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Saddam Hussein’s capture is a spectacular and carefully-timed post-9/11 propaganda event that distracts public attention from the stark and inescapable fact that the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq was illegal and based on false evidence, fabricated pretexts and a multitude of lies. It masks the reality that the US occupation and Iraqi puppet regime is illegitimate, and that the administration’s activities leading up to, during, and after the Iraq invasion have been crimes of unprecedented magnitude.
It is, in fact, the ample documentation and reporting of these crimes, and the mounting criticism of an exposed and cornered Bush administration , that this new propaganda campaign is designed to deflect, and obliterate.
The spinning of this latest event is part of a long series of Bush administration red herrings, part and parcel of the fabricated "war on terrorism", which is itself built upon elaborate fabrications , and deceptions about Al Qaeda, the CIA and affiliated US intelligence proxies , and a continuing coverup of September 11 (also check here , and here ), and the "infinite" global war being waged on the 9/11 pretext .
Saddam’s capture has no relevance to the fact that the Iraq invasion was illegal, conducted based on fabricated evidence and lies carefully sold to the public. It does not change the fact that there have been no weapons of mass destruction, the absence of them a virtual certainty, even according to UN weapons inspector Hans Blix .
It does not change the fact that the war has never been about Saddam Hussein, but "Saddam pretexts". It has been about long-planned US geostrategic imperatives, most notably the capture of Iraqi oil (approximately 11 percent of world oil), and the clearly-stated official policy directive calling for the protection of "the United States’ vital interest in the region--- uninterrupted, secure US/Allied access to Gulf oil" , in preparation for Peak Oil , the nightmarish reality of energy depletion that has been confirmed by CNN , former British environment minister Michael Meecher , Bush administration insiders and a growing number of analysts, such as George Monbiot .
It does not change the fact that numerous recent Iraq-related crimes, from the dubious suicide of British Ministry of Defense bioweapons expert David Kelly , the dirty tricks campaign against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and the criminal outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, and the mysterious death of State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research Near East and South Asian division (INR/NESA), John Kokal , lead directly to the White House.
It does not change the fact that Saddam Hussein is a former US ally and CIA asset who has the goods on his former allies and partners, including George H.W. Bush . Declassified documents confirm the long and close relationship between Saddam Hussein and the United States. Reports of less-than-savory dealings between Saddam, Donald Rumsfeld and other US officials have also been amply documented.
It does not change the well-documented fact that the Bush administration was hellbent on invasion, without regard to the rule of law. A November 6, 2003 New York Times article ("Iraq Said to Have Tried to Reach Last-Minute Deal to Avert War" by James Risen) underscores this fact:
"As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal.
Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search.
The businessman said in an interview that the Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. At one point, he said, the Iraqis pledged to hold elections.
The messages from Baghdad, first relayed in February to an analyst in the office of Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy and planning, were part of an attempt by Iraqi intelligence officers to open last-ditch negotiations with the Bush administration through a clandestine communications channel, according to people involved.
The efforts were portrayed by Iraqi officials as having the approval of President Saddam Hussein, according to interviews and documents.
The overtures, after a decade of evasions and deceptions by Iraq, were ultimately rebuffed."Saddam’s capture also does not answer questions about how the "fall of Baghdad" actually occurred, how and why Iraq was suddenly surrendered, why the Iraqi military stopped fighting (after three weeks in which the US and its "mightiest military on earth" was pinned down by stiff Iraqi resistance). (These and other details about the Iraq operation have been analyzed by retired US Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff .)
Nor does it address the possibility that Saddam Hussein was initially spirited away as the result of a secret deal struck by the Bush administration, immediately after National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice's trip to Moscow. Recall that Vladimir Putin, who had condemned the war in Iraq when it was launched, stated, "A US defeat would not be in Russia's interests." According to a report from Al-Jazeera, Saddam was seeking asylum with Russia. Indeed, the timing of the Saddam capture, in the wake of US-Russian tensions regarding Iraq debt, reconstruction and oil, should raise questions about Russia's behavior throughout the US invasion .
There is, however, one way in which the capture could be made relevant: that is if Saddam Hussein---or the image of Saddam that the world will experience over carefully controlled media---is forced to "sing", and issue "admissions" favorable to the Bush agenda. These may include "new revelations" and "new evidence" that will retroactively and fraudulently justify the Bush administration’s war---silencing anti-war opposition and paving the propaganda path for George W. Bush’s re-selection.
At a December 16 press conference, the sadistic Donald Rumsfeld, whose cozy relationship with Saddam has been captured in photographs by the National Security Archive , gleefully announced that the CIA is in charge of Saddam Hussein’s imprisonment, and "may well" be in charge of his interrogation. Recent reports suggest that torture has already begun. Larry Johnson, former deputy director of the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism said, "We’re not going to torture the guy, but you don’t have to use physical pressure. The type of pressure you can use is keeping someone in a lead cell all the time with constant noise and limiting his sleep and what he eats."
