Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

But What About Saddam?
========

I've been to Iraq three times in the past four years. Each time I go
someone asks me whether I met Saddam. The first question the editor of
my local newspaper asked me was, "Did you ever meet a dictator you
didn't like?" That was the high point. The interview went downhill from
there.

I can't figure it out. I go to Nicaragua every year; but no one has
ever asked me if I met Enrique Bolanos; or if I met Jean Chritien when
I went to Canada, or Vicente Fox when I visited Mexico. Perhaps, when
the US government and its propaganda machine demonize a head of state,
people confuse the head of state with the country and its population.

I try to avoid talking about Saddam. My work in Iraq with Veterans for
Peace is rebuilding water treatment plants which were deliberately
destroyed through war and sanctions.

Saddam is irrelevant. He isn't drinking polluted water because of
sanctions, but millions of Iraqis are. Saddam's children aren't dying
from water-borne diseases, but hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children
have died of water-borne diseases because of sanctions. Iraqi children
will continue to die needlessly until the sanctions are lifted and the
12 year old state of war is ended. Saddam is the excuse for continuing
the slaughter.

I've been told that if I don't talk about Saddam, no one will listen to
me. I've also been told that if I don't repeat the litany, "Saddam is a
brutal dictator who gassed his own people," I will have no credibility.

Whether I'm talking to a pro-war hawk, or an anti-sanctions activist,
it's the same litany, "Saddam is a brutal dictator who gassed his own
people." Something is wrong. If everybody agrees, why repeat it?
Strange. This litany would seem to obscure some important truth.

Below, I will debunk some common myths relating to Saddam Hussein; and
then suggest an hypothesis concerning the hidden truth behind the
demonization of Saddam.

     ----------------

MYTH: By gassing civilians at Halabja, Saddam placed himself on the
level of Hitler and a few other genocidal maniacs.

FACT: It's almost never stated that this happened during the war with
Iran, and that both sides used poison gas (although Iraq did so first).
It's also rarely stated that much of the raw materials and technical
knowledge to produce these weapons came from the US, which at the time,
raised no protest to the gassing of civilians at Halabja.

Most major participants in World War I used poison gas. After WWI,
Britain gassed the Afghans, France the Moroccans, Italy the Ethiopians,
and so it went among the "civilized" Western powers. During WWII Japan
attempted to spread anthrax and plague among the Chinese, a feat the US
also attempted in North Korea some years later.

The US has a long history of using biochemical weapons. As early as the
18th century, European immigrants deliberately spread smallpox among
the indigenous peoples of North America. The US sprayed Vietnam
copiously with dioxin containing agent orange, poisoning the land, the
people, the food and water supply, and its own soldiers. The US is now
using a toxic fumigant in its war against Columbia, again poisoning the
land, the people, and the food and water supply. In each case, the
victims are mostly civilians.

MYTH: No other country would use biochemical weapons on its own people,
like Saddam did.

FACT: The US has also used biochemical agents against its own people.
During the early decades of the cold war, the US Army routinely used
unsuspecting US citizens as human guinea pigs to test nuclear and
biochemical weapons. On many occasions, the US Army released the toxic
heavy metal compound, zinc cadmium sulfate, which causes birth defects
and developmental retardation, in US and Canadian cities, sometimes in
close proximity to schools. This heinous and unpunished crime took
place at a time of (relative) peace.

MYTH: If Saddam stopped building palaces, he could provide for his
people. Sanctions have nothing to do with the excessive childhood
mortality in Iraq.

FACT: During the 1980's Saddam built an educational and health care
system in Iraq that was the envy of the Arab world. Childhood mortality
in Iraq fell by an astounding 38% in a decade. By 1990, Iraq was well
on its way to achieving a level of education and health care comparable
to the industrialized world.

This changed dramatically with the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the
ensuing sanctions. UNICEF has blamed sanctions for an excess of 500,000
child deaths over an 8 year period.

Iraq gets no cash through the oil for foods program, so virtually all
cash, including the palace-building fund, comes through the black
market trade, which is estimated at less than $1 billion per year. Even
if the black market trade is as much as $8 billion, it would provide
each Iraqi with only $1 per day. Try providing for your child on $1 a
day.

MYTH: Saddam is a threat to global peace.

FACT: What global peace? The world has been at war for most, if not
all, of my 60 years.

Interestingly, in a recent UK Mirror poll, 75% identified Saddam
Hussein as a threat to world peace, second only to the ubiquitous Osama
bin Laden, whereas George W. Bush finished third at 51%. After Israel,
Britain is the staunchest ally of the US, yet over half of the British
people think that Bush is a threat to world peace, and 22% identify him
as the greatest threat to world peace. What would the results be in a
worldwide poll?

MYTH: We must invade Iraq now. If Saddam gets weapons of mass
destruction (WMDs), he'll use them or give them to terrorists.

FACT: There is only one nation that has irrevocably demonstrated to the
world its willingness to use nuclear weapons, and it's not Iraq.
Further, the US routinely threatens to use nuclear weapons, even
against non-nuclear states. Saddam's use of biochemical weapons pales
in comparison.

