Al-Tikriti's Capture: Of Rat, Fox and other holes!
As citizens of the world, we are answerable only to the people of Iraq - not one Saddam Hussein, and not the US or some 'son-of-a-fox' called George Bush Jr. If there is even one gene of MORALITY still alive and kicking in our system, any shift in our moral equation in these debilitating times, will ensure that future tyrants will find newer avenues to redefine morality, as if it were a maze in our blurry collective conscience. If EVER that is, the world is prepared to TRY, convict and execute George Bush of crimes, no worse than those of Saddam? Without putting our mouths into motion before our heads are in gear, lets say 'we will not deny Bush the 'justice' he denied the people of the world' - shall we?
"They tell me: If you see a slave sleeping, do not wake him lest he be dreaming of freedom. I tell them: If you see a slave sleeping, wake him and explain to him freedom." -- Kahlil Gibran, MIRRORS OF THE SOUL, p.72
Saddam Hussein Al-Tikriti Captured - 'Ladies and Gentlemen - we've got him' so BIG DEAL. What more could we have expected? Saddam committing suicide or fighting to his death? Really, what could have Saddam done to make all of us 'appreciably' happier? The truth: NOTHING.
Trapped in a third world mentality of supporting any underdog standing up heroically or foolishly, against the US, come hail or high wind - we would have much preferred Saddam held back a trifle longer, and conducted a 'resistance', by which we imply, that we would have liked that he 'LED'.
Fair enough - the question is from where?
Leading would be so uncharacteristically Saddam, for the man was never a leader, and never led, but was a master of intrigue, of causing deaths and wanton destruction, of doing a Houdini at the first available opportunity, of routinely pillaging the ultimate in value systems, not only on Iraqis but on all HUMAN dignity, in his maniacal bid for absolute power.
Never have we heard of an instance where the man led from the front. Whether it be, his mindless war in the 80's with 'fundamentalist' Iran directed by US intelligence satellite feeds, or that sneaky FRONT called Kuwait. It was the people of Iraq that paid the price for his gluttonic lust and depraved, repetitive and unending 'mother of all battle' cries. Hundreds upon thousands were compelled to die to protect Saddam-land - not Iraq, and when the 'defeat of all defeats' came with the fall of Baghdad to the US, we saw him UP FRONT as promised didn't we - fighting till the last breath had left his body? Never ever in the history of the world, has such a dismal and brutal coward been blown to such a larger than life HERO?
Planted not simply for an easy invasion of Iraq, Saddam was propelled and pummeled to what he is today, to CONQUER the Arab heartland, the beginning of the end to Muslim's misplaced and unnecessary pride. Yet systematically stripped off his so-called DIGNITY in that hippopotamic YAWN to a US doctor for the world to see, we decided to cry FOUL. The entire pan-Islamic pantheon of the so-called Ummah and others set about a chorus of pleading- 'he is after all a world leader, he doesn't deserve any of this'.
But pray why NOT?
Constitutionally NO, legally NO, but morally YES, Saddam absolutely deserves the fate he is in today. Shall we remind ourselves, that all along in this drama called the Iraq invasion, was it not 'thinking' people around the world that repeatedly impressed upon how 'morally' wrong things are? Well, this is the final straw ladies and gentlemen.
How MORAL was that coup engineered by a CIA trained Saddam to capture power, how moral was the US backed Iraqi regime that allowed him license to lead all his detractors from a public hall to be shot with TV cameras whirring, how moral was his invasion of Kuwait, which was okayed by the US, how moral was gassing of the Kurds with chemicals provided by the US…we have loads of MORAL questions, that would be IMMORAL, if left unanswered.
As citizens of the world, we are answerable only to the people of Iraq - not one Saddam Hussein, and not the US or some 'son-of-a-fox' called George Bush Jr. If there is even one gene of MORALITY still alive and kicking in our system, any shift in our moral equation in these debilitating times, will ensure that future tyrants will find newer avenues to redefine morality, as if it were a maze in our blurry collective conscience. If EVER that is, the world is prepared to TRY, convict and execute George Bush of crimes, no worse than those of Saddam? Without putting our mouths into motion before our heads are in gear, lets say 'we will not deny Bush the 'justice' he denied the people of the world' - shall we?
