SUSPENSION
OF DISBELIEF
Right
from the beginning, we know we're not reading any ordinary
new story: "The mysterious visitor emerged from the shadows
outside my hotel in Kurdish controlled northern Iraq, just
as a crisis between Washington and Baghdad was reaching
a climax in January 1998. His appearance set alarm bells
ringing" – as indeed, it ought to in the reader. For
what we are reading is not a news story at all, but a narrative
that is based on the "revelations" of an anonymous source,
whose mysterious appearance from the mists of Kurdistan
right outside the author's hotel has all the hallmarks of
a certain type of genre fiction, one that appeals to people
with very long train commutes. These readers are necessarily
undemanding: since all they want is to be somehow transported
out of their dreary little lives, and would prefer to be
anywhere but where they are, they are willing to suspend
their disbelief to the extent that the locale is exotic
and the plot-line relentless albeit mindless. Roberts has
written the case of the Iraqi nuke scientist who came in
from the cold: Roberts' cameraman, who is filming outside
the hotel, is suddenly confronted with a mysterious stranger,
who asks: "Are you a journalist?" A good question, the answer
to which seems somewhat ambiguous by the time we get to
the end of this tall tale.
DO
I HAVE TO DRAW YOU A PICTURE?
The
mysterious "Leone," a rather imaginative nickname for an
Iraqi, is a nuclear scientist who once worked for Iraq's
nuclear weapons project. Although frightened, and visibly
shaking, "Leone" talked quite freely, apparently unafraid
to openly approach a bunch of Western journalists –
one
of whom had already incurred the wrath of the regime
by investigating allegations that Saddam had used poison
gas on the Kurds. Once a member of the Iraqi Atomic Energy
Commission, he drew detailed drawings of the Iraqi nuclear
device – which, Leone claims, Iraq has already developed
and tested:
"'This
is Iraq's nuclear bomb,' he said, spreading diagrams on
the bed. 'I saw it in the workshop in Tuwaitha many times.
This is the first successful prototype. When they finished
it in 1986, they took it to the president by car, but without
uranium. All members of the delegation got cars as presents
for their work. Between 1985 and 1989, I saw this device
at least five times."
THE
SECRET OF LAKE REZZAZA
Naturally,
there was a large drawing of the purported device illustrating
the article, an ominous silo-shaped projectile, with the
nuclear warhead at its tip printed a bright crimson, the
color of fire and blood;
"'The
test was carried out at 10.30 am on September 19, 1989,
at an underground site 150km southwest of Baghdad,' he said.
'Saddam had threatened us with the death penalty if we told
anybody about it. The location was a militarized zone on
the far shore of Lake Rezzaza, which used to be a tourist
area. There is a natural tunnel there which leads to a large
cavern deep under the lake. Laborers worked on it for two
years, strengthening the tunnel walls. There was a big Republican
Guard camp nearby and dirt roads leading to the site. You
could see the thick high-tension cables on the ground, which
disappeared into a huge shaft entrance. I saw one which
must have been 20km long. The command post for the test
was in a castle in the desert not far away. We went to a
lot of trouble to conceal the test from the outside world.
The Russians supplied us with a table listing US satellite
movements. They were always helping us. Every six hours,
trucks near the test site changed their positions. They
had carried out a lot of irrigation projects in the test
area during the year before as a diversion. But these weren't
agricultural workers. They were nuclear engineers. It was
a nice cheat.'"
DUBIOUS
DECEPTION
Oh
those nasty Russians! Wouldn't you just know it?
But as usual in pulp fiction of this kind, there are several
gaping holes in the story big enough to drive a fleet of
trucks through – with room left over for a couple of
tank divisions. To begin with, if such a facility had been
set up it would have been impossible to keep hidden from
satellite reconnaissance. Not only a system of roads, but
a large and reliable power source and a series of telltale
excavations and construction projects would have been required
to pull such a feat off, and the project have been detected
by Western intelligence agencies long before it reached
fruition. I especially like how we're supposed to believe
they evaded detection: "The Russians," we are told, "supplied
us with a table listing US satellite movements." Oh really?
But how would that prevent such ostentatious facilities
from sticking out like a sore thumb – unless the Iraqis
somehow managed to dismantle and reassemble them with superhuman
swiftness? In addition, tensions with Saddam were already
rising, and the US and its allies would have been all the
more watchful, on the alert for a development just such
as this. Remember, too, that at the first hint Saddam might
be building a nuclear reactor developing weapons-grade uranium,
Israel
bombed the Osiraq reactor in June 1981. How did they
miss this one?
