New Iraqi Leaders Confront Their Former Dictator

[MORTARDUDE]

New Iraqi Leaders Confront Their Former Dictator
By IAN FISHER

Published: December 14, 2003


AGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 14 ? The wild gray beard was gone, and he sat on a metal Army cot, just awake from a nap, in socks and black slippers. He was not handcuffed. He did not recognize all his visitors, but they recognized him. That was the purpose of the visit: to help confirm that this was, in fact, Saddam Hussein.

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What came next was, according to people in the room, an extraordinary 30 minutes, in which four members of the Governing Council, among the new leaders of Iraq, grilled the nation's deposed and now captured leader about his crimes. Mr. Hussein, they said, was defiant and unrepentant ? but very much defeated.

"The world is crazy," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, one of the council members in the room today after Mr. Hussein was captured in his hometown of Tikrit. "I was in his torture chamber in 1979 and now he was sitting there, powerless in front of me without anybody stopping me from doing anything to him. Just imagine. We were arguing, and he was using very foul language."

Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, said: "He was quite lucid. He had command of his faculties. He would not apologize to the Iraqi people. He did not deny any of the crimes he was confronted with having done. He tried to justify them."

Following Mr. Hussein's capture ? in an eight-foot hole that one council member said was filled with "rats and mice" ? the four council members were taken by helicopter this afternoon to a military base, at a site they would not disclose. Two other council members, in addition to Mr. Rubaie and Dr. Chalabi, were aboard: Adnan Pachachi, the foreign minister before Mr. Hussein came to power; and Adel Abdel Mahdi, who represents the Shia religious body, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Two of Iraq's other new leaders were there, too: L. Paul Bremer III, the American civilian administrator of Iraq; and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq. The room was small, Mr. Rubaie said, and General Sanchez asked the men if they would like to see him through a window or by camera.

"We said, `No, we want to talk to him,' " Mr. Rubaie said.

Aides to the men differed slightly about what happened next: One said that Mr. Hussein, who they said had just awakened, did not recognize any of his visitors. Another said he recognized Dr. Chalabi and asked him to introduce the others.

"Saddam turned to Pachachi and said: `You were the foreign minister of Iraq. What are you doing with these people?' " one aide said.

Mr. Rubaie said he had asked the first question ? which, he said, was met with a brutal and dismissive joke. He said he had asked why Mr. Hussein had killed two leading Shia clerics: Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr, killed in 1980; and Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, killed in 1999.

The word "sadr" means "chest" in Arabic, and Mr. Hussein replied, "Al Sadr or Ar Rijil?" That translates as: "The chest or the foot?"

The men then asked Mr. Hussein about three of the crimes of which he has been accused in his nearly 35 years in power:

Asked about the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in the northern Iraqi town of Halabja in 1988, in which an estimated 5,000 people were killed, Mr. Hussein said this was the work of Iran, at war with Iraq at the time.

Asked about the mass graves of tens of thousands of Iraqis uncovered since Mr. Hussein was toppled from power in the American-led offensive this spring, Mr. Rubaie said that Mr. Hussein answered: "Ask their relatives. They were thieves and they ran away from the battlefields with Iran and from the battlefields of Kuwait."

Asked why he invaded Kuwait in 1990, provoking the first American-led assault on Iraq the next year, he said that Kuwait was rightfully a part of Iraq.

"He was not remorseful at all," Dr. Chalabi said. "It was clear he was a complete narcissist who was incapable of showing remorse or sympathy to other human beings."

Dr. Chalabi said that Mr. Hussein also suggested that he had been behind the recent wave of attacks against American soldiers in Iraq since his defeat.

"He said, `I gave a speech and I said the Americans can come to Iraq but they can't occupy it and rule it,' " Dr. Chalabi said. "He said, `I said I would fight them with pistols and I have.'

"He didn't say it directly but he was trying to take credit for it."

At a news conference this evening, Mr. Pachachi said Mr. Hussein had tried to justify himself by saying that Iraqis needed a tough ruler.

"He tried to justify his crimes by saying that he was a just but firm ruler," he said. "Of course, our answer was he was an unjust ruler responsible for the deaths of thousands of people."

Throughout the meeting, Mr. Hussein was calm but often used foul language. Mr. Pachachi said he looked "tired and haggard." Mr. Bremer and General Sanchez, they said, did not speak, though Dr. Chalabi said that Mr. Hussein was "deferential and respectful to the Americans."

"You can conclude from that some aspect that he was reconciled to his situation," he said.

"The most important fact: Had the roles been reversed, he would have torn us apart and cut us into small pieces after torture," Dr. Chalabi said. "This contrast was paramount in my mind ? how we treated him and how he would have treated us."

Mr. Rubaie said: "One thing which is very important is that this man had with him underground when they arrested him two AK-47's and did not shoot one bullet. I told him, `You keep on saying that you are a brave man and a proud Arab.' I said, `When they arrested you why didn't you shoot one bullet? You are a coward.'

"And he started to use very colorful language. Basically, he used all his French."

Mr. Rubaie added: "I was so angry because this guy has caused so much damage. He has ruined the whole country. He has ruined 25 million people.

"And I have to confess that the last word was for me: I was the last to leave the room and I said, `May God curse you. Tell me, when are you going to be accountable to God and the day of judgment? What are you going to tell Him about Halabja and the mass graves, the Iran-Iraq war, thousands and thousands executed? What are you going to tell God?' He was exercising his French language."