Wag the Dog (45 page)

Now the president was onto something. He stood; he began to pace and gesture as he spoke. “I'm going to let you guys in on a secret. Normally, I wouldn't do this. I would carry this secret to the grave with me. But I think we've gone far enough here, the four of us, that I don't think they'd hang us separately, they'd hang us together. Not that they'd hang us at all, if they really understood our motivation here. A leadership opportunity. A chance to finally lift America out of the malaise of Vietnam. And to show the world that we are not a crippled giant or tied-up giant, whatever they like to call it we're no paper tiger.

“Bear with me on this, the guy to play Hitler—Saddam Hussein. He's a friend of mine. I know this is a casting decision,” the president said in a waggish mode, “and I hope you don't feel like I'm stepping on your toes, John. Your friends do call you John? Do they? Or Line?”

“John'll be fine, Mr. President.”

“You can call me George, that's OK. If we ever go hunting poon together, you can call me Bushie. Right Jimmy?” When the president enjoyed himself, his jocularity emerged. But then he got back to business. “What I'm trying to tell you here is that I have dealt with all of these people. Who you can do business with and who you can't I have the experience for judgment there. There's secret stuff that I can't tell you about, but Saddam Hussein, over there in Iraq, he could well be the guy to go with, for this Hitler thing.
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“The thing that I like about Saddam is that he plays the game the way the game should be played. He made a deal and by golly he held up his end of it. And you didn't find him leaking all over the press. Not like those bastards in Iran. They leak and it was our pants that looked wet all up and down the front.
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And when he found out that we were aiding Iran against him, did he storm off in a snoot? No. He came right back and you know what he said? He said, ‘Hey, fellas, you do that, you better cut me in for more. Balance things out, you owe me.' You see what I'm saying here—this is someone we can deal with. We can say to Saddam Hussein, ‘How about invading someplace—you'll look like a hero to the Arab world, as big as Hitler even.' Then we'll have a war, and may the best man win. He likes a good fight.”

“A lot of the images I see here,” Beagle said, growing enthusiastic, and now loose enough with the president to start sharing his feeling and his craft, “is this real low-tech video of high-tech operations. Like infrared night bombing. There's this one thing that's absolutely central, imagistically speaking, to the whole production. I'm sure you know I've had access to Pentagon film and video, even top-secret stuff, and I want to say thanks, it helped, helped a lot—they have these smart bombs, laser-guided, computer-guided, can drop them on a dime, they say—I want a shot of one of these smart bombs going right down Saddam's chimney. It goes right down the chimney, then the whole building sort of expands outward and
boom!
Explodes. Right down his chimney.

“And what that's going to tell America is that this is surgery, not slaughter. That these are targets we're hitting, military targets, not women and children. This is not Vietnam. Surgical strikes. And we're going to show them on every TV set in the country and by satellite, on every TV set in the world, that, goddammit, this is surgery.”

“What I see here,” Bush said, “I want to see a heroic fighter pilot, you know I can relate to that because I had my moments, I don't have to tell you about that, it's pretty well known. A fighter-bomber, coming in low, beneath the enemy radar. Do you know they have cameras mounted in the noses of fighter planes? Of course, if it's a bomber, the camera's in the belly, that's how they know you're not cheating when you claim your score, not that you would expect that the kind of young man that would have the guts and all that, the Right Stuff, to fly one of our megaspeed, top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art jet aircraft, you wouldn't expect a fine youngster like that to be dishonest. No, you wouldn't. And he wouldn't be. In the heat of combat, though, you can't always be looking back to see where the fallen have fallen, when you're looking forward to what you have to do next, it's good to have a record.”

“Of course we can do that, George. I love fighter and fighter-bomber footage. The stuff is so great. The trick to making it seem real—gut-level real—is low-tech. You know when you watch the old WWII movies, whenever they cut in that scratched-up, dirty film, with the spots—everyone knows, everyone gets it—real combat footage.”

Baker still had one thing that bothered him. Big-time. It was the thing that he had been intending to use to blow the whole project out of the water. “How the hell are we going to pay for it? An issue is going to be made of that. Of paying for the war.”

“Mr. Secretary, Mr. President.” David Hartman spoke. This was a question that he was ready for. “In this event, the United States is the Studio. When a Major Studio makes a movie for, say, forty million dollars, they don't reach into their pocket and take out forty million dollars. That would be insane. Let's say we're making
Catwoman,
the third Batman sequel. To start with, fifteen percent goes back to the studio for studio overhead. Then there's interest on the full amount from day one. See, I really only have to worry about thirty-one, thirty-two million.

“If I want to, I can cover that with foreign, cable, and cassette sales. Before I start shooting. England, two million, Germany, six million, France, three million, Italy, two million, Scandinavia, another million, Spain, a million. That's fifteen. I need another sixteen, seventeen. I pick up three in South America, eight in Japan, and I still have Africa, Asia, Australia, HBO, Showtime, Network TV.

“Do you see what I'm driving at? Only the United States can truly produce this picture. Who's going to pay? That depends on the war. The president says Saddam Hussein. Let's say he invades Saudi Arabia.

“Let's say this war is going to cost fifty billion dollars. A lot of that is overhead. We have a standing army and reserves, equipment, the generals and their staffs, and the munitions and tanks, billions of dollars' worth of stuff that we pay for whether we use it or not. OK, let's say, conservatively, that fifty percent of the cost of the war is true overhead. But for billing purposes let's say our overhead is twenty percent, ten billion dollars. Now we have to find forty billion. How much do you think the Saudis will pay to get their country back? Fifty percent of their oil revenues for the next ten years? We would never even ask them for that much. How about fifteen billion. Plus gas. For the planes and tanks and all ships at sea. Let me just jump ahead for a moment. Think about how much armament they are going to buy after this war. ‘Wow! We don't want to be invaded again. We better double our Air Force!' Planes. Spare parts. Training.

