Prometheus 6

Saddam, So Not Worth It
Dubya, now that you've got your dime–store thug, can you stop the warmongering and death?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
©2003 SF Gate

Well gosh golly it took only upward of 500 dead U.S. soldiers (and counting) and more than 2,500 U.S. wounded (and counting) and more than 10,000 dead innocent Iraqi citizens (and counting) and countless tens of thousands of hapless dead Iraqi soldiers (and counting).

And it'll only cost U.S. taxpayers at least a staggering $350 billion along with the complete gutting of our foreign policy and our national treasury and the appalling blood sacrifice of our national pride and our international status and global sense of self–respect.

Oh, and the truth is, it turns out Saddam actually did have some old stashes of weaponry, a bit of rusty, small–scale WMDs, after all –– because we sold them to him, 20 years ago. But they were never any sort of direct danger to America –– or anyone else, for that matter –– and regardless all evidence points to the fact that the stash was completely destroyed more than a decade ago.Remember that time? Right about when the U.S. hushed up all those sales of biological weapons and computer technology to Iraq? Right about when all those American corporations, from Bechtel to Kodak to AT&T, from Dow Chemical to Hewlett–Packard to IBM and at least 100 more, decided it might be best to begin shredding their records detailing all their Iraq business deals? Hey, why is Donny Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam and smiling in this photo? Shhh.

And now, long after his political usefulness to us has expired, we up and invade his unhappy nation and lay waste to the entire region for no justifiable reason, and we inflate his global stature into this massive inhuman Hitler–esque monster when in fact he was really just an old, tired, small–time thug, and now finally Saddam Hussein, the brutal pip–squeak dictator/former beloved U.S. ally who had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, has been captured alive. Yay yay go team.

It was a proud moment in American history. Almost as proud as when Dubya secretly flew to Iraq a few weeks back to spend 2.5 hours pretending to serve a fake, inedible plastic turkey [P6: much like he himself!] to that handful of carefully selected, prescreened soldiers for that Thanksgiving PR stunt that will forever embarrass anyone with any sense of decency and pride –– which is, according to Bush's instant surge in the polls after the photo op, fewer and fewer of us.

As if this changes a single thing. As if Saddam's capture suddenly means BushCo is some sort of nimble or subtly intelligent leader, and that nine months of brutal ongoing gut–busting war was all worth it.

As if we are safer from terrorism. As if we are safer from Karl Rove and John Ashcroft. As if the nation can now stand proud.

Think again. Even Bush himself is not quite so stupid as to go that far. Note how just after Saddam's capture, his army of handlers rushed in to make sure Americans don't expect any lessening of U.S. casualties in Iraq, no slowdown in the number of dead American soldiers or the killing of innocent Iraqis who just happen to be trying to get some clean water or a gallon of fuel when U.S. forces blow another building apart while they're looking for guerrilla insurgents.

Oh yes, Saddam needed to be captured. Oh yes, his capture is a swell thing for the world. Oh yes, Bush desperately needed the ratings boost. But we as a nation have been utterly pulverized with the lie that this war was the only way. We have been slammed for more than two years with relentless hammer of fear and inflated terrorist threats and bogus Orange Alerts, until we all just give in and our resistance crumbles and we say, fine.

Fine, just get it over with, Dubya, go slaughter yet another nearly defenseless nation and catch your impotent bad guy and eviscerate your own country's economy and embarrass us the world over and protect your oil cronies and your military portfolio. Get it over with.

By the way, from Bush Sr. forward (and, yes, that includes Clinton), the U.S. has to date killed far, far more Iraqi civilians than Saddam ever could. Along with the United Kingdom, we've been bombing Iraq almost nonstop for the past decade. Not to mention the more than half a million Iraqi children who've died from lack of medicine or decent health care since the brutal, U.S.–backed U.N. sanctions were imposed 12 years ago. Shhh.

The capture does not justify the savagery, nor the humiliation. Not by a long shot. The ends do not justify the means. Nor do they justify the staggering, steaming pile of BushCo lies about why we went to war in the first place.

Remember those? Remember how not one single motive BushCo gave for launching this insane war has actually been proven true? Does this even matter anymore, the string of falsehoods and treasonous fabrications? Apparently not. This is America's biggest wonder, and its ugliest flaw: a nasty short–term memory.

But whatever. Most lockstep Americans do not care that Saddam was never a threat. Most do not care about how many Iraqi children have died, or that in just the first days of the war, U.S. forces killed far more innocent civilians than were killed by those non–Iraqi terrorists in the WTC (4,300, to be more specific). Most do not care that the other 25 despotic heads of state out there right now who are far worse than Saddam are not, apparently, quaking in their dictatorial boots.

Most Americans do not care that somewhere, Osama is probably cheering (hey, he hated Saddam, too). They do not care that, what with our outward display of savagery, new America–loathing terrorists are being spawned faster than BushCo's war machine can possibly keep up with them.

They care only for waving the bloody flag. They care only for the jingoistic PR spin and the hollow sophomoric neocon punditry of Fox News and enough oil to fuel the Expedition for another year. This is what matters most. Kill 'em all, let Halliburton sort 'em out.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Saddam's capture really will mean an earlier end to this tragic and painful war. Maybe it will mean we can get our soldiers home sooner. Maybe it will mean we can get the U.N. and NATO and our international allies involved in setting up a reasonably stable, noncorrupt government in Iraq, one not so obviously in the back pocket of ExxonMobil and Shell. Whoops, too late.

Maybe now that Saddam's captured, we can begin to focus on what's really important: the mandatory and deliberate ouster of another truly ruinous global threat, a shockingly disastrous political puppet.

After all, Saddam's not the only dreadful world leader who's abused his allies, ravaged his economy, launched two blood–drenched wars in as many years, authorized the bombing of tens of thousands, allowed hundreds of U.S. soldiers to die, cut the benefits of war veterans, poisoned the environment, invoked the name of God to justify it all and smirked away every notion of his obvious ineptitude. Can we send Special Forces to the Oval Office now?