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America needs you, Deep Throat
II
By Ehsan Ahrari
Now
that the entire world knows who "Deep Throat"
really was - then-Federal Bureau of Investigation
deputy chief Mark Felt - the mystery is solved,
but the longing for mystique remains. It is
tempting to wish for another deep throat to give
us an insider's scoop about the real causes
underlying the American invasion of Iraq. Former
Senator James Baker's immortal words - "What did
he [Richard Nixon] know and when did he know it?"
- are still relevant regarding President George W
Bush's decision to invade Iraq. When did he decide
to invade Iraq, and why did he decide to do so? No
one really knows the precise answer. Not even Bob
Woodward of the Washington Post, who made his name
by effectively using Deep Throat's inside scoop to
bring down Richard Nixon's presidency. Despite
writing two books on George W Bush, the journalist
did not really have much earth-shattering
information about those questions.
Why do
we need to know the answers to these "when" and
"why" questions? Because they still puzzle the
students of America's foreign policy; because they
are related to a lot of bloodshed in the Middle
East; and because they promise to change the very
nature of the balance of power, and in the
process, threaten the political stability of that
region. Finally, they should also be answered
because the answers will help future historians
arrive at major judgments about the Bush
presidency.
What surprised everyone who
was following the initial phases of America's "war
on terrorism" was that Bush virtually walked away
from the unfinished task of eradicating the
remnants of al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in
Afghanistan. The eruption of anti-Saddam Hussein
rhetoric came out of nowhere, it seemed, as a
prelude to America's invasion of Iraq, while
American forces were still engaged in Afghanistan.
The dominant question at that time was why such
vitriolic attacks on Saddam just now? The brutal
nature of his dictatorship was no news to anyone
inside or outside the US government. In fact,
despite that knowledge, the administration of
president Ronald Reagan opted to side with Saddam
against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war of the
1980s. The official US position was that his
regime was envisaged as the lesser of two evils.
Nothing about the nature of Saddam's
regime changed, even when he invaded Kuwait. His
decision to attack Iran in 1981 was also a quick
and surprising one. The only difference was that
in 1981, he was attacking America's sworn enemy,
whereas in 1991 he invaded a friendly emirate. He
also used chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq
war, as he did in 1988 against the Kurds. An
unclassified Central Intelligence Agency report
states, "Iran and Iraq have developed chemical
weapons [CW] and have employed them in their
conflict since the early 1980s. Iraq began to
develop its CW capability in the early 1970s,
while Iran began its program as a response to
Iraqi battlefield use. Baghdad used riot control
agents in the mid-1970s against dissident Kurds in
northern Iraq. Hostilities with Iran gave
additional impetus to the Iraqi CW program in the
early 1980s, and since 1983, Iraq has used
chemical weapons every year in its war with Iran."
All of the preceding was old news.
However, the US escalated its anti-Saddam rhetoric
in 2002. The American public started to hear
frequent comparisons between his regime and that
of Adolf Hitler's. The Bush administration issued
a dossier in September 2002 listing a number of
violations by Saddam and quoting from Amnesty
International reports. Amnesty swiftly responded
by noting that at least one of the US government's
claims was simply false: that it had never made
one of the claims - on disappeared persons in Iraq
- that was attributed to them. More to the point,
Amnesty was harshly critical of Bush's attempt to
use human rights as a justification for a war of
aggression. It stated, "Once again, the
human-rights record of a country is used
selectively to legitimize military actions. The US
and other Western governments turned a blind eye
to Amnesty International reports of widespread
human-rights violations in Iraq during the
Iran-Iraq war, and ignored Amnesty's campaign on
behalf of the thousands of unarmed Kurdish
civilians killed in the 1988 attacks on Halabja."
Why did Bush scurry to topple Saddam? Was
it a personal vendetta, since Saddam allegedly
plotted to assassinate his father, George H W
Bush, during his visit to Kuwait in 1993?
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh depicts
that plot as "conflicting and dubious evidence" in
one of his essays in the New Yorker magazine. Bush
senior, in a television interview, denied any
linkage between that alleged plot and his son's
decision to oust Saddam. What is the real reason
then? No one really knows, except for Bush, or
maybe Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and
they aren't talking. Not right now anyway.
But why can't we find out the real reason
underlying the US invasion of Iraq? Maybe because
it is no longer an earth-shattering question. The
real truth related to that - if it were to have
been unearthed before the presidential election of
2004 and were to have been disapproved by the
American people - would have brought an end to
another presidency, as did Deep Throat's role to
the Nixon presidency. Now Bush will be in office
for three and a half more years. Nothing short of
"high crimes and misdemeanor" will oust him from
this presidency.
And no one really cares
to find the answer to why he really invaded Iraq,
and exactly when he decided to do it: it is also
possible that, in the information age, people's
sensibility about scandals has been numbed. We are
bombarded by all sorts of scandals - corporate
scandals, celebrity-related scandals, sports
figures-related scandals, etc. In addition, we
live in an age of terrorism, when news of major
disaster and mayhem resulting in the loss of
hundreds and even thousands of human lives has
become part of our "routine".
Still, the
least discussed reality of the American government
is that deep throats do exist. They are regularly
passing out information to the media on a number
of sensitive issues. Come to think of it, Hersh
was responsible for uncovering the Abu Ghraib
scandal. So, stay tuned. Bush or any other
political figure is not out of the woods yet. We
have found out the real identity of only one deep
throat. A whole lot of them are still active, and
a number of scandals are also waiting to be
uncovered. The future of top American politicians
may not be fully secure, but the future of
American democracy certainly is. That, indeed, is
a good thing, thanks to the roles of future deep
throats.
Ehsan Ahrari is an
independent strategic analyst based in Alexandria,
Virginia, US. His columns appear regularly in Asia
Times Online. He is also a regular contributor to
the Global Beat Syndicate. His website:
www.ehsanahrari.com.
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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