“Now, let's get five billion dollars each from Kuwait, the Emirates, Qatar. Now all we need is another ten billion.

“Meanwhile, the day Saddam marches into Riyadh, the price of oil goes from three and a half dollars a barrel to twenty-five dollars a barrel? Thirty-five dollars a barrel? Fifty dollars? The Nikkei index drops two thousand points in a day.
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Mr. Secretary Baker picks up the telephone. He says, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, what is it going to cost your country if the price of oil stays over thirty dollars a barrel? My army is willing to go in there, straighten things out, get the price down somewhere reasonable, under ten anyway. What's that worth to Japan? Is it worth five billion dollars?'

“ ‘Mr. Kohl, how many people are going to drive Mercedes and BMWs, with gas at the pump, in America, at four dollars a gallon? In Europe at fifteen dollars a gallon? What's that going to do to the German economic miracle?'

“I say,” Hartman concluded, “that before a shot is fired y'all are gonna have this here war paid for.”

“Now correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think I'm very tuned in on this,” the president said. “According to John Lincoln's scenario—is that the right jargon there? scenario?—according to his idea, this is the invasion of Poland and in this context, Saudi Arabia would be the equivalent of France. Maybe France and England combined. I wouldn't want things to get out of control, if you see what I mean. So what I think our Hitler should do is conquer some place a little smaller and
threaten
France. Which would be Saudi Arabia. That would be next, if we didn't stand up to them. See, that works even if Saddam turns out not to be the one, but say it's Iran that's the aggressor nation. Against any one of the little countries there—Qatar, Kuwait, the Emirates. Any one would do, don't you think?”

“That's brilliant, Mr. President. That's what I'm talking about. Exactly it. Let's say it's Iraq. They take Kuwait. It looks like the next move will be Saudi Arabia. Just like the Germans took Poland and everyone just knew, just knew, that France was next. In the space, in the waiting, that's where you build the thing. Perfect, sir, perfect.”

Baker had kept his mouth shut while the president spoke. But the idea of making war on Other People's Money demonstrated not just brass balls, but a pair that was downright stylish and freshly spit-shined. Now he spoke. “You are one smart Hollywood Jew,” he said to David Hartman. “Y'all can call me Bubba.”

 

 

 

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Hartman was pleased that the plan—though Beagle had arrived at it by driving up the opposite side of the mountain—agreed entirely with one of the most important of Sun Tzu's precepts:
While I have heard that a quick though clumsy campaign may pay, I have never seen any merit in a long one. There has never been any country that has benefited from a long war.

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Beagle thought that what the United States needed, cinematically, militarily, and politically, was a football field: a flat, clear space with lines.

In the jungle—as in Vietnam—or in the mountains—as in Italy and Yugoslavia—you go fight some guys, you win, you turn around and half of them are still there, hiding behind trees, in tunnels, and in caves.

In the desert, on the steppes, on the plains, you drive them out, and they're out.

Based on terrain alone, the U.S. didn't want to have a war in South America, Southeast Asia, much of Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines, Korea.

In addition, there were political considerations. No European war. Too expensive. The money people would never stand for it. No nuclear war. That eliminated Russia and China. While parts of black Africa may have been suitable militarily. Beagle's gut reaction was to stay out: whatever you do you're a racist, even in a black-black war. The Russo-Mongolian steppes were attractive but inacessible inside of a ring made half of mountains, half of nuclear powers.

The Indian subcontinent was both politically tricky and nuclear. It would certainly be a religious war, but Hindu versus Moslem, not the appealing Christian versus Moslem confrontation. Of course, as it turned out, Moslem versus Moslem must be considered a stroke of genius, real genius.

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In the Loop: Bush's Secret Mission,” by Murray Waas and Craig Unger (
New Yorker,
11/2/92), reports that when Bush was vice president, CIA Director Bill Casey sent him on a secret mission to make contact with Saddam Hussein through Mubarak of Egypt or King Hussein of Jordan, both of whom Bush was scheduled to speak with during a Mideast trip. Casey wanted to encourage Saddam to use his air force to bomb deep inside Iran. Iran would then need American arms equipment to defend itself, and this would give the U.S. leverage to get better terms in the arms-for-hostages deal that later became the Iran-contra scandal. Iraq did so.

In return, Saddam got economic and military assistance, including access to satellite intelligence, Western arms and technology. Iran responded to the air attacks with a desperate and bloody ground offensive outside of Basra.

In other words, Bush and Saddam had a relationship that long preexisted Desert Storm. And Saddam committed certain specific acts of war at the request of the United States government even though those acts were costly for Iraq in terms of the lives of its people.

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What came to be known as Iran-contra began with a story on November 3,1986, in a Beirut newsmagazine, Al Shiraa, which reported that the Reagan administration was shipping arms to Iran. Presumably, the information came from Iran.

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Actually, oil went from $3.56 to $28.05 a barrel. The Nikkei index dropped 1,264.25 points, about 5 percent. Of course, Iraq only invaded Kuwait, not Saudi Arabia. While Hartman may or may not have been pulling numbers out of his hat here, the cost of the war was later estimated at $60-to-$70 billion. Cash contributions were expected to cover $42 billion, plus “in kind” contributions of fuel, food, and other goods.