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I
have written before about the
myth of the "Saddam Bomb" – the perfervid and recurring
group fantasy that has the Iraqi ruler on the verge of developing
an atomic bomb – but after playing that one over and
over again since 1991, the War Party must have apparently
decided that it's time to change their tune, or at least vary
it a bit: so today [Sunday] the ever-obliging London Times
has come up with a new version – according
to a story by Gwynne Roberts, he already has the Bomb!
I say "story," and not "news story," because Roberts' piece
reads more like fiction of the made-for-TV variety, perhaps
an old episode of "The
Man from U.N.C.L.E," then anything journalists of the
old school might recognize as news.
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.
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."
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.'"
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?
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
–
Justin Raimondo
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