|
OJ STUPID bush's iraq gambitThe Bush White House is either Stupid Stupid or OJ Stupid. Stupid Stupid if they are genuinely protecting vital US interests while not muzzling Karl Rove and Andrew Card (and not hiding a clearly uncomfortable Colin Powell). OJ Stupid if all of that chaos was meant to make us suspicious of the administration's motives, while dismissing the obvious because it's just too skeevy to be contemplated. While presently enjoying a 70% job approval rating, George W. Bush has, for me, been an at best mediocre president. At worst, he is a menace to this Great Society. A man who causes the Dow Jones to tailspin every time he makes a major speech. Literally. I'm not kidding. Since taking office, when I wrote this essay, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost 27% of its worth, investors losing $5 trillion (yes, with a "T") in wealth. The unemployment rate has gone from 4.2% to 5.7%, and the nation's $281 billion surplus has become a $157 billion deficit. Not all of that can or should be laid at the feet of Bush, mind you, but a good deal of our economic malaise can be directly attributed to the Blunderer In Chief, a man who almost single-handedly plunged the country into recession with careless and, frankly, untrue statements during his Florida wrestling match with Al Gore (Bush, trying to position himself as the more deserving contestant, downplayed the Clinton market boom and created doubt about the economy that became a self-fulfilling prophecy once the Supremes awarded him the Oval Office. I mean, what was the man thinking? Of course, if the man who says, "We're in financial trouble," is seated in the White House, the markets would respond, creating as fact Bush's jumbled, paranoid hyperbole). No one wants to believe the president is an incompetent boob. Nobody really believed Gerald Ford was a stumblebum or Ronald Reagan was reading off cue cards, and Richard Nixon, despite cruel caricatures, was a great intellectual and great statesman. George W. Bush has yet to demonstrate any of those qualities. He lacks the fatherly reassurance of a Bill Clinton— as imperfect as Bubba was, I still find comfort in his rational exploration of the issues. Bush has yet to learn how to inform without panicking us. How to lead without bull-in-China-closet collateral damage.
President George W. Bush was addressing the cheery throng on Tuesday, September 17, at Pledge Across America— a grass roots effort backed by the Bush Administration and federal Department of Education to organize school children for a national recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in the midst of a national debate over whether the words "under God" should be included in the pledge. Veering off-topic into foreign policy for his daily Saddam bashing sound bite, the president summoned all of the authority and solemn gravitas of his administration when he cockily leaned against the podium and, in his best John Wayne Glare, said, "There's an old saying in Tennessee, I know it is in Texas, but probably here in Tennessee, which says 'Fool me once— shame on... shame on... [long pause, then, in unsure, half-whisper, half-prayer] ...you..." And off he went, into the now-famous Bush Deer-In-Headlights Freeze. A VCR pause in actual time when the president appeared to suffer a small seizure as the electrical system in his brain shorted out while he fought desperately to not get this "old saying" wrong. But the struggle, consuming Bush for long seconds before he defensively sputtered out, "—fooled— you can't be fooled again," was actually much worse than the gaffe itself. Bush's inability to achieve any level of comfort with himself is what frightens me the most about Senior White House Advisor Karl Rove's impending "war" with Iraq. Bush seems not only uncomfortable with himself, and wholly unable to laugh at his own silliness, but he seems unable to just admit his little mistake and move on. As though, somehow, keeping a straight face through an embarrassing moment will somehow salvage his dignity. Which, in turn, seems to suggest salvaging the president's dignity would be worth the greater sacrifice of his credibility. This nation has had a lot of experience with leaders who put saving face above saving the nation. Bill Clinton put this country through enormous pain and turmoil and, indeed, set the stage for this very scary man to succeed him, by simply not admitting, waaay back during Paula Jones's suit, that he'd had inappropriate conduct (if not quite legally provable sexual intercourse) with a White House intern. George Bush before him spent billions of dollars to bring us to Saddam's door and then turned and went home, and then proceeded to squander a 90% public approval rating to be beaten by an Arkansas governor we'd never heard of. Richard Nixon sentenced tens of thousands of teenage boys to die in the jungles of Southeast Asia because he wanted to win reelection in 1972 and because he didn't want to look bad, or be the first president to "lose" a war. We fought in Vietnam for a principle, to protect our values and our way of life from a tiny, impoverished nation that we pretended was the linchpin to Soviet world dominance so General Dynamics and Bell Helicopter could make a fortune.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs "Gulf of Tonkin" resolution. August 10, 1964 But, perhaps the most tragic example of a president putting dignity above morality and common sense was Lyndon Baines Johnson's use of the Gulf of Tonkin "incident" as a rallying cry to escalate the Vietnam War in 1964.