There are, of course, a host of questions regarding the Saddam capture itself, which is no different than other questionable post-9/11 arrests of "villains" such as Khalid Shiekh Mohammed highly dubious arrests, raids conducted by post-9/11 intelligence agencies, and the myths created in the wake of these actions , and the frequently resurfacing tapes of former (and possibly still) US intelligence asset/legend/myth Osama bin Laden. What really happened, and when? What is authentic, and what has been manufactured? In the post-9/11 world of official secrecy and deception, these questions will likely never be answered (or even asked).
Questions about the timing of the event, and the political spin, have been raised by Congressman Jim McDermott , who told a Seattle radio station on Monday, December 15, 2003, that the U.S. military could have found Saddam "a long time ago if they wanted" :
"Asked if he thought the weekend capture was timed to help Bush, McDermott chuckled and said: ‘Yeah. Oh, yeah.’
The Democratic congressman went on to say, ‘There's too much by happenstance for it to be just a coincidental thing.’
When interviewer Dave Ross asked again if he meant to imply the Bush administration timed the capture for political reasons, McDermott said: ‘I don't know that it was definitely planned on this weekend, but I know they've been in contact with people all along who knew basically where he was. It was just a matter of time till they'd find him.
‘It's funny,’ McDermott added, ‘when they're having all this trouble, suddenly they have to roll out something.’"
There is no doubt that a Saddam show trial aids a George W. Bush presidency that has come under increasing fire, watching its public approval drop like a stone.
The capture deflects attention from fierce and continuing Iraqi resistance to the occupation , problems with still-undeliverable Iraqi oil, diplomatic flaps between the US and other nations regarding Iraq reconstruction spoils , barring of anti-war allies from even bidding on reconstruction , and more corruption involving Halliburton .
In addition, it distracts from growing problems for the Bush faction, including:
The United States is currently training and housing the Mujahadeen Khalq (MEK) terrorist group as a terror proxy and covert action force for future operations in Iran, with the enthusiastic and active support of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who view these terrorists as "freedom fighters".
White House is being blasted by the US military community itself.
The Bush White House is being pressured for its secrecy on 9/11 , and is also being sued by a prominent 9/11 widow (also see http://www.septembereleventh.org/ )
Bush administration’s continuing problems with the world economy and financial markets
The capture also coincides with the re-appearance of legendary Reagan-Bush "fixer" James Baker as an official new White House foreign policy envoy, and manager of Iraq debt . Some view the Baker appointment as a move repair the Bush administration's foreign policy in a way that restores traditional "multilateralism" (UN involvement, etc.).
Could the Saddam arrest---and what appears to be a process conducted by "international consensus"---be a part of this new rescue agenda?
America’s mainstream corporate media organs have relentlessly played the White House’s tune for public consumption. America Online’s main web news headline of December 16 shouted the question, "Arrest Erasing Doubt on War?" and even featured a poll titled "Are we winning now?", while a recent Time magazine cover shouted, "We Got Him".
The ruthless and self- congratulatory George W. Bush has already begun gloating , beating his favorite 9/11 pretext like a drum. Leaders of the US puppet regime in Iraq, led by longtime US figurehead-CIA asset Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress , jumped at the new opportunity to repeat old Saddam demonizations, in the hopes of igniting Iraqi support for the illegitimate occupation. Pro-Iraq regime removal neocons and neoliberals, led by Senator Joe Lieberman, co-signer of the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act ) took the opportunity to blast anti-war adversaries, such as current Democratic front runner Howard Dean, who offered little resistance, and applauded Saddam's capture . Prominent Democrats, with few exceptions, have reflexively fallen back on congratulations to the White House , and other ludicrous statements ringing with hawkish jingoism, the many months of criticism quickly dropped.
Criticism outside of the US appears to be firm , however. When the noisy and boastful arrogance dies down, there is the possibility that this desperate propaganda "home run" by the Bush faction could easily backfire: Iraqi cheer fades into ire at US (Reuters)
Regimes desperate to remain in power resort to desperate measures, many of them successful thanks to overwhelming media control, and mass public ignorance bred by this control.
Red herrings, no matter how elaborate, cannot hide the facts from astute observers who will not be swayed by official lies, media distortions and futile attempts to rewrite history.
This writer notes with horror that the invasion and occupation predicted in "The Deep Politics of Regime Removal In Iraq: Overt Conquest, Covert Operations" has occurred as predicted, its correctly named players have behaved as brutally as anticipated. The larger war agenda, built upon decades of national security and foreign policy directives of successive US administrations going back to the 1950s, continues to unfold, threatening mankind itself. This "endless war" is likely to expand, regardless of who occupies the US White House in 2004.
America's War for Global Domination (Michel Chossudovsky)
Bush's Operation Clean Sweep: World War IV in 2004? (John Stanton)
New era of nuclear weapons: Bush buildup begins with little debate in Congress
Beyond Bush II (Michael C. Ruppert)
It is this larger reality, not the propaganda and smokescreens, that must be understood, prepared for, and acted upon.
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