020

Will Saddam spill the beans?

This man has a strong sense of self-preservation. The captive's current
meekness is no surprise -- nor is the likelihood that he will try to
rebuild his legend, says biographer ANDREW COCKBURN

By ANDREW COCKBURN

Toronto Globe and Mail | Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2003

An odious leader, discredited even before capture, is gradually restored to
health and strength while awaiting trial for war crimes. Finally in court,
he conducts a vigorous defence and thus retrieves some dignity before his
inevitable conviction and condemnation. That was Herman Goering: Once Adolf
Hitler's right-hand man, an obese drug addict by the end of the Second
World War, he put up a forceful defence at the Nuremberg Trials of the Nazi
leadership.

The Saddam Hussein captured on the weekend was reminiscent of Goering at
his nadir -- blinking, disoriented and so divorced from reality that he
asked his G.I. captor if he was open to negotiation. This was a far cry
from the frightening leader who once conferred on equal terms with fellow
world leaders.

Can he emulate the old Nazi and rally before taking the stage in the courtroom?

Putting up a good account of himself in the last act of his public career
will be an important priority for Saddam. This is a man who has brooded
long and deeply on his place in history, famously reconstructing remnants
of ancient Babylon, for example, using bricks inscribed with grandiose
references to "the era of Saddam Hussein." Iraqi billboards were papered
with posters depicting Saddam standing alongside what he regarded as his
historical peers: legendary rulers such as Babylon's Nebuchadnezzar, and
Saladin, the conqueror of the Crusaders. This former village bully saw
himself as the true successor to these giants of the past, and worked hard
to convince others to think the same way.

To some degree he was successful. Soon after the invasion of Kuwait in
1990, a respected and eminently cultured Arab intellectual described the
Iraqi leader to me as a "kick-ass Arab," willing and able to defy the
arrogant Americans and their Israeli allies. Even his opponents were wary
of his alleged strength and toughness. I recall a senior CIA official
respectfully quoting Saddam's observation that "Assad (at that time the
dictator of Syria) may be the smartest leader in the Middle East, but I am
the toughest." More recently, U.S. President George W. Bush was able to
sell Americans on the inherently unlikely notion that Saddam Hussein
actually posed a threat to the security of the United States.

Saddam's emergence from his burrow, looking more like an addled street
person than a fearsome dictator, obviously put an enormous dent in the
assiduously cultivated legend. To surrender without a shot being fired, let
alone without saving the last bullet for himself, was deeply humiliating.
Over the years he has repeatedly stressed how he, personally, would fight
to the end.

Sometimes he would repeat a tale of how, during the Iran-Iraq war, he found
himself in the Iraqi front line as it was being overrun by advancing
Iranians, and had snatched a gun from an Iraqi soldier. "With a gun in my
hand," he would conclude the anecdote, "I was ready to face the world."

Of course, it didn't turn out that way. So, Saddam may now wish to
re-establish his aura as a formidable figure, respected on the world stage.
One means to restoring his credentials as a respected statesman that may
have occurred to him would be frequent evocation of the decade during which
he was a close ally of the United States. "Black List One" as the U.S.
troops have been calling Saddam may -- or at least should -- be
contemplating the subpoena he might issue to summon U.S. Defence Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld to testify about his trip to Baghdad in 1983.

Cross-questioning would elicit details of how Mr. Rumsfeld arrived as a
special presidential envoy, offering full support to Saddam in his war with
Iraq, while simultaneously touting for the Bechtel Corporation in
connection with a proposed pipeline deal.

Saddam may also have visions of summoning the American executives who sold
him the wherewithal for biological-weapons manufacture, or the U.S admirals
who commanded the fleet to fight by his side against Iranian gunboats and
airliners in the Arabian Gulf in 1988, or the Saudi officials who
subsidized his nuclear-weapons program.

Closer to home, he can remind leading members of the so-called Iraqi
Governing Council of close co-operation in the past -- especially the
Kurdish leader who once disposed of a large number of Iraqi Communist
refugees at Saddam's behest in exchange for a lavish reward.

Such crafty defiance would certainly embarrass the prosecutors. But it will
take more than that to restore Saddam's stature as a larger than life
figure -- for, despite all the carefully fostered legend, Saddam's
submissive surrender was absolutely in character. Forty years ago, he was a
hunted fugitive on the run from the security forces of the regime that
drove his Baath Party from power in a November, 1963 coup. Finally cornered
in a safe house with two companions, Saddam rejected the exhortation of one
comrade to fight to the death, opting instead for surrender and a
comfortable jail cell.

This pattern of retreat persisted in later years. He repeatedly tried to
throw in his hand once his ill-considered 1980 attack on Iran went awry,
only to have his offers rejected by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, a
genuinely hard-nosed individual. In the 1991 Gulf war, Saddam effectively
surrendered by ordering a precipitous and disastrous retreat by his armies
from Kuwait. Credible reports indicate that prior to this year's invasion
of Iraq, he was offering abject concessions, including an invitation to
U.S. troops to come and search for the weapons of mass destruction.

Despite this record, much of the world has been prepared to believe the
fantasy -- even through its latest manifestation, in which Saddam was
depicted by the Americans as an organizer and mainspring of the Iraqi
resistance.

Now, assuming he gets anything approaching a fair and open trial, he has
the opportunity to reassemble the legend that fell apart at the bottom of a
muddy pit.

Andrew Cockburn is co-author, with Patrick Cockburn, of