38 years later, the American pubic is amnesiatic once again, this latest bout sponsored by the terrorist attacks that have coalesced America into flag-waving Reaganite jingoists desperate for closure. We need a villain, we need a bad guy, and we are so very desperate to believe every word issued from Donald Rumsfeld during his stand-up act at the Pentagon briefings. We are completely spellbound by the hard-charging Beltway square jaws and, desperate for Ronald Reagan but finding him no longer available, we have settled upon George Dubya the illusion of greatness, correcting his flawed humanity and seeing and hearing what we so desperately need to see and hear. Which is a perfect environment for a political shark like Karl Rove to thrive in. Here Rove has Lyndon Johnson's America: an America so distraught, so wounded by great tragedy, that we are prepared to believe whatever horseshit Washington issues forth. The panicked strum und drang of Bush's rush to Baghdad speaks almost entirely to political opportunism over any real semblance of national security. While we certainly believe getting rid of Saddam will ultimately be a good thing for everybody, we don't believe hostilities must, must, must start before the November elections, elections which would otherwise certainly be a referendum on the administration's Iraq policy. The timing of Bush's efforts to panic the American public and change the topic from Enron to Tehran makes Bush appear pathetic if not evil. The tactic is insultingly blatant, so much so that we have to assume it is not a tactic at all, but a genuine call to arms for genuinely scary reasons, because if they really wanted to wag this dog, they'd be much more clever about doing it... right? I mean, they wouldn't be this obvious and this brazen... right? The Bush Administration is selling high-end copper and oak coffins to the grieving widows and widows-to-be of America; taking advantage of our grief to shove this obscenity down our throats, ramming it through a congress of cowards and liars who will most certainly give him his Tonkin Resolution. And, that paperwork in hand, this president will unleash hell, sweeping even more likeminded GOP candidates to victory in November amidst the flag-waving rah-rah of an America rallying to support our troops as they sail into what Bush must, by all evidence, see as his own Grenada, but which holds the distinct possibility of becoming Bush's Vietnam if not Bush's Waterloo if not America's Waterloo. Bush wants his own Tonkin Resolution because he is acting like it's still 1964, like America can still run around firing its guns whenever and wherever we like. Like the political landscape and the rules of war haven't irrevocably changed in 38 years. This reminds me of the pathetic British armies, orderly and civilized, marching to a loud drum beat— a drum beat— into the wooded Maryland hills, wearing bright red, and being slaughtered by un-uniformed terrorists and guerilla warriors hiding in tress and attacking from all directions. We now call those factions patriots, patriots who won largely by changing the rules of war, while the powerful, established nation continued to employ tactics and rules that no longer applied. If Desert Storm proved anything, it's that we can bomb Baghdad into the stone age without affecting much of the political landscape there. But we are all too grief stricken and perhaps too gullible and too stupid to even see it.
Doing The Pepsi Challenge between Bush's proposed resolution and the Tonkin Resolution conjures up possibilities that'll have me sleeping with the light on for quite awhile. Or, am I just being unreasonably cynical? Maybe. But, in the final analysis, the Bush Administration's Iraq policy boils down to this: these men are either evil or stupid. There's really not much middle ground. Rallying America for a just cause would seem to invite if not require bipartisanship, and eschewing even the appearance of politics. No component of Bush's mealy, meandering attempts to convince us of the rightness of his cause presents any compelling reason why the whole matter couldn't be tabled until the new congress is seated in January. The merits of his case are not my issue here so much as the timing, the urgency being so seemingly transparent. For all I know, the president has a valid case for this policy, but he squanders it on brazen political opportunism, which makes me question his ethics and, therefore, his judgment.
