| But it's Newsweek so who knows if it's true. |
Newsweek, June 13 issue - Some of Saddam Hussein's most notorious former lieutenants have been dishing dirt. Senate investigators looking into prewar U.N. Oil-for-Food deals have named Saddam's former personal secretary and security chief, Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Tikriti, former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan and former foreign minister Tariq Aziz as key witnesses who have provided inside info about Saddam's regime.
Senate staffers traveled to Baghdad earlier this year to interview Iraqi officials, and their reports are among the first official accounts of what captured Iraqi leaders are saying. "In interview after interview, the officials were generally forthcoming and quite proud—even boastful—of their creativity in undermining U.N. sanctions," says Sen. Norm Coleman, who leads one of several congressional probes into Saddam-era oil deals.
"More giggle grape juice, Taha?"
"Why yesh, shank yous!" |
According to Senate documents, Ramadan is one of the most talkative captives, supplying pithy quotes about how Saddam allegedly manipulated the prewar oil program to buy support from influential foreigners. Senate investigators quote Ramadan saying that Saddam's regime gave foreigners oil allocations—which could be cashed in for lucrative brokerage fees—as "compensation for support." Al-Tikriti told investigators the former Iraqi leader and his aides "were all extremists" on the issue of oil sales to Israel. If they found an Iraqi oil buyer was selling to Israel, they would "not allow it," al-Tikriti said.
Footnotes in Senate documents show that Aziz, the urbane English speaker who was Saddam's principal mouthpiece to the outside world, confirmed key details of Saddam's alleged corruption. David Kay, former head of the postwar U.S. team hunting Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, told NEWSWEEK that Aziz and other Saddam aides were eager to discuss corruption in the former regime, and particularly Saddam's efforts to buy off friendly foreigners.
By contrast, when it came to talking about Saddam's WMDs, Kay says, the captives would say almost nothing—which Kay now acknowledges may be because there were no WMDs to talk about. Kay says that Aziz "sang like a canary" about Saddam's effort to use oil deals to buy friendship among French, Russian and U.K. politicos. Kay says that Aziz once told him that if the U.S. government released him from prison, he would tour the United States, telling journalists and the public about the evil deeds of the former Iraqi regime, about Saddam's corruption and about the former dictator's "demented" mental state. Kay says that when he asked Aziz how the United States could be sure Aziz would keep this bargain, Aziz told him: "Mr. David, because you now own me."
| For Aziz: wring him dry. Try him. Shoot him. |
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