1 Boring Old Man

I’ve rattled on about "double binds" before. It is a kind of communication originally described under this terminology that’s common in families that produce mentally ill children. An example that immediately comes to mind from a case long ago was a patient who was in the hospital after a suicide attempt. It was her birthday. She was a short, stocky, overweight and plainly dressed. Her mother was otherwise – petite, thin, dolled-up. For her birthday, her parents brought her a huge box of chocolates and a frilly nightgown, two sizes too small. The night after receiving the gift, she made a suicide attempt in the hospital, but couldn’t explain why. Later in her hospitalization, her parents made an appointment with me. They brought a box full of the patient’s diaries. They wanted to give them to me provided that I would not tell the patient I had them and return them before discharging her so they could return them to their hiding place. When I suggested that I had a problem doing that, the father said to his wife, "I told you," and he and his wife began to argue. I said something about them fighting. They both turned on me for accusing them of fighting and left abruptly, mercifully taking the box of diaries. So much for double bind communications.

1. A direct communication to take an action. Eat chocolate.
2. An indirect communication not to take the action in 1. Lose weight.
3. An injunction to act with a touch of urgency.
4. An injunction not to address the fact that these communications are contradictory.

Why do I bring this up? I was musing about David Kelly and Joseph Wilson. I hadn’t ever really considered how similar the two cases were. Dr. David Kelly was the British Weapons inspector who was involved in writing the British Memo about Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction [September 2002]. He apparently thought the Memo had been overstated, particularly a part that said Hussein could deploy in 45 minutes. In May, after Bush’s "16 words," after the Iraq Invasion, he told a reporter that he thought the Memo had been exagerated. There was a witch hunt to find the reporter’s source, and Dr. Kelly came forward voluntarily to the government. In what followed, he was "outed" by the government, had two inquiries, one public, and within hours was found dead [July 17, 2003]. His death was ruled a suicide, though many expect foul play.

Joseph Wilson was a retired American diplomat married to a covert C.I.A. Agent. When the C.I.A. was investigating the report that Saddam Hussein had purchased Yellowcake Uranium from Niger, his wife was asked to recruit him to investigate as he had a longstanding relationship with the Niger region. He flew to Niger and nosed around, concluding that the story was a hoax [which it was]. In January 2003, he heard President Bush’s State of the Union speech with the "sixteen words" – “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” Bush was referring to the British Memo mentioned above, and Joseph Wilson was steamed. He was certain that the Niger story was false from personal experience. So he began to talk to various people, including reporters who commented on his concerns without naming him. Wilson even publicly questioned the claim without revealing his own experience – his trip to Niger. As it became clear that he was getting nowhere and that he would probably be revealed as the source, he wrote his now famous op-ed in the New York Times on July 6, 2003. On July 12, 2003, his wife’s identity as a C.I.A. Agent was revealed, leaked by the Bush Administration to discredit Joseph Wilson and his claim that the Bush Administration had exagerated the pre-war intelligence about Iraq [which they had done].

Both of these men were in double binds. They were partial insiders and partial outsiders. Both were experts. Both were patriots. Both men were engaged to participate in an aspect of the lead-up to the War in Iraq – an aspect that had to do with the selling of the war. When we invaded Iraq, both men had known or at least heavily suspected that the war had been oversold. A double bind is very painful because of number 3. above – a sense that something has to be done, but there’s nothing right to do – and an implicit message to be silent about the problem. Both men loved their countries and wanted to loyally serve. Both men smelled a big rat.

So they both went a little crazy. Joseph Wilson haunted the back side of Washington, basically trying to get someone to say what he knew for him, or figure it out on their own. Dr. Kelly did the same thing, in a more muted British sort of way. Wilson is a swashbuckler of sorts. Kelly was a more OCD kind of guy. But they both were in a bind of some note. Both broke the code of silence [4.]. Both got slammed for doing it. Wilson’s wife had her career ended. Dr. Kelly became distraught. There’s a huge contraversy as to whether he was killed or committed suicide. I, of course don’t know, but as in my example above, I’ve sure seen suicides tried and completed by people in double binds – more than I like to recall. I’d say his suicide is as big an indictment of his superiors as his murder would have been. Double binds regularly throw people into the "To be, or not to be" frame of mind.

Some say that Joseph Wilson should’ve known his wife would be exposed by his op-ed, so it was his fault. That’s absurd, because it suggests that he shouldn’t have written it. Had he not, he’d have been outed like Dr. Kelly, and his wife would soon follow. When it’s all said and done, suggesting that a person in a double bind should have anything is a mistake, because it’s a misunderstanding of a dilemma – there really is no right thing to do, except go crazy. Joseph Wilson did the rightest thing in the end. He broke the code of silence.

The person in the double bind "goes crazy." But the crux of the story is that it doesn’t mean they are crazy. It means they have been driven crazy by someone else. George Bush et al wanted to go to war with Iraq. They didn’t have a reason that they could sell, so they made one up that sounded plausable, but they couldn’t prove it [because it wasn’t true]. So they fudged the data. I don’t know if the British were so hot on going to war with Iraq, but they wanted to be our pals, and they joined in the fudging. Both Kelly and Wilson knew it. Neither the Bush Administration nor the Blair government resolved their own double bind. We think Saddam Hussein is dangerous. We can’t prove he’s the kind of dangerous that is a Cassus Belli [cause for war]. Instead of facing that impossibility directly and gathering more information, they did something crazy [and we think they had other motives]. Then they had another bind, Kelly and Wilson were talking. So both governments did another crazy thing – exposed [scapegoated] them. And so it went.