I think it interesting to note Osama bin Laden's disappearance from the White House daily theme. The president has successfully turned our attention away from Osama, the other mission we've spent billions of dollars and killed thousands of people without a successful or satisfying conclusion to those matters, and focused us on his next multi-billion dollar expenditure and epic loss of life that will not only end inconclusively but will likely plunge this country into deep recession if not depression, de-stabilize the Middle East, and initiate a wave of terrorism against this country unprecedented in this nation's history. The president's reasons for pursing his course seem to change daily. There is a Reason Of The Day, like a child desperate for a new bike, pressing his cause with ever new and largely unsubstantiated and unverifiable claims. Watching the poll numbers, Bush recently linked Saddam with Osama, an extremely unlikely paring, as my friend G. Edward Jones, Jr. pointed out on my weblog:
Other Reasons of The Day imply alliances with Iran (laughably unlikely), arming and supporting the Palestinians (more likely, but nobody believes we're going to war to bring peace in Israel), and, most unworkable, the notion that Saddam might someday attack us. Currently, the Bush drum beat is about nukes. The president danced around Saddam Nukes for months, then kind of intimated Saddam Nukes, but now, ever more intent on panicking the American public, he is all but saying Saddam has nukes (but no enriched uranium to blow them up). The president's southern drawl, regrettably, has him clearly and painstakingly enunciating (with, as Dana Carvey pointed out on a recent Letterman appearance, a smug look of satisfaction when he pronounces the big words correctly). The word nuclear is often pronounced by this president as "nuculer," which, for me, really doesn't help me take him seriously. The administration is throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, and nukes tend to stick. The notion of a terrorist setting one off in Times Square scares the bejezus out of all of us, as it should. But, making the American people believe attacking Saddam will somehow prevent that is, for me, as heinous as the potential terrorist act itself. There are any number of states out there with the bomb, including our allies, like Israel and India, and hostile states like North Korea. I think it inevitable that terrorists will someday have nuclear capability and the capacity to deliver it to our door. Should we work like hell to prevent that? You bet. But creating the myth that all roads lead to Baghdad, and that regime change will guarantee our safety, is a pretty cruel lie to foist on the American people. We are an open society. We are not safe. 9|11 has demonstrated to all the nut jobs in the world just how vulnerable we truly are, and that they've been, mostly, wasting their time going after our embassies and military installations when our mainland remains incredibly vulnerable.
The president is quite correct when he says this is a new day and a new war and it's only just begun. Making Saddam a key figure if not the figure, however, is manipulative and inaccurate, and his daily Reasons, nearly al of which are beyond independent verification, have the stink of desperation about them. If you say enough things enough times, making enough of a sort of official sound, it begins to sound like a body of evidence. It begins to sound like you have a case. But there is no case. At least, not one that we have real evidence the American people can look at for themselves. In fact, the downside risk to Bush's Iraq gambit is so huge, so unthinkable, that there can only be one rational reason he's pushing so hard for this: The Secret Stuff. The government has done a lot of things in the name of The Secret Stuff throughout this nation's existence. When the government is vague and obfuscatory, when they get backed into the corner, they wheel out The Secret Stuff. Issues of national security with devastating consequences should they be publicly aired. Bush's hole card is this Secret Stuff, things he intimates exist but cannot publicly discuss, but matters of such dire proportions that they are worth the lives of thousands of teenagers. The subliminal message, at least the one I'm receiving, is, Bush is not a madman. He's not some insane old coot putting kids in harm's way just to help the mid-term elections. I'm no Bush fan, but even I can't think of him in that way. So the message, the one they're not saying but are clearly communicating with the American people, is there is Secret Stuff. Something so terrible, the president feels the urgent need to act. And we, as good Americans, should trust his judgment, trust this Secret Stuff, and exercise a fundamental faith as Bush taps into the wellspring of exactly that kind of faith he and his administration has banked away since the planes hit the towers. President Bush apparently means to make a withdrawal at the bank of good will and drain off some of his 70% approval rating by ramming this war down our throats. And, honestly, even a cynic like me might be better able to get on board with this, were it not for incredibly stupid Deer Freeze gaffes, nuculer, $150 million for the GOP, and reckless statements from within Bush's own White House. To wit, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Karl Rove:
