Comments on: Can’t get no satisfaction

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 22:19:58 +0000

I remain deeply skeptical that Hussein will be present at a full-blown trial. I know what Bush (and Blair, per the comment yesterday—but who says he actually has a vote in this matter?) are saying. But Bush is picking his words carefully. I think the reality of the “trial” will be quite a bit different than what people are expecting at this point. I am still predicting something more like an Iraqi show trial with Hussein in absentia. As a matter of fact, such a trial with a death sentence, carried out by the Iraqis, would work well for the administration. The question is how soon they’d turn him over to them.

By: Thorley Winston

Thorley Winston — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 22:09:38 +0000

I agree with Dan Hardie that it is unlikely that Saddam Hussein will have much useful information with regards to the B’aathist network of terrorists but will still probably be useful in cutting off their funding and demoralizing them. However, in my layman’s opinion, it seems to me that Saddam Hussein’s primary cause and ideology has always been his own survival above all. It may not come to torture (although I would not rule it out, despite the SecDef’s assurance that we will be following the Geneva Convention’s standards on the treatment of POW’s) and faced with the choice between execution and life imprisonment, he might be willing to bargain for the latter. In which case he might be able to provide us some useful intelligence on WMD’s, the disappeared, where he stashed his loot, and maybe some of his cohorts. I think that there are two additional benefits to putting him on trial. First, it will provide a closure for a lot of Iraqis who lived under his regime to see him broken, defeated, tried, and punished and perhaps inspire new cooperation with Coalition forces. Maybe we could invite that kid who kicked the head of Saddam Hussein’s statute to play soccer with the real thing. ;) Second, I think also the prospect of having Arab and Muslim witnesses testifying about the atrocities that were ordered by Saddam Hussein on Arab and Muslim citizens might be useful in countering much of the anti-US propaganda about the “occupation.” At the very least, it will undercut sympathy in the Arab/Muslim nations for the leader who “stood up to the United States” to hear from his victims. Just a couple of thoughts.

By: pchuck

pchuck — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 21:39:06 +0000

The Iraqis are going to try him and execute him, toot sweet.

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 18:32:47 +0000

Nice analysis, Maria.

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 15:30:48 +0000

I know this sounds negative, but the idea that the US can extract useful intelligence from Saddam about the guerrillas rests on two assumptions: one, that he can be broken under interrogation; two, that he has a lot of useful intelligence to transmit. And I don’t buy either assumption. The first seems (I’m sorry) utterly ludicrous; the second, counterintuitive though this may seem, unlikely. Re breaking Saddam under interrogation: what are they going to do to him if he doesn’t talk? Strip him of power, kill his sons, invade his country, publicly humiliate him? Oh, wait…And I don’t see too much chance of plea-bargaining, or a beautiful empathetic friendship springing up between Saddam and his interrogators. Re his probable lack of useful intelligence: any successful guerrilla campaign- one that can generate a large number of attacks on the enemy and maintain a presence in the civilian population- has to be very decentralised. Otherwise it is just too vulnerable to decapitation: you strike the guerrillas’ commander, or cut or infiltrate their communications, without which command and control is impossible, and the guerrillas have lost. Lots of conceivable references on this one: try Mackenzie’s official history of SOE (the French Gaullists in particular were unwilling to accept a decentralised guerrilla structure, and set up a huge politico-military bureaucracy in Occupied France under Moulin and Delestraint, which was of course busted in its entirety by the Germans), or anything on the IRA shift to a cellular structure after the early ‘70s. It’s not an exact fit, but the closest business comes to a successful guerrilla organisation is the franchise model: lots of eager little beavers handle the bombing and killing; head office diffuses best practice and market information (ie sends out a few instructors, although learning how to make bombs is not all that hard, and warns about potential traitors); and, perhaps, pushes seed money towards those franchisees who seem particularly enterprising. Saddam can’t have been exerting close, real-time command and control over the guerrillas: the landline and mobile phone networks have been largely down since the invasion, and would be insecure anyway; using a satphone would be suicidal; and passing messages by guys on foot or on bikes may be secure but takes time. My guess is that his primary contribution to the guerrilla campaign was a) to motivate Ba’athist fighters who really did think the chief was going to make a comeback; and b) to intimidate the Sheikhs and other local leaders ~~who seem to be so important in Iraq~~ perhaps not to participate actively in attacks but to passively let guerrillas operate on tribal land without tipping off the Americans. Maybe Saddam did think he could say ‘Ali, tell the Tikrit resistance to kill the invaders on Tuesday’, but- like Hitler in the bunker- I doubt that these orders achieved any effect besides bolstering Saddam’s self-delusion. The one exception to the above is that I would guess that Saddam knows where a lot of his missing dollars are being held, and was in touch with the man or men responsible for funnelling money down to guerrilla groups. People like that don’t trust others with their money. But, as previously stated, I doubt there’s a cat’s chance in hell that he’ll tell the US where to find the money. Maybe now some of the bagmen will make a break for Switzerland or the Bermudas. As to this not having any effect on the guerrillas: depends which guerrillas. I would say Saddam’s capture is necessary to defeat the guerrillas, but hardly sufficient. The guerillas’ money may well start to dry up. Lots of Ba’athists will now give up the fight; Arab nationalists, blood-feuders looking to avenge relatives killed by US troops, and jihadis will keep going (although they may have been sustained by Ba’athist networks). Local leaders in particular will be less happy to turn a blind eye to the guerrillas; but that doesn’t rule out a possible clash between the coalition forces and Iraqi civilians on other grounds.

By: freddie-poo

freddie-poo — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 13:52:09 +0000

I am surprised that the rleased version of how Saddam was caught is not questioned. After all, our troops managed to get tips and info from families close to Saddam? Do you really believe that story? Oh, yes. If you are looking for him he is in a hole about x miles from here. Any other questions? for a better pespective see my site: http://www.GoodShit.phlap.net, where I have posted a piece that is much more sensible.

By: Barry

Barry — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 13:47:57 +0000

A rather long post. Let’s see if we can condense it a bit: 1) When extracting intelligence from a prisoner, it’s good that his/her comrades don’t know what has been spilled. True. However, whenever a prisoner is presumably subject to torture, the only reasonable assumption is that the prisoner will quickly spill his/her guts. 2) Compromising intelligence sources used to capture Saddam, or used to document his crimes, would be bad. Agreed. However, the former could simply not be used in a trial, since it is not relevant. There’s probably enough evidence of enough crimes to convict Saddam of virtually anything at least 100 times over. 3) The information problem faced by the US administration is really how to keep Saddam from talking in public. He’s got to have lots of damaging information about higher-ups in the Bush administration – during the 1980’s, when ‘gassing his own people’ was merely a PR problem. And later, in the 1990’s when a wholly-owned French subsidiary of Halliburton (i.e., Cheney, Inc) was doing business with him.