Mr. Houston, We Have Another Problem

by pessimist

There is a long-standing legend that Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna Perez de Lebron requested assistance from his brother Mason Sam Houston after the Battle of San Jacinto. The price to be paid for saving Santa Anna's life was Texan Independence. There is no way today to verify this rumor, but it does lend an ear to some interesting speculation.

So does this story:

Rumsfeld offered Saddam freedom - Report
5/1/2005 3:18:00 PM GMT

Some two weeks ago the British paper The Daily Telegraph reported that Iraqi gunmen were offered a "deal" to halt all attacks in return for a reduced sentence for Saddam, likely to be sentenced to death.

The U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld paid a ‘surprise’ visit to Iraq some two weeks ago and was known only to a few Iraqi officials in Jordan, the Arab daily reported quoting sources. Quoting from the London-based Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Donald Rumsfeld paid a secret visit to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and offered him freedom and a possible return to public life if he made a televised request to rebel groups for a ceasefire with allied forces, a media report said.

Ynetnews reported that Saddam promptly rejected the offer.

An Iraqi government official is said to believe that Saddam's Baath party will request to return to politics, the report said.

Somehow, I doubt that Masons are involved in today's Iraq, considering that Freemasonry teaches a moral philosophy of life.

Masons are dedicated to becoming better men, improving themselves and the quality of life of their community, and in so doing becoming wiser and happier. I think we can easily demonstrate that only the Topper$ are benefiting while the rest of us are out in the political cold. It is a similar sadly situation for the population of Iraq, so there has to be another motive for this story:

Are we Bu$hevik$ looking to politically balance the victorious Islamists in Iraq?

UPDATED: THE BBC HAS MORE - follows original text.

With Iraq’s first Islamist-led government since the fall of the Ottoman Empire expected to formally take office this week, it’s getting harder for the Bush administration to realize its dream of molding the nation into a secular, inclusive democracy. The tensions between Iraq’s Shi'ite Islamists and American-backed secularists also threaten two important goals for the United States and Iraq: drafting a permanent constitution and organizing full national elections by the end of the year.

Instead, the January elections gave rise to a conservative Shi'ite brain trust with close ties to Iran and power enough to make its secular rivals nervous. The significance of the new Iraqi government was plain at prayers throughout Baghdad last week, as cries of "Victory to Islam!" echoed through Shiite Muslim mosques where worshipers celebrated leaders that look, think and pray like them.

In another example of the new government’s ideology appearing on a public stage, Jaafari’s Dawa Party held an anniversary gala last week at which Dawa leaders extolled Jaafari as a Shiite "evangelical" and praised the conservative movement sweeping across the country.

"Iraq has turned into a big mosque - schools and universities and streets have become mosques," Khudair al Khuzai, a Dawa spokesman, told the audience.

Isn't it funny that Bu$hCo thinks 'evangelical' conservatives are OK in the United States and not OK in Iraq!

But that wouldn't be the first hypocrisy expressed by Bu$hCo, would it? They would, of course, have their reasons for suddenly reforming 'the most evil man since Adolph Hitler':

Sunni leaders have little pull in the new government; their constituents either boycotted the vote or stayed away for fear of insurgent retaliation. However, they do have valuable inroads into the nation’s largely Sunni insurgency, and could act as negotiators to end the violence if included in a meaningful way.

They were hoping to trade that asset for amnesty for some former regime members and a promise to accept their own candidates for defense minister, a post promised to a Sunni.

Could this list of 'former regime members' include Saddam? Sure! - if it meant that the Sunnis would back off of their discontent over the configuration of the current Iraqi 'government'.

It would be a cheap Bu$hCo ploy designed to pay a cheap price to allow continued play of Monopoly (TM Parker Bros.) with the world's oil.

UPDATE: The BBC tends to agree that this story is plausible - and for the same reasons I do:

'Rumsfeld's offer'

Saddam Hussein may also have heard the extraordinary series of car bomb explosions which greeted the first day of the new government and highlighted the huge challenge facing it. They also reinforced the conclusion drawn a few days earlier by the top American military official in Washington - that the insurgency is as strong today as it was a year ago.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also said it would be the Iraqis who would defeat the insurgency, and that the struggle must involve political and economic elements as well - in other words, hearts and minds. That's why it is so important for credible Sunnis to be drawn in to the new Iraqi government, because it is in the Sunni community that the insurgency is rooted - whether it is the strand made up of former regime loyalists or the radical Islamic jihadis, some of them from outside.

It is the Jihadis who steal a lot of the limelight with their spectacular suicide attacks. But security officials believe networks of Saddam Hussein's loyalists are doing the bulk of the damage.

So an Arabic newspaper report that also came out on Saddam Hussein's birthday may not have been as fanciful as it seemed.

It said that on a recent visit to Baghdad, Mr Rumsfeld secretly met Saddam Hussein, and offered him a deal: his life would be spared and he could go into exile, if he made a broadcast calling for a halt to the insurgency.

Saddam Hussein's reported response: absolute rejection and a demand for an immediate American withdrawal and war reparations.

I haven't seen the report denied, though doubtless it has been. But given the situation, it would have been a logical offer to make.

Stranger things have happened.

Like a two-time loser occupying the White House and going to war illegally?

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