Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2003 | 8:50 a.m.
I AM NOT sure about Mudville, but there is plenty of joy in the United States and Iraq and most other countries around the world because Saddam Hussein is finally where he belongs. In jail.
The significance of his capture and the way in which he was found cannot be understated because both tell a hopeful story about our own country and the country Saddam led to the brink of disaster. For too long the ability of the United States' intelligence services to gather reliable information on the ground has been a question without a satisfactory answer. So, even though it took a war and subsequent occupation by tens of thousands of United States' military personnel and intelligence agents, the fact remains that it was superior information from informants that led our troops to the place where Saddam was found. That is definitely a win for our side.
The other obvious victory is for the Iraqis who for far too long were victimized by their own leadership in the person of Saddam. He brutalized his people to the point where they cowered at the mention of his name. His ruthlessness is well-documented and, likely, will be rehashed at whatever trial he is subjected to in the months ahead.
Millions of people allowed themselves to be dictated to for decades by a man so many thought all-powerful and beyond simple humanity. All that came to an end when "Saddam the powerless" was dragged from a six-foot hole in the ground, dishevelled and disoriented, with a weapon at the ready but never to be used against his captors. He lived like a rat since the war began and he was found crouched up among them, barely recognizable when matched against the bravado of the posters and statues that once covered the whole of Iraq.
So, on both counts -- our ability to gather the kind of intelligence that leads to serious business and the understanding by a dictator's victims that they were cowered into submission by a man, a broken and exhausted man, who in the end could no longer run or hide from justice and accountability -- the capturing of Saddam has been a victory.
Of course, the obvious is also true. Saddam is no longer a wanted man, at least in the sense of a man on the run eluding responsible authority. If he is still wanted, it is by an America that wants to know what he knew the day we started the war against his regime early this year. Where are his weapons of mass destruction, and what were his plans to use them against the West and our allies? What was his relationship with Osama bin Laden, and what were their plans to terrorize the rest of the world? Who else was in on their evil doings? Was there complicity with those countries who refused to attack him at our side? Russia? France? Germany? What was Saudi Arabia's role in the planning and paying for the destruction of the World Trade Center, if he knows? Did he help fund and foment the trouble in the Middle East, which has made peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors elusive at best and murderously difficult, at worst? If not him, who? What other countries have weapons of m! ass destruction, and do they plan to use them against America?
These are all good questions, the answers to which can go a long way to making this world a much safer place in which to live.
President George W. Bush has a right to be happy today, although he has suitably contained his glee, choosing instead to rightfully focus the good news toward the people of Iraq, who have been sleeping much better since the news of Saddam's capture first broke this weekend. The president stands to garner the kind of information from Saddam that should help him prosecute the war against terror in a much more meaningful way, assuming of course that we are not already doing all that we can.
He also gains politically, a secondary motivation I am sure but still one that raises his stature in this country among the majority of people who viewed Saddam's capture as one of the defining moments for victory in Iraq as well as a justification for the war in the first place. If Saddam's capture also lessens the resistance to U.S. occupation and the resulting deaths to American troops, then this weekend's startling news would be as good as it can get.
Now that the Ace of Spades is just another card removed from the hole in which he was hiding, I hope it will be easier for U.S. intelligence efforts to focus on the other and, in my mind, far more treacherous man on the run. He, too, is likely hiding in a hole or a cave somewhere between Pakistan and Afghanistan and has proved even harder to find than Saddam. I am talking about Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the World Trade Center attacks, which focused our president on the need to fight this long-term war against international terrorism. I mention him, not to take away from the excitement of Saddam's incarceration, but to remind each of us that there is much more to be done if this country is to lead the way against these forces of evil.
The real joy, though, is not ours in this country or even the Iraqis, it belongs to the men and women of our armed services and those of our coalition partners who have stood the test of battle and who have not shirked one bit in their mission to rid Iraq of this tyrant and the evil that has grown out of his reign of terror. They are the people who have witnessed the deaths of their friends and fellow soldiers at the hands of terrorists bent on destroying any chance of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East moving towards democracy and modernization. They are the people whose lives have been and still are on the line every day over there and who try to play by a different set of rules, a civilized set, while the enemy has just one. Kill at all costs.
This continued fact of life in post-war Iraq was brought home Monday while I read through the pages and pages of stories about Saddam's capture. It seemed like there was nothing else to read in the daily newspaper. Until I turned well back into the body of the paper to read a two- paragraph blurb about Lt. Col. Allen West.
Col. West is the Army officer who admitted that he threatened to shoot an Iraqi detainee during the war in an effort to extract information from him that Col. West was convinced would save the lives of American soldiers. He did fire a pistol near the man's head, and the man immediately opened his mouth enough for Col. West to learn of the planned attack. Countless American soldiers' lives were saved because of Col. West's actions.
On the same day as the media heralded the good news about Saddam's rat-like capture, it also told the story of an American Army officer who made the admission as part of a deal that allows him to pay a $5,000 fine and retire rather than face a court-martial. Here's a case of man in the middle of a most unconventional war, acting first and foremost to save American men and women in uniform, being drummed out of the service because his tactics in the light of hindsight were not appropriate. Forget that he was up against people who cared little or nothing about human and, especially, American life and forget that his tactics saved many.
Col. West did what needed to be done just as the brave soldier who first peeked into the hole where Saddam was hiding did his job, not knowing what might happen. In the latter case, the Ace of Spades was found quivering and disoriented, captured without a shot. In the former, the rules were bent but lives were saved.
Perhaps with all the joy being rightfully shared in Washington this week, President Bush might take a look at the case of Lt. Col. West. I am sure our commander in chief can find a way to share a little bit of the good news with a man who has been broken for saving American lives.
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