Hocus POTUS: A Fictional Account of the Search for WMDs in Iraq

By Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet. Posted September 20, 2007.

Editor's Note: The following is an interview with author Malcolm MacPherson and an excerpt from his book Hocus POTUS.

In Malcolm MacPherson's fictional Iraq, Ambassador Taylor, head of reconstruction, is preoccupied with his image of "contrasting notes of Brooks Brothers and army gear" and Kristin, an executive assistant, is just glad the old ambassador is gone because he had no definable jaw line.

Rather than looking for real WMDs, the goal is to find something that at least looks like WMDs to justify POTUS' (President of the United States) foray into Iraq. In other words, MacPherson's fictional Iraq may be only a sip of moonshine from the truth.

Hocus POTUS is a thinly veiled satire based on MacPherson's time in Iraq immediately following the occupation. A veteran journalist and former Marine, MacPherson's fiction goes a remarkable way to capturing a truth about Iraq that you won't get from reading the daily news.

His story starts when Rick Gannon tries to steal 17 tons of U.S. currency off a C-130 military plane. Kristin, Ambassador Taylor and the other Kool-Aid-drinking members of the reconstruction team, use this to land him in prison. Not, mind you, to punish him for his crime, but rather to keep him out of their hair. Gannon has a big mouth and a propensity for calling a spade a spade. But in an environment where White House appointees, still wet behind the ears, are running the show, there's no room for Gannon's kind.

When Gannon escapes, Ambassador Taylor wants to call off the search for WMDs and look for him. Kristin, in an apoplectic fit, lets him know why that's all wrong: "Was he losing it? POTUS was why they had invaded Iraq, and POTUS was why they would find POTUS a reason for invading Iraq. Was that too fucking complicated?"

It isn't complicated, and Gannon, busy painting a rocket-ship kiddie ride so that it looks like a WMD, knows it. He plans on selling the fake to the ambassador and his crew. They just might buy it. By the end, readers are inclined to wonder whether MacPherson's satire is convenient euphemism for truth, or whether it's the other way around. MacPherson recently sat down with AlterNet to talk about his experiences in Iraq as well as the writing of Hocus POTUS.

Onnesha Roychoudhuri: You've covered a lot of wars. What was different about Iraq?

Malcolm MacPherson: I covered the occupation, not the war. The fighting itself was over by the time I got there. How many times have we really occupied a country after combat? You couldn't say that was true in Vietnam.

The last time was either Korea or WWII. It was a unique experience to be in a place that had been subdued militarily and was now being dealt with post-combat. We haven't done that very often, and we proved to be terrible at it in Iraq, We were brilliant at it in WWII. There are a huge number of on-the-ground differences in Iraq, including the sectarian hatred. But I believe that what we brought to Iraq has none of the genuine commitment to help, which contrasts with the post-WWII experience.

OR: What made you doubt the commitment?

MM: I'm sure there are people over there who are genuinely interested in doing the best that can be done for the Iraqi people, but a lot of what I saw were people doing the best they could possibly do for themselves. A lot of self-centeredness, a lot of ambition that had nothing to do with doing a good job for as long as needed. Some of the younger people who Bremer brought into the CPA reminded me of high school students who go down to Costa Rica to build a house in the summer. They hammer a nail and then they go to the beach and then they hammer another nail and they have a Mai Tai.

They never really get engaged with the people whose house they're building. They smile at them and pat them on the head. I saw a lot of that over there. And just as high school kids are trying to make their application look better for college, these young people were trying to make their resumes look better for the White House, so that they could get a better job.

OR: This reminds me of the character, Kristin, in your book. In one episode, she demands that her driver stop at a traffic light despite the fact that it's not functioning.

MM: I didn't have to make this stuff up. This actually happened. It's just a huge collision between idealism and reality, and what Kristin preferred was the idealism. Here's what actually happened. Me, my friend (the basis for Rick Gannon) and a Defense Intelligence Agency guy would meet at the front of the palace at night and go eat outside at one of the restaurants, pick up a bottle of whisky and just talk. It was us older guys.

One night, these two young women were with the DIA guy. They had just gotten there, but they were connected, so he had to kowtow or thought he had to. He said, "They're coming with us." We just looked at him as if to say, "You've broken the rules here, pal." These two young women jump in the car. One got in the front passenger seat and one got in the back, which meant that my friend and myself, among a few others, were going to have to crunch into the back.

See more stories tagged with: iraq, wmd, fiction, malcolm macpherson, hocus potus

Onnesha Roychoudhuri is a San Francisco-based freelance writer. A former assistant editor of AlterNet.org, she has written for AlterNet, the American Prospect, MotherJones.com, In These Times, Huffington Post, Truthdig, PopMatters and Women's eNews.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from War on Iraq! Sign up now »