Saddam's Secrets Page 21

  They told me they had talked to some Iraqis who had solid evidence that Speicher had ejected from his plane and somehow managed to evade capture. When they told me the names of the men who said that, I realized I knew one of them. He was a distant relative of Saddam’s. So I said, “Bring them to me.” They had to fly the men to Iraq from America, and when they finally arrived I asked them to tell me the whole story. They said they’d seen the pilot. They fed him, gave him clothing, and then helped him escape across the border into Syria.

  I didn’t believe it for a minute, but I asked for more proof, and they told me they had given Speicher official documents. I asked if they had copies of those documents and they said they did. They showed me the copies, and they looked official. But I knew they were a forgery the minute I saw them, because of the title at the top of the page.

  Uncovering a Fake

  At one time, many years ago, Iraq was called “The Iraqi Republic,” and in Arabic that’s a feminine title, because of the endings of the words. When Saddam first saw it, he said, “How can Iraq be a feminine name? We’re a strong, masculine country!” So he ordered the government to change all the official documents and also to change the official name of the country. Instead of the feminine form, “The Iraqi Republic,” would now be “The Republic of Iraq,” with the masculine construction.

  When the men who claimed to have seen Speicher showed me their papers, I realized the documents had the old feminine title for Iraq, so obviously they had forged them. I knew their story was false, but I gave them one more chance to show me the rest of their proof. At that point they claimed they had been to the crash site, so I told the Americans to ask the men to take us to the crash site. I knew by then that the wreckage of Speicher’s plane was far away, in the western desert, and it would be very hard to find it again. The men admitted they had no idea which way to go, and at that point everybody knew they’d been lying.

  I brought with me another Iraqi general from the intelligence service who might be able to help in the investigation. But as soon as he arrived, the intelligence specialist told the Americans, “You know, you really ought to listen to General Sada.” He said, “He’s the one who will tell you the truth.” He knew that I had already spent a lot of time on this case. They agreed with him, and they asked me to handle the investigation.

  They had offered us money, but I said we didn’t want any money. We weren’t doing this for money, but out of respect for the men and women who had fought to liberate our country from Saddam. I told them we would be honored if they would simply think of us as allies.

  Ever since attaining the rank of brigadier general, and even during my retirement, I was the one responsible for aircraft safety, for aircraft inspections, and for investigation of accidents and things of that sort. This was an area I understood very well, so I helped those people the best I could, and we examined maps, evidence, and all the various claims from people who said they had seen the downed pilot. It soon became clear to everyone that Lieutenant Commander Speicher had been killed in the crash, so I urged the Americans to let his family know what we’d found out so they could, at long last, have some resolution of this matter. I believed it was better to know the truth than to cherish a false hope.

  CHAPTER 7

  DAMAGE ASSESSMENT

  Saddam had put me in charge of interrogating prisoners of war, and I began that assignment with some concern for the situation we were in because of Saddam’s refusal to leave Kuwait before the United Nations’ deadline. Having created our own crisis, we were in no position to punish or harass prisoners who had been shot down or captured in the pursuit of a just mission. But, through detention and interrogation, we could perhaps discover tactics and plans that would help to lessen the destruction being inflicted upon us by the enemy. And that was now my duty.

  I insured that prisoners who had been wounded were properly treated, and I arranged for housing and food, which was never easy because of the constant pummeling we were taking from coalition strikes. Day after day, fire and death were being rained down upon the city of Baghdad, and on some of those days the buildings where POWs were housed were struck as well, and this meant moving the men from place to place at various times.

  Each day of that first week we followed specific procedures involving meals and hygiene for the prisoners and the internment and classification of the new arrivals brought in from the field. But on January 24, exactly one week into the war, Saddam’s younger son, Qusay, came to my office and demanded that all POWs be executed immediately as “war criminals.” He was ranting when he arrived and never relented, yelling that these men were butchers and murderers, and they had to die for their crimes.