A product of an institutionalized worldwide franchise of US thuggery, Saddam's mind and actions were all coordinated at the behest of his masters, never for a second doing anything that would keep him off the cognitive US radar. Yet here we are, jumping in the bandwagon of 'what's next', for a man, whose rise and fall and hopefully his ultimate demise will all be orchestrated by the US, unless providence intervenes and determines events to the contrary, which is of course highly unlikely.
Never ever has a tyrant played all available opportunity to keep everybody guessing, and even while he headed the deck of US cards as the ACE of Spade capable of digging holes (would have been much better, if it was a JOKER) - every third world man and women still nurture hopes that he would somehow make a comeback, on the crest of a huge tidal bore of popular support. As if that is not enough, in the months he went into hiding, we have lost count of the numbers of Muslim infants we named - SADDAM!
Shame on HITLER - shame on BUSH, Saddam rules pop infamy?
And then we bad mouth our ire on the Media, the 'embedded' US first line of offense and defense, the first line of lies, and the first line of imagination going waste. The tragedy of it all, the imagination of the whole world is captive and has been tattered to shards, while in the pronounced hysteria, everything has been made to look so predictably 'win, win' predictable. What more can a war machine out to conquer the world do better, than so capably play this dunce game on us, all of it with our unconditional approval? We could have not been more susceptible to being this duped, nor could the world been less stupid-er thanks to the like of Saddam and Bush.
In the quest for freedom of expression, free speech, democracy and whatever else we consider holy in this new millennium, have we ever stopped to ask about the priorities or options available to the Iraqi people? Are we to hope that only a failed Emperor who guided the destiny of men, women or child for more than two decades - is their only plausible answer? If YES, which would be a reasonably unreasonable answer, can we pause for a couple of more questions?
What does freedom mean to a people who have been enchained to slavery this long - and how is it that a 'thinking' world would permit debating such regurgitated idiosyncrasies for another 100 years or so, while we let the original Pharaoh, the US, to literally amble in and throw out older, less threatening serfs in the region, with newer excuses of FREEDOM that vulgarizes and condemns the usage of the word forever? Why do only innocents have to pay with their lives, when monsters shuffle their pawn on global chessboards? When will we have CNN and BBC reporting - 'MONSTERS are dying'?
We live in strange times, and in Al-Tikriti's 'capture', the strangeness of it all is far too overpowering.
Even as the US announced with unrestrained relish that they 'got him in a rat hole', other gaping holes in the story from soldiers just out of foxholes emerged. Imagine 500 'brave' US soldiers out on a mission to capture their oldest friend turned fiend in the Middle East, aerial surveillance, guns drawn, on a silent mode, ready for the kill. Guess what - while they wore their high-tech night vision goggles all right, on hindsight they forgot night vision cameras otherwise used in bombing raids or puny 'heroic' surges on insurgents in the so-called Sunni triangle.
The sob story - the 'highest' profile operation as such, but the US could not record it for posterity - unbelievably believable? We were therefore left with nothing more than 'heroic' US soldiers giving us 'first hand' accounts of the same, there being no other eyewitness around, his guards having fled: 'seeing' approaching US soldiers!
Not a villager, not anybody in sight - Saddam and 500 US soldiers, a tent and the rat hole, take it or leave it folks - period!
Question: If the guards could have fled - why couldn't the Emperor?
Answer: There must have been an undetected Texan rattler pit nearby!
Then in comes this huge unplugged hole in the story Courtesy CNN:
"And then 'Emperor of Iraq' stepped out of the 'rat hole' and proclaimed himself thus and expressed his desire to 'negotiate' with his 'friend' George Bush?"
All of this as dumbfounded journalists would learn in perfect, Queens English, albeit with an Arabic zing. But hang on a second - is there any available record anywhere in the world to prove dumb Iraqi Emperor ever spoke a word of English? There is no record in the US seizure list the existence of an Arabic-to-English dictionary either!
