Frankenstein-a history of Saddam

[Shannon]

POV: Frankenstein-a history of Saddam
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We Finally Got Our Frankenstein... and He was In a Spider Hole! by Michael Moore

Thank God Saddam is finally back in American hands! He must have really missed us. Man, he sure looked bad! But, at least he got a free dental exam today. That's something most Americans can't get. America used to like Saddam. We LOVED Saddam. We funded him. We armed him. We helped him gas Iranian troops. But then he screwed up. He invaded the dictatorship of Kuwait and, in doing so, did the worst thing imaginable -- he threatened an even BETTER friend of ours: the dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, and its vast oil reserves. The Bushes and the Saudi royal family were and are close business partners, and Saddam, back in 1990, committed a royal blunder by getting a little too close to their wealthy holdings. Things went downhill for Saddam from there. But it wasn't always that way. Saddam was our good friend and ally. We supported his regime. It wasn't the first time we had helped a murderer. We liked playing Dr. Frankenstein. We created a lot of monsters -- the Shah of Iran, Somoza of Nicaragua, Pinochet of Chile -- and then we expressed ignorance or shock when they ran amok and massacred people. We liked Saddam because he was willing to fight the Ayatollah. So we made sure that he got billions of dollars to purchase weapons. Weapons of mass destruction. That's right, he had them. We should know -- we gave them to him! We allowed and encouraged American corporations to do business with Saddam in the 1980s. That's how he got chemical and biological agents so he could use them in chemical and biological weapons. Here's the list of some of the stuff we sent him (according to a 1994 U.S. Senate report): * Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax. * Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin. * Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord, and heart. * Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs. * Clostridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness. * Clostridium tetani, a highly toxigenic substance. And here are some of the American corporations who helped to prop Saddam up by doing business with him: AT&T, Bechtel, Caterpillar, Dow Chemical, Dupont, Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM (for a full list of companies and descriptions of how they helped Saddam, go here). We were so cozy with dear old Saddam that we decided to feed him satellite images so he could locate where the Iranian troops were. We pretty much knew how he would use the information, and sure enough, as soon as we sent him the spy photos, he gassed those troops. And we kept quiet. Because he was our friend, and the Iranians were the "enemy." A year after he first gassed the Iranians, we reestablished full diplomatic relations with him! Later he gassed his own people, the Kurds. You would think that would force us to disassociate ourselves from him. Congress tried to impose economic sanctions on Saddam, but the Reagan White House quickly rejected that idea -- they wouldn't let anything derail their good buddy Saddam. We had a virtual love fest with this Frankenstein whom we (in part) created. And, just like the mythical Frankenstein, Saddam eventually spun out of control. He would no longer do what he was told by his master. Saddam had to be caught. And now that he has been brought back from the wilderness, perhaps he will have something to say about his creators. Maybe we can learn something... interesting. Maybe Don Rumsfeld could smile and shake Saddam's hand again. Just like he did when he went to see him in 1983 (see the photo here). Maybe we never would have been in the situation we're in if Rumsfeld, Bush, Sr., and company hadn't been so excited back in the 80s about their friendly monster in the desert. Meanwhile, anybody know where the guy is who killed 3,000 people on 9/11? Our other Frankenstein?? Maybe he's in a mouse hole. So many of our little monsters, so little time before the next election. Stay strong, Democratic candidates. Quit sounding like a bunch of wusses. These bastards sent us to war on a lie, the killing will not stop, the Arab world hates us with a passion, and we will pay for this out of our pockets for years to come. Nothing that happened today (or in the past 9 months) has made us ONE BIT safer in our post-9/11 world. Saddam was never a threat to our national security. Only our desire to play Dr. Frankenstein dooms us all. Yours, Michael Moore mmflint@aol.com www.michaelmoore.com (http://www.michaelmoore.com)

[lyot]

Comment: “Little Saddams” Still at Large

Ba’ath party heavies still lurk in every neighbourhood, reminding people of their intimidating role in the past.