New York Times: “White House is Suffering Pain From a Slipped Disk " Who lost Karl Rove's slide show? That was the mystery yesterday at the White House, where an administration that prides itself on secrecy was in a minor uproar over an intern who apparently dropped a computer disk in Lafayette Park containing a confidential and unvarnished analysis of the coming 2002 elections. The disk was then picked up by a Democratic Senate staff member, who made sure that its most embarrassing points were made public. Bulmiller, New York Times, June 17, 2002 New York Times: “Americans trust the Republicans to do a better job of keeping our communities and our families safe. We can also go to the country on this issue, because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America’s military might, and thereby protecting America.” — Karl Rove, January 19, 2002
DONAHUE:
The war is a winning political issue for this election and two years from now. How do I know this? Karl Rove told me. My point is that Karl Rove has said all year to us, he’s said, look, this election has to be about national security. Now we’re 45 days from the election and what’s the issue we’re talking about? —John Nichols, Correspondent, THE NATION. DONAHUE appearance, Sept. 19, 2002
Terrorism and war are absolutely part of Senior White House Advisor Karl Rove's reelection strategy. While it is certainly possible the timing of Rove's incredulous statements and Bush's saber rattling are coincidental, it nevertheless give me pause and a reasonable and human suspicion of the administration's motives, not so much in the objectives of Iraqi disarmament as in the timing of this campaign for it. If Bush is trying to sell us on rushing into Iraq, and in obtaining his own Tonkin Resolution from Congress, he could have inspired more confidence by beginning his campaign after the elections. There's plenty of time to bomb Baghdad into the stone age in 2003, and even now we are unlikely to begin strikes before the end of the year. But I'm unsure whether or not Bush is interested in accruing credibility so much as expending it, draining it from the 70% approval well to achieve both a military and a political objective at the same time. Tainting Bush's message— a good and rousing call to arms against the villainous Saddam— with Beltway politics seems revelatory of a weasely character of a very small man. Putting the fairest and best face on this that I possibly can, Bush looks bad. Looks small and dumb and incompetent and selfish and, well, like a politician. For the timing if not the substance of all of this. And he shoots himself in the face, here, by asking us to trust him without presenting any measurably credible evidence. The subtext is, "Secret Stuff. Trust Me." But he asks us to trust him in the drive time of the 2002 mid-term elections, while Karl Rove and Andrew Card are running around all but telling us they are using a potential war with Iraq to maximize the GOP political position. I'd also be less nervous about all of this were it not for Vice President Dick Cheney's direct and indirect profiting from the Iraqi state.
In this Age of The CEO Perp Walk, changing the tune of the American press from the economy to national security would seem a good idea, especially if the media scrutiny was settling in on the vice president. It is, of course, preposterous to assume the Iraqi campaign is just Rove wagging the dog (likely at Cheney's direction), or that the president or vice president or their administration would actually put anyone in harm's way for political gain. I am not suggesting this is what they are in fact doing. I am also not saying anything about Iraq having the world's second largest oil reserve. Bush is not saying anything about it, either, not even if only to dispel the thought that we're out to grab the oil. This is how evil, how conniving this all looks. Not talking about the politics or the oil only encourages that line of cynicism. Even if it is not evil, not conniving, even if the president and the administration's motives are absolutely pure, their good takes on the appearance of evil by the timing of their initiative and their silence on these kinds of issues. Skepticism is a cancer to any military campaign. While preparing this country for war, the administration has done itself and this nation a disservice by encouraging our cynicism with maneuvers that are either too clever for us to parse or are exactly what they appear to be: stupid. I am suggesting that they are stupid. Very stupid. Or perhaps they are OJ Stupid: pretend to look stupid, leave blood trails, drop gloves, low speed Bronco chase, so the defense goes, "You can't possibly think he's that stupid? It's a frame up!" which makes OJ Stupid a very smart maneuver. The public loves a good mystery. While most police officers will tell you, the most obvious criminal scenario is often exactly what happened, the American public has been conditioned by Matlock to look for complexity where none really exists. So Clinton was the victim of a vast right wing conspiracy, OJ was set up, and this Iraq business can't possibly be about the 2002 elections because that possibility really is just too ridiculous and obscene. Which, to me, means the Bush White House is either Stupid Stupid or OJ Stupid. Stupid Stupid if they are genuinely protecting vital US interests while not muzzling Rove and Card (and not hiding a clearly uncomfortable Colin Powell). OJ Stupid if all of that chaos was meant to make us suspicious of the administration's motives, while dismissing the obvious because it's just too skeevy to be contemplated.
