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From
El-Hayat, no. 14646
El Sahhaf…The Iraqi
Tinhorn Is he worth all the noise?
Adel Wahba
30 April 2003
Does colourful Iraqi Information
Minister Mohamed El Sahhaf, who has gone missing, deserve all of the media hype?
Has his stardom of the past twenty days created a legend, even though the war
is now over? We are not sure what is behind all the noise. El Sahhaf can only
be described as charmingly eccentric and nothing more. It was enough for the audience
that he would let drop all sorts of lies, insulting taunts, and expressions of
braggadocio. But if Arab audiences wanted to judge him by his official statements
as Information Minister, he would stand justly accused. El Sahhaf is a fitting
image of the Iraqi Baath regime: lies, fabrications, imaginary victories, empty
slogans, and false bravado to please the Iraqi and Arab audiences. He embellishes
his rhetoric in the same way his fellow ministers, Baathist authorities, and the
former president did.
So what did Mohamed El
Shahhaf do other than lie, lie, and lie to deserve all of this uproar, like having
a web site dedicated to him and having his picture appear on t-shirts? True, he
used strange invective, and he introduced new words into the media lexicon (like
sissies, louts, cuckolds, and jackasses). True, also, he insulted Bush and Blair
directly and unequivocally. But what he really did was to expose the indescribable
idiocy of Iraqi media (which was Arab media par excellence) and the way it plunged
into the war. The Western media welcomed him only as a sort of rare comic relief.
When the American armed forces occupied the airport and outskirts of Baghdad,
he kept insisting that they were dying on the walls of the city. While all of
the other Iraqis that we saw on the screen looked exhausted and emaciated as if
they had not eaten or slept in days, he would pop up as fresh as this morning's
bread, cleanly shaven and smiling innocently, he and those standing behind him
dressed in their military attire, all confident in their great president.
As for the American president
George Bush, he could not have been more scornful, not just of El Sahhaf as a
person but also for what he stood for. This showed when he ironically described
El Sahhaf his favourite person. Perhaps the British press got it more right when
it called him a clown.
The Lebanese minister
Karim Baqradouni expressed his amazement at seeing El Sahhaf, whom he likened
to something like a bum steer, in one of his television spots, waving his arms
about as was his wont.
Twenty days are not long
enough to build the kind of legendary status imputed to El Sahhaf. But it is long
enough to confirm the impression of the old, dictatorial Iraqi Baathist regime
as pathetically shot full of decay. And it is long enough for El Sahhaf to become
a tin horn media personality.
ENDS
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