Love your blog. I cannot, however, make the same leap as you did from reading Fisk's article. Abu Nidal's death may not have been planned to either help or hurt the US administration. Even so, it may still "come as a gift" to the administration. I do not see the contradiction. Surely, there does not need to be an intent to offer a gift for something to "come as a gift" to the administration.

Touche...

But if it is a gift, it is a strange one for the Iraqi government to offer. They could have just said nothing, after all.

My assessment is that Saddam (perhaps having read too much Macchiavelli, Nietzsche and Kissinger) does not conceive of Iraq and US as enemies, but as dance partners.

The Iraqi report of Abu Nidal's demise -- whether true or false -- may be a goodwill gesture, or some other signal, or a probe of US intelligence.

It's by no means inconsistent with the situation, nor is Fisk's cautionary context map.

Personally, when I read the news I also thought it was a goodwill gesture from the Iraki government. I thought they either assacinated Abu Nidal or pushed him to do so.

The irony may be that Hussein's government was really planning to take him to court and that's why he shot himself. The idea would actually be to show the world that Irak in now way intends to sponsor terrorism.

Of course, Washington hawks would have interpreted the signal to their own advantage. Maybe Saddam should just hire better communication experts just as Bush sr. did for his Gulf War...

Or maybe the guy just shot himself for unrelated reasons... I am going to go read English speaking Arab newspapers. That will make for a fine contribution to my blog :)

There we go...

http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/020822/2002082213.html

Brad

I too can't see your problem with this article, as Dinesh said, a gift is a gift regardless of whether it was inteded as such.

As to why they didn't keep quiet, perhaps you are assigning a little bit too much rationality to the Saddam administration. Remember a lot of people in the US seem to believe that Saddam will at some point use weapons of mass destruction against a superpower. Such a view cannot assume rationality.

The main point of Fisk's article remains: no matter what Iraq says, Abu Nidal may or may not be dead now, and he may or may not have been dead before the reported event. (One of the four combinations of these propositional alternatives can be discounted on other grounds).

Iraq has a government that has fostered terror at home and abroad for several decades. That Abu Nidal was sheltered in Iraq for years, is simply another example of how dangerous the present government has been and will continue to be.

Brad,

Let me add my name to the list of "cannot-understand-your-point" on Fisk. His article was clear and did not present any conspiracy. His point is that whether or not the reports of Abu Nidal's death were true, Washington hawks will use them to justify an attack on Iraq.

But then the floods in Dresden or the last game of the Yankees can also serve the same purpose...

Nidal's death may not have been a gift, but the report in the London Times (which claims that Nidal was shot by Iraqi agents because he refused to help Saddam train Al-Quaeda terrorists - indeed, the report rather implies he honourably renounced terror in the wake of Sept. 11th, which doesn't really sound convincing) surely is. And does rather smack of some sort of conspiracy pulling for Bush - albeit a journalistic one.

Yet another puzzled reader here, Brad. Nothing in the article suggests the conspiracies you say Fisk believes in. Fisk's article was annoyingly-written, but it wasn't what you said.

The 'world that Robert Fisk lives in' is actually 'Beirut', his home for the last twenty-five years; a place where he's reported on the thugs of all sides (most notably Arafat during the PLO's sojourn in Lebanon) and their rather dubious loyalties. So yes, Brad, I think in this case you're more than oversimplifying, particularly given the spread of reports that imply Abu Nidal's 'suicide' was for refusing to be co-opted into Saddam's plans to export terrorism. (A far more dubious claim than the ones linking him to the Lockerbie bombing.)