This net result of making our forces "strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up..." would be to encourage exactly the unorthodox initiatives we ourselves employed against an unbeatable and unstoppable force— the British. Desperate people who see no way to wage a conventional war with us will, by even a child's logic, turn towards desperate measures— terrorism. Bush's false machismo is a recipe for, an invitation to, a new era of terrorism unparalleled in American history. Bush's statement reads more like a Stalin speech than the leader of the free world. A monologue from a man seemingly owned by special interests and manipulated by political strategists like Karl Rove, who has unequalled access to Bush (not even Cheney has more access than Rove). This hawkish tone emboldens terrorists and inflames jihad, as the big enemy flaunts his bigness. It's really just so insane, just so unthinkable, that I have to begin to suspect the administration is up to something: that this Madman Bush tone has a deliberate purpose and design. Because, if it does not, if this is not some psychological or propaganda campaign— if Bush actually means this— the implications are simply terrifying. I suspect, for me, the proof of which this is will be whether or not we actually send ground troops into Baghdad. A squeaky clean air campaign could go on for months with very few American casualties. Troops in the desert are still a relatively low-risk endeavor, so maybe we're still talking about under 100 American casualties. But I'd have to assume that, should the president march high school boys into Baghdad for close-in hot zone house-to-house combat, that the president is serious about Iraq's potential threat to our national security. I'm just not cynical enough to believe that, should we get to a Panama or even Vietnam combat mode, that it would be political maneuvering on Bush's part. My hope and prayer is we accomplish some semblance of a goal with an air campaign and some desert maneuvers and then the administration bows to political pressure from the U.N. and modifies or withdraws it's military campaign, conveniently, sometime after the November elections. That is, perhaps, the best face I could put on the OJ Stupid scenario, as the Stupid Stupid scenario is just too terrible to contemplate. The flag-waving chorus of post-9|11 nationalism has provided Bush and Rove the perfect atmosphere to run their little hustle, rushing us headlong into a "war" with Saddam Hussein with a very sudden urgency that just happens to coincide with the November elections. And, sadly, we, as a nation, are not calling him on this. His approval rating remains sky high and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, kicking off his '04 White House run, sold us all out by cutting a secret deal with Rove & Co. that will have the Democrats— and I am dizzy with disbelief about this— voting for Bush's obscene rush to Baghdad. This president fills me with anxiety about both his motives and his competence. That no one can see this emperor is down to his boxer shorts, if not completely naked, fills me with dread. I desperately fear this man, and I desperately fear the equally clueless country that supports him. Forget Iraq, the country in desperate need of regime change is the USA.
Christopher J. Priest
The speech was coherent, temperate, very well written, concise, and made Bush sound much, much saner than the podium thumper he's been lately. He did not mention his "dad," which was deliberate. He did mention Bill Clinton, or rather, the Clinton Administration, which also was deliberate. He sounded much more willing to work with the U.N., even though what he wants from the U.N. is likely beyond what the U.N. will be willing or able to craft into a resolution. He intimated (to me, at least), that the U.N. will be considered weak if they don't do things his way, and made no secret of the fact that, should the U.N. not do things his way, he's willing to bolt the U.N. and act unilaterally (he used the word "coalition," but nobody, not even his own party, believes that). In other words, the United States is a member of the U.N. when it is convenient to us and our policies, and when it is not, the U.N. is weak and we will go our own way. Isn't world peace the whole point of the U.N., and forcing nations to comply with the resolution of the global community it's purpose? I mean, what if the U.N.'s resolution, rather than being the blank check Bush wants, becomes a resolve against the policies of the U.S.? Not likely, of course. The U.N. certainly doesn't have enough power, even with Russia and China, to mount a military campaign against the U.S.,, but, yikes, what if they did. What if the world just said, "enough with this guy," and met us out there in the desert to defy Bush's anti-Saddam fanaticism? Like, what if, say, France, flew interference runs over our sorties. Would we fire on French jets to get Saddam? On Russian MiG's? Wouldn't that be, kind of, Armageddon...? Nah. Never happen. But the daydream did take my mind off of Bush's attempt— a really