The first 48 hours was spent convincing the world how a member of the family revealed the location of the rat hole. Ah, it was of course the ravishing second wife, made $ 25 million richer, with 'credible' interviews taken from her in Beirut, Lebanon, filled the 'guess who' speculations? Every newspaper or news portal worth its name splashed the story, yet none made much of a noise when the Lebanese Government formally issued a rejoinder that Samira Shahbandar does not live in the country?
Then came a succession of claimants, the Kurds and later a guard who has unfortunately been denied the promised $25 million, and instead found himself behind bars for also being a 'criminal'. Thuraya Satellite phones picked up on its sales when tales circulated that the US pinpointed Saddam locations by tracking a call made over such a device to Samira - once again proving how dumb Al-Tikriti really was. Not to be outdone a Pakistani newspaper said that Saddam had been captured weeks earlier, or a Saudi report that Emperor dined with his holiness the Pharaoh on his surprise visit to US forces over Thanksgiving, in the 51st state!
But beating everybody hollow was an Israeli tale of Ariel Sharon making a quick trip to Baghdad to meet the captive emperor (why?) - and it goes on and on, and its seems just about anybody can cook up stories and pass them on to a 'what next' starved, bored world.
However for those trying to go beyond the media and intelligence jamboree, the facts as they stand are: it is only and IF Saddam ever gets anywhere close to a court of law, wherever, shall we know what transpired, not just in the rat holes, and fox holes, but also about the WMD's, about the war, about his riches - and perhaps some of the many unanswered questions we have raised today.
Saddam's captors do not have to worry about placing him on a suicide watch. Bush has decided to hang him - and so he will, rightly or wrongly, and whether anybody in the world cares is a separate matter. Death under mysterious or 'accidental' circumstances is quite fair and 'game', and when the going will get tougher than tough for the US, Saddam will have passed unto mother earth's womb, half deeper than the 'hole' he was discovered in - without even our knowing.
We should not be surprised if Saddam is dead already. Any takers out there?
But heck, who the hell cares, for likes of Saddam and Bush, the death penalty is actually being merciful. The world may turn out to be a planet lot more peaceful than we had bargained for. And we will be left non-too-wiser falling into or out of, or explaining 'holes' of all kinds to our children!
(|)(-) 'Damn Texan Rattle SNAKES!'
"They tell me: If you see a slave sleeping, do not wake him lest he be dreaming of freedom. I tell them: If you see a slave sleeping, wake him and explain to him freedom." -- Kahlil Gibran, MIRRORS OF THE SOUL, p.72
Saddam Hussein Al-Tikriti Captured - 'Ladies and Gentlemen - we've got him' so BIG DEAL. What more could we have expected? Saddam committing suicide or fighting to his death? Really, what could have Saddam done to make all of us 'appreciably' happier? The truth: NOTHING.
Trapped in a third world mentality of supporting any underdog standing up heroically or foolishly, against the US, come hail or high wind - we would have much preferred Saddam held back a trifle longer, and conducted a 'resistance', by which we imply, that we would have liked that he 'LED'.
Fair enough - the question is from where?
Leading would be so uncharacteristically Saddam, for the man was never a leader, and never led, but was a master of intrigue, of causing deaths and wanton destruction, of doing a Houdini at the first available opportunity, of routinely pillaging the ultimate in value systems, not only on Iraqis but on all HUMAN dignity, in his maniacal bid for absolute power.
Never have we heard of an instance where the man led from the front. Whether it be, his mindless war in the 80's with 'fundamentalist' Iran directed by US intelligence satellite feeds, or that sneaky FRONT called Kuwait. It was the people of Iraq that paid the price for his gluttonic lust and depraved, repetitive and unending 'mother of all battle' cries. Hundreds upon thousands were compelled to die to protect Saddam-land - not Iraq, and when the 'defeat of all defeats' came with the fall of Baghdad to the US, we saw him UP FRONT as promised didn't we - fighting till the last breath had left his body? Never ever in the history of the world, has such a dismal and brutal coward been blown to such a larger than life HERO?
