Michael Hanscom

Interesting theory from the Tehran Times:

Suspicions rose on the same day when U.S. troops, that had been stopped at the Euphrates, immediately were able to advance toward the heart of Baghdad without any significant resistance by Iraqi forces. Nobody asked why Tikrit, that was once called the ideological heart of Saddam’s government and the last possible trench of the Iraqi army, was never targeted by U.S. and British bombs and missiles. Or why when the elite Iraqi forces arrived in eastern Iraq from Tikrit, the pace of the invaders advancing toward central Baghdad immediately increased. Also, it has been reported that over the past 24 hours, a plane was authorized to leave Iraq bound for Russia. Who was aboard this plane?

All these ambiguities, the contradictory reports about Saddam’s situation, and the fact that the highest-ranking Iraqi officials were all represented by a single individual — Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed al-Sahhaf — and the easy fall of Baghdad shows that the center of collusion had been Tikrit, where Saddam, his aides, and lieutenants from the Baath Party had been waiting for al-Sahhaf to join them so that they could receive the required guarantees to leave the country in a secret compromise with coalition forces.

This possibility was confirmed by the Al-Jazeera network, which quoted a Russian intelligence official as saying that the Iraqi forces and the invaders had made a deal. The Russian official told Al-Jazeera that the Iraqi leaders had agreed to show no serious resistance against the U.S.-British troops in return for a guarantee that Saddam and his close relatives could leave Iraq unharmed.

Is it possible? Well, of course it’s possible. The question is whether it’s an actual probability, or if it’s just a well thought out conspiracy theory. Either way, we’re not really likely to know unless someone high enough in the heirarchy turns whistleblower (not a very likely option).

I have to admit, though, it is a convincing argument for the possibility. I’m weighing whether my ingrained distrust of conspiracy theories outweighs my rapidly-growing distrust of our current administration, or vice versa. For the moment, I’ll just chalk it up as a very intriguing idea.

(via The Agonist)

The Agonist discussion thread about this is so far leaning to the side of it being a combination of media spin and conspiracy theory, but one of the posts brought up something I’d been wondering about myself, that this theory could make sense of.

Last week, on April 3^rd^, Daily Kos wondered where the Iraqi army was.

Whole units are missing from the battlefield and that has to concern CENTCOM planners. Whole divisions are gone. The arrogant and clueless Richard Perle says they’ve gone home. He’s an idiot. They’ve done no such thing. If they did, you’d see signs. Abandoned equipment, lots of surrenders, the surrender of cities or even the beginnings of civil war as the regulars shot it out with the Baathists.

Instead, they’re nowhere to be found.

My bet, they’re hiding in the close suburbs of Baghdad, maybe 100,000 men. Now, they may not be there. But if Saddam is a student of Stalin and not insane, he’s got a plan for a counterattack when the US is least able to reply. Kaplan isn’t wrong when he says the Republican Guard isn’t all that elite, but they have unit cohesion and discipline. So they didn’t run away.

Saddam has used very small forces to tie down US troops. Only in Basra is there a sign that whole divisions have been used. So, unless Perle is right, and that would be a first, where IS the Iraqi Army?

The assumption then was that Hussein was keeping the majority of his most elite forces close around him in Baghdad, in order to give the advancing U.S. forces “the mother of all battles”. However, as was seen in today’s advances into Baghdad, that never happened. As thrilling as the pictures coming out of Baghdad were today, it still leaves the question of just where all of Iraq’s troops went unanswered. This AP story asks some of the same questions:

CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar — With American troops rolling through Baghdad, U.S. military leaders are asking a disturbing question: Have Iraq’s Republican Guards really melted away, or are they regrouping to fight another day?

Early fears about the battle for Baghdad raised the prospect of house-to-house combat and even chemical warfare. But U.S. forces quickly overran the capital.

Upon entering the city, Marine Cpl. Nate Decavelle wondered out loud with a yawn: \”Where are the Iraqis at?

