Saddam Hussein – Hunted, Hidden, Betrayed – And Hanged

Sheri Laizer | iKurd.net

For the 20th anniversary of regime change, Sheri Laizer speaks with John Nixon in her forthcoming book, Iraq: Deception, Corruption, Hope – After the US Coup 2003-2023. [1]

John Nixon was the senior CIA analyst first tasked with identifying and debriefing the captive Iraqi president. He became the author of Debriefing the President – The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein, [2] in which he strongly criticises and highlights the many mistakes of the war.

Introduction

A week into Saddam Hussein’s captivity under the US Occupation in December 2003, the task fell to you to identify the fugitive known as HVD-I. Still ungroomed after his hiding place was betrayed by a confident, he jested with you, “Perhaps I am not the real Saddam Hussein,” with reference to the myth of the body-doubles. Even this early on you got a foretaste of both Saddam’s black humour and had also commented on his charisma. Before long, you debunked much of the ‘false news’ about him, especially slanted claims long in circulation as propaganda. Some of the frustration you felt over the way the Oval Office also chose to ignore or reject vital expert analysis also played a strong role in what was to follow. George W. Bush (43) seemed to pursue a blinkered personal vendetta against SH and be damned the consequences for Iraq and US personnel deployed there.

I note recently declassified UK documents, that late in 2002, Tony Blair’s chief private secretary, Jeremy Heywood, discussed using “a change of regime” in Iraq to flood the global oil market and “break” the Opec oil cartel to keep fuel prices low. 3 Such discussions were also part of the ongoing exchange with President Bush.

Q: Although your book makes no direct reference to it, do you think the US and UK governments’ desire to control Iraq’s energy sources was a major motivating factor in launching the war come what may?

A: I was not aware of this.  Nothing would surprise me in terms of motivation when it came to oil.  One of the more bizarre of the neocon fantasies concerning Iraq was the issue of using Iraqi oil to  help Israel.  Specifically, there were neocons in the CPA who wanted to revisit opening the Haifa pipeline so that the new Iraqi government could start shipping oil to Israel.  Believe it or not, Donald Rumsfeld brought this up when he met with Saddam in 1983! Unbelievable.  Nothing ever came of this initiative but not for want of trying.

Halabja

Just months after the attack on Halabja, I was among a group of international journalists in Baghdad, many of whom were haranguing Nizar Hamdoon about Iraq’s use of chemical weapons. ‘It was self-defence’ Minister Hamdoon had replied calmly. ‘Next question…’ His successor, Ambassador to the US, Mohamed al-Mashat faced the same treatment in 1990. “Iraq did not attack America or its interests.” [4]

Q: When you posed the WMD questions to the captive president himself, 16 years had gone by since the Halabja attack. You wrote how the Iraqi leader had been incensed when he had heard about Halabja and how it was touted by the Iranian media. He insisted to you that the decision had not been taken by the RCC, but by the commander in the field and that the Iranians had used chemical weapons – as they would later admit. [5] Do you still tend to believe this or has some document surfaced – such as from the Ba’ath Party records – to change your mind?

A: Nothing has changed my mind.  I know of no documentation that has emerged that would contradict what we were told by Saddam, his chief of Diwan, Ahmen Husayn Khudayir al Samarai, and others about Halabja. 

Prioritising death over dialogue

Q: Why do you think no real effort was made by US forces to capture Uday and Qusay alive?

A: There was always the concern that regime insiders like Saddam’s children had suicide belts and that this would be a threat to the safety of US forces. They were most likely given an opportunity to surrender themselves.  When they didn’t come out then the awesome firepower of the US army was used against them.  Dead or alive. US leaders wanted captures because they did not want to experience another situation like Afghanistan when the ringleaders like Bin Laden and Zawahiri got away.

Q. SH saw himself as a thinker and, latterly, as a writer. Was the political hostage able to finish his last novel or to commit any written memoir of his life to the page as an autobiography when being denied pen and paper?

A: I do not know the answer to that question.  It was a source of great consternation to Saddam. I know Tariq Aziz was working on a memoir in prison. I am sure whatever he wrote was suppressed and/or destroyed. What a waste.

Q: You wrote in your book how SH would sometimes ask for luxury items. What kind of things did he want? Like many Middle Eastern men did he want expensive perfume for men, after have or deodorant; if so, did he get any of them and smell as sweet as the smile he shone upon you when he was in a playful mood?  

A: The only thing I remember him asking for was a cigar.  I was talking to him and told him that our reporting said that he gave up cigars.  He just laughed and said he had several every day. Sometimes, in order to get him to engage, I had to frame my questions as to how we had intelligence on a certain topic and get him to confirm or deny or explain it to us.  When he asked for cigars I told him that I don’t smoke them.  I truly wished at that moment that I had had one because I would have given it to him.  It would have helped us build rapport.  

