Posted on 12/14/2003 7:48:10 PM PST by Pokey78
WASHINGTON — On Saturday night, I stuffed myself on lamb chops and potato pancakes at a holiday party at the home of Don and Joyce Rumsfeld. Along with other media bigfeet, I chatted up Rummy and C.I.A. chief George Tenet, both of whom were in on the secret of the capture of Saddam a few hours before. Neither man even hinted at a thing. So much for being a Washington Insider.
After the news broke Sunday morning, I asked a source in Iraq to speak to members of the Governing Council who had spent a half-hour with the prisoner after he was pulled out of his "spider hole."
They described Saddam as "reacting aggressively" to the presence of the Iraqi leaders who were Shiites. He said to this month's council chairman, Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni, "What are you doing with these guys?"
One of the Shia leaders came back with "Why did you kill Ayatollah Sadr?" Saddam sneered: "Sadir" or "rijl"?
This was a contemptuous play on words. "Sadir," which sounds like a name of the assassinated Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, is Arabic for "chest" and "rijl" means "foot." Saddam, murderer of hundreds of thousands of Shia who dared oppose his rule, didn't leave his thigh-slapping sense of humor in the "spider hole."
Another useful bit of information is the origin of "spider hole," a phrase used by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez to describe the dugout hiding place in which the fugitive Saddam was cowering.
This is Army lingo from the Vietnam era. The Vietcong guerrillas dug "Cu Chi tunnels" often connected to what the G.I.'s called "spider holes" — space dug deep enough for the placement of a clay pot large enough to hold a crouching man, covered by a wooden plank and concealed with leaves. When an American patrol passed, the Vietcong would spring out, shooting. But the hole had its dangers; if the pot broke or cracked, the guerrilla could be attacked by poisonous spiders or snakes. Hence, "spider hole."
Those are facts; now to speculation. Democrats here are already saying ruefully "because we `got' Saddam, we'll `get' four more years of Bush." But that assumes that the Iraqi captive will now reveal weapons of mass destruction and his connections to Al Qaeda, thereby confirming the intelligence that the Bush neocons are charged with having cooked up to justify going to war.
I think Saddam is still Saddam — a meretricious, malevolent megalomaniac. He knows he is going to die, either by death sentence or in jail at the hands of a rape victim's family. Why did he not use his pistol to shoot it out with his captors or to kill himself? Because he is looking forward to the mother of all genocide trials, rivaling Nuremberg's and topping those of Eichmann and Milosevic. There, in the global spotlight, he can pose as the great Arab hero saving Islam from the Bushes and the Jews.
Under interrogation, he's not likely to rat on his fedayeen, lead us to his hidden billions abroad or tell the truth about dirty dealings with France and Russia. Instead, he intends to lie all the way to martyrdom.
Example: Dr. Ayad Allawi, an Iraqi leader long considered reliable by intelligence agencies, told Britain's Daily Telegraph last week that a memo has been found from Saddam's secret police chief to the dictator dated July 1, 2001, reporting that the veteran terrorist Abu Nidal had been training one Mohamed Atta in Baghdad. Nobody disputes that a few months after Atta's 9/11 suicide mission, Nidal was permanently silenced by Saddam's police, the only "suicide" to be found with four bullets in his head.
The prisoner will surely dispute all connections to Al Qaeda, along with charges that he ordered the deaths of what Tony Blair now estimates as 400,000 Shiite and Kurdish Muslims in Iraq.
We are not finished with this remorseless monster; Saddam will have his day in an Iraqi court. But so will the ghosts of poison-gassed Halabja and Iraqi children forced to clear minefields in Iran. The meticulous presentation of his offenses against humanity will demonstrate again that all that would have been necessary for the triumph of evil was for good people to do nothing.
Wrong. He didn't kill himself because he is a coward.
There is nothing "good" about the people who demanded we do nothing in this case. They have the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis on their hands.
Good people don't "do nothing." Democrats do nothing. They advocate doing nothing, and they castigate good people for doing something.
I love good television, and this is going to be the best!
After each episode, we’ll let the Democratic Presidential candidate rebut the prosecution’s case.
Seriously, if that don’t kick the crap out of Survivor 19 and Friends reruns, I don’t know what does.
Give me a six-pack, some hot dogs, a comfy couch and the Saddam trial, and I’ll think I’m in heaven (although you could throw in 72 virgins, if they're not busy.)
The answer to the million dollar question.
This is Safire's real point. "I am the ultimate insider," he never fails to communicate. Safire has never been accused of being humble in the least.
More importantly, it is unethical for reporters and government officials to be so cozy, and dangerous.
Which is why Hussein's capture and continued ability to generate attention to his atrocities will become a permanent and ongoing albatross to Bush's opponents in the War on Terrorism.
Heh heh heh...
Gee, that's funny Mr. Pompous of the NY Times, Brit Hume reported about being at the same party, and noted that Rummy and company were unusually jubilant. When asked about it, Rummy responded that he had had a series of good meetings that day. Brit did not note what he had stuffed himself with.
I thought that was quite common at one time in Arkansas.
Perhaps Brit doesnt share the same weakness for lambchops and potatoe pancakes that Bill, Rummy and I do. LOL ;^p
Safire gets his history wrong here. Cu Chi was a South Vietnamese town / area under and around which were dug an extensive series of tunnels. I believe a large VC force was stationed in the tunnels, with relatively rapid access to Saigon. Cu Chi is a reference to a place, not a type of tunnel.
Spider holes were probably connected to tunnels around Cu Chi, but they were also present everywhere among rural Viet Cong sympathisers. If recollection serves, even your average mama-san had a spider hole in her house to which she could retreat if mortars or rifle fire erupted near by.