By Salaam Jihad in Baghdad (ICR No. 40, Part III, 18-Dec-03)

Three days ago I received a death threat from our local Ba’ath party “block captain” - the party official formerly responsible for our neighbourhood in Baghdad.

The threat was not delivered personally, since the Ba’athist is in hiding. Instead, he sent his daughter to the home of another neighbour, who is on good terms with both our families, and that neighbour passed it on to my little brother. The message was that I should stop working for the Americans or else I would be killed.

I don’t work for the Americans. But I do talk a lot, and loudly, about how much I hated the old regime. This old Ba’athist’s house has been raided a few times because many people in the neighbourhood dislike him. So I assume that he just jumped to false conclusions about me.

The last time I saw our neighbourhood Ba’athist was just after the fall of Baghdad. At that point, he was dressed in tribal robes and preparing to escape.

Before that, during the war, I saw him striding through our neighbourhood, rifle in hand and ammunition clips strapped across his chest, shouting that an American pilot had bailed out of his plane and landed in our area. They brought thousands of people to scour the place, and ended up burning a swathe of reeds in an attempt to smoke out the “airman”. As it turned out, our quarry was only a pack of propaganda leaflets.

I’m not overly worried about his threats now. He’s weak – he has to sneak in and out to visit his family. I should also emphasise how much people dislike him around here. In fact, if he ever came after me, he’d be in more danger than I would be. I suppose he makes these threats because he senses his weakness – the bluster represents a final chance for him to flex his muscles.

Still, this kind of thing can’t help but awaken nightmarish memories of a time, not so long ago, when this Ba’athist and his friends held the power of life or death over the rest of us.

I remember one incident quite vividly. It happened during the war. I was at work when a police car raced up, with an officer shouting that American paratroops were descending on Baghdad and that I should tell the relevant officials in my neighbourhood.

A colleague and I dashed home and told the local intelligence officer. He answered ominously: “You need to come with me.” At first, he didn’t believe we had been sent by a police officer. We waited five hours, certain he would draw his pistol and summarily execute us for rumour-mongering. Eventually he told us not to spread such stories again, and sent us home.

Even today, we still see some of these Ba’athist people in our neighbourhoods. Sometimes we see a number of expensive cars pull up in front of one of their houses – clearly some sort of meeting. But we never bother to tell the coalition. Maybe the coalition translator doesn’t like you, and will make sure that the US officer doesn’t believe you. Then again, the coalition officials may believe you and raid the house – but they’ll release the Ba’athists after a few days for lack of evidence.

The Iraqi police, meanwhile, only bother with ordinary crime – and if you walk into the Ministry of Interior, you might well end up delivering your complaint to a former party member.

Maybe when they finally install a mobile phone network, people will call in when they see suspicious activity. Until then, though, I think that these Ba’athists will come and go as they please.

I have nothing against party members who joined out of necessity, for work reasons. My old boss was a high-ranking Ba’athist. But all of the employees in his firm still liked and respected him. Ironically, he was just high enough in the party to lose his job as part of the de-Ba’athification campaign.

The second-in-command - who now runs the department - was by contrast a real ideologue. Before the war, he arbitrarily cancelled all of our vacation time, in case any of us try to leave the country to escape military service. “We are under threat from the Americans, so you shouldn’t go outside Iraq,” he told us. This man is still my boss.

Other Ba’athists tried to do their work as humanely as possible. The father of one of my friends, for example, would never report any of the military deserters in our neighbourhood. He’d never turn someone in for spreading rumours either. You could complain about Saddam to his face. That old man now sits in the coffeehouse and play dominos in complete peace, confident that no one in the neighbourhood means him harm.

So, we’re not totally free of the old fear. The United States may have captured the big Saddam, but the little Saddams are still with us.

Salaam Jihad is an IWPR trainee journalist in Baghdad.

www.iwpr.net (http://www.iwpr.net)

[Hk]

Now that we have "frankenstien", we know what crooked, barbaric, war-monger, created him, dont we......now whose more scary the monster or the one who created the monster?......

Dont allow others to set your agenda for you, set it for yourself(general comment).....oh yeah, and when looking to pass judgement, go to the root of the issues .