Posted on 10/08/2004 9:28:39 PM PDT by neverdem
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Saddam Hussein saw his life as an unfolding epic narrative, with retreats and advances, but always the same ending. He would go down in history as the glorious Arab leader, as the Saladin of his day. One thousand years from now, schoolchildren would look back and marvel at the life of The Struggler, the great leader whose life was one of incessant strife, but who restored the greatness of the Arab nation.
They would look back and see the man who lived by his saying: "We will never lower our heads as long as we live, even if we have to destroy everybody." Charles Duelfer opened his report on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction with those words. For a humiliated people, Saddam would restore pride by any means.
Saddam knew the tools he would need to reshape history and establish his glory: weapons of mass destruction. These weapons had what Duelfer and his team called a "totemic" importance to him. With these weapons, Saddam had defeated the evil Persians. With these weapons he had crushed his internal opponents. With these weapons he would deter what he called the "Zionist octopus" in both Israel and America.
But in the 1990's, the world was arrayed against him to deprive him of these weapons. So Saddam, the clever one, The Struggler, undertook a tactical retreat. He would destroy the weapons while preserving his capacities to make them later. He would foil the inspectors and divide the international community. He would induce it to end the sanctions it had imposed to pen him in. Then, when the sanctions were lifted, he would reconstitute his weapons and emerge greater and mightier than before.
The world lacked what Saddam had: the long perspective. Saddam understood that what others see as a defeat or a setback can really be a glorious victory if it is seen in the context of the longer epic.
Saddam worked patiently to undermine the sanctions. He stored the corpses of babies in great piles, and then unveiled them all at once in great processions to illustrate the great humanitarian horrors of the sanctions.
Saddam personally made up a list of officials at the U.N., in France, in Russia and elsewhere who would be bribed. He sent out his oil ministers to curry favor with China, France, Turkey and Russia. He established illicit trading relations with Ukraine, Syria, North Korea and other nations to rebuild his arsenal.
It was all working. He acquired about $11 billion through illicit trading. He used the oil-for-food billions to build palaces. His oil minister was treated as a "rock star," as the report put it, at international events, so thick was the lust to trade with Iraq.
France, Russia, China and other nations lobbied to lift sanctions. Saddam was, as the Duelfer report noted, "palpably close" to ending sanctions.
With sanctions weakening and money flowing, he rebuilt his strength. He contacted W.M.D. scientists in Russia, Belarus, Bulgaria and elsewhere to enhance his technical knowledge base. He increased the funds for his nuclear scientists. He increased his military-industrial-complex's budget 40-fold between 1996 and 2002. He increased the number of technical research projects to 3,200 from 40. As Duelfer reports, "Prohibited goods and weapons were being shipped into Iraq with virtually no problem."
And that is where Duelfer's story ends. Duelfer makes clear on the very first page of his report that it is a story. It is a mistake and a distortion, he writes, to pick out a single frame of the movie and isolate it from the rest of the tale.
But that is exactly what has happened. I have never in my life seen a government report so distorted by partisan passions. The fact that Saddam had no W.M.D. in 2001 has been amply reported, but it's been isolated from the more important and complicated fact of Saddam's nature and intent.
But we know where things were headed. Sanctions would have been lifted. Saddam, rich, triumphant and unbalanced, would have reconstituted his W.M.D. Perhaps he would have joined a nuclear arms race with Iran. Perhaps he would have left it all to his pathological heir Qusay.
We can argue about what would have been the best way to depose Saddam, but this report makes it crystal clear that this insatiable tyrant needed to be deposed. He was the menace, and, as the world dithered, he was winning his struggle. He was on the verge of greatness. We would all now be living in his nightmare.
E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com
Did Hell freeze over in the editorial room of the NY Slimes?
George Soros probably worked with him
read later
Does Brooks' column appear only on Saturdays? That is the day with the lowest readership.
Marc Rich apparently did...
I don't know why all parties continue to report that no WMDs were found in Iraq. The Duelfer Repost states that 53 Chemical WMDs have been found in Iraq since June of this year. The complete report is available on the following CIA website:
http://www2.cia.gov/Iraqs_WMD_Vol3.pdf
Check out Page 30.