Planted not simply for an easy invasion of Iraq, Saddam was propelled and pummeled to what he is today, to CONQUER the Arab heartland, the beginning of the end to Muslim's misplaced and unnecessary pride. Yet systematically stripped off his so-called DIGNITY in that hippopotamic YAWN to a US doctor for the world to see, we decided to cry FOUL. The entire pan-Islamic pantheon of the so-called Ummah and others set about a chorus of pleading- 'he is after all a world leader, he doesn't deserve any of this'.
But pray why NOT?
Constitutionally NO, legally NO, but morally YES, Saddam absolutely deserves the fate he is in today. Shall we remind ourselves, that all along in this drama called the Iraq invasion, was it not 'thinking' people around the world that repeatedly impressed upon how 'morally' wrong things are? Well, this is the final straw ladies and gentlemen.
How MORAL was that coup engineered by a CIA trained Saddam to capture power, how moral was the US backed Iraqi regime that allowed him license to lead all his detractors from a public hall to be shot with TV cameras whirring, how moral was his invasion of Kuwait, which was okayed by the US, how moral was gassing of the Kurds with chemicals provided by the US…we have loads of MORAL questions, that would be IMMORAL, if left unanswered.
As citizens of the world, we are answerable only to the people of Iraq - not one Saddam Hussein, and not the US or some 'son-of-a-fox' called George Bush Jr. If there is even one gene of MORALITY still alive and kicking in our system, any shift in our moral equation in these debilitating times, will ensure that future tyrants will find newer avenues to redefine morality, as if it were a maze in our blurry collective conscience. If EVER that is, the world is prepared to TRY, convict and execute George Bush of crimes, no worse than those of Saddam? Without putting our mouths into motion before our heads are in gear, lets say 'we will not deny Bush the 'justice' he denied the people of the world' - shall we?
A product of an institutionalized worldwide franchise of US thuggery, Saddam's mind and actions were all coordinated at the behest of his masters, never for a second doing anything that would keep him off the cognitive US radar. Yet here we are, jumping in the bandwagon of 'what's next', for a man, whose rise and fall and hopefully his ultimate demise will all be orchestrated by the US, unless providence intervenes and determines events to the contrary, which is of course highly unlikely.
Never ever has a tyrant played all available opportunity to keep everybody guessing, and even while he headed the deck of US cards as the ACE of Spade capable of digging holes (would have been much better, if it was a JOKER) - every third world man and women still nurture hopes that he would somehow make a comeback, on the crest of a huge tidal bore of popular support. As if that is not enough, in the months he went into hiding, we have lost count of the numbers of Muslim infants we named - SADDAM!
Shame on HITLER - shame on BUSH, Saddam rules pop infamy?
And then we bad mouth our ire on the Media, the 'embedded' US first line of offense and defense, the first line of lies, and the first line of imagination going waste. The tragedy of it all, the imagination of the whole world is captive and has been tattered to shards, while in the pronounced hysteria, everything has been made to look so predictably 'win, win' predictable. What more can a war machine out to conquer the world do better, than so capably play this dunce game on us, all of it with our unconditional approval? We could have not been more susceptible to being this duped, nor could the world been less stupid-er thanks to the like of Saddam and Bush.
In the quest for freedom of expression, free speech, democracy and whatever else we consider holy in this new millennium, have we ever stopped to ask about the priorities or options available to the Iraqi people? Are we to hope that only a failed Emperor who guided the destiny of men, women or child for more than two decades - is their only plausible answer? If YES, which would be a reasonably unreasonable answer, can we pause for a couple of more questions?
What does freedom mean to a people who have been enchained to slavery this long - and how is it that a 'thinking' world would permit debating such regurgitated idiosyncrasies for another 100 years or so, while we let the original Pharaoh, the US, to literally amble in and throw out older, less threatening serfs in the region, with newer excuses of FREEDOM that vulgarizes and condemns the usage of the word forever? Why do only innocents have to pay with their lives, when monsters shuffle their pawn on global chessboards? When will we have CNN and BBC reporting - 'MONSTERS are dying'?