  “Do you see what they’ve done to Baghdad?” he said. The city was being bombed around the clock, with as many as a thousand sorties a day, and Qusay was infuriated by our seeming inability to retaliate. So, to his mind, the best way to slap the Americans in the face and send a message to the U.N. and the rest of the world was to execute the pilots being held in our military jails.

  Imagine my position. The son of Saddam, immoral, unpredictable, and more brutal than his father, had determined on his own self-proclaimed authority that these men must die. Trying to defend the pilots by the standards of the Geneva Convention against the wrath of such a man was not going to be easy. In fact, for more than ten hours we argued back and forth. I said, no, it could not be done. But Qusay wanted to kill them immediately, all of them: Americans, British, coalition flyers, and especially the Kuwaiti pilot, Staff Colonel Mubarak, who managed to take off after the airfields were destroyed and kill or wound hundreds of Iraqi troops on the border.

  Qusay yelled, “I want you to kill that Iraqi. He’s a traitor, and that is our business.” He claimed this man was a traitor to his country. Like his father, Qusay insisted that Kuwait was the nineteenth province of Iraq and not a separate country. But I challenged him. “Do you mean the Kuwaiti?” At this he yelled even louder, “Don’t say Kuwaiti! He’s an Iraqi, and he dropped bombs on his own people.”

  I knew I must not speak harshly to this boy if I valued my life, but I glared at him sternly and said, “Mr. Qusay, excuse me but the Geneva Convention states very clearly that the uniform, the ID card, and the aircraft of a captured pilot may be used to identify the nationality of a prisoner of war. When he was captured, this pilot, Col. Mohammed Mubarak Sultan Mubarak was wearing a Kuwaiti uniform, he was flying an American Skyhawk fighter, which is a Kuwaiti aircraft and not an Iraqi aircraft, and his ID card said that he belongs to the air force of Kuwait. By the rules of war, I have no choice but to say that this man is a Kuwaiti.”

  Justifiable Defense

  By any measure, that Kuwaiti pilot was a skilled aviator and a hero to his people. When the Iraqi Army entered Kuwait on August 2, 1990, one of the first things they did was to drop bombs on the runways so that the Kuwaiti fighters could not take off. So almost immediately, the entire air force of Kuwait was disabled and could not fly. But Col. Mubarak didn’t use the runway; he taxied his plane onto the service road that surrounds the airfield and, miraculously, he had just enough room to take off and become airborne.

  He climbed quickly, and as soon as he gained altitude, he spotted four massive columns of Iraqi tanks, armored personnel carriers, trucks, and vehicles of every description—stretching for miles, as far as the eye could see—and they were coming across the border into Kuwait. Obviously, those vehicles were easy targets, so he opened up on them, flying up and down, back and forth, column by column, until he ran out of ammunition. Then he flew to the air base in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, where he remained for the next five and a half months, until the air war started on January 17, 1991.

  At that time, the Kuwaiti pilot returned, and that’s when his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire and he was shot down. When he ejected, Mubarak was captured and taken as a prisoner of war, and there was no doubt that he was the same pilot who had managed to do such damage to our forces on the morning of August 2. T
he television news cameras had captured the horror of that grisly scene: miles and miles of burned-out tanks, columns of acrid smoke rising from those burned-out hulks in all directions, and hundreds of bodies scattered along the roadside. No wonder Qusay and the others hated him; but no wonder his own people today consider him to be a hero.

  When news of that first attack reached Baghdad, Saddam and his sons were furious, and I’m sure this is why they wanted to take revenge on all the captured pilots. But I also realized that if I could save the life of that one man, I could save all the others. Qusay and his family would likely say that I was only defending the pilots because they were Christians like me. So I thought, By the rules of war, the religious background of the prisoners doesn’t matter at all. But, still, it will be much better if I can make the case by saving the life of this Muslim pilot. And that’s what I did. I defended him vigorously, and doing that gave me the credibility to defend all the others.

