Saddam's Secrets Page 33
I listened and I thanked him politely, but when I put down the receiver I looked at the boys and just shook my head. They looked like good boys, and they were frightened because they knew what was going to happen next. But after a few minutes I asked them, “Do you know me?” They said, “No, we don’t know you.” So I said, “Then why do you want to kill me?” and they said, “We were told to kill you.” I said, “You don’t know me but still you wanted to kill me?” And they answered, “Yes, that’s true.”
So I asked them, “What do you do when you’re not blowing people up?” Two of them told me they were engineering students at the University of Baghdad, and the other two were in their second year of medical school. Again, I just shook my head. Here were four bright young men, obviously from good families, and they had been turned into murderers by foreign-born terrorists and the fanatical clerics of their own religion.
I felt sad for them, and I knew very well what the intelligence officers would do to them when I turned them over to the police. As I was considering my options, I asked them, “Why did you listen to these men who told you to kill me?” They said, “They’re foreigners, and they told us that it was the will of Allah for us to kill you. If we didn’t do it, we would be cursing Islam.” I looked at them and I just said a silent prayer: Jesus, tell me what to do with these young men.
After I thought about it for a moment, I knew what I was supposed to do. They were trembling with fear, and they had no doubts about what was going to happen to them. The prime minister was angry, especially since they had targeted my house and wanted to blow me up. There would be no mercy for terrorists—these or any others. But I knew I had to settle it another way.
Finding Another Way
I went back to my office and called the prime minister once again, and I told him that I had decided to let them go. He yelled, “What? Georges, no! What are you talking about? You can’t do that. It’s against the law!” So I said, “Sir, these people were trying to kill me. You know that I’m a Christian, and we’re taught to practice forgiveness. Even Jesus Christ, when they hung him on the cross, said, ‘Father, forgive them, because they don’t know what they’re doing.’ So let me deal with this in my own way.”
When I came back into the room and told the young men they were free to go, they didn’t believe me at first. They were sure it was a trick; they were going to be killed as soon as they stepped outside. But I assured them it wasn’t a trick and nothing would happen to them. I told them to go, and they went. But four hours later, I looked out the window and I saw all four of them coming back to my house, this time with their fathers and mothers. I invited them to come inside and immediately the parents fell all over me, thanking me for sparing the lives of their sons. They said I had saved their lives and they offered the boys to me as bodyguards.
They were kissing me and thanking me over and over, but I said, “Okay, thank you very much, but listen to me. I have bodyguards and I don’t need any more. The only thing I want from you is that you send these boys back to the university. These two are going to be good doctors, and the other two are going to be good engineers one day. They’re our hope for the future, and Iraq needs them. So why are you allowing these bright young men to be in the hands of foreigners and terrorists who are telling them to kill people like me whom they’ve never even met?”
Most of them had tears in their eyes by this time, but they were listening carefully to what I was saying. So I told the boys, “Please listen to me. Those foreign terrorists are nobody. They’re losers, they’re killers, and they’re cowards. They won’t do the dirty work themselves, but they want you to kill your fellow citizens. They’re nobody, but you’re somebody, because you are the future leaders of Iraq. Please don’t throw your lives away for losers like that.” And they heard me loud and clear.
To this day, those four boys still come to my house from time to time to say hello and wish me well. They say, “Sir, is there anything we can do for you?” And I say, “No, but how are you doing in school?” And they say, “We’re doing very well.” So I tell them, “I want you to work hard and make sure you pass your exams. And when you graduate as doctors and engineers, come back to see me and we’ll try to put you in good positions in the government.”
When I spoke to the prime minister about this, he said, “Georges, sometimes I don’t understand you. You Christians always do things like this, but God only knows what they’re going to do.” And I said, “Sir, the only thing they’re going to do is graduate from the university as doctors and engineers, and one day I’ll put them in good positions. And I think this is the best way of making our young people whose eyes have been blinded by hate and lies to see the truth. One day you’ll see what happens.”
It’s been nearly two years now since that incident happened, and some people still tell me that one day those young men will come back and finish the job. But I don’t believe it. I didn’t decide to release them on my own: I prayed about my decision and Jesus told me to release them. So I’m not sorry that I let them go, and I mean that even if something bad does happen to me one day. But I can tell you this. All of their people know this story now, and some of them say, “We know very well what would have happened if General Sada was a Muslim. The boys would have been hanged that same day. But that man had mercy on them because he’s a Christian.”
When I see these young men now, they’re so different than they were. They’ve shaved their beards, they’re wearing very nice clothes, they’re doing very well in their studies at the university. I have some friends who tell me I did the wrong thing, because these young men are Sunnis and they wanted to see them hanged. Fortunately, many people in Iraq know this story now, and many of them believe I did the right thing. But I know it was the right thing.
Incidentally, one of my bodyguards took the video camera they were using and he copied the file onto my laptop computer. So we know exactly what they were doing and saying in the car before they were caught. If I had simply made the easy decision and done the usual thing, they would be dead now. It’s easy to hate, and I could have hated them and allowed them to be hanged; but I knew that Jesus wanted me to find another way, and that’s what I did.
