By Beth Solomon
Despite a lot of news reports, a clear explanation by President Bush, and eyewitness live footage of a hole in the dirt, the Iraqi insurgents somehow haven’t gotten the message that Saddam Hussein was a low-life coward, unworthy of respect or allegiance, much less combat.
Have they been hiding under a rock? “It’s ironic that there he was, at the end of the day, cowering in a spider-hole,” one U.S. Army general said.
“He didn’t even fire his gun,” another said. “I will negotiate.” What a joke.
Clearly this man was not a strong leader. A strong leader would have flown onto the deck of an aircraft carrier, guns blazing, wearing a bomber jacket.
Instead, Saddam took a subtle approach to the big moment with 600 U.S. troops. Surrendering with his hands in the air, he didn’t even shave or put up a fight. This was a man and a people going nowhere. Headed for the ash heap of history. Just like the Ruskies, before they got Putin.
“When you take this leader, and find him in a hole in the ground, then that’s a powerful signal you may be on the wrong team and maybe you need to be thinking about some other line of work,” said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who took the shuttle into Bagdad for the day, and like the Commander-in-Chief, took the next flight out. Believe it or not, airline food is better than the grub, I mean, MREs they serve in Iraq.
No, the Iraqi “insurgents” haven’t gotten the message. From Bagdad to the northern city of Mosul, crowds took to the streets in support of Saddam and what they perceive as freedom — freedom from occupying U.S. troops.
They bombed U.S.-backed police stations. They attacked a U.S. supply train.
And they fired on a 2nd Infantry Division patrol using a flock of carrier pigeons as a trap. (This was actually a good thing, because McDonnell Douglas has developed an anti-pigeon semi-automatic M-8 retrofit, which Halliburton will deliver to the U.S. Army next year for a small mark-up. Say, 20,000 percent.) Some Iraqis think this war is about money and oil. Where do they get these ideas? The president has said it 1,000 times if he’s said it once. This war is about freedom and democracy. And to prove it, he’s brought in experts. Like James A. Baker III, who knows a heck of a lot about democracy since he figured out that mess in Florida in the last election. And he barely does any oil business any more.
I heard a report on KPFK, a left-wing radical radio station in Los Angeles, in which Palestinians were saying the capture of Saddam was a set-up by the Americans, a staged event, as predictable as a Hollywood ending. Now, the Palestinians have been through a lot, so you can’t blame them for being a little delusional.
But it does seem sort of inevitable, in a way, that a little dictator funded and armed by the U.S. military, a man who tapped a rich vein of American guns and butter for a decade in another war against another one of our enemies, would be returned to ground level, or even a spider hole, by the same global weapons traf-ficker, I mean superpower.
Not to worry. A guy who was too dumb to fire his gun at the Special Forces will never think to bring this up when he gets his day in court. (Beth Solomon is a Los Angeles writer reachable at)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 23, 2003. Read the original PDF.