The lamb and the tiger

by PV Vivekanand

A folk tale speaks about a tiger that seeks to savour
the flesh of a lamb drinking water downstream. It
accuses the lamb of polluting the water. The lamb
replies it is innocent since he is downstream and the
tiger upstream. "Oh, then it is your grandfather who
polluted the water some years ago," replies the tiger
and pounces on the lamb.
We are reminded of this tale every time we hear the
American allegation that Saddam Hussein had links with
Osama Bin Laden despite an independent commission's
findings to the contrary. Washington's
behind-the-scene efforts to make the charge stick are
at best pathetic.
The only difference is that Saddam Hussein was no
lamb.
Russia has joined the American bandwagon with an
assertion by Vladimir Putin that Russian security
agencies repeatedly had warned the White House after
Sept.11, 2001, that Saddam was planning "terrorist
attacks" against targets both outside and inside the
United States.
"This information was passed through channels to
American colleagues," according to Putin. "George Bush
had a chance to personally thank a chief of one of the
Russian secret services for the information that he
considered very important."
Indeed, the assertion, which lacks in details, could
help the US effort to justify the invasion of Iraq as
well as US President George W Bush's standing among
American voters since the Democrats have accused Bush
of launching the war with little justification.
"It appears Mr. Putin is trying to help Mr. Bush win
his second election, that Moscow is becoming a player
in the American political scene," Lilia Shevtsova, a
political scientist at the Moscow Carnegie Center, was
quoted as saying by the Baltimore Sun. The inference
is that Putin might feel more comfortable dealing with
Bush as president of the US than his Democratic rival
John Kerry and is hence pitching his lot into run-up
to the US presidential elections in November.
Without going into details, Bush himself has insisted
that Saddam's Iraq was linked to Bin Laden's Qaeda.
But neither Bush nor anyone else has come up with hard
evidence.
Middle Eastern circles endorse the finding by the
American independent commission investigating the
Sept.11 attacks that no proof exists of co-operation
between Al Qaeda and Saddam.

Linkage not possible

Allegations of a tie-up between Bin Laden and Saddam
were seen with scepticism in the Middle East whenever
such charges were made in the US.
Most analysts and observers in the Middle East think
such a linkage is not possible because the two,
despite their fierce anti-US postures, followed
different, dramatically divergent paths. Bin Laden
never considered Saddam as a Muslim faithful and
steadfastly rejected the Iraqi strongman's overtures
to set up an alliance.
Bin Laden blamed Saddam for the Mideast's troubles as
much as he blamed the US and Israel. He saw Saddam as
having set the ground for the US to set up a permanent
military presence in the Gulf region by invading
Kuwait in 1990.
Bin Laden was a bitter critic of Saddam for using
Islamic tenets whenever it suited and ignoring them
otherwise. A classic example cited by Bin Laden was
Saddam's imposition of parts of the Shariah (Islamic
law) in Iraq, like bans on alcohol and nightclubs and
enforcement of the Islamic dress code at times when it
suited him. The ban was imposed and implicitly lifted
at regular intervals during the Saddam reign in Iraq.
As far as Bin Laden was concerned Saddam was not a
true Muslim and this, in his eyes, ruled him out as an
ally. If anything, according to sources who knew Bin
Laden in the early 90s, the Yemeni-born Saudi militant
considered Saddam as a traitor of the Islamic and Arab
cause since he felt that the Iraqi strongman would
respond positively to any American overture to settle
Washington-Baghdad differences and rejoin the American
camp if the US administration invited him to do so.
"Saddam Hussein is in fact an infidel who is trying to
use Islam to serve his politics and secure support
among the faithful in Iraq," Bin Laden was known to
have commented to some of his "Arab Afghan" supporters
— Arabs, who like Bin Laden himself, volunteered to
fight against the Soviet army in Afghanistan during
the 1980s. He also maintained that the people of Iraq
should be seen separate from the regime since "they
were Saddam's innocent victims" just as "the
Palestinians were the victims of Israel."