An Unexpected Confession
Throughout this book I have tried to put a human face on the tragedy of Iraq under Saddam and to show how the corruption of the government in my country affected not only the Middle East but the whole world. But the story of what has happened in Iraq is not just my story. It’s the story of all of us, because we’ve all paid a terrible price. The Middle East has suffered, the West has suffered, the United Nations has suffered, and the world has suffered. The world Saddam created, in which he held all the power and received all the glory, was a pitiful excuse for a nation. At the heart of it was only terror and evil. But thank God, Saddam is gone now and it’s time for the people of Iraq to find our way back to reality.
The biggest problem we had in my country was not poverty or hunger or homelessness. It was that Saddam Hussein, supported by some people in the Baath Party and his corrupt bureaucracy, was able to create a regime based on lies, deception, and their own wicked ambition. When Saddam said that two plus two is nine, there was no one who would dare to tell him otherwise. If Saddam said black was white, they would have agreed immediately. And everything worked this way for forty years.
If Saddam wanted the air force to attack the people of Tehran with mustard gas, the people surrounding him would trip over each other trying to be the first to tell him what a great idea he had. When he decided to attack Israel with chemical weapons, the same people were there, applauding and telling him he was a hero and a military genius. Some of them would say that Allah must have spoken those very words into his ear. To kill and destroy for Saddam was, in their eyes, to do the work of Allah.
It was a sick and dangerous system, and I’m grateful now to know that when Saddam called me for advice it was never because I agreed with him or gave him the answers he wanted to hear; it was because he knew I wo
uld speak the truth, even at the risk of my own life. He knew I would not lie to him, even when he disagreed with me. Somewhere deep inside of him, I think he knew that truth does matter. And he also knew I would always speak truth, to the best of my ability. When I refused to execute the pilots, I could easily have been killed. Refusing to do what Saddam or his evil sons ordered had already cost many of my countrymen their heads. Yet, when I refused to obey, I wasn’t killed. Instead, I was simply discharged, retired, and sent away.
In some cases, my promotions were delayed because I wasn’t a very good yes man, and I had refused to join the Baath Party. But when Saddam called for me and brought me back as an adviser, he did it because he realized I had been right about the captured pilots. He realized it was the right thing to do, and I had been right about many other things as well. On one occasion I will never forget, I was called to the palace and when I arrived was told that Saddam wanted me to have dinner with him. Suddenly, I was terrified, because this often happened when Saddam wanted to poison an enemy. Eating with Saddam wasn’t something I wanted to do.
Nevertheless, I went in and met the president. We exchanged pleasantries and spoke for a short time, and then he called for the meal to be served. During the whole time, I kept wondering if the next bite would be the one that killed me. Then, at one point, Saddam said words that sent chills down my spine. He said, “Georges, you know you have not always been very agreeable with me. Seventeen times you have disagreed with me—I’ve counted them . . .” On hearing that, I could hardly breathe. Disagreeing with Saddam was almost always a death sentence, and his words seemed to confirm my worst fears. But then he added, “and seventeen times you’ve been right.” Imagine my surprise and joy at hearing that remarkable confession. Despite all the evil he had done, Saddam still recognized that honesty could be a good thing, and that it wasn’t always necessary to shoot the messenger.
The problem, however, was that the corruption within Saddam’s regime reached from the top to the bottom of the system. It was in the government, the military, the hospitals, the universities, the private companies, and even the families of many of our most prominent people. We were not free to think for ourselves, and no one dared to do whatever they wished, because they knew that only Saddam’s wishes would be followed. That’s why I was forced out of the military in 1986, even though I was a young forty-six-year-old major general who had earned his commission the hard way. At that time I was rated as the best fighter pilot in the air force, but I had a bad habit of saying that two plus two is four. So I had to go.
Saddam, the Destroyer
Saddam must have had other moments of sobriety, but except for that one occasion I never really saw any of them. To understand what he was really like, you need to know that Saddam was the man who killed more Baath Party members than any other person, from the foundation of the party in 1947 to the present. Saddam killed more officers of the Iraqi Army than any other person or nation, from the foundation of the army in 1921 to the present. Saddam killed more Tikritis, his own cousins in the north of Iraq, from the foundation of the nation of Iraq in 1921 to the present. Saddam killed more clerics of all the major Muslim denominations and tribes than any other man. At first it was the Sunnis, beginning with the Badries in the north, and then it was the Shia and the Sadries in the south.
Saddam is also the man who has killed more military personnel and civilians of his own country than any other person, eventually totaling more than a million men, women, and children. All this he did for the sake of expanding his own power and control over the nation. In his time, the nation of Iraq and its vital infrastructure was destroyed more than at any other time in history. At his command, hundreds of thousands of Arabs were killed in the south, especially in Kuwait. And at his command, hundreds of thousands of Kurds were killed and maimed in the north.