  I should also mention that during the Gulf War, a total of 606 Kuwaitis were captured and held by our forces as either hostages or prisoners of war. Of those, 605 were killed by Saddam, and only one is alive today. That one man is the pilot, Staff Colonel Mohammed Mubarak Sultan Mubarak, whom I defended on that day.

  Unspoken Threats

  It was not an easy task. The more I resisted, the more Qusay became enraged at me. He was relentless, and it was obvious that he was becoming exasperated and volatile as the day wore on. Normally, Qusay wouldn’t think twice about chopping off my head if I didn’t agree to his demands, and no one would have said a word. There must have been twenty or thirty officers, pilots, and other staff members standing there watching all of this taking place, and, believe me, none of them would have said a word if Qusay had shot me on the spot.

  But he continued to argue, and when he finally stormed up the stairs toward the exit late in the evening, we passed through the shelter where the women and children were housed, and I breathed a silent prayer, Jesus, please help me to know what to say to this man.

  As he stood near the door, Qusay looked at me with utter contempt, and he said, “Don’t you want to obey the orders of the president?” And I said, “I’m sorry, but I’m the man who was commanded by the president, your father, to obey the orders in this book.” For the tenth time I held up my copy of the Geneva Convention, and I said, “As you know very well, the nation of Iraq signed this document too. But if you disagree with this, then go ahead and tell your father exactly what I’ve said.”

  He was silent for a moment, but at length he said, “All right, then. Let the Americans execute the Americans. Take the pilots out of the prisons and put them at the targets their own bombers will hit. Then we’ll just let the American pilots do the job for us.” But I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t do that either. That’s the same as murder, and, again, the Geneva Convention specifically forbids using prisoners of war as human shields.”

  “If the American intelligence is as good as you say it is,” Qusay shouted, “they will know we’ve done this. And if they know their pilots are at the targets, maybe they will change their plans and not hit the targets. Surely they don’t want to kill their own people.” But I said, “It’s still the same thing as executing them.”

  I was exhausted by this time and tired of the whole debate, and I thought, My God, what can I possibly say to this man to make him change his mind? At that moment I knew what I had to say to him, so I said, “Mr. Qusay, here’s the last thing I can say to you about this matter. At this moment we are at war with America. It’s a war between Iraq and America. But I can assure you, if you kill these twenty-four pilots, it will no longer be a war between Iraq and America; it will be a war between America and your family. If they discover that their pilots have been executed, they will come for you, one by one. And, believe me, they will not stop until they have done the job. Is this what you really want?”

  When I said that, all the officers and pilots standing with us began looking around at each other, wondering what was going to happen next. Some of them were certain that Qusay was going to kill me on the spot; others were afraid he was going to kill us all. But a few thought that maybe this time Saddam’s undisciplined son had actually heard what I was saying. But Qusay said nothing. He simply turned on his heel and walked off into the night.

  The moment he left, several of the officers who were standing there all at once began shouting at me very loudly, “Georges, why did you do that?” they said. “You know that man can have you killed! What were you thinking? Why didn’t you just agree with him and be done with it? Do you want to die?”

  That was a very dark hour, I must say. Imagine the situation I was in. Coalition pilots were still attacking Iraq. And in that command bunker I was fighting for the lives of pilots who, to many of those men as well as to Saddam and his family, were considered nothing more than war criminals. But thank God, by some miracle, I was given the courage, the words to say, and the ability to save the lives of those men.

  Even so, I didn’t know what my destiny would be, and it turned out to be a costly effort on my part. I couldn’t sleep after that because I knew there would be a price to pay. Sure enough, the next day, on January 25, Qusay sent intelligence officers to pick me up. They were surprisingly polite. They said, “Please, sir, will you come with us?” And I asked, “Where are you taking me?” But they didn’t tell me. They just said, “Just come along. You’ll see.”

