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Wednesday, April 4, 2001

Uday Hussein's Cruel April Fool Joke Not Funny to Hungry Iraqis

In an attempt to be funny, Saddam Hussein's son Uday published an item promising Iraq's hungry population an "increase in food rations," the London Telegraph reports.

The Babel newspaper, run by Uday Hussein, "announced a generous rise in portions of meat and chicken available under the rationing system in force" because of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War that have resulted in vastly reduced food supplies for ordinary Iraqis but not for Saddam's family and henchmen, who have been living high on the hog.

On "the last page of the newspaper" an insert "warned readers not to be fooled." This hoax wasn't the first such so-called April Fool's joke. Two years ago, the Times recalls, "the Iraqi government "played the same hoax on its people" when an official newspaper promised they would receive "bananas, chocolate and soft drinks in their rations."

The "joke" fell flat. For the Iraqi people, it's hard to laugh on an empty stomach.

A fate worse than 9/11

Son of Saddam's threat if U.S. attacks

By RICHARD SISK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Uday Hussein

WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein's playboy son Uday blustered yesterday that if America invades Iraq, the U.S. will be hurt so badly that the Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks will seem like a "picnic."
"If they come, Sept. 11, which they are crying over and see as a big thing, will be a real picnic for them, God willing," Uday Hussein said on the al-Shahab (Youth) TV station he runs.

"It is better for them [the Americans] to keep themselves away from us," he said. "They will be hurt and pay a price they will never imagine," he said without specifying whether he meant by terrorism or losses in war.

Uday, 38, his brother Qusay Hussein, 36, and their father have issued a stream of threatening rhetoric in the current buildup to war, but they normally do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Statements from Qusay Hussein, head of intelligence and the Republican Guards, are deemed to carry more weight than those of his older brother, who has a reputation for partying and has been assigned lightweight duties in TV, rock radio and sports.

Uday Hussein said the U.S. "can get much more from Iraq by dialogue without resorting to the logic of force and war," but President Bush was fed up with talk and will use his State of the Union speech next week to brace the nation for the "prospect of war," a White House official said.

Explaining why

"This is not a speech to declare war," Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said in a preview of the annual address.

He said Bush would "educate the public about why we are taking the course that we are, that we have the prospect of war, and it's important to explain why."

Weapons inspectors were ready to give Iraq a grade of B for cooperating in the search for terror arsenals, but Bush believes Saddam already has flunked, Bartlett said. He said the Iraqi strongman was hiding "massive piles" of chemical and biological weapons.

In Vienna, chief nuclear arms inspector Mohamed ElBaradei was preparing a report on Iraqi cooperation for delivery to the United Nations Security Council on Monday that would give Iraq a generally good grade.

"Their report card will be a B. Access and cooperation are good," said ElBaradei spokesman Mark Gwozdecky. "He'll say we need several more months to come to conclusions."

Cigarette Business Good for the Sons of Saddam
Thursday, October 31, 2002

BY STEVE STECKLOW
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Middle East tobacco exporters say it's not possible to export cigarettes into the parts of Iraq controlled by Saddam Hussein without paying off members of his family.

In an interview, Abbas Al-Janabi, who served as a private secretary to Uday Hussein, Saddam's oldest son, from 1984 to 1998, describes the scheme. Al-Janabi says that until 1995, Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law and a government minister, collected taxes on every imported "master case" of 10,000 cigarettes.

After Kamel was murdered in Baghdad in 1995, Al-Janabi says the profits from this trade went to Uday Hussein, who dramatically increased the flow of imports.

A key way Uday Hussein did this was by reselling Iraq's imported cigarettes to smugglers who took them to Iran. "He enlarged the quantities [of cigarettes], he enlarged the business," Al-Janabi says. He adds that many of the cigarettes flowed from Cyprus into Iraq via Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.

In the late 1990s, Uday Hussein's annual take from imported cigarettes averaged about $10 million a year from legal and illegal sales, says Al-Janabi, who was involved in collecting these revenues until 1998 when he defected from Iraq. "The truth is, he keeps all of it for himself. He never shares anything."

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