Q: From your book it strongly appears that Saddam Hussein could not really understand why he was so reviled. Even now the vicious campaign of vilification goes on. Offensive T-shirts are sold on Ebay Etsy, etc. with slogans reading ‘SH, eat sand and die!’, ‘Boil ‘em in oil’ [6] ‘Hey Iraq – Mess with Iraq and we’ll stick it up your dirty crack’ [7]’ Take me back to my hole’ [8] etc. Has populism destroyed all chance of the American people wanting to hear the truth?

A: This is the way we do things in America:  We build ceratin leaders up to be the focus of evil and then we put all our energy into tearing them down.  Then, after we have vanquished our foes, we make fun of them on late night talk shows and they become the punchline in a comedian’s act.  You have to understand most Americans are clueless about the outside world.  And, for a country that has so much access to education and knowledge, there are a lot of very stupid people in this country.

Q: When, if ever, might the abundant redacted passages in your book be cleared?

A: Probably never. Once things are cleared for publication then the rest will probably stay classified forever.  I doubt there will be any change in my lifetime.

Anti-Saddam propaganda – 20 years on

In his forthcoming book Confronting Saddam Hussein, [9] American academic Melvin P. Leffler starts off by claiming he “came to understand how much the two leaders – Bush and Blair – detested Saddam Hussein and how much their view of his defiance, treachery and barbarity affected their calculations. I realised that the story of intervention could not be told without illuminating the Iraqi tyrant’s role and agency…” (Italics, my emphasis). Who cares what Bush and Blair thought of Saddam Hussein. The media is owned to the point where little independent journalism is left. Universities seem to be following suit with scholarship becoming usurped by political party interests. My question is:

Q: Do you think Mel Leffler’s pretence to a scholarly account means the US administration, or the Bush clique, has learned nothing at all from the destruction and death their war unleashed – not least the increased Islamic terrorism it spawned? Is a guilty conscience trying to absolve itself?

A: When asked by a reporter how he thought historians would view his presidency, Bush nonchalantly said that it would be decades before historians would be properly able to assess his presidency and, by that time, he would long be dead.  So, in essence, he was saying that he didn’t care what historians said about him.  Like all things regarding the Bush presidency, the truth is a bit more complicated.  I think George Bush cares a great deal about what historians say about him.  In 2019, Cornell University Press put out “The Last Card: Inside George W. Bush’s Decision to Surge in Iraq,” which captured the proceedings of a conference at Texas A&M University that looked at Bush’s “courageous decision” to buck the conventional wisdom and increase troop strength in a very unpopular war.  Nowhere did they look at the false assumptions that underpinned the war or second guess the decision to start an unnecessary and illegal war.  But this book was a precursor to Melvin Leffler’s turgid ode to Bush’s folly. 

Leffler has not done any original research and his book is merely a re-hash of all the propaganda that the media lapped up in 2002 and 2003 about Saddam’s Iraq.  Leffler’s methodology is even worse than his conclusions.  Leffler interviewed several of the key Bush officials and he seems to take everything they say at face value and ignores and/or omits anything that contradicts the tired old excuses of why the USA went to war with Iraq in the first place.  If this is how he trains his students, then it’s no wonder that US universities and colleges are dropping diplomatic history courses left and right. I think George Bush is hoping that 20 years has softened how the American people view him and that, if he and his pals just manipulate their media allies one more time, than maybe they can alter history’s verdict.  Lets’ face it: in a country that elected Donald Trump as its president, George Bush is filled with hope that his stock will rise because he is NOT Trump.  It’s a pathetic and disheartening viewpoint from someone who lacks the temperament and training to lead the US and should never been entrusted with such responsibility.  

Q: You were on point in your ‘deep dive’ briefings to George W. Bush concerning the power and influence enjoyed by Moqtada al-Sadr as well as relations with his Shi’a rivals like Adel Abdul-Mahdi, for example. Why were both Bush and his successor, Barack Obama, so uninterested in this intel? You also found Obama delegating this to former Vice President Biden whose reactions were equally inept? Do you think they understand Iraq’s tribal and secular culture any better now after twenty years since the invasion while revenge-based torture, sect-based murder and the writ of Iran goes on?

A: Let’s face it:  Obama inherited Iraq and did not like it.  He wanted nothing to do with Iraq and he ignored it for as long as he could.  It was only when ISIS erupted and he could no longer ignore Iraq that he became interested. He was forced to.  Bush was very interested in intel. but he became confused when he received contradictory information.  He liked everything to be straight forward and, in the intelligence business, there is a lot more gray than there is black or white.  

