DAVID VEST
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Sat Jan 3 03:07:36 2004
64.140.159.211



Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
On Digging a Hole and Crawling in It
By DAVID VEST

American troops found a guy who looked a lot like Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn hiding in a spider hole in Iraq.

The word "grotesque" means "out of a cave."

"Good riddance," said an oddly prescient G. W. Bush, employing the
same phrase millions will no doubt utter the day he leaves office. If
he returns to his ranch in Texas sooner rather than later, voters all
over the country will run through the streets wearing T-shirts
emblazoned with G.W.'s likeness over the words "We got him!"

Saddam may have looked like a displaced Russian novelist on
Thorazine, and why not? We are told he spent his last days in power
putting the finishing touches on a new novel about himself leading an
underground resistance movement to victory against an occupying force.

Forget Solzhenitsyn, Saddam is straight out of Nabokov, who knew more
about the psychology of the self-deluding fool than anyone (with the
possible exception of Henry James). Go and rent Fassbinder's 1979
film of Nabokov's "Despair" and let Dirk Bogarde explain the likes of
Saddam to you without of course ever mentioning him.

No one will ever mistake G. W. for a novelist, nor is he much of an
actor. Indeed, no president has had less to say and more trouble
saying it. He has dared come forth from his own hiding place to
confront the press only four times this year. Bush, who overwhelmed a
crumbling, virtually defenseless opponent only to begin behaving as
though he had just won the War of the Worlds, was wearing no disguise
when last seen, not even a borrowed flight suit. He looked exactly
like himself as he smirked his way through a press conference and a
victory lap with Diane Sawyer.

While G. W. witlessly gloated ("when the heat got on, you dug
yourself a hole, and you crawled in it"), others were scowling on his
behalf. William Bennett, the chain-smoking former drug czar and
easily the most dishonest-looking man in America, turned up on cable
calling outright for Bush to torture Saddam, put sharp sticks under
his fingernails, and so forth, until he comes up with weapons of mass
destruction. (If they really wanted to torture Saddam they would
force him to read The Book of Virtues.)

So what if Saddam is getting no better than what he had coming to
him. I'm more worried about what we'll all get, down the road, as a
result of the administration's actions.

Whether or not he is a prisoner of war, Saddam is, or was, after all,
a Head of State.

Is it inappropriate to ask how we would want an American president to
be treated if he or she were ever to fall into enemy hands and be
accused of crimes against humanity?

(I agree, it is unthinkable. Still, let us think it.)

Would not Americans demand that even the worst commander-in-chief be
treated with respect, and not a hair on that old gray head harmed?

Would we not also feel that however they were treating our president,
they were treating our country?

Twenty years ago Donald Rumsfeld was photographed grinning and
hugging his friend Saddam Hussein. Now Rumsfeld's army is holding our
former employee incommunicado at an undisclosed location,
interrogating him without witnesses. Assuming that the arrangement is
not, contrary to appearances, designed more to keep him from telling
what he knows than to encourage him to unload, can information
produced under those circumstances have a shred of credibility?

One imagines Saddam sitting there, even now, dreaming of Mars bars
and salami and outlining his next ghastly novel in his head, no
longer able to distinguish his life from his dissociated legend.

Meanwhile people with close ties to the administration go on
television and call for the prisoner to be tortured. No one in
authority is telling these people to shut up. Why should they? Their
leader has already expressed his preference for the "ultimate"
punishment.

It's pretty hard to get worked up about humane treatment for Saddam
Hussein. I'm not too worried about it myself. Frankly, I don't care
what happens to him.

However, here's the thing. If the worst have no rights, neither do
the best.

By his own testimony, G. W. Bush's favorite philosopher is Jesus, who
said "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The Buddha
said that, too. So did Dr. John the Night Tripper ("what goes around
comes around").

"You dug yourself a hole, and you crawled in it." Words that Bush
used to describe Saddam's attempt to hide from capture. Words that
sadly may also be used one day to describe Bush's adventure in Iraq.
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UPDATE: More Saddam Husseins appeared on Iraqi TV on Ocrober 14, 2002 on the eve of the "election" to affirm the power of Saddam Hussein. One seems almost certain to be the real Saddam, because it shows him meeting with the President of Algeria. Are they all the same person?

http://www.ishipress.com/saddams.htm