BTW - There is an excellent book around entitled, if recollection serves, "The Tunnels of Cu Chi." Damned fine and brave men went down there to confront Charlie.
FNC reported tonight that the U.S. has found a letter handwritten by Abu Nidal that discusses Mohammad Atta and the training he received in Baghdad; if so, the "no Al Qaeda/Saddam connection" is one more the 9 dwarves can remove from their list of grievances.
And even his sons went down with guns blazing, the only good thing you can say about them.
The worst of these liars are those who take pains to cover their tracks by insuring that no flaw in their 'journalistic appearance' helps to reveal their conscious or subconscious bias to their readers.
Theappearance of not having a conflict of interest is not what's important, except in that when people are more concerned with the 'appearance' than the reality, there is something wrong in River City. Of greater importance is knowing enough about a reporter to see where he tends to lean on a given topic, and knowing where he loiters, or to whom he may kiss up, is one of the valuable indicators.
Again, when I hear reporters fail to mention the social circles in which they move, then it is a certainty they seek to be deceptive, to cast the false impression that they are pure and uninfluenced.
I much prefer to know if or how a journalist associates with those he reports on. It came in very handy with Pincus of the washington Times when he was reporting on former Ambassador Wilson. Had he covered up and took care with his 'appearances,' I would not know how to weight his reporting, most particularly on the business with Niger, and might have thought him to be an outsider. Now that I know he has an association with Wilson and Plame, I can judge the depth of his bias and take his reporting with a huge grain of salt, and seek out some journalist with other views to balance Pincus' work and see where the different accounts ring true - or not.
A reporter who claims not to have a conflict of interest is a reporter who has no sources.
The myth of objective, unbiased journalism is just one of my pet peeves.
Saddam will not provide any useful information. According to reports, few, if any of his inner-circle have. It will be the Iraqi scientist/soldier/bureaucrat who no longer fears retribution from Saddam that will reveal the whereabouts of the WMD. And when (not if) they do, we must ram it down the throat of every liberal toad that called President Bush a liar in the most public manner possible.
"However, the tantalising detail provided in the intelligence document uncovered by Iraq's interim government suggests that Atta's involvement with Iraqi intelligence may well have been far deeper than has hitherto been acknowledged.
"Written in the neat, precise hand of Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) and one of the few named in the US government's pack of cards of most-wanted Iraqis not to have been apprehended, the personal memo to Saddam is signed by Habbush in distinctive green ink.
"Headed simply "Intelligence Items", and dated July 1, 2001, it is addressed: "To the President of the Ba'ath Revolution Party and President of the Republic, may God protect you."
"The first paragraph states that 'Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian national, came with Abu Ammer (an Arabic nom-de-guerre - his real identity is unknown) and we hosted him in Abu Nidal's house at al-Dora under our direct supervision.
" 'We arranged a work programme for him for three days with a team dedicated to working with him . . . He displayed extraordinary effort and showed a firm commitment to lead the team which will be responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy.'"
If a private communicaton between Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti and Saddaam Hussein dated July 1, 2001, regarding Mohammad Atta and the commitment he hdd made for "attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy." cannot convince someone that there is a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and the events of September 11, 2003, then that someone must be Howard Dean or Cynthia McKinney.
Any reasonably intelligent person would ask if Mohammad Atta had attacked any targets other than the World Trade Center or Pentagon between July 1, 2001 and September 11, 2001, because he certainly could not have had any expectation of doing so AFTER September 11. The attacks of September 11, 2001 were the only attacks directed and coordinated by Mohammad Atta in the period in question.
The inescapable conclusion is that the targets referenced in this memo wer the ones in fact destroyed by the team led by Mohammad Atta. And if one gives credence to the memorandum at all, these targets were "agreed" to be destroyed by Saddam Hussein.
What is described here is no mere "link"; it looks more to me like a chain of cammand.
The Democrats that have been moronically chanting the mantra "No link between Iraq and Al Qaida" and "No link between Iraq and 9-11", ought now to commit public seppaku out of respect to the shame they have brought on themselves and their nation.
But, never mind, they won't do it. At the very least, though, they ought to have the decency to change the name of their party to "The Idiot Party" as a clarification for the least intelligent among us.
What the hell? Clay pots! Poisonous spiders! Bwahahaha! They were called spider holes simply because they had camouflaged lids reminiscent of a wolf (?) spider, which pops out of its hole to get its prey. All VC foxholes , lidded or not, were eventually called spider holes. (They also tended to be rather small, further reinforcing the spider image.)
While Safire is a good political columnist, his explanation of the origination of the term “spider hole” is specious. The term obviously derives from the burrows constructed by many spider species.
Burrows provide refuge from predators like birds, bandicoots, centipedes and scorpions, as well as buffering climatic extremes for spiders and their young. Some spiders have a trapdoor at the top of their burrow, useful for disguising the burrows presence and ambushing prey. It can also be held shut by the spider or securely silked down when the spider is moulting. Some burrows have extra security within, in the form of additional chambers and doors, escape tunnels and burrow blocking devices like pebbles and loose silk collars. One trapdoor spider (Idiosoma nigrum) even uses its thick, hard abdomen as a plug against burrow invaders.
Five different burrow designs (L to R): Burrow closed by trapdoor; Open burrow blocked by pebble attached to silk lining; Hardened abdomen of a Trapdoor Spider blocking the burrow; Burrow with a side chamber and a second door; Wishbone burrow with hidden escape tunnel.
IMHO, Saddam is more wily than predictable -- but, hey, predictions sell newspapers.
We'll see. It is entirely possible that everyone with direct knowledge of where the WMDs are are dead.
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