THE FILIPINO MIND

America needs you, Deep Throat II
By Ehsan Ahrari

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NOTE: Former Nixon accomplices Gordon Liddy, Charles Colson, etc. came out to describe Mark Felt's actions as being disloyal, as against government, assuming to themselves that the late President Richard Nixon was THE government.

Nixon fans think Felt also have done unlawful deeds i.e. wiretapping, etc. (on the Minutemen) but, in that issue of Watergate, the abuse of power by Nixon -using the CIA and attempting to employ the FBI for political purposes- was a "clear and present danger" to the nation and its people. At a time of declining social conscience/morality and where such concern has become unpopular, Mark Felt did the "moral thing to do".

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Now that the entire world knows who "Deep Throat" really was - then-Federal Bureau of Investigation deputy chief Mark Felt - the mystery is solved, but the longing for mystique remains. It is tempting to wish for another deep throat to give us an insider's scoop about the real causes underlying the American invasion of Iraq. Former Senator James Baker's immortal words - "What did he [Richard Nixon] know and when did he know it?" - are still relevant regarding President George W Bush's decision to invade Iraq.

When did he decide to invade Iraq, and why did he decide to do so? No one really knows the precise answer. Not even Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, who made his name by effectively using Deep Throat's inside scoop to bring down Richard Nixon's presidency. Despite writing two books on George W Bush, the journalist did not really have much earth-shattering information about those questions. Why do we need to know the answers to these "when" and "why" questions? Because they still puzzle the students of America's foreign policy; because they are related to a lot of bloodshed in the Middle East; and because they promise to change the very nature of the balance of power, and in the process, threaten the political stability of that region. Finally, they should also be answered because the answers will help future historians arrive at major judgments about the Bush presidency.

What surprised everyone who was following the initial phases of America's "war on terrorism" was that Bush virtually walked away from the unfinished task of eradicating the remnants of al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan. The eruption of anti-Saddam Hussein rhetoric came out of nowhere; it seemed, as a prelude to America's invasion of Iraq, while American forces were still engaged in Afghanistan. The dominant question at that time was why such vitriolic attacks on Saddam just now? The brutal nature of his dictatorship was no news to anyone inside or outside the US government. In fact, despite that knowledge, the administration of President Ronald Reagan opted to side with Saddam against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The official US position was that his regime was envisaged as the lesser of two evils.

Nothing about the nature of Saddam's regime changed, even when he invaded Kuwait. His decision to attack Iran in 1981 was also a quick and surprising one. The only difference was that in 1981, he was attacking America's sworn enemy, whereas in 1991 he invaded a friendly emirate. He also used chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war, as he did in 1988 against the Kurds. An unclassified Central Intelligence Agency report states, "Iran and Iraq have developed chemical weapons [CW] and have employed them in their conflict since the early 1980s. Iraq began to develop its CW capability in the early 1970s, while Iran began its program as a response to Iraqi battlefield use. Baghdad used riot control agents in the mid-1970s against dissident Kurds in northern Iraq. Hostilities with Iran gave additional impetus to the Iraqi CW program in the early 1980s, and since 1983, Iraq has used chemical weapons every year in its war with Iran."

All of the preceding was old news. However, the US escalated its anti-Saddam rhetoric in 2002. The American public started to hear frequent comparisons between his regime and that of Adolph Hitler's. The Bush administration issued a dossier in September 2002 listing a number of violations by Saddam and quoting from Amnesty International reports. Amnesty swiftly responded by noting that at least one of the US government's claims was simply false: that it had never made one of the claims - on disappeared persons in Iraq - that was attributed to them. More to the point, Amnesty was harshly critical of Bush's attempt to use human rights as a justification for a war of aggression. It stated, "Once again, the human-rights record of a country is used selectively to legitimize military actions.

The US and other Western governments turned a blind eye to Amnesty International reports of widespread human-rights violations in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and ignored Amnesty's campaign on behalf of the thousands of unarmed Kurdish civilians killed in the 1988 attacks on Halabja." Why did Bush scurry to topple Saddam? Was it a personal vendetta, since Saddam allegedly plotted to assassinate his father, George H W Bush, during his visit to Kuwait in 1993? Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh depicts that plot as "conflicting and dubious evidence" in one of his essays in the New Yorker magazine. Bush senior, in a television interview, denied any linkage between that alleged plot and his son's decision to oust Saddam. What is the real reason then? No one really knows, except for Bush, or maybe Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and they aren't talking. Not right now anyway.

But why can't we find out the real reason underlying the US invasion of Iraq? Maybe because it is no longer an earth-shattering question. The real truth related to that - if it were to have been unearthed before the presidential election of 2004 and were to have been disapproved by the American people - would have brought an end to another presidency, as did Deep Throat's role to the Nixon presidency. Now Bush will be in office for three and a half more years. Nothing short of "high crimes and misdemeanor" will oust him from this presidency. And no one really cares to find the answer to why he really invaded Iraq, and exactly when he decided to do it: it is also possible that, in the information age, people's sensibility about scandals has been numbed. We are bombarded by all sorts of scandals - corporate scandals, celebrity-related scandals, sports figures-related scandals, etc.

In addition, we live in an age of terrorism, when news of major disaster and mayhem resulting in the loss of hundreds and even thousands of human lives has become part of our "routine". Still, the least discussed reality of the American government is that deep throats do exist. They are regularly passing out information to the media on a number of sensitive issues. Come to think of it, Hersh was responsible for uncovering the Abu Ghraib scandal. So, stay tuned. Bush or any other political figure is not out of the woods yet. We have found out the real identity of only one deep throat. A whole lot of them are still active, and a number of scandals are also waiting to be uncovered. The future of top American politicians may not be fully secure, but the future of American democracy certainly is. That, indeed, is a good thing, thanks to the roles of future deep throats.

Ehsan Ahrari is an independent strategic analyst based in Alexandria, Virginia, US. His columns appear regularly in Asia Times Online. He is also a regular contributor to the Global Beat Syndicate. His website: www.ehsanahrari.com.

"Democracy is not about trust; it is about distrust. It is about accountability, exposure, open debate, critical challenge, and popular input and feedback from the citizenry. It is about responsible government. We have to get our fellow citizens to trust their leaders less and themselves more, trust their own questions and suspicions, and their own desire to know what is going on." - Michael Parenti

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." - Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945

"Free and responsible government by popular consent just can't exist without an informed public." - Bill Moyers at first ever National Conference on Media Reform in Madison, Wisconsin. November 2003