Posted on 01/27/2005 5:03:27 PM PST by Flavius
ACCORDING to the logic of post-war Iraq, General Abdullah Hussein should be out in a field somewhere in the western deserts, sniping at US troops or setting road bombs.
A Sunni army commander from Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit, he fought the invading US forces until the day Baghdad fell, then saw his beloved army ignominiously defeated by the vastly better-armed US forces.
Hundreds of officers, jobless and desperate, turned to the resistance in a confused search for justice or retribution.
General Hussein, by contrast, will be running in Sunday's US-brokered elections. Not only that, he believes up to 40 per cent of the voters in Salah-ad-din province, the Sunni-dominated area north of Baghdad where Saddam was born and raised, will show up at the polls.
The general, a trim 48-year-old with a clipped military moustache, may represent an exit strategy for Washington rather than an enemy. His brand of nationalist democracy might mark a political maturing in the Sunni heartland, and his credentials are impeccable in a society that reveres fighters but deeply resents foreign occupation.
"When we find we don't need the multinational forces, I'll be the first to ask them to leave, and if they don't, I'll give the order to fight," he said yesterday during a meeting with US military commanders in Saddam's former palace building in Tikrit.
After 18 months of bloody fighting, the Sunni guerrillas have still failed to dislodge the huge US forces here. Now the general and like-minded former officers hope they can take up the initiative, channelling resentment of the occupiers into democratic action.
He is not afraid to speak his mind. Standing next to Major-General John Batiste, the commander of the US First Infantry Division, he declared: "No Iraqi is honoured by the presence of foreign troops in his country." His US counterpart nodded in acknowledgement of this hard-won truth.
But General Hussein admitted the post-war chaos made it impossible for Iraq to stand on its own feet.
At the end of the war, he was shocked by the spread of looting and sabotage following the fall of Saddam. Fellow officers started discussing how they could best serve their country.
They decided they needed US help to rebuild Iraq, and the general embarked on a two-year collaboration with his former foes.
The Times
Wasn't this the plot for a made-for-tv movie involving some out-of-work trial attorneys.
Wonder if his fight to the last day was in a spider hole hiding like his boss?
This guy is more honorable than our own Ted "the drunk bastard" Kennedy, even if he was our enemy a short while ago.
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