqi companies in the rebuilding process.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shi'ite
religious authority, also wants direct elections. In an
unprecedented move for someone as "beyond politics" as
Sistani, he accused the CPA of being non-democratic.
Sistani is totally supported by Shi'ite leader Abdul
Aziz al-Hakim, one of the rare members of the IGC not
suspected by ordinary Iraqis of being a crook.
Al-Hakim's official position is that a provisional
national assembly should be elected by the Iraqi people,
and this assembly should choose the government. The
credibility of the IGC is less than zero. Iraqis,
Shi'ite and Sunni alike, are convinced there is
absolutely no difference between Saddam's former thugs
and the current, power-hungry majority of IGC members.
"When the heat got on, you dug yourself a hole
and you crawled in," said Bush of his public enemy
number two. Like Shi'ite and Sunnis all over Iraq,
former CIA asset Saddam Hussein is also plotting his
revenge. One can bet he is sure that when he talks he
may be able to hurl George W Bush all the way back to
his ranch in Crawford - along with Saddam's close
collaborator Dick Cheney and Saddam's old friend Donald
Rumsfeld.
TOMORROW: Part 2 - why the
resistance will increase
(Copyright 2003
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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