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'Distraught' Saddam begging for mercy
Deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is depressed and has begged the Iraqi government for mercy, Iraq's Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said in an interview published on Monday. "He is distraught and depressed," Allawi said of Saddam, the man who was Iraq's president for 24 years and is awaiting trial for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. "Saddam and his colleagues are not the giants that the media sometimes talks about," Allawi said in an interview with the pan Arab al-Hayat newspaper. "Saddam sent us an oral message in which he begged for mercy. He said that they were working in the public interest and did not mean any harm."

The portrait painted by Allawi differed sharply from that in a New York Times account published over the weekend, based on interviews with U.S. and Iraqi officials who have visited the former dictator in his air-conditioned 10-by-13-foot cell on the grounds of one of his former palaces. The newspaper said that according to its sources, Saddam has refused to acknowledge wrongdoing or show remorse for the people who were killed during his 24-year rule, whom he labels as traitors. At every encounter, the officials told the Times, Saddam insists he is still the constitutionally elected president of Iraq.
A legend now only in his own mind.
In his interview with the al-Hayat newspaper, Allawi also said he has survived four assassination attempts since his interim government came to power in June, the last just five days ago when his guards became suspicious of a car outside Baghdad's Green Zone compound housing the government and the U.S. and other embassies. The car then blew up and a battle between gunmen and his guards ensued. Two non-Iraqi Arabs were arrested, he said. Allawi would not give their nationality, but said they belonged to Islamist militant groups.
Posted by: Steve White 2004-09-20
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=43734