|
SADDAM HUSSEIN
AND REALITY
LAGAUCHE IS RIGHT
Friday/Saturday,
March 11-12, 2005
We all saw the
photos in December 2003 of a
disheveled Saddam Hussein after
he was pulled out of a 'spider
hole' in a town near Tikrit. The
administration laughed and the
U.S. public made jokes about him
and his hiding place.
The room was
dirty. There was an empty Spam
can. The story was that he was
holed up here and was totally
irrelevant to Iraq. His day was
done and he was now in the hands
of the liberators.
Guess what?
Nothing of this scenario was
true.
On March 8, 2005,
United Press International (UPI)
ran a small press release titled
'Public Version of Saddam
Capture Fiction.' Don't think
you are remiss because you have
not yet read this, but it
received scant publicity in the
U.S. Prior to my writing this
article, I have found only one
news outlet that carried the
story: WHAM Channel 13 of
Rochester, New York.
The U.P.I. press
release consisted of quotes from
ex-U.S. Marine Nadim Rabeh, of
Lebanese descent. In addition to
the U.S. version of the capture
date being off by one day,
during an interview in Lebanon,
he stated:
I was among the
20-man unit, including eight of
Arab descent, who searched for
Saddam for three days in the
area of Dour near Tikrit, and we
found him in a modest home in a
small village and not in a hole
as announced.
We captured him
after fierce resistance during
which a Marine of Sudanese
origin was killed.
Rabeh recounted
how Saddam fired at them with a
gun from the window of a room on
the second floor. Then, the
Marines shouted at him in
Arabic, 'You have to surrender.
There is no point in resisting.'
How did we come
to see the pictures of the hole
and a scruffy-looking Saddam?
According to Rabeh, 'Later on, a
military production team
fabricated the film of Saddam's
capture in a hole, which was in
fact a deserted well.'
The former
Marine's account mixes with the
rendition Saddam Hussein gave
his lawyer when they had their
only meeting. Saddam told him
that he was captured in a
friend's house and that he was
drugged and tortured for two
days. Hence, the pictures of
Saddam looking bedraggled.
I went to
Google.com and searched for
images of Saddam's capture. All
the major news networks and
publications showed pictures of
the hole and a beleaguered
Saddam: Time Magazine,
CNN News, magazines, daily
newspapers, etc. You name it and
they published it.
But, they were
all wrong. Not one publication
took the time to research the
story. Not one. They just took
pictures given by the U.S.
military and parroted the lines
they were given.
This is not the
first time something similar has
occurred. After the 1989
invasion of Panama, the U.S.
allowed the press to enter
Manuel Noriega's office. He was
portrayed as a sexual pervert.
In the office were pictures of
young boys, a picture of Hitler,
red underpants and pornographic
magazines. The dirty bastard.
A few months
later, the first Marine to enter
Noriega's office was released
from the Corps. He eventually
talked to a reporter and said
that he was the absolute first
to enter the office after the
U.S. kidnapped the former
Panamanian president and all
that was inside were a desk, a
telephone, a chair and a
typewriter.
Let's go back 16
years from Noriega's demise. In
1973, Salvador Allende, the
president of Chile, was
assassinated. When the press was
allowed to enter his office,
they saw a pair of red
underpants, pictures of young
boys, a picture of Hitler and
pornographic magazines. The CIA
did not have the decency to
change props. They used the same
for both offices, thinking that
16 years was a long time and no
one would figure out the ruse. A
reporter who covered the 1973
event was also in Panama in 1989
and happened to see both made-up
scenarios.
With Saddam, they
changed props because the
previously-mentioned ones
probably would not go down in
Iraq. And, I always wondered how
he obtained a can of Spam, since
no such product was offered in
Iraq.
It seems no one
asks questions, such as how a
can of Spam was in the hole.
About a year ago, there was a
picture on the Internet that
gained much publicity of a bunch
of U.S. soldiers standing next
to an Iraqi building on which
was depicted the blowing up of
the World Trade Center. The
inference was that Iraqis took
glee in the acts of 9-11.
However, I
noticed the soldiers were
standing on a base path of a
baseball field. There were no
baseball fields in Iraq. Then, I
looked at the trees and saw they
were typical southeastern U.S.
types that I had never seen in
any pictures of Iraq.
The photo was
bogus, but the harm had been
done. Even mainstream media
picked up and ran with the
picture. I wrote to a few
agencies that used it, but
received no reply. They were
embarrassed.
Now, let's get
back to Saddam and his spider
hole and other aspects of his
life after April 9, 2003.
When he was
captured, U.S. authorities said
he was a spent force and had no
say in the ever-growing
resistance. Hogwash. Subsequent
information shows that he was
heading the resistance and
called many shots. For instance,
on Wolfowitz' first visit to
Baghdad, he stayed at the Hotel
Al-Rashid.. A rocket was fired
at the building and killed a
U.S. colonel on the floor just
above Wolfowitz'. Saddam Hussein
personally ordered that strike
and, for the sake of about four
meters, history may have been
changed.
I have heard
anecdotal tales of Sadam Hussein
taking part in street battles
against U.S. troops. Various
sources have told me this. So, I
wrote to my Iraqi contact in
Baghdad (a retired colonel) and
asked him. Today, I received a
response about that as well as
Saddam's capture. Here are a few
items he mentioned.
-
Saddam's
inside wear was very clean,
which gives the impression
he was not in a hole.
-
At the time
they said they captured him,
no dates were available, but
the trees they showed in the
films had fresh dates on the
palm trees and this was not
possible.
-
My house is
in the Adhamiya and I can
say that I saw Saddam after
they announced the fall of
Baghdad. I saw him myself.
He was standing on a bonnet
of a car. He was giving
smiles to the people around
him who were encouraging him
by their loyalty, which they
always had.
-
As I know,
Saddam was on top of the
battle at the airport.
-
What I heard
was that he was on top of
many assaults against the
Americans.
From various
sources, we now have a totally
different story than the one
force-fed to us by the U.S.
administration. Instead of
Saddam Hussein being a coward
who fled and was caught in a
hole in the ground, he now is
the president, who, under siege,
met publicly with his people on
April 9, 2003 (we saw viedo of
this on U.S. TV), after
personally being involved with
several battles against the
invaders, and who created a
network of resistance while tens
of thousands of U.S. military
people were looking for him.
One thing is
sure. Most 65-year-old men are
contemplating retirement.
However, Saddam Hussein lived
off his wits, the land, and with
comrades for nine months, all
the time coordinating a
resistance against illegal
invaders. Most men half his age
would not be able to take the
physical challenges of such a
routine. This in itself is a
remarkable feat.
Let's look at
Saddam's U.S. counterpart,
George W. Bush. About the only
military achievement he ever
performed was evading drug tests
while in the U.S. National
Guard. There, he succeeded
magnificently.
Unfortunately,
the U.S. government is in
possession of all of Iraq's
records prior to April 2003. Not
one word will be mentioned that
will contradict the U.S.
rewriting of Iraq's history. At
best, we will have to rely on
anecdotal accounts and eye
witnesses. It is neither the
best nor the most accurate form
of history, but it's all we have
now.
|