Q. At the mention of his daughters, tears came to the eyes of the president sat before you, doubtless feeling the love between them and that he would never see them again. Did you make contact with any of his family, as had former US Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, who represented Saddam Hussein on his defence team [10] ?

A: No. There was simply no opportunity to speak with them.  It was still a secret where Saddam was being held in those early weeks after the capture. Even if his daughters were allowed to see him those first few days we would probably not have met with them.  Chances are they probably would have been taken into custody if they had shown up.

The al-Kharbit villa in Ramadi bombing by US fighter jets

On the night of April 11, 2003, acting on a tip-off, American bombers had struck and destroyed a large villa 15. km west of Ramadi, in al-Anbar governorate, hoping to kill the Iraqi president. They had mistakenly hit the wrong house. Instead of striking the president and his entourage, they had slain Iraqi billionaire businessman, Sheikh Malik al-Kharbit, and twenty-two other members of his family including as many as twelve children. Ironically, or perhaps, cynically, Saddam Hussein’s intelligence chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush, had gone there to try to make arrangements for the meeting between U.S. representatives and Saddam Hussein. Instead, U.S. warplanes had bombed the location. [11]

Then sheikh’s younger brother, Mudher al-Kharbit, later revealed how he had found Saddam stood weeping outside the burning villa while his son, Qusay, was struggling to save an injured child. Mudher al-Kharbit was later to languish in a Beirut prison on the basis of a US/ al-Da’wa promoted arrest warrant although the clan had been intriguing with the CIA to supplant Saddam in power with themselves.12 You mentioned the incident in your book, although without naming the al-Kharbit clan.

CIA operative, Bob Bear, one source for the story of there having been a crucial meeting for negotiations in the planning went on to work for ABC News. In fact, Saddam had been proposing unconditional negotiations with the United States from as early as December 1990, if not after the end of the war with Iran despite the Iran Contra scandal.

The Iraqi President’s political overtures always went unheeded, yet Bush consistently blamed Saddam for the war, as your book points out.

We do not know how long Saddam sheltered in the al-Kharbit compound with his half-brother, Barzan, his sons and his bodyguard but they all left Ramadi soon after the strike, heading north to al-Tikriti clan home turf. Saddam remained on the run and in hiding there for the next eight months. His sons went on to Mosul where they met their end.

My question is this:

Q: Do you think this so-called negotiation meeting being set up by Tahir Jalil Habbush was really a ploy used by the US ‘negotiators’ to try to locate Saddam Hussein early on, liquidate him and then report back in triumph to George W. Bush, “job done”?

A. Yes. I have heard that is how Presidential secretary Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti was picked up.  The official story was that he was coming back into Iraq from Syria when he was arrested.  After my book came out, someone contacted me and said that was incorrect: that Abid was responding to messages sent to him by the CIA and that he walked into a trap.  I would not be surprised if they weren’t trying to do the same with Saddam.

The Invasion

The US-led invasion effectively became a US and UK-aided military coup that was transplanted to Iraq in league with the pro-Khomeini Shi’a opposition and exiled Kurdish leaders of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The invasion could not have brought democracy to Iraq because these two distinct sides had their own interests in mind. Instead, the war delivered power to the historic internal enemies of the Iraqi state that had long intrigued against their own country with Iranian support. None of them had lived in Iraq but in comfortable exile through the tumultuous years of sanctions and bombing. Twenty years of bloody conflict and corruption has ensued since then, but the same blocs continue to cling to their power-sharing formula, in Arabic, Muhasasa, and keep the country in thrall. Saddam Hussein had warned of the risks posed by Iran, the Shi’a turbans and of the unreliability of the Kurdish leaders whom he knew very well.

As one Kurdish intellectual based in the United States told me this week, “The Kurds could have worked with Saddam instead of relying on Iran. Saddam was an idealist and common ground could have been found between us, such as through the autonomy agreement being developed further over time. This photo makes me very sad.” [13]

Q. Did Saddam Hussein go into much more detail than space (and other constraints) allowed for in your book?

A: My only regret is that I did not have more time with Saddam.  If we were to meet today I would handle things quite differently.  I would listen more and let him explain things as he saw fit. I would also make sure to have a box of very good cigars!

Q:  Finally, John, do you harbour any hope in our lifetime for the opposition – such as in the Tishreen and Kurdish protest events, being able to quash Iranian-sponsored expansion and the Kurdish corruption that stifles the aspirations of ordinary Kurds for a better life at last?

A: No. I think Iraq will have to wait for another Saddam to come along and that could take a very long time.

My sincere thanks to you and commendations for readers at all levels to get hold of your book and to think about what is said there.

A: Me, too.

Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.

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