One of Saddam's Men Speaks Out
February 5, 2005
Memo To: Website Fans, Browsers, Clients From: Jude Wanniski Re: An Interview with Muhammad al-Duri
It’s almost two years since the invasion of Iraq and the world has not been able to hear from any of the members of Saddam Hussein’s regime, because of course they are all under lock and key, waiting to go on trial for hiding weapons of mass destruction they did not have and for colluding with Al Qaeda, which they did not do. I’ve often wondered what happened to Muhammad al-Douri (as I have spelled his surname). I had been in daily touch with him by e-mail and cellphone when he was Iraq’s Ambassador to the United Nations in the last days before the March 2003 invasion, but lost touch with him when he left quickly for Europe on the day Baghdad fell.
We’d originally met through his predecessor at the UN, Nizar Hamdoon, who I’d known since I began looking into the allegations of Iraq’s misdeeds in 1997. Hamdoon passed away last year, of cancer, and I’d been assured by the Iraqi U.N. Mission that al-Douri was okay. It was nice, though, to see this interview on the Al Jazeera English website this week. I would have missed it in my daily scan, but spotted his frowning visage. He’s really a most pleasant fellow, a rather distinguished lawyer who joined the diplomatic corps to represent Iraq at the Human Rights Convention in Geneva. In case you wonder, I agree completely with him in this interview, that the recent elections are meaningless because they were arranged along sectarian, not nationalist lines. President Bush should read this. He would learn a thing or two.
Iraqi Freedom