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Posted on 05/03/2003 5:55:42 PM PDT by MadIvan
The moment when Saddam Hussein's faithful minister of information, Mohammad Said Sahhaf, finally accepted that the game was up is revealed today by The Telegraph.
In the dying days of the regime the indefatigable minister, dubbed "Comical Ali", had haunted a radio studio in Baghdad, urging engineers to carry on pumping out Saddam's propaganda.
Even after the statue of Saddam was toppled on April 9, Mr Sahhaf refused to accept that Saddam's era was over. But in the early hours of April 10, with the sound of battle raging ever closer to the studio, in the al-Adhamiyah district, even Mr Sahhaf headed for the exit.
"Sahhaf slowly removed his black beret," recalls Raibah Hassan, 35, the manager of the Hikmat studio, the last person to have seen Mr Sahhaf in public. "He folded down the epaulettes on his military jacket to hide his rank and then he reached for a red and white kaffiyeh scarf.
"He wrapped it around his head as he told us to keep on re-broadcasting until 3am. He said goodbye, and then disappeared out of the back door."
Last week, the minister whose outrageous proclamations during the war earned him an international cult following - record producers are to create a dance track sampling his most popular catchphrases - was reportedly trying to strike a deal with the Americans that would allow him to go into exile in Egypt.
A former Iraqi general who is working closely with Gen Jay Garner, the man overseeing Iraq's post-war reconstruction, told The Telegraph that he had been approached by one of Mr Sahhaf's cousins, seeking a deal.
The general described Mr Sahhaf as "naive" and claimed that Saddam used to beat his minister of information.
Certainly, Mr Sahhaf's loyalty as a standard-bearer for the cause was remarkable. According to Mr Hassan, Mr Sahhaf and a team of aides arrived at the studio on April 8 and rarely left it. He says that Mr Sahhaf worked from a transmitter van parked in the studio garden, sustained only by a few cups of tea and an occasional slice of cake.
On the morning of April 9, the day American soldiers seized Baghdad, he set off as usual for the Palestine Hotel, where the world's media were based, to deliver his daily briefing but made a U-turn after spotting American troops.
"He was very tense," Mr Hassan recalls. "He had been cut off from the regime."
Nothing daunted, the minister carried on working. "He pushed it to the very end," Mr Hassan says. "I saw American tanks on Haifa Street across the river and I asked him about it. He said, 'No, no, no, maybe there are two or three tanks, but they will go'."
As the streets around the studio, which is near one of Saddam's biggest palaces, were being looted, desperate Ba'ath Party officials fled. Only Mr Sahhaf remained, making sure the regime's propaganda was pumped out over the airwaves. In the evening of April 9, a courier arrived with a videotape of what was supposedly Saddam's last recorded speech and an official handwritten note that ordered it to be broadcast continuously.
The minister's spirits visibly lifted, says Mr Hassan. "He said to me, 'As I told you, this is Saddam, this is the government, everything is normal'. But there was gunfire in the background."
When Mr Sahhaf finally accepted that all was lost, he left even his bodyguards behind. Barely three hours later, American troops swarmed down the street.
"I think he ran the battle alone," Mr Hassan said. "For two days he stayed with me with no food, nothing. He did his duty to the very end. He was brave."
Last week there were rumours that Mr Sahhaf had been hiding out in Baghdad, staying in an aunt's house.
"Sahhaf's cousin told me he wants to give himself up, but with certain conditions," the former Iraqi general says. "They know I had a connection with Jay Garner and I sent him to see Garner. But I warned him not to set conditions with the Americans.
"He wants to be outside Iraq," said the general, who did not wish to be identified. "He wants to get to Egypt. He has a lot of money stashed there in a bank and loves those Egyptian women very, very much."
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You know in Texas, calling someone a character is kind of like saying "well bless her heart"......another way of saying the person is an idiot, but still sounding nice.......lol
You know, we should be as angry with him as we are with all the other generals and underlings of Saddam. But you don't see this outpouring of anger and hatred for him, not even from President Bush. Why is this????? Is it because he made us laugh? sometimes so very hard? He's no better for that, is he? He was as complicit with the evil regime as if he did it (and may have) himself. But, for whatever reason, I don't feel the same animosity towards him, at all. Perhaps we should; but I don't. And I think it's because he made me laugh, and I even admired his attempts to go on (but that was not good, either, if you think about it---"go on" meant keeping Saddam in power and the Republican Guard and the Fayadeen and the children in prison, etc.). I do feel sorry for him. Perhaps laughter brings these feelings.
No doubt!
Yep. Hey may been funny to us, but he sure wants out of Iraq fast enough. Perhaps he isn't well like there?
"This is not true! I do not wish to go to Egypt, I have no money stashed in a bank, and I do NOT like women! Um, wait, scratch that last denial."
I understand his circumstances; OTOH, wasn't that NOT an "allowed excuse" for the Nazi war crimes...I was following orders?
The only beautiful women in Egypt are the Westernized ones.
The homegrown variety smell like a football team's locker room and have hair on their legs and underarms that would dull a chainsaw.
Stated another way, if I would be hired at a company, just a little person, and work my way up, over time, I would realize this is a "bad company," unethical, immoral practices. Now, if I aspire to higher levels within that corporation, then, with the knowledge I have accumulated along the way, I am aware of what I'm getting into. Is that not wrong for me to strive to "get at the top of the ladder" in that company rather than stay "a peasant" where I will not become a part of murders? Did Baghdad Bob really have no choice, early on, to slither away into obscurity....attracting little attention from Saddam (if he became involved, of course, as a "little person")?
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