good attempt— at civility and intellectual reasoning. It was a very good speech, but for me, not at all convincing of why this speech could not have been made in mid December rather than right before the mid-term elections. As I've said, ad nauseam, it is not Bush's policy that angers me so much as the timing of it, the appearance of politics. His speech did not address those who rightfully point out the president's timing looks terribly convenient, especially when the difference of six to eight weeks will make absolutely no difference in the military campaign strategy— but those weeks are of obvious and paramount import in the domestic political campaign. I'd take the president more seriously (if not being completely won over), if he'd just stop acting like a politician while he's trying to convince us to sacrifice thousands of human lives— American and Iraqi. I mean, think about it: there's a presidential palace, off-limits to weapons inspectors. We think there's Sarin gas or VX gas there. Let's bomb it! BOOM! We destroy thousands of liters of this nightmare stuff, just a teaspoons of which can wipe out several city blocks. And it all becomes aerosol, gets blown onto our troops, their troops, civilians. Gets into the clouds, gets rained down elsewhere. The president addressed none of those nightmare scenarios, nor the one that says Saddam just starts giving all of this stuff away before looting the treasury and escaping to some friendly nation, getting the last laugh on us as this stuff— which can be encased in containers smaller than a golf ball— starts showing up on New York subways. The president addressed the notion of Saddam arming terrorists (also saying al Qaeda are in Iraq while not mentioning the concentration of al Qaeda are in the Northern territories which Saddam does not control), but the larger consensus of political analysts suggest Saddam is such an ego maniac he is likely to horde his weapons until he feels as though he needs to use them or lose them. In other words, attacking Saddam makes him more likely to arm terrorists. The louder the Bush saber-rattling, the more likely Saddam will act preemptively and, at this point, the international community can hardly blame him. Look, if someone tells me they're coming to kick my ass, I will not only give them my address, I'll pay for the taxi. As Bush said, I refuse to live in fear. If somebody wants to do me harm, let's just get together so we can see what we see. Bush is destabilizing a dangerous guy, a guy who, from what I can see, is more patient and, likely, smarter than Bush. But a guy who can and will unleash hell is he feels like he has nothing to lose. And Bush, every day, pretty much tells the guy he has nothing to lose: we're coming in no matter what. Of course, if I were Saddam, I'd be long gone. I wouldn't even be in Iraq, but would be driving a taxi in New York. I mean, I've seen dozens of guys who look exactly like Saddam driving cabs in New York. That'd be the last place anybody would look for him. The likelihood of Saddam just sitting there, waiting for us to come get him, is nil. He'd likely have some double sitting there, but the real Saddam is like a cricket that's gotten into your house. No matter how much gassing you do, inevitably, there's that noise again. I arrived at the end of Bush's speech exactly the way I was when he began: unconvinced. Bush offered lots of claims against Saddam, some familiar, some new. But he continued to offer no independently verifiable evidence, no way for the American people to believe these claims other than the fact the president is the one making them. Which, 38 years ago, was once the gold standard of truth telling. But Tonkin, Watergate and Lewinsky have all but done away with that (at least, I certainly hope so). The president of the United States is not the Pope. At least, not any more. If we're to put our kids on the line, we honestly need proof of these claims. And guys like Colin Powell really need a better poker face: the man just terrifies me every time I see him, which, I suppose, is why I see him less and less these days. In many ways, the president is right. In many ways, I agree with him. If he'd made this speech six weeks from now, I'd be much less cynical about it all. But this man is clearly playing politics. Shame on you, Mr. President. And shame on us, for falling for it. Christopher J. Priest
|
|
TOP OF PAGE |
At my
fairest, I can characterize this issue as a damned-if-you-do,
damned-if-you-don't moral dilemma. If the administration is right,
waiting to disarm Iraqi President Saddam Hussein can and will have
devastating consequences. If the administration is wrong,
attacking Iraq will, in fact, bring about the unprecedented wave
of terrorism Bush presumes to prevent. I am actually not
attempting to sift through the wisdom of this call to arms so much
as to vent my discomfort with the stink of it; a sinking Wag The Dog
feeling about the timing and ultimate purpose of this
saber-rattling, of this seemingly madman Bush, who has now only
one topic of conversation— Saddam Hussein.
Postscript: