Rove made new reality for Saddam's sons

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/


-snip-

On the topic of the Beast of Baghdad, January's Esquire brings an interesting article by Sara Solovitch reporting her discovery that Jumana Hanna's accounts of rape and torture at the hands of Uday Hussein don't appear to have the intimate connection to reality trumpeted by the Bush Administration and by such reporters as Peter Finn of the Washington Post, who promoted her in the Post in July of 2003.

Hanna poured out her story to many eager ears belonging to Finn; Bernard Kerik (surely an expert in mendacity); a New Jersey Superior Court Judge called Donald Campbell, who was the coalition's top legal adviser; Paul Wolfowitz; Hanna's shrink, Paul Linde; and finally Solovitch, who was hired to co-write Hanna's story. Solovitch says she began to entertain some doubts when pondering Hanna's claim to have received an MA in accounting from Oxford, but somehow put off making a simple phone call to Oxford till she had spent a lengthy period of presumably well-paid toil checking other aspects of Hanna's story.

I could have saved the publishers a wad of money. In atrocity stories there are some things that don't ring true, even when dealing with such well-credentialed butchers as Saddam and his sons. Take the story, subsequently identified as one concocted by a Western intelligence agency, that Uday had put some of his victims through a wood chipper. Anyone using these chippers knows the damn things jam if inconvenienced by anything with a diameter larger than that of a stick of asparagus, let alone an Iraqi human, however scrawny. Uday's chipper, whose origin can probably be traced to a scene in the movie Fargo, just didn't pass muster, same as the incubator story from the first Gulf War, first identified in this column as intrinsically preposterous.

Among the horrors of Uday's boudoir divulged by Hanna to many, including Solovitch, was the following:

"She was raped for days. A virgin when she entered, she heard the guards ask "Master Uday" what he wanted to do with her blood. He ordered them to sprinkle it around the rim of his whiskey glass like salt on a margarita."

That's the point at which any person equipped with minimal power to suspend willing belief should have said, "Oh, come on!" No call to Oxford would have been necessary. But then, there's no ear more credulous than the one that yearns to believe.
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well, well, well, what have we here?

[Eric J in MN]

1. I never heard these stories before now, for better or worse (nt)

nt

[KC21304]

2. You never heard about the wood chipper ? You are lucky.

I remember hearing it from some pretty lofty resumes on the silly cross talking shows. Maybe someone with the wherewithall can check on that.

[Eric J in MN]

4. I did hear about the wood chipper part, but not the rest (nt)

nt

[bluedonkey]

3. I read about this the other day

Nothing she said is true!All lies and fabrications!

[Taxloss]

5. Are you being serious? nt

[theresistance]

6. A review of history...

Don't forget...The major Iraqi horror story during the first Gulf War, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, was that evil Iraqi soldiers had thrown babies out of incubators. This story was huge news and was a factor in turning the UN and the US Congress towards war. It was a lie. The girl who gave testimony to Congress was the daughter of the Kuwait ambassador to the US. These atrocity lies are akin to the stories of German soldiers crucifying kittens on church doors in Belgium in WW1. The same propaganda to brainwash the population into supporting war...