Time for game of 'Let's Pretend' Saddam Hussein lives
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
It’s January 2009, and a new American president is taking office.
It has been nearly six years since President George W. Bush nearly led America into war in Iraq, only to be stopped at the brink by Senate Democrats, joined by a few Republicans.
Saddam Hussein is moving toward agreement with his new Muslim ally Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to develop the third phase of Iraq’s nuclear power program, modeled after Iran’s.
The former rivals pledged solidarity and were joined quickly by Libya and North Korea in a stunning announcement that reminded historians of the Hitler-Stalin Pact that hastened World War II.
The so-called “Pact of Arms and Oil” of 2006 called for driving the “Great Satan,” America, from the Middle East, annihilating Israel, and partitioning Kuwait as a prelude to dominating the world’s oil supply.
Helping were leaders of China and Russia, who pledged immediately to follow their non-intervention pattern of the early 2000s in exchange for assurances from Iran and Iraq of a plentiful oil supply.
A joint communiqué released simultaneously in Baghdad and Teheran said, “What we withhold from our Western enemies we will make available to our friends.”
An elated Saddam told reporters, “They lacked the will to stop us when they could. Let them try now that we are united with our Muslim and communist brothers.”
In 2003, Saddam was the target of 17 United Nations’ resolutions calling for verifiable inspections. Now, the total is 43.
The U.S. CIA and intelligence branches of all major Western nations need no longer suspect that Saddam has nuclear materials and know-how. They can be certain.
Especially frightening to the Israelis has to be Saddam Hussein’s recent pledge to donate $50,000 to families of terrorist bombers who die killing Jews. Previously, the donation was $25,000. Ahmadinejad promptly offered matching funds.
Enough of Let’s Pretend.
Saddam is gone, courtesy of the United States led by President George W. Bush and Great Britain, led by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Despite his record of using weapons of mass destruction against Kurds and Iranians in the 1980s, despite his clever shuffling around inside Iraq of plants that might produce poison gas and/or nuclear components, despite his chucking out UN inspectors, despite his leaving 400,000 graves of political opponents in the desert, despite all his known brutality, all his pledges to see Israel and America destroyed, he is less than a memory to Americans now.
That despite the fact that nearly every major candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, and former President Bill Clinton, are on television footage saying Saddam was a menace to the world and must be stopped. An overwhelming majority of the Congress voted to approve the war. Every western intelligence arm believed Saddam’s own bluffs and boasts about weapons.
That would exclude Barack Obama, who seems to be basing his strategy for dealing with murderous dictators on “Hope” – a not very reliable formula judging by history.
Sadly, hope failed in 1936. That is when Germany’s Adolf Hitler could have been stopped easily had British and French leaders of that day mustered the resolve to do it – and more than 50 million people died in World War II.
But to our hopeful brave new generations, Saddam is the man who never was. He goes unmentioned. His removal seems to count for nothing.
But some of us know what he was. Thankfully, we have not had to experience what he might have become.
May 2008