We live in strange times, and in Al-Tikriti's 'capture', the strangeness of it all is far too overpowering.
Even as the US announced with unrestrained relish that they 'got him in a rat hole', other gaping holes in the story from soldiers just out of foxholes emerged. Imagine 500 'brave' US soldiers out on a mission to capture their oldest friend turned fiend in the Middle East, aerial surveillance, guns drawn, on a silent mode, ready for the kill. Guess what - while they wore their high-tech night vision goggles all right, on hindsight they forgot night vision cameras otherwise used in bombing raids or puny 'heroic' surges on insurgents in the so-called Sunni triangle.
The sob story - the 'highest' profile operation as such, but the US could not record it for posterity - unbelievably believable? We were therefore left with nothing more than 'heroic' US soldiers giving us 'first hand' accounts of the same, there being no other eyewitness around, his guards having fled: 'seeing' approaching US soldiers!
Not a villager, not anybody in sight - Saddam and 500 US soldiers, a tent and the rat hole, take it or leave it folks - period!
Question: If the guards could have fled - why couldn't the Emperor?
Answer: There must have been an undetected Texan rattler pit nearby!
Then in comes this huge unplugged hole in the story Courtesy CNN:
"And then 'Emperor of Iraq' stepped out of the 'rat hole' and proclaimed himself thus and expressed his desire to 'negotiate' with his 'friend' George Bush?"
All of this as dumbfounded journalists would learn in perfect, Queens English, albeit with an Arabic zing. But hang on a second - is there any available record anywhere in the world to prove dumb Iraqi Emperor ever spoke a word of English? There is no record in the US seizure list the existence of an Arabic-to-English dictionary either!
The first 48 hours was spent convincing the world how a member of the family revealed the location of the rat hole. Ah, it was of course the ravishing second wife, made $ 25 million richer, with 'credible' interviews taken from her in Beirut, Lebanon, filled the 'guess who' speculations? Every newspaper or news portal worth its name splashed the story, yet none made much of a noise when the Lebanese Government formally issued a rejoinder that Samira Shahbandar does not live in the country?
Then came a succession of claimants, the Kurds and later a guard who has unfortunately been denied the promised $25 million, and instead found himself behind bars for also being a 'criminal'. Thuraya Satellite phones picked up on its sales when tales circulated that the US pinpointed Saddam locations by tracking a call made over such a device to Samira - once again proving how dumb Al-Tikriti really was. Not to be outdone a Pakistani newspaper said that Saddam had been captured weeks earlier, or a Saudi report that Emperor dined with his holiness the Pharaoh on his surprise visit to US forces over Thanksgiving, in the 51st state!
But beating everybody hollow was an Israeli tale of Ariel Sharon making a quick trip to Baghdad to meet the captive emperor (why?) - and it goes on and on, and its seems just about anybody can cook up stories and pass them on to a 'what next' starved, bored world.
However for those trying to go beyond the media and intelligence jamboree, the facts as they stand are: it is only and IF Saddam ever gets anywhere close to a court of law, wherever, shall we know what transpired, not just in the rat holes, and fox holes, but also about the WMD's, about the war, about his riches - and perhaps some of the many unanswered questions we have raised today.
Saddam's captors do not have to worry about placing him on a suicide watch. Bush has decided to hang him - and so he will, rightly or wrongly, and whether anybody in the world cares is a separate matter. Death under mysterious or 'accidental' circumstances is quite fair and 'game', and when the going will get tougher than tough for the US, Saddam will have passed unto mother earth's womb, half deeper than the 'hole' he was discovered in - without even our knowing.
We should not be surprised if Saddam is dead already. Any takers out there?
But heck, who the hell cares, for likes of Saddam and Bush, the death penalty is actually being merciful. The world may turn out to be a planet lot more peaceful than we had bargained for. And we will be left non-too-wiser falling into or out of, or explaining 'holes' of all kinds to our children!
(|)(-) 'Damn Texan Rattle SNAKES!'
posted by Mac Haque at 12:15 AM
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