Saddam Does TV
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[ed note: hi, this will be saddam week. there are some saddam pieces in the queue, and i think this is as timely a time as any to run mockeries of him. if anyone else wants to submit a piece on saddam, please do so. also, since this is just a twinge political, i am taking it further and running one mockery of saddam a day PLUS a left-ish nonfiction, non-humorous, and almost certainly, heartbreaking piece. it might be about iraq, bush, blair, anything. if you have any of that, please submit. the good with the bad, the sweet with the sour. thanks for understanding. so, thanks to graham smith for the sweet, and michael moore for the sour. there are links with that piece, so we can know he's not twisting everything... unlike (cough) some of the media. -spinning and twisting uber, dee dee peel]
Saddam Does TV!
Saddam on Blind Date
Desperate Woman: Okay, this question is for Bachelor #3. What would our first date be like?
Saddam: Well, I'd probably praise Allah for being so lucky to meet such a beautiful woman as yourself, before taking you inside my place where we could get away from the stresses of the outside world for a while. Then I'd explain to you my plans for once again taking my rightful place as leader of the Iraqi people. Then we'd watch The Godfather. Man, I love that film.
Saddam on The Real World
Saddam: Saddam doesn't need them! Saddam has a style all his own, and they were only holding Saddam back! Saddam will go on to better things while those in there will simply die like infidels! Saddam is out of here!
Saddam on The View
Saddam: Ladies! Ladies! Ladies! I think you're missing the issue here; who wants to join my harem?
Saddam on Jeopardy
Alex Trebek: This horrible act was carried out by Hitler during World War 2 and resulted in the deaths of millions of Jews.
Saddam: What is a good time?
Saddam on Dictator Survivor
Saddam: You voted me off? George, I thought we were buds now! Well screw you guys!
Saddam on Letterman
Saddam: Fuck you Letterman!
Saddam on Leno
Saddam: Fuck you Leno!
Saddam on Tom Green
Saddam: Does anyone even watch this show?
Green: Fuck you Saddam!
Saddam on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Regis: The question is, 'Have you been captured?' Is the answer A: Yes, B: Yes. C: Yeah. or D: Yes.
Saddam: I think I'd like to phone a friend, Regis.
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We Finally Got Our Frankenstein... and He Was In a Spider Hole!
by Michael Moore
December 14, 2003
Thank God Saddam is finally back in American hands! He must have really missed us. Man, he sure looked bad! But, at least he got a free dental exam today. That's something most Americans can't get.
America used to like Saddam. We LOVED Saddam. We funded him. We armed him. We helped him gas Iranian troops.
But then he screwed up. He invaded the dictatorship of Kuwait and, in doing so, did the worst thing imaginable -- he threatened an even BETTER friend of ours: the dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, and its vast oil reserves. The Bushes and the Saudi royal family were and are close business partners, and Saddam, back in 1990, committed a royal blunder by getting a little too close to their wealthy holdings. Things went downhill for Saddam from there.
But it wasn't always that way. Saddam was our good friend and ally. We supported his regime. It wasn’t the first time we had helped a murderer. We liked playing Dr. Frankenstein. We created a lot of monsters -- the Shah of Iran, Somoza of Nicaragua, Pinochet of Chile -- and then we expressed ignorance or shock when they ran amok and massacred people. We liked Saddam because he was willing to fight the Ayatollah. So we made sure that he got billions of dollars to purchase weapons. Weapons of mass destruction. That's right, he had them. We should know -- we gave them to him!
We allowed and encouraged American corporations to do business with Saddam in the 1980s. That's how he got chemical and biological agents so he could use them in chemical and biological weapons. Here's the list of some of the stuff we sent him (according to a 1994 U.S. Senate report):
* Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax.
* Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin.
* Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord, and heart.
* Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs.
* Clostridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness.
* Clostridium tetani, a highly toxigenic substance.
And here are some of the American corporations who helped to prop Saddam up by doing business with him: AT&T, Bechtel, Caterpillar, Dow Chemical, Dupont, Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM (for a full list of companies and descriptions of how they helped Saddam, go here).
We were so cozy with dear old Saddam that we decided to feed him satellite images so he could locate where the Iranian troops were. We pretty much knew how he would use the information, and sure enough, as soon as we sent him the spy photos, he gassed those troops. And we kept quiet. Because he was our friend, and the Iranians were the "enemy." A year after he first gassed the Iranians, we reestablished full diplomatic relations with him!
Later he gassed his own people, the Kurds. You would think that would force us to disassociate ourselves from him. Congress tried to impose economic sanctions on Saddam, but the Reagan White House quickly rejected that idea -- they wouldn’t let anything derail their good buddy Saddam. We had a virtual love fest with this Frankenstein whom we (in part) created.
And, just like the mythical Frankenstein, Saddam eventually spun out of control. He would no longer do what he was told by his master. Saddam had to be caught. And now that he has been brought back from the wilderness, perhaps he will have something to say about his creators. Maybe we can learn something... interesting. Maybe Don Rumsfeld could smile and shake Saddam's hand again. Just like he did when he went to see him in 1983 (see the photo here).
Maybe we never would have been in the situation we're in if Rumsfeld, Bush, Sr., and company hadn't been so excited back in the 80s about their friendly monster in the desert.
Meanwhile, anybody know where the guy is who killed 3,000 people on 9/11? Our other Frankenstein?? Maybe he's in a mouse hole.
So many of our little monsters, so little time before the next election.
Stay strong, Democratic candidates. Quit sounding like a bunch of wusses. These bastards sent us to war on a lie, the killing will not stop, the Arab world hates us with a passion, and we will pay for this out of our pockets for years to come. Nothing that happened today (or in the past 9 months) has made us ONE BIT safer in our post-9/11 world. Saddam was never a threat to our national security. Only our desire to play Dr. Frankenstein dooms us all.
Yours,
Michael Moore mmflint@aol.com www.michaelmoore.com
For a look back to the better times of our relationship with Saddam Hussein, see the following:
Patrick E. Tyler, Officers say U.S. aided Iraq in war despite use of gas, New York Times, August 18, 2002.
"U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their possible impact on health consequences of the Gulf War," 1994 Report by the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affiars.
William Blum's cover story in the April 1998 issue of The Progressive, "Anthrax for Export."
Jim Crogan's April 25-May 1, 2003 report in the LA Weekly, "Made in the USA, Part III: The Dishonor Roll."
"Iraq: U.S. military items exported or transferred to Iraq in the 1980s," United States General Accounting Office, released February 7, 1994.
"U.S. had key role in Iraq buildup; trade in chemical arms allowed despite their use on Iranians and Kurds," Washington Post, December 30, 2002.
"Iraqgate: Saddam Hussein, U.S. policy and the prelude to the Persian Gulf War, 1980-1994," The National Security Archive, 2003
Graham Smith watches all kinds of television.