The US demonstrated in the 1980's its desire to not only arm terrorist
groups, but to create them, specifically the Afghan Mujaheddin and the
Nicaraguan Contras. The US continues to train Latin American terrorists
at the School of the Americas and continues to arm terrorist death
squads in Columbia and Guatemala. No connection between Saddam and
Al-Qaeda or any other armed group has ever been substantiated.

Israel is a thermo-nuclear power and one of the world's most
aggressive, expansionist countries. Few in the US propose disarming
Israel or even cutting off the over $3 billion of aid the US has given
Israel every year since 1967. India and Pakistan were within a hair's
breadth of nuking each other. Few propose disarming India and Pakistan.
With the breakdown to Russian society, Russia is by far the world's
most likely source of nuclear proliferation. Few propose taking
measures to secure Russia's nuclear arsenal.

With all these aggressive irresponsible nuclear powers about, why
invade Iraq because it might have stashed away a few biochemical
weapons or might acquire some nuclear weapons in the future?

MYTH: Iraq must be invaded because Saddam is in violation of UN
resolution 687, calling on him to destroy all WMDs and submit to UN
inspections.

FACT: UN inspections have in the pass been used for espionage. Iraq
would probably allow UN inspectors to return, if given assurances that
they would not be used again for espionage.

Other countries flout the UN with impunity. Israel is in violation of
dozens of UN resolutions. Israel, India and Pakistan are in violation
of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The US doesn't even pay its
dues to the UN.

MYTH: Saddam has twice attacked his neighbors. Unless disarmed now, he
will do so again.

FACT: Both attacks were with the apparent blessings of the US. The
Iran-Iraq war was a proxy war which Saddam fought with material and
intelligence from the US. With Iraqi troops amassed on the border of
Kuwait, US ambassador April Glaspie virtually invited invasion by
saying to Saddam, "But, we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts,
like your border disagreement with Kuwait." If the US had unequivocally
opposed these acts of aggression, it is unlikely that either of them
would have occurred.

Meanwhile, it is conveniently ignored that Israel has attacked all its
neighbors: Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. It is
unlikely that these acts of aggression could continue if the US cut off
the over $3 billion it gives to Israel every year.

MYTH: Saddam must be taken out because he is a brutal dictator who
oppresses his own people.

FACT: The world is full of brutal dictators. The world is full of
oppressors and abusers of human rights. Many dictators such as
Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf are good friends of the US. Many of the
world's most heinous human rights abusers like Ariel Sharon are good
friends of the US.

The US could oppose dictators by supporting democracy. Yet the US
opposes Iran's Mohammad Khatami and Palestine's Yassir Arafat, both
democratically elected heads of state in a region with very little
democracy. The US could strike a fierce blow against human rights
abusers by supporting the International Criminal Court (ICC). The US
opposed the ICC.

           -----------------

So, instead of repeating the litany, "Saddam is a brutal dictator who
gassed his own people," perhaps, we should ask why the United States is
so bent upon destroying Iraq? Clearly it has nothing to do with weapons
of mass destruction, threats to neighbors, dictatorships, human rights
violations, or any other reason put forward by the US.

Some answers I have heard are oil, revenge, and stupidity. All three
make some sense, but don't fit the facts completely.

Here is an hypothesis which does fits the facts. The US is bent on
destroying Iraq for the same reason it destroyed Nicaragua and has been
trying to destroy Cuba for 43 years. It cannot tolerate that a third
world country should follow an independent course and place the health
and education of its citizens before the profits of US based
multi-national corporations.

No other explanation I've heard fits the facts so well. Every third
world country that has placed the health and education of its citizens
before the profits of the multi-nationals has earned the enmity of the
US. It doesn't matter whether the country has oil. It doesn't matter
whether they have done anything aggressive toward the US. It doesn't
matter whether the US president is a clever Clinton or a bungling Bush.

Whenever possible the US has crushed these upstarts and dismantled
their health and education infrastructures. The Mossadegh government in
Iran, Sukarno in Indonesia, Allende in Chili, and the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua are some of the better known examples.

While Iraq was fighting a proxy war against Iran for the US, it was far
too valuable an ally to crush. But, that changed in 1990. Iraq was
enticed into Kuwait, and then crushed in the Persian Gulf War. Iraq's
health and education infrastructure were destroyed, but Saddam remained
in power. And this has continued through 12 years of murderous
sanctions.

Now sanctions are unraveling. Little by little the world is calling for
their end or quietly ignoring them. So the US now contemplates open war
and invasion.

But, again, Saddam is just an excuse. The real war is, and always has
been, against education and health care. The goal is to keep the
children poor, sick, and illiterate, the resources in the hands of the
multi-nationals, and to let Iraq serve as an example to any other
country that might contemplate pulling itself up from third world
status.

This, indeed, is the important truth hidden by the demonization of
Saddam Hussein.

-Tom Sager

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-- Stu