December 18, 2003

So there’s President G.W. Bush on television, trying to be oh-so low key about the capture of Saddam Hussein. You know, it’s all a victory for the Iraqi people, and all that baloney. The problem is that Saddam’s capture won’t make a bit of difference in the coming months.

Saddam was a figurehead of state in Iraq. He appeared to be the dictator; omnipotent, evil and all-powerful – according to the American media – but that never was really the case.

The real Iraqi underpinnings keeping Saddam in power was his Sunni Bathist Party, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Saddam was powerless without them, and it is they, and the thousands of foreign fighters infiltrating Iraq, who are attacking and killing our troops every day. Saddam’s capture doesn’t even represent a speed bump to the goals the resistance fighters in Iraq have planned.

Take a step back from this chessboard, and let’s examine what’s really on the table.

President Bush faces re-election in less than one year. His most likely opponent is moderate Democrat Howard Dean, who opposed the war on Iraq from its inception. It is very likely that the resistance in Iraq sees the possibility that a President Howard Dean will pull our troops from Iraq the moment he’s sworn in. Bush barely won election in 2000, and the Iraqi resistance knows that.

If the resistance in Iraq can keep sending American soldiers home maimed and in body bags at an ever increasing rate, the chance Howard Dean will replace Bush as president is magnified. For this reason, the resistance in Iraq will actually accelerate in response to Saddam’s capture, rather than diminish. Thanks to our well-published Republican form of government, President Bush has a deadline to meet, and the enemy in Iraq is very well aware of it.

There’s an even bigger potential problem facing President Bush, and that is the fact Saddam Hussein allowed himself to be taken alive.

Had our troops lobbed a couple of grenades into that spider hole Saddam was hiding in, or had Saddam gone out in a blaze of glory, or had Saddam simply shot himself in the head as our troops closed in, Bush would be breathing easy – but I can guarantee you he’s not.

Already, CNN and FOX News are telling the American public that Saddam is a known pathological liar – did you catch that? Why is that, do you suppose?

The only proper judicial venue for Saddam’s trial will be for his alleged crimes against the Iraqi people, meaning a trial in Iraq manned by an Iraqi judge and Iraqi jurors. Following that, a world court of some sort might need to consider whether Saddam is a war criminal. Either way, Saddam will likely testify on his own behalf, and call on witnesses who can support his testimony.

There could very well be evidence presented that Bush knew Saddam had destroyed his remaining weapons of mass destruction after the first Gulf War, and that GW’s war on Iraq was therefore contrived for reasons other than the alleged imminent threat Bush claimed. All kinds of evidence Bush might want to suppress could come to light in a public Iraqi trial.

I fully expect Saddam to be overtaken by cancer before he’s ever tried – a known CIA method of assassination that first came to light with the convenient death of Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer, Jack Ruby.

Even if that scenario plays out, Bush is in deep trouble still. Bush wants to pull our troops out of Iraq by the end of June – conveniently in time for the November election – but if he does that, it would be the same as when the United States declared “victory” in Viet Nam in 1973 and then watched the North Vietnamese Army take Saigon two short years later.

While Saddam might be out of the picture, another vicious and violent Bathist Party member could easily replace him, and return Iraq to the same form of government that existed before. If that happens, then every single man and woman who died and was maimed for life in Iraq, will have died and been maimed for life in vain – just like the 58,000 kids who died for nothing in Viet Nam.

If Bush is forced to keep our troops in Iraq as the daily slaughter continues, then he’s toast as a candidate in November. Either way, Bush is in a lose-lose situation, which means our kids in uniform are in a lose-lose situation right along with him.

The only difference will be that Bush will publicly shed alligator tears of sympathy, while our kids in uniform will be shedding their blood in the gutters of Iraq. I must question the intelligence of any American who seriously considers a military career at this time, which is why I still believe a revived draft is in the making after the November elections.

The next 11 months will be very interesting to witness.

Carl F. Worden

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