SADDAM’S LOOKING BETTER ALL THE TIMEBy:
Malcom Lagauche
Friday/Saturday, February 25-26, 2005
If you are interested in the Arabic translation of this article, yuo may use this LINK"They’ll welcome us with flowers and candy," said retired General Barry McAffrie on nationwide TV a few days before the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. His stooge partner agreed. The only difference of opinion was in the timeframe to do the job. The 18-star general said six days and his cohort said three. All the time, Scott Ritter was aside them with his head in his hands. He was perplexed and shook his head back-and-forth in disbelief.
At about the same time, Tariq Aziz, former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, said that Iraqis would definitely welcome the Americans. He then apologized for Iraq running out of candy and stated that they would have to substitute bullets. Aziz and Ritter were right.
This was a no-brainer, but the U.S. administration, both Democrats and Republicans, decided to succumb to acts of delusion. "Everybody hates Saddam," they said. They received their information from a few dozen Iraqi exile individuals who have been totally discredited. And, these people, including Allawi and Chalabi, have gained lucrative paydays from Washington for their lying.
No, if anyone used logic, he/she would have seen clearly that an invasion would not have gone smoothly. You can not take a country that has been run for 30 years by a system and change it at the end of a gun barrel. The entire infrastructure of Iraq (education, economics, security, etc.) had been in place for a long time. And, those aspects of the country were functioning well.
Even under the illegal embargo based on lies, Iraq struggled, but it still functioned. Within five weeks of the total destruction of its electrical grid in 1991, the system was up and running. Almost two years after the March 2003 invasion, under U.S. technology and supervision, electricity is a luxury in Iraq. Many homes are fortunate to have three or four hours a day.
The unspoken truth, one that no one in the U.S. will admit, is that Iraqi did not lie about the contentious issues brought up by the U.S. and that the country was not ready for a regime change.
Sure, there may have been opposition in Iraq to Saddam Hussein, but it was not big enough to create a popular movement. Just think, all the so-called opposition groups (INC, INA, etc.) that the U.S. allied itself with represented only a few dozen people. And, some of them never lived in or visited Iraq. They hardly represented a consensus.
Look at the current leaders in Iraq and you will see people who lived outside the country for years and some who ordered terrorist acts inside Iraq. Allawi’s group went on a terror rampage in Baghdad in 1995, killing civilians at bus stops and in cinemas. Chalabi’s group was less violent, but more greedy. They garnered tens of millions of dollars in funds to tell the U.S. what it wanted to hear. On April 6, 2003, Chalabi was escorted into Iraq by U.S. troops. This was supposed to be his grand entrance as a national savior.
One small thing occurred that made the U.S. begin to question his authenticity. He told the American side that he had more than 100,000 "freedom fighters" inside Iraq that would meet him when he returned. On April 6, 2003, Chalabi entered Iraq, yet not one of his "fighters’ showed up. There total number of members of his force was zero , yet he conned the U.S. into believing he had an army.
Now, we have a person who probably will be the next prime minister of Iraq, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who fits right into the U.S. mold of a stooge leader of the once-proud Arab country. Al-Jaafari, a religious Shi’ite, fled to Iran in the late 1970s because he thought Iraq should be an Islamic state. During the Iran-Iraq war, he led terrorist attacks on Iraqi civilians. If that was not enough, he was instrumental in the unsuccessful Shi’ite uprising of 1991.
All three of these individuals were behind acts that destroyed Iraq, not improved it. And, when all of them returned in April 2003, each would have had to use a road map to find out how to get to Baghdad. In other words, they were not Iraqis, but more familiar with Iran or the U.S.
Saddam has been overthrown. Even the so-called anti-war people state that the war was wrong, but at least Saddam is gone. They might as well have said "nuke Baghdad." These are the same words Bush is using. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no Bin-Laden/Saddam team. And, all the other horrors we heard about the regime are now being shown as lies, one at a time. Let’s look at some.
• In 2003, it was stated that 400,000 bodies were found in mass graves in the south of Iraq. On June 18, 2004, Tony Blair apologized for using this figure. In reality, fewer than 5,000 graves have been found, and most of these were soldiers who were killed in wars, including Desert Storm. This story never made one line in U.S. publications.
• "Saddam gases his own people," we heard time and time again in reference to the gassing of Kurds in Halabja. The reality is that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds. In 1988, the CIA reported this and again in 2004, embedded in a CIA report was the fact that Iran gassed the Kurds.
• During the Anfal campaign of 1988, supposedly 180,000 people were killed by Iraqi troops, mostly Kurds. Human Rights Watch heralded these figures. But, of the 180,000, not one body has been found. Today, Human Rights Watch admits it was taken in.
• The stories of the "human shredding machine" at Abu Ghraib, as well as the torture chambers at the Iraqi Olympic Committee have also been found to be fabrications. One-by-one, each allegation has been shown to be a lie used by the U.S. to demonize Saddam Hussein and his government.
Today, Saddam sits in a jail cell reading and writing poetry and tending to a few flowers. His trial probably will never come because there is virtually no proof to the allegations. A trial would expose the U.S. duplicity in gaining support for an invasion. A little-known fact is that the genocide charges have already been dropped because of lack of proof. The only allegations now to consider are the invasion of Kuwait and the putting down of the Shi’ite revolt in 1991. These are flimsy as well because the U.S. has invaded Grenada, Panama, Somalia and Iraq in illegal and single-handed manners. And, there is no country on this planet that is not allowed to defend its government against an insurrection.
No media mentioned that Saddam Hussein would probably have won the recent Iraqi election if he was on the ballot. He gained many votes as a write-in candidate, yet this was not reported. Even many previous naysayers now wish Saddam was back. But, this is the unspoken subject to which I consistently refer.
My first on-line column on September 25, 2003 discussed the same issue. In it, I said no peace would come to Iraq until the grave injustices of de-Ba’athifying the country were reversed. Lagauche was right.
After Desert Storm, Schwarzkopf was asked what kind of military leader Saddam Hussein was. He laughed. Today, Schwarzkopf, if he is an honest individual and military expert, would take back that laugh
The current resistance was planned in advance by Saddam Hussein. It is strong and will last for a long time. The plan was to have the U.S. occupy Iraq because the Iraqis knew full well they could not repel such an advanced military machine as the U.S. employs. Then, once in Iraq, the U.S. would be targets for guerilla tactics.
In 1974, Mohamed Ali allowed George Foreman to pound him for seven rounds in a world heavyweight championship boxing match. In the eighth, he knocked out an exhausted Foreman. The ploy was called "Rope a Dope." I call the Iraqi resistance methods "Rope a Bush."
If nothing else, if Sadam were to be placed back in power, electricity would be flowing to all of Iraq within a month. With the tremendous carnage, unemployment and deprivation occurring now in Iraq, that would be good enough for most Iraqis.
I asked a comrade in Baghdad (a retired Iraqi colonel) to sum up the elections for me and address the issue of the disappearing votes for Saddam Hussein. Here is his reply:
We are in such a great democracy that the day of the elections was one in which we had electricity. Suddenly … with the election day! Why is that? Just letup to elect the new candidates. But so many boxes were electing SADDAM Hussein. They disappeared. The criminal Americans invaded IRAQ just to make him vanish … People of Iraq wouldn't forget that. That man usually brought good things to them. Not like those invaders!