Secret report

A secret British intelligence report, which was
suppressed by the government in late 2002, said it was
not possible that Bin Laden and Saddam could have
forged an alliance if only because their "ideological"
differences were too wide. The same report also said
that there was no evidence of an Al Qaeda-Baghdad
link.
After the August 1998 Al Qaeda bombings of the
American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the
retaliatory American attacks against a Bin Laden camp
in Afghanistan, Saddam reportedly extended an
invitation to Bin Laden to go to Iraq and take shelter
there against any further American military action.
Saddam promised him "absolute" safety and protection.
The Al Qaeda leader not only turned down the
"invitation" but also berated Saddam for thinking that
a "true believer" such as Bin Laden himself would
accept such an invitation from a "non-believer" like
Saddam.
Indeed, according to the sources, Al Qaeda activists
from Egypt, Sudan and other countries might have
visited Iraq while Saddam was in power, but this never
constituted any basis for an alliance as alleged by
the US.
Against this backdrop, persistent claims made by
senior American officials that Saddam and Bin Laden
had strong links sounded hollow and without substance.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell raised a big hue
and cry in mid-2002 that Ansar Al Islam, an Al Qaeda
affiliate, was housed in northern Iraq and was
developing chemical weapons there.
In less than 24 hours after Powell made the
allegation, the horde of Arab, regional and
international media based in the region rushed to the
area only to find a couple of ruined buildings there.
The only chemicals worth mentioning that were found in
the area was a packet of detergent that someone had
forgotten in a makeshift washing room.
So much for American intelligence findings.
However, the catch in the situation was always that
while administration allegations against Iraq were
played up, results of on-the-ground inspections were
played down, and not many got to read or hear the
actual findings. They were left with the first
impressions of the charge itself.
Contrary to what many Mideastern pundits argue, the US
investigating commission asserts that Bin Laden had
made overtures to Saddam but the Iraqi strongman never
responded.
It could indeed be true that someone, somewhere in the
Bin Laden camp might have made such requests, but it
is highly unlikely it came from Bin Laden to Saddam,
say Arab intelligence agencies.

False claims

The American investigating commission's failure to
find any evidence that Al Qaeda and Iraq had links
pulls the rug from under the feet of steadfast claims
made by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and
other administration officials.
Even last week, Cheney claimed Saddam "had
long-established ties with Al Qaeda," but what he had
to cite as evidence was an already discredited report
that Mohammed Atta, leader of the 19 Sept. 11
hijackers, met in Prague, Czech Republic, with a
senior Iraqi intelligence official before the attacks.
The investigating panel concluded no such meeting had
occurred.
Putin's assertion that Saddam plotted terror attacks
against the US after Sept.11 brings forth several
elements into consideration.
It was assumed as early as November 2001, one month
after the US launched the war against Afghanistan,
that Iraq was the Bush administration's next target.
Bush said his interpretation was that his war against
terror include those countries which "terrified" their
neighbours with their weapons of mass destruction.
That was the clearest signal that he intended to wage
war on Iraq no matter.
Surely, if even the man on the street could sense that
Bush was on an irreversible course towards war against
Iraq, then Saddam and his advisers and strategists
should have also known of the inevitability of war.
From that point onwards, Saddam tried desperately to
avoid war. Despite his public anti-US rhetoric, it was
clear since July 2002 that he would have complied with
every American and UN demands in connection with
charges that he had a massive stockpile of weapons of
mass destruction. The truth, as it had emerged, was
that he did not have any. He did not risk anything by
allowing UN inspections and accepting other UN demands
aimed at ensuring that he did not resume his weapons
programmes.
However, Bush, nudged by his neo-conservative
pro-Israeli advisers, had made up his mind and
Saddam's offers of compliance were steadfastly turned
down. There was nothing in the world Saddam could have
done to change the course towards war.
The pattern of American behaviour since late 2001
clearly showed that the objective was indeed invasion
of Iraq, topple Saddam and occupy Iraq until the
country is reshaped as the most "American-friendly" in
the Middle East after Israel.
By late 2002, it became very clear that war would be
launched anytime. All the American manoeuvrings
through the UN under European pressure had only one
objective: Give no room for Saddam to get off the hook
even if he were to go on his knees.
It was during this period, according to Putin, Saddam
allegedly had plotted terror attacks against the US.
Logic does not agree with that assertion.
Notwithstanding all his shortcomings, Saddam would not
have been as naive as not to realise that any such
action against the US would have brought an immediate
military action upon Iraq and would have made
meaningless any effort to avert the war.
Many in the Middle East see as credible recent
revelations that Saddam had, through a Lebanese
intermediary, made a last-ditch offer to open all his
military facilities to the US without reservation and
meet any American demand as long as he remained in
power. That fits in with the overall picture that
Saddam knew that war was inevitable and was trying to
hang onto to the slimmest straw.
Against that reality, it seems inconceivable that
Saddam might have been plotting terror attacks against
the US at a time when he was desperately attempting to
ward off war that would inevitably topple him.
But then, that is what the lamb tried and failed.