Saddam's Secrets Page 3

  I also want to speak about my role in the Revolution of 1968 when Gen. Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and Saddam Hussein came to power. I’ll tell about my discussions with President Al-Bakr, as well as what Abdurazzaq al-Nayif said to me before he was killed in London, and how I led formations of Iraqi fighters into Iran at the outset of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980.

  Saddam seldom based his military strategy on logic, national interest, or least of all, genuine national defense. As in everything else, his tactics were centered on whatever would benefit him personally or exalt his reputation and authority in the region. He was interested only in his own glory and power, which helps to explain another little-known secret: we were ordered to carry out an attack against Israel using chemical weapons. I will talk more about that, and I will also go into some detail about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

  Yes, we had them. We used them. And Saddam shipped them out of the country before coalition forces ever arrived. I will talk about how these WMDs were used by Saddam and the military on both soldiers and civilian targets, how Saddam managed to hide them under the noses of U.N. inspectors, and then how he managed to smuggle them out of the country before the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

  Saddam, The Crasher

  These are some of the more difficult aspects of my story, but I’ll be frank about what happened and how we did it because I believe these things need some explanation. I think it’s important to talk about the events of July 1979 when Saddam came as a gangster and told President Al-Bakr to get out because he was taking over. I’ll speak in more detail about the way Saddam manipulated people and events to increase his dictatorial power.

  Saddam was a cunning and manipulative man: I’ve often said he was a genius. Like the communist leader Josef Stalin, on whom Saddam modeled himself, he was truly a genius at doing evil. He was a man without a conscience. He was ruthless and brutal, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to achieve his own ends. He killed many times and ordered the brutal murders of hundreds of thousands of our own people. He was a true Stalinist, inside and out, and this is why he had to be removed from power, once and for all.

  In Arabic, Saddam’s name actually means “The Crasher.” It’s a word we use whenever there’s an auto accident—when two cars crash into each other. When people first heard the name, we were puzzled by it. We had never heard of anyone named Saddam before he came. But today, as you can imagine, there are many little Saddams in our part of the world. Adoring parents named their little boys Saddam, and there are even children named Uday and Qusay, for Saddam’s sons, who were more evil than their father.

  What Saddam did in Kuwait was appropriate for someone with such a name. He burst in, destroyed, raped, tortured, and took whatever he wanted. He was, by nature and training, an assassin, a thug, and a crasher from the beginning. His job in the Baath Party was to crash in and intimidate people or kill them. He had a reputation for being a gangster before he turned twenty years old, and he lived up to the name.

  In 1959, Saddam led a gangland-style assassination attempt on Iraq’s president, Gen. Qassem. When the attack failed he fled to Syria where he lived for four years. During that time he was introduced to Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had befriended many thugs in his own rise to power. But even Nasser, who was a belligerent pan-Arabist, could see the evil in Saddam Hussein, and he warned leaders of the Baath Party in Iraq to be wary of him. Nasser said Saddam was a dangerous man and a loose cannon, but no one in Iraq took the warning seriously until it was too late.

  I knew Saddam and I knew what he was capable of. I don’t hesitate to say that his decision to invade Kuwait was wrong. The way our forces did it was wrong; the behavior of our soldiers in Kuwait was not only wrong, it was immoral. Failing to withdraw the army immediately, as we were called upon to do by America, Britain, and the United Nations, was wrong as well; what happened to our forces was a disaster that could have been avoided.

  This all happened because one man had all the power, and the entire mission of the army, air force, and navy of Iraq was to do whatever this wicked dictator demanded they do. I was not the only one who argued against the action in Kuwait—there were a few others —but there was no one with enough influence or enough courage to stop him. There was no system for objecting to Saddam’s orders, and most of his commanders knew that if they did not obey he would have them hanged immediately.

  The British scholar and historian Lord John Acton said famously, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But he also said, “Great men are almost always bad men.” Saddam Hussein was a great man in the same sense that Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin were great men. They were rulers with the power of life and death over other men, and they would stop at nothing to fulfill their wicked dreams of conquest and domination. And all of them were absolutely corrupt.

  Losing the Peace

  We all know the results of the Gulf War. Because Saddam was left in power for twelve more years, he was able to do much greater harm than he had ever done before the war. President George H. W. Bush was a career diplomat and not a natural wartime president, as I believe his son, President George W. Bush, to be. I believe he thought that the people of Iraq would rise up and drive Saddam from power; unfortunately, he didn’t understand the absolute tyranny of Saddam in that nation or the control he had over us.

  I know many, many Iraqis who were weeping on the day the Americans announced their withdrawal. They said, “Is it really going to end like this? Is Saddam going to win after all?” They knew what would happen. They knew Saddam would quickly regroup and rebuild his military and claim he had won after all, and millions of Iraqis would suffer. We were all terrified of what would come next.

  If Gen. Colin Powell and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf thought the cost of going on to Baghdad would have been too high, then I must say they were badly mistaken. There was no one defending Baghdad at that time. If their intelligence was telling them that the defense of Baghdad was too strong, I must say, “Sorry. Your sources were wrong.” The closest thing to a defense of Baghdad at the end of the first Gulf War were a few hundred seventeen- to nineteen-year-old cadets at the Military Academy and the Air Academy.

  If coalition forces had gone into Baghdad immediately after the liberation of Kuwait, Saddam would have been finished once and for all, and countless lives, including the lives of the thousands of Iraqis who were executed by Saddam over the next ten years, could have been spared. And, not least, American soldiers, sailors, and airmen wouldn’t have had to come back in 2003 with the risk of losing another two or three thousand troops, as they’re doing now. By not going on to Baghdad when they had the chance, the coalition forces created a disaster that will take years, if not decades, to overcome.

  But that’s not even the worst of it, from our view. When they left Iraq in 1991, American and coalition forces encouraged the pro-democracy resistance in Iraq to rise up against Saddam, and they did. Fourteen of eighteen provinces were freed from Saddam’s control by our brave young men, but then the Americans suddenly left. At that point, Saddam mobilized his Special Forces and they went in and massacred tens of thousands of civilians. They murdered anyone suspected of participating in or sympathizing with the attempted coup. Men, women, and children were butchered by the thousands, and the world did nothing to help.

  An Error of Judgment

  If those pro-democracy forces could have had the support of America, the British, or any nation to supply them with arms and logistics, the resistance would eventually have taken all eighteen provinces. They would have cleaned them out the Iraqi way. By that I mean they would have left no one in power who could come back to make trouble later. There would be no insurgency, no resistance, no terrorism. They would have wiped the slate clean with a new regime, new laws, new order, and a new beginning for Iraq, without Saddam Hussein.

  They only needed to take the four provinces in the Anbar region, known as the Sunni Triangle, where most of the Saddam lo
yalists were living. But when our bold young rebels tried to go in there, they were deserted by the West, and consequently they lost the momentum and the battle, as well as the lives of thousands of fine, brave men. All this happened because America didn’t finish what they started. They may have won the war, but they hadn’t won the peace.

  Instead of solving a problem, for the next twelve years the world bickered with Saddam about nuclear and biological weapons, demanding that Iraq permit United Nations inspectors to come in. Believe me, Saddam was laughing the whole time, because he had made fools of them. He went on national television in Iraq and told the people he had won the Gulf War. By that he meant that he was still in power, and nothing had really changed in the way things would be done. He had billions of dollars in gold, currency, and high-tech equipment that our soldiers had stolen in Kuwait, and no one was going to intervene. The fact is, some of that booty was eventually returned to Kuwait, but Saddam made a fortune from it in the process.

  Later, when America and the U.N. decided to punish Saddam by imposing sanctions on our country, once again they thought that economic pressures would force Saddam to capitulate or possibly even leave the country. Forgive me, but this was the stupidest idea of all. Saddam and his friends were not hurt in the least by sanctions. He already had dozens of palaces and had begun building more. He had hundreds of servants, and all the oil money anyone could ever dream of. Only the people of Iraq were hurt by sanctions because Saddam didn’t care in the least if the people of Iraq starved to death as long as he was in control.

  Because the first Gulf War ended so abruptly, America and the West now have problems that will be much more costly in the long run, for themselves and for Iraq. Until the Iraqi military can take over the job of safeguarding the country, multinational forces will have to stay where they are. And this means that more people will die on both sides, more equipment will be destroyed, and it will affect foreign policy in Iraq, the greater Middle East, and the West for years to come.

  Although we went through hell in Iraq for twelve years because of the pullout in 1991, most Iraqis were happy to see the Americans return in 2003. But since they had not won the peace when they had the chance, coalition forces now have to deal with many new problems. For too long there was a great vacuum in security that led to more violence, looting, and armed resistance from the Sunni minority who realized that they were losing their superior position in Iraqi society. This can be stopped, but it will take time.

  No Time for Compromise

  Actually, I never set out to write a book about these things or to talk about the secret world of Saddam Hussein that I witnessed as a senior officer and member of the government in Iraq. I was only persuaded to undertake this project after a series of speaking engagements in America and a chance meeting with someone in the publishing business. But after much thought, prayer, and consultation with family and friends, I decided that such a book may help the people of my country and shed new light on our situation.

  There were times when I wanted to speak up, and there were times when simply doing the humane thing—such as refusing to execute coalition pilots captured during the first Gulf War—did cost me my job and freedom. But now that Iraq has been liberated from the blood-stained hands of a dictator, with a new constitution and a new government of freely elected representatives for all people, I am finally able to speak. I’m still not out of danger; there are people in Iraq who would silence me if they could. But the world needs to hear from someone who will speak the truth, and that’s what I’ve attempted to do in these pages.

  The story I know best, of course, is my own, and that will be the thread that ties this narrative together. I had the good fortune to grow up around professional soldiers and fighter pilots, and then to become a pilot myself. For most of my adult life this was my passion, and you’ll hear more about that. But since the mid-1980s, our lives have become much more complicated, so the drama of life in the Middle East will also be a persistent theme in these pages. I hope my own journey as a member of an ethnic and religious minority may offer a point of focus that will be useful in gaining a better understanding of what really happened to us.

  Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, we all knew it, and he had many secrets. The chapters of this book, however, will not be infused with one amazing secret after another. Rather, I will discuss private conversations, little-known facts about certain individuals and events, and other aspects of life in the Middle East that are not widely known in the West. And of course I want to speak about the nature, deployment, and ultimate destination of Saddam’s WMDs. But I will do all of this chronologically in the course of my story.

  Looking back now, it seems like such a strange odyssey. King Faisal I, who ruled during the British Mandate of the 1920s and ’30s, was by all accounts a wise and intelligent leader. His son and successor, King Ghazi, was educated at Harrow in England, and when he died in an automobile accident in 1939, he was succeeded by his son, Faisal II. The prime minister at that time was General Nuri es-Said, who was educated at Constantinople and became a good friend of T. E. Lawrence, the flamboyant British officer known as Lawrence of Arabia.

  Like both of the monarchs, Gen. Nuri hoped to maintain strong alliances with Europe and America. Unlike most Middle Eastern countries at the time, Iraq was well positioned to build strong commercial and economic relations with the West. But the pro-Western government was overthrown by a military coup on July 14, 1958, and the new ruler, Gen. Abdel-Karim Qassem, transformed the nation into a pro-Soviet republic. Then in typical communist fashion, King Faisal II, the royal family and Gen. Nuri were murdered, along with many who had served in the cabinet.

  Qassem’s government wasn’t to last very long, however. Five years later, on February 8, 1963, Col. Abdel-Salam Aref and the Baath Party mounted a coup to oust President Qassem; and five years after that the Baath Party leader, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, overthrew Aref. Al-Bakr seized power with the aid of Saddam Hussein, whose notorious brutality and efficiency had made him a valuable asset to tyrants. But, true to form, Saddam gradually forced Al-Bakr into a position of subservience, and on July 17, 1979, Saddam walked into Al-Bakr’s office and told him that he was taking over. Al-Bakr capitulated immediately, and on that day “The Crasher” took over as Supreme Leader of the country.

  When I served under him, military officers could only say what Saddam wanted us to say, and if we chose to say anything different from what was prescribed, it could be a fatal choice. We had to follow the party line, and it was often forbidden to speak the truth. Some people have told me I’m crazy to tell this story. The war is still under way. There are American and coalition forces on the ground in Iraq, and United Nations representatives are everywhere. On top of that there is an intense political battle taking place all around us that is every bit as hot as the war on the ground. When it gets this hot, they say, the right thing to do is to back away from the fire, but they think I’m jumping into the middle of it.

  One man said to me recently, “Georges, you think you have to tell the truth all the time! Don’t you know it’s not safe to tell the truth so much!?” But I just said, “I’m sorry, this is the way I’m made. I can’t be any other way.”

  Ever since Saddam seized power in 1979—and, really, for a decade before that—we knew that truth was whatever the leader said it was. If Saddam wanted two plus two to equal nine, then everybody would say it was nine. And more than that, it was nine with flowers and ribbons around it, because that’s how Saddam wanted it to be. Even in the military, where you would expect men to have courage and stamina, it was considered indiscriminate and dangerous to speak openly. Unfortunately, I had a habit of saying that two plus two is four, knowing very well that speaking the truth could cost me my life. Ultimately, it almost came to that, but I’ll come back to that in due course.

  Our Infamous Friend

  Oddly enough, I had a casual acquaintance with Saddam a couple of years before his ascendancy. At that time, Saddam and his wife, Sajida,
were just ordinary people—or so it seemed to us. They didn’t have much money and they lived in a modest house. I knew who he was. Saddam was a member of the Baath Party, and his wife was a teacher at our local school, Al-Massarah Athaniya. Sajida was from the town of Al-Mansour, which is a nice suburb of Baghdad, and this is also where my wife was from. Both of them were teachers there, so we were familiar with Saddam and Sajida before his more-celebrated exploits began.

  Sajida would eventually go on to become head of that school, but during those years she was very much the traditional Arab woman. She wore the long dress, the Abaya, and she was friendly to us. I was a young officer, but I had recently returned from advanced flight training in Texas and I brought with me a brand-new 1965 Chev-rolet coupe, with Texas plates. I would drive to school each day after work and pick up my wife. Since Sajida generally walked to work, my wife would say, “Georges, let’s give Sajida a ride,” and we were happy to take her home. At that time my Chevy was the nicest car in Iraq—the president had a 1964 Chevy and mine was a ’65—so that was fun for all of us, and we were glad to help them out.

  I would see Saddam from time to time, especially on social occasions at the school, and he’d show up wearing a casual shirt and his lounging slippers. Afterward he and his wife would walk home together and everything seemed normal. I spoke to him briefly on a few occasions—it was not a close friendship by any means, but I can say that we knew Saddam before his rise to power. I would come to know him much better in time.

  In those days we thought Saddam was like everyone else. He had a reputation, it’s true, and we knew his name because of the assassination attempt in 1959. But that was years earlier and most people thought of him as a rebel, or a somewhat overzealous politician. He had been an assassin, but he was brought back by the administration and given amnesty for his past actions. After that he seemed to be living a normal life.