Forty one SAKR-18 Sarin tipped rockets were found in one location. The SAKR-18 is an Egyption manufactured copy of the Soviet BM-21. Each Rocket has a range of 20-40 Km depending on the rocket motor and carries a 38 Kg war head. This particular version of the SAKR carries the capability of dispersing smoke for battlefield concealment. Anyone of these fired into a population center or smuggled into a public gathering could easily inflict 10X – 100X the casualties of 911. The real danger was in one of these getting into the hands of terrorists.
Thanks for the info, but I have an aversion to pdf. files.
From time to time, I’ll post or ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
Check out comment# 28.
mildly interesting old report on Iraqi chem weapons.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/czech_french/czfr_refs/n08en057/970613_60210196_96_txt_0001.html
Did you try the link you posted? Wouldn't work for me.
(yawn...)
It is incredibly slow. Look for a horizontal bar at the bottom that indicates the % of load as it turns blue.
The MSM is probably paid well to call a homeland defense rifle WMD, but a SAKR rocket a conventional armament. Cite of SAKRs found is said to be from Volume III of the report.
And they continue to rally around Rather.
Thanks for the ping.
God will have to help the lunatics of the MSM if we ever find out that they have been on the payroll of Islamofascists.
There could be foundation money involved, even indirectly.
Who funds the big-name journalism profs? Who builds the new buildings, and stocks their libraries, and rewards their internationalist, anti-western, Marxist academic agendas? These are encoded into the rules of PC, which are inculcated in the media's recruits before they arrive. Who contributes to the guilds and professional organizations to which they flock, once they have been hired? Who buys thier advertising? I see more and more "international" and "benign" public TV/radio coverage of mideast issues than ever before. Why the sudden interest?
INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS AND EDITORS (IRE): Grant Support in Alphabetical Order
| American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (ABC) APBnews.com American Press - Lake Charles Arizona Association of Industries The Baltimore Sun Bloomberg L.P. Bolles Project The Boston Globe CBS Corporation Cable News Network (Turner Broadcasting Systems) Capital City Press Carnegie Corporation of New York Central Newspapers, Inc. Chicago Sun-Times, Inc. Chicago Tribune Foundation The Christian Science Publishing Society Monitor The Courier Journal - Louisville Cox Newspapers Daily News - New York The Dallas Morning News L.P. The Dispatch Printing Company - Columbus The Examiner - Independence The Freedom Forum Gannett Foundation Phillip L. Graham Fund R. Gregg Hillman Hoosier State Press Association Indianapolis Newspaper Inc. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation The Journal Gazette - Fort Wayne The Joyce Foundation KCTV - TV KSHB - TV Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation The Kansas City Star John S. & James. L. Knight Foundation Knight Ridder Los Angeles Times The Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation The Miami Herald Michigan Press Association National Broadcasting Company, Inc. (NBC) The New York Times The New York Times Company Foundation The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, Inc. Newsday, Inc. The Nicholas B. Ottaway Foundation Ohio Newspaper Association Open Society Institute Network Media Program The Philadelphia Inquirer Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. The Plain Dealer - Cleveland The Poynter Institute Press Club of New Orleans Providence Journal-Bulletin Jane Pulliam Trust The Record - Hackensack The Billy Rose Foundation, Inc. The San Diego Union-Tribune San Francisco Chronicle The Florence and John Schumann Foundation Scripps Howard Foundation The Seattle Times Neal Shapiro The Star Ledger - Newark Star Tribune Foundation (formerly Cowles Media Co.) The Star Tribune Company - Minneapolis Stern Fund [aka Stern Family Fund, funder of various Marxist groups including the Institute for Policy Studies and the Tides Foundation--Fedora] Sun Sentinel - Fort Lauderdale TheStreet.com, Inc. Time, Inc. The Times Mirror Foundation The Times-Picayune Publishing Company The Tulsa Tribune Turner Broadcasting Systems USA Today U.S. News & World Report University of Missouri -- School of Journalism University of Southern California WBNS - TV WDAF - TV WKYT - TV The Washington Post Washington Press Club Foundation Western Consortium for Public Health |
Phillip L. Graham Fund
That'd be Katharine Graham's husband, who was linked to Felix Frankfurter and a Soviet spy ring Frankfurter was running during WWII.
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