[…]

One U.S. official involved in both military operations and intelligence said there are thousands of Iraqi troops unaccounted for.

“That’s the scary part. We don’t know where these guys went to. Did they just melt into the population? Are they planning to come back out as paramilitary? Are they laying in wait?” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

So — what now? Is Saddam dead? Exiled? Still in hiding? Is the Republican Guard really gone, or merely waiting for U.S. soldiers to drop their guard?

And lastly — how many of these questions can be answered without more loss of life?

This editorial from Ha’aretz, while actually about the Fox News network’s approach to reporting the war in Iraq, could very well apply to the majority of U.S. media these days.

With effective, rapid and decisive rewriting of history, there is an impression that the network has erased past relations between Iraq and America. It is difficult to find any mention of the fact that the U.S. armed Iraq in its war against Iran in the 1980s, or that it turned a blind eye when Saddam Hussein brutally put down a 1991 uprising with chemical weapons after the first Gulf War. The argument about the connection between Saddam’s regime and Al-Qaida and the attack on the Twin Towers has disappeared, and the “axis of evil,” which also included Iran and North Korea, has evaporated. There’s practically no mention of the stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction and how they were hid from the UN inspectors as being the official reason for the war. There’s no reference to the American economic interests in Iraqi oil wells. Every operation to take over the wells and prevent their sabotage was altruistic, for the sake of the Iraqi people and preservation of its assets and resources.

Sometimes I think the only thing really standing in the way of a truly Orwellian society is our ability to find other sources of news and information via the Internet and form our own opinions. If all I got was the official propaganda, I’d probably be fairly satisfied with the world right now. Heh.

Okay — so everyone on the ‘net is linking to the pictures of Saddam’s statue in the middle of Baghdad getting yanked down by Iraqi citizens, helped by U.S. Marines.

Yes, it’s wonderful. It’s a high point for the campaign. Many Iraqis are thrilled. But this isn’t the end.

This exchange between Doc Searls and Shelley Powers, and this post from Phil capture my feelings on this precisely. What happened today was certainly a momentous and important event — but things won’t be “over” for a long time to come.

©2003 Bill DeOre (via Kung-Foo.tv)

There’s an excellent posting from Dru Blood today entitled “The Importance of Dissent“.

Many people are tempted to stop protesting now that the war is in full swing. Many other people debate the effectiveness of the usual protest tactics — what does bocking traffic or holding demonstrations here in U.S. cities do to stop the conflict in Iraq? However, these are important issues, and shouldn’t stop, for two reasons.

Firstly, we must continue to express our discontent with the tactics undertaken by our goverment. To stop now, to shrug our shoulders and go home, is just admitting defeat. We can’t change anything by staying in our homes and ignoring it, and when our government isn’t truly representing us anymore — well, to quote the Declaration of Independence, “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall most likely effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Secondly, if we do nothing, we’re giving up our right to assemble, and in a day and age when more and more of our rights are disappearing, that’s a dangerous thing to do voluntarily. From Dru:

What protestors are doing is very important to the preservation of free speech. It might be annoying, it might be condemnable, it might even piss people off. But, damnit, it’s absolutely crucial that people continue to exercise their right to assemble and agitate peacefully as much as possible. If no one did, how easy would it be to erode that right and/or take it away altogether? In fact, many people say that there has already been a great deal of erosion in the right to assemble, considering protestors are forced to get parade licenses and have to work with the government and the police prior to being “granted” the right to assemble. There’s actually a great deal of red tape involved in exercising your right to assemble peacably, and that, I’m pretty sure, is different from the way it was during the Viet Nam war….which was the last time that protests were as large and as coordinated as they are now.

So… brave freedom fighters ? I guess that’s open to interpretation. However, protestors of any ilk are certainly doing a very important thing for the continuation of democracy. We are exercising muscles that, if left unused, could very possibly atrophy, leaving our democracy damaged and ineffective.