Posted on 12/15/2003 4:57:37 PM PST by Pokey78
HE had all his visitors body-searched and all his food tasted in advance. He was obsessed with hygiene and stray infections.
He wore a different uniform every day and built himself a vulgar palace in every city of his miserable country. Nice, then, to see him found like a rat in a hole, covered with grime, sprouting a dirty grey mane, and being shaven and combed for lice.
"He was in our minds at all times - and that was power, of a kind." These words, from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, convey a faint sense of the symbolic and practical importance of the fact that, today, we enter the post-Saddam epoch.
Try to imagine seeing his face on your front page every day for three decades, and hearing that voice and seeing that face every time you turned on the radio or TV.
Try to imagine being unable to escape from it when you went to the opera, the cinema, the theatre, or the football. For millions of Iraqis under 35, this indoctrination started at infant school, where lesson one was that Big Daddy was supreme, and could do what he liked to your or your family.
Kanan Makiya's brilliant profile of Ba'ath Party rule, The Republic of Fear, had a title that was, if anything, understated. In Baghdad in the old days, I knew people who said you could smell the fear. Others said no, you could taste it. The one who came closest said you could actually eat it.
Just the mention of the name was enough to bring a look into the eyes of almost any Iraqi: the look of a broken dog that is once again shown the whip. This is why I can't stand those who refer with a sneer to the courageous Iraqi opposition as "exiles".
THE risk of uttering the mildest criticism of Saddam entailed savage torture followed by brutal execution, with the same being visited upon your family.
Those thousands who fled Iraq had no guarantee they would not be followed by assassins and murdered overseas. Many were.
Those who remained were used as cannon fodder in crazy and destructive wars, or shovelled into mass graves.
So here is a moment to salute those who refused and resisted. Early reports of the tyrant's capture indicate Kurdish intelligence forces played a leading role in tracking Saddam down. I hope this is true, because there is natural justice as well as legal justice to be considered.
The 4th Infantry Division, and their commander, General Ray Odierno, also deserve credit for taking the monster alive.
I was in Mosul the day before Uday and Qusay died. I felt the courts had been cheated. I was sure Saddam would be found fairly soon, and I wanted everyone to get a long look at him, as they have been able to with Slobodan Milosevic. Only last week the Iraqi governing council announced the setting-up of a system to try the war criminals and torturers of the old regime, and nothing will mark the transition more vividly than the sort of trial Saddam's numberless victims never received.
His arrest also shows how empty and unstable his otherwise terrifying regime always was. He must have known that the search would concentrate on and around Tikrit, his hometown. But he went there anyway, and hid in his hole. He knew he wouldn't be able to hide anywhere else. You hear a lot about his 'Sunni' support, but the Tikriti clan is a minority of the Sunni minority.
When he was bagged, Saddam was found with a huge pile of cash in US dollars. Only this month was the coalition able to print a new Iraqi dinar note, without his face on it.
ONE of the worst recent attacks on coalition forces, in the city of Samarra, was made on a convoy bringing that new currency to the local banks and shopkeepers.
The desperation of the so-called "resistance" is evident from such tactics. It might not be wise to assume, though, that such elements will necessarily be discouraged by the capture of their former boss.
Throwing off all secular disguise, they have adopted the rhetoric and method of jihad and this will be their selling point for some time.
However, they have lost their rallying point. And a number of Iraqis who have been hesitant and fearful until now can be expected to straighten up and look people in the eye.
In Baghdad and Basra in the summer, I met several people who could not be convinced Saddam wasn't coming back. It was the same in Ceausescu's Romania, where it took a while before citizens would believe the local Dracula was really dead. A diet of fear is bad for the system and has pernicious long-term effects.
An Iraqi religious leader allowed to see Saddam after his capture found the tyrant defiant and unrepentant. Those cheering his fall were "mobs" and those who were found in mass graves were "thieves".
I can't wait to see him repeat this in the dock. Meanwhile, the whole enterprise of re-making Iraq is greatly clarified by the certain knowledge that there's no going back.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair
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