At Saddam’s command, more than four thousand villages in the north were completely destroyed, and more than 132 of our ancient churches were wiped from the face of the earth. Because of his own fear and hatred, Saddam attempted to destroy the entire way of life of the Arabs in the marshlands of the south. The rivers were diverted, the wildlife was decimated, the people were driven out and killed, and villages and important waterways were ruined forever. At Saddam’s command, our wealthy Arab neighbor, Kuwait, was attacked and pillaged, and all for his own glory and greed.
Under Saddam, the great wealth of my country was squandered on wars, weapons, and wasteful spending. On top of that, he paid millions of dollars to bribe and blackmail journalists and broadcasters, to buy off the authors of books and journals, and to publish lies and propaganda in the Arab world and far beyond. He bribed ambassadors, foreign dignitaries, and heads of state. The amount of money Saddam spent on his wars and other corrupt schemes was greater than all the wealth we accumulated in that nation through the sale of oil from the day the first wells were drilled in 1927 to the present. I’ve done the calculations and I know this is true.
When I consider all the terrible things that Saddam did to my country during his thirty-year reign of terror, I have to ask myself, How could anyone weep because this man is gone? Saddam Hussein destroyed our country. He destroyed our people, their pride, their hope, and for some, even their futures. The best name for such a man is not Saddam, “The Crasher,” but rather the Arabic word Haddam, which means “The Destroyer.”
Saddam was the only leader in the world to use weapons of mass destruction against his own people. Even as he was building sixty-eight luxurious palaces and increasing his personal wealth to more than $30 billion, he was destroying everything he touched. The educational system, health care system, and financial infrastructure of the nation were ruined by Saddam. The middle class, which is the foundation of every stable society, was attacked, and anyone who dared to speak freely was destroyed by Saddam. The army, air force, and coastal forces were utterly destroyed, first in 1991 and again in 2003, and yet this villain still believes that he should be free to return as the president and national hero of Iraq.
Restoring Our Dignity
As a military officer, I was taught that the success of every operation depends on the strategy that is used. When a leader has the right strategy, even if he makes mistakes in tactics, most of the time the operation will succeed. But if he has a bad strategy, even good tactics cannot save him. I say this because I believe that all of Saddam’s strategies were wrong, from the very beginning in the late 1960s to the present. He frequently had clever tactics. He was manipulative and deceitful, and he managed to fool most of the people most of the time. But ultimately he was bound to lose because all of his strategies were bad ones.
It makes me sad to realize that there are still countries in our region who are taking the same path Saddam had taken. They’re using the same strategies and many of the same tactics, and if nothing changes, they’re headed for the same dead end. If there’s one lesson worth learning in the tragic saga of Saddam Hussein, it’s that there must be a major change in the policies and strategies of our neighbors in the Middle East if there’s to be any hope of bringing peace and reconciliation to our people. This, I believe, is our last, best hope, and I pray that the leaders of the Arab world will be willing to embrace the needed changes.
But even as I say this, I realize that this will not be an easy concept for many people in my part of the world to accept or understand. It will require wisdom, knowledge, and courage to change directions in this way, but I believe it can and must be done. For one thing, I believe in the resourcefulness of our people. We have many well educated leaders in government, business, science, and the law, and we’re not lacking for good ideas. So I’m sure these kinds of changes are possible—if we have enough faith and courage to take the first steps. If the nations of the Middle East will come together in a spirit of cooperation to rebuild the region, they won’t just be helping themselves: they will be restoring the promise of peace for the whole world.
This is beginning to happen now, and there are many p
eople who are very important to our future who understand this. In particular, I want to express my thanks and gratitude to President Jalal Talabani, who has given our people new hope and begun the process of restoring our dignity. He is a gifted leader and he has also been an encouragement to the Christians in Iraq. He told us that if any of our people are persecuted in the central and southern regions of the country, they can come to the north, to the villages around Kurdistan where they will find land and jobs, and where they will be protected. I wish I could say that all Iraqis are as sympathetic as Dr. Talabani toward the ethnic and religious minorities in the country, but so far that is not the case.
Dr. Ayad Alawi served as the first prime minister of the new Iraq. He has been a great friend to the people of my country and an inspiration to me. I should also say that his deputy, Dr. Barham Saleh, has also been enormously helpful to those who suffered the most in the north, including the Kurds and the Christian minority. When our churches were bombed on August 1, 2004, the prime minister ordered the government to pay for rebuilding them, and he handed me the entire sum in cash, amounting to $496,460. On top of that, Dr. Alawi contributed $100,000 from his own pocket for the reconstruction effort. All of this money is now being used to restore the hope of the Christians in the north.
Dr. Barham Saleh, who heads up the reconstruction committee in the prime minister’s office, arranged for the builders to erect a new cathedral for the Ancient Church of the East in the city of Kirkuk. In addition, he offered to rebuild the Assyrian school in Kirkuk, which is part of the Ancient Church of the East, at a cost of approximately $500,000. During this difficult time, I met with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and leaders of all the Christian churches in Iraq, including the patriarch of the Chaldean churches, bishops of the Assyrian churches, and the bishop of the Armenian Orthodox churches. We were also accompanied by the national security adviser, Dr. Mowaffaq al-Rabaie, who respects the Christians and always tries to help them.