  I was sure I was going to be killed, so I just said to myself, Thank God that I was able to do my job in a proper way, as a good general. If I must die for that, then I am satisfied I’ve done my best.

  Counting the Cost

  The Mukhabbarat took me to a room in a nearby school. When the air force command center was destroyed on the first night of the war, Saddam gave orders for a new facility to be set up and they decided to use the bunker under the women and children’s shelter. So for several days operations were directed from there, but a few days later they moved it again, to the school, and that’s where I was taken.

  They held me there as a prisoner for the next week, and this was a very difficult time for me. I didn’t know what would happen, whether I would be killed or put on trial. I eventually learned that the air force commander and several others in the leadership had deserted me and turned against me, so my fate was uncertain.

  The waiting was difficult, especially when I thought about what would happen to my family after my death. At that time I was wearing a beautiful Swiss-made watch, a chronometer especially made for pilots, with sophisticated time and navigation features, and I decided I wanted to leave it to my son. So from my prison cell I managed to signal to my driver who was waiting nearby, and I said to him, “I want you to take this to my son and tell him I want him to have it as a memento from his father.”

  Sometime later when I spoke to my son, I asked him what he thought when that watch arrived, and he told me he didn’t know what to think. Mostly, he said, he was frightened, because he knew I loved that watch, and if I was sending it to him, then something terrible must have happened. But Saddam was the one who made the decision about what to do with me, whether I was to live or die, and he decided that I had done the right thing.

  Saddam was capable of diabolical evil, but he was also a very practical man, and he realized that killing the pilots would only have made the situation worse for him. So he decided that they should not kill me. In reality, only God knows what would have happened if I had agreed with Qusay and let them execute those men. I know many Americans were divided over the war; many thought the war was wrong, and the public was divided on this issue. But news that all the coalition pilots had been executed may well have been enough to galvanize public opinion against us, and the pressure to punish Iraq—not just in America, but in Europe and the Middle East—would have been greater than ever.

  Eventually, there were forty coalition pilots and five support staff from Saudi Arabia who ended up as prisoners in Iraq in that area. But when the decision was made
not to kill the first twenty-four pilots, that meant that I had saved all of them. So I’m glad my actions turned out to be the right ones, and I’m also glad, for my sake, that Saddam recognized it before it was too late.

  Col. David Eberly, who was shot down on January 19, 1991, was the senior coalition pilot captured at that time, and became the leader of the POWs. He had evaded detection for three nights but was captured in the early morning hours of January 22, on the Syrian border. After the war, he wrote about his experience in his book Faith Beyond Belief. He describes what happened, day by day and hour by hour, how he was shot down and how he came to us. He doesn’t talk about the fact that he wasn’t badly treated, but in the letter he wrote to me after the war, he thanked me for saving his life. David’s story was described previously in Rick Atkinson’s book about the war, called Crusade, which reveals many of the conflicting images of that war.

  Col. Eberly told me that his book was the story of how his Christian faith sustained him through those stressful times. More recently, I have visited with him in America. We have shared our common faith and have become good friends. David has thanked me many times for saving the downed pilots from execution. Of course he couldn’t praise the enemy, and we were enemies for the duration of the war. But he has been clear about the service I rendered. After all, if I had obeyed Qusay’s command, as most others in my position would have done, there would have been no story to tell.

  Casualties of War

  Exactly five and a half months after Saddam gave the order to Gen. Hussein al-Tikriti to “Let the boys get in,” the first Gulf War began. Coalition forces had been preparing for war since the first day our soldiers crossed the border into Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Then the first missiles hit Baghdad on the morning of January 17, 1991, and after forty-two days of sustained combat on the ground and in the air, and after more than 88,500 tons of bombs had been dropped by coalition aircraft on the nation, a ceasefire was finally declared and the armistice signed. On February 28, 1991, the first Gulf War came to an end. Saddam’s outrageous gamble had failed, and the rest of the world had won.