ELEMENTS
OF FICTIVE JOURNALISM
There
is, of course, another huge discrepancy in the story of
"Leone," and that is the political context in which it is
supposed to have occurred. Remember that the Berlin Wall
fell in November of 1989, a few months before this alleged
Soviet-Iraqi joint project is supposed to have come to fruition,
and Gorbachev had been frantically pulling away from Russia's
previous international commitments: From Afghanistan to
Cuba the troops and the technicians were coming home, Gorby
was in the process of dismantling the Soviet military. In
that year the Soviets reached a comprehensive agreement
on the reduction of nuclear arms with the US, and the old
Warsaw Pact broke up: the Soviet Empire was going down,
fast – and this is when Gorbachev decided to
nuclearize Saddam's forces? It just doesn't make any sense,
either technically or politically – but, then, fiction
is judged far differently than a news story, and that is
the implied standard by which the author of this story expects
to be judged. One telltale mark of this genre – which
we might call "journalistic fiction," or fictive journalism
– is that, as the story progresses, the plot becomes
more improbable, but the reader – in search of a cheap
thrill – is willing to go along, provided the denouement
is sufficiently frightening. The idea is to keep shocking
the reader until, in the end, he or she – knocked senseless
– is ready to accept anything. Certainly it
comes as a bit of a shock that, according to "Leone," it
was the French and the Brazilians who provided the
Iraqis with highly enriched uranium:
"We
had a purchasing department whose job was to buy highly
enriched uranium. Brazil purchased highly enriched uranium
from South Africa and then delivered it to Iraq. I am not
talking about tons. It was between 20 and 50 kilograms.
France also supplied us secretly with highly enriched uranium
after the Israelis bombed the Osiraq reactor in 1981."
NEVER
A DULL MOMENT
The
conspiracy expands exponentially, as the plot unfolds, reaching
from Moscow to Paris to Rio – as in retail, so in the
art of writing a certain kind of fiction, the rule is "location,
location, location." This is a tale of treachery, greed,
and international intrigue, of Iraqi mad scientists and
heroic defectors, an ominous parable permeated by a sense
of urgency and impending disaster: It is, in short, war
propaganda: its aim is to induce in the reader a sense of
anxiety, even panic. For if the French and even the Brazilians
are in on the plot, who knows but that Mexico or even Canada
might be next: a vantage point from which Saddam may have
a shot at hitting the editorial offices of the Weekly
Standard, or even The New Republic – and,
as I said, these page-turning plots, however improbable,
get more exciting by the minute.
FORGETTABLE
FICTION
Of
course, a story like this depends on the sort of reader
who is not only willing to overlook a few major lapses in
logic, but is also prepared to forget what he has read,
so as to be able to appreciate successive Saddam Bomb stories
as they are churned out. The London Times, a major
publisher in this genre, headlined a [November 28, 1990]
story "Iraq may have a nuclear capacity in two months."
Three weeks later a front page story trumpeted the "news"
that "Iraq is Two Years away from [a] Nuclear Bomb"! But
they appear to have solved the problem of what to do about
the singular lack of any evidence that Iraq has either the
capacity or the plan to construct nuclear weapons sometime
in the future by simply asserting that the plot is a fait
accompli – and that Saddam is merely holding his
radioactive revenge in reserve, waiting for the opportune
moment.
THE
USES OF ILLOGIC
But
it would be hard to imagine what that moment might be, unless
it passed a decade ago, when the US unleashed a firestorm
over Iraqi cities, decimated its army, and could well have
gone all the way to Baghdad instead of stopping at the brink
of that abyss. If Saddam had the bomb in 1989, then why
didn't he use it during the Gulf War, when his back was
to the wall? But what's another major inconsistency in a
story made up almost entirely of half-truths and lies? After
all, the reader is not meant to be informed by such a piece,
but merely inflamed with the certainty that whatever we
do to Iraq is justified no matter how many thousands (of
Iraqis) have to die.
LIES
WITHOUT END
The
growing tendency of so much of the "news" – especially
international reporting – to be pure fiction designed
to arouse emotions rather than impart information, is a
development that may not be recent, but certainly it has
gotten more brazen. I don't know whether that represents
a growing carelessness on the part of the War Party, or
else an assumption that their readers have been so dumbed
down that it hardly matters. I am struck, however, by the
apparent belief by many journalists that they can get away
with it. People just aren't that stupid – are
they? At any rate, I'll leave such metaphysical concerns
to my readers, and pursue my own interest in this theme:
for I have a lot of stories like this, exemplifying
the growing role of outright fabrication in the manufacture
of what today passes for news. Alas, I have run out of room,
but look in this space for future installments of "How They
Lie" – the serial without end.
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