More Saddamned Lies . . .

On Friday the Pentagon displayed yet again its utter contempt for the American people and the international community at large with its release of "Iraqi Perspectives Project: Operation Iraqi Freedom from Saddam's Senior Leadership," a 230 page scrapbook of lies, misinformation and revisionist history that is perhaps the best piece of government deception since the 9/11 Commission Report (discussed by Dr. David Ray Griffin here and further dismantled here) . To go through every lie and absurdity in this tome would dwarf even the work itself, so we'll have to go through an abbreviated tour, albeit with the appropriate references.

Starting immediately in its Introduction, it rewrites history, noting:

In fact, Iraq's national history is littered with military coup attempts with one following another in dreary progression. Even Saddam's Ba'ath Party saw its first try at seizing power in the early 1960's collapse under the hammer blow of a military coup that overthrew the first efforts of the Ba'ath Party in accordance with its ideology." (pdf page 11, p. vii report)

But this conveniently ignores the United States role in this "dreary progression" of coup attempts. In fact, Saddam has been a CIA asset as far back as 1959 where he was part of a CIA sponsored six man squad assigned to assassinate the Prime Minister Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim. But after Saddam apparently messed up the assassination attempt he was transfered to Beirut then Cairo and trained by the CIA. He would then be brought back with the aid of the CIA in 1963 where it would stage another coup, this one successful. The young Ba'ath Party would then hunt down all of the communists provided to then on a list by the CIA, then executed them. Yet the government would quickly collapse and Saddam would then be imprisoned, but would escape from jail in 1967. And after two more CIA supported Ba'ath Party coups, the United States would help install Saddam's uncle, General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, to the presidency, and Saddam would be named Vice President. So from the start, Saddam was a US groomed, maintained and protected asset. It is simply hyperbolic, self serving gibberish to describe Saddam as:

". . . not just a product of a violent era, he was a master of it. In an environment of violence, Saddam rose to the pinnacle of power because he was the most determined of the lot. His atrocities differ from those of Hitler and Stalin only in scale, not intent." (pdf p. 19, rep. p 1)

Then this fictitious little manual goes on to describe how Saddam made "liberal use of methods developed and refined by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to quash internal dissent, Saddam rapidly consolidated the Ba'ath party's grip on power. Spies and informers became omnipresent and Iraq truly became what Kana Makiya called a 'Republic of Fear.'" (pdf p. 21, rep. p. 3) Yet this misinformation fails to mention that it was not Russians or Germans who taught him these techniques, but rather Americans, as Americans would teach these techniques to many of the strongmen of the Third World to crush internal opposition that would include among other things, psychological warfare as weapons against their own citizens.

And then we proceed to the pablum: "Externally, Iraq's enemies were generally of his own making, real and imagined. Iran became an implacable foe when Saddam launched his Army against it only eight months after seizing power" (pdf p. 23, rep p. 5) But conveniently omits the fact that the US was horrified that its longtime ally the Shah had been deposed from Iran, went against the advice of Israel to arm Saddam Hussein (for which Israel would heighten tensions by bombing Iraqi nuclear facilities and secretly arm the Iranians), and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brezinski would encourage Saddam Hussein to attack Iran. Saddam, ever the compliant US vassal, complied.

And what would the reward from this compliance be? A new chemical and biological weapons capacity at the urging of present Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In fact, shortly after meetings with Don, Saddam would start actually using chemical weapons against the Iranians, while Donald was pushing for normalized relations between the US and Iraq. Yet it would be incorrect to blame simply Rumsfeld on the matter. Iraq would be a treasure trove of money for American and European corporations cashing in on weapons sales. Yet the military revisionism history would have you believe that Saddam was a raving madman who "lost touch with reality during the 90's and has taken on an 'unrealistic outlook.'" (pdf p 28, rep p. 10) Yet despite the apparent madness of King Saddam that would not stop American corporations to continue to arm the regime in the same decade of the 90's.

Yet it was after the Iraq-Iran war nearly backrupted Iraq, did they then look to the oil markets to give them revenue to rebuilt. But when Kuwait was overproducing beyond its OPEC quota that meant less Iraqi oil revenue. Of course, Saddam, ever the willing US client asked whether a Kuwait invasion would be tolerated by his American masters/minders. In the now famous declaration from then-US envoy April Gillespie, she replied, "we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesman to emphasize this instruction." Yet the misinformation piece boldly declares that "Saddam made it clear that he was seeking a direct confrontation with the United States in the near future." (pdf p 24., rep p. 6). Yet it was the US that thought that war with Iraq was inevitable. Saddam, on the other hand, realizing again that he was "caught" in George Bush's trap, wanted to negotiate a withdrawal.

A decade and a half later, Saddam would find himself in the same position: namely, of being in the imperial designs of the United States. In perhaps one of the few truthful assessments in this document, the document states: ". . . Saddam avoided taking actions in the year after September 11th terrorist attacks in the United Staets that would appear obstructionist or threatening. In late 2002, he told a group of officers that Iraq would provide UN inspectors with the access they needed, thus denying President George W. Bush and the Americans any excuse for starting a new conflict." (pdf p. 47, rep p. 29) (also corroborated in media here). Yet little did he know that once again, the trap had already been sprung. During the summer of 2001, Dick Cheney had convened his Energy Task Force, a meeting of the largest petrolium companies in the United States, where they already began to map out how to dissect the Iraqi oil wealth, replete with further charts of foreign companies that would be approached (chart 1, chart 2) .

But of course the Pentagon wants to depict him as the Saladin of the Middle East, who "In the final months, Saddam's confidence in ultimate victory grew." (pdf p 48, rep p. 30) Once again reality contradicts this assessment, as on the eve of bombing and earlier, Saddam was trying to negotiate a peace with the Arab League to prevent invasion.

In short, the document is a souvenir of how distainful the nation's leaders is of its citizens, and why its citizens are woefully out of touch with the rest of the world's opinion of it, and out of touch with reality. This government is actively lying, to hide its own role in the chaos it has created. And despite the effort to depict Saddam an a lunatic, sadly he seems more prescient than the aptly named Vice President Dick Cheney who claimed that "We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators" when he noted that "Iraq will not, in any way, be like Afghanistan. We will not let the war become a picnic for the American or the British soldiers. No way!" (pdf p. 48, rep p. 30)

Sadly it is American soldiers, Iraqi men, women and children, and the reputation of the United States that have all suffered irreparable harm as the result of the lies and missteps of this criminal government.