Jim Hoagland, Saddam Hussein and Washington Post

[nelsbacon <nelsbacon@DELETETHISearthlink.net>]

To: Washington Post  <letters@washpost.com>
Reference: Jim Hoagland's "Dear Saddam"
Washington Post,  September 3, 2000

Dear Editor:

Can any nation hold a candle to Arrogant America when it comes
to hating, dehumanizing, demonizing  and destroying their chosen enemies?
The beauty of the American psyche (one can hardly call it "character") is that
it has never learned -- and could never cope  with -- examining itself under
the same "standards"  (using that term loosely) that it imposes on those we
have chosen to humiliate and destroy.  Substituting the "US" and the
names of a massive collection of Americans who are in and who have held
high positions of power in our government during the past century into
Hoagland's piece would present a shockingly realistic picture of ourselves.

Get ready America.....our Exalted War Lords and  America's
"Corporation's Whores" are preparing us for another one-sided
War of Mass Destruction and Merciless Slaughter.

We always love a fair fight:  270-million Americans, the World's
Sole Super Power and "Goebbels the Magnificent" vs. 20-million
starving Iraqi Arabs struggling to survive in a nation we have already
 "Bombed back into the Stone Age."

Clinton may have been a draft dodger when the conflict may have
put his precious butt in danger of getting kicked, but he's no slouch
when it comes to genocide and destruction of Arabs
"From Great Heights and Long Distances."
 

Happy Labor Day and Bombs Away!!!!!!!

nels bacon
nelsbacon@earthlink.net
-----------------------------

letters@washpost.com

Letters to the Editor
The Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW
Washington, DC 20071

from Sunday's Washington Post:
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1680-2000Sep2.html

Dear Saddam
By Jim Hoagland

Sunday , September 3, 2000 ; B07

Hi ya, big boy. Yeah, you, Saddam. The Mother of All Dictators.
Okay, okay, the All Mighty and Munificent One, then. Still touchy
after all these years, I see. Yeah, it's been a while. You've been
busy rebuilding missile factories and other secret toys for your
version of a good time. Here, we've been distracted with a nascent
election campaign in which both sides have been praying that you
would stay out of sight.

They never learn, do they, O Blessed Hope of Iraq? They
underestimate your need to stay in the spotlight. So you're back,
making threatening noises. And they still don't get how you've
honed that trademark touchiness you unleash so quickly as one of
your most important political weapons.

You use it to attract useful idiots from abroad to plead for an end to
international infringement on Iraq's "sovereignty." And you use it to
intimidate other governments and the United Nations into tiptoeing
around your deadly toys, so as not to set off your nasty side.

World-class tactics, pal. They help you big time now in wriggling
away from U.N. sanctions. Why am I not surprised? Maybe
because I have seen your skills firsthand. During our 1975 interview
in your palace in Baghdad, for example. When one of your minions
called to say you were upset with the article that followed, I thought
I knew why: those references to you as a teenage gunman and the
violence and intimidation you used to rule Iraq. All true, I said.

Nah, not that stuff, your diplomat shot back. It's the diamond cuff
links. How could I have mentioned the obvious pride of the Greatest
Arab Socialist in History in such worldly goods? This would not
help your image, and what did not help your image was dangerous
in Iraq.

Recent reports say that you and your clan still live luxuriously and
that your army thrives while Iraqi children die from hunger and
neglect. But somehow today the diamond cuff links part of the
picture gets too little attention: Your line that sanctions, rather than
your bloody rule and defiance of the United Nations, are the root
cause of Iraq's troubles is propagated widely by people who should
know better. They portray you as the victim.

But there I go again. You clearly are doing something right, from
your standpoint. Look at the debate at the United Nations last
week over a mind-numbing nuance: Should Hans Blix, the
chairman of the new team of arms inspectors, announce that his
group was ready to return to Iraq, as he planned? Or should he say
the arms experts "could plan and commence" preliminary tasks to
prepare for future inspections, once they are approved by Iraq?

Now stop laughing, Saddam. And don't gloat because Blix chose
the second option after Washington and Moscow told him they
didn't want an announcement that would "create a climate of
confrontation at an inappropriate time." That's a Security Council
diplomat talking to The Washington Post's Colum Lynch.

We know why Moscow wants to avoid any hint of confrontation.
President Vladimir Putin is avidly working to get sanctions off and
business with Iraq resumed, no matter how many hidden atomic,
chemical or biological weapon facilities you've been building.
Washington's motivation is more complex but no less craven.

Diplomatic confrontation would call attention to the fact that there
have been no inspections for weapons of mass destruction since
you unilaterally ended them in December 1998. Al Gore does not
want that dredged up now. Not even Bush-Cheney-Powell seem
eager to have U.S. televiewers or newspaper readers reminded that
you survive, and plot.

But the Clintonites are considering rushing Patriot missiles to
Israel just in case you act up. They are probably looking the wrong
way again. All you have to do is cut back on oil exports and you
would throw world markets into chaos. Is that a smile I see forming
beneath the world's most notorious moustache?

And that would enable you to keep the focus off the fact your ban
on inspections will outlast Clinton's second term. You keep the
focus on the sanctions, not on your defiance. You hide in plain
sight the fact that you could end tomorrow the cruel deprivation that
afflicts Iraq's children by simply living up to the obligations you
undertook to the United Nations and to the administration of
George W. Bush's father to get an end to the Gulf War.

"Europeans feel we cannot go on starving innocent children with
these sanctions," a leading German politician said on a recent
Washington visit. I asked him if it made any difference that it was
Baghdad's just-repeated refusal of inspections that kept the
sanctions in place. "No, people just see the children," he
responded.

You turned 63 this spring, O Crafty Survivor of All Survivors. But
you haven't lost a step in the flimflam and intimidation game,
Saddam. You are one of a kind. Or so I pray.

                      © 2000 The Washington Post Company