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CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Iraq's former information minister Wednesday defended the airing of footage of five U.S. POWs on Baghdad television in the early days of the war, saying it was ordered by the armed forces general command. The U.S. administration was shocked by the March 27 footage of the POWs and accused Iraq of violating the Geneva Conventions. The soldiers had been arrested four days earlier in southern Iraq together with Jessica Lynch, who was hospitalized with injuries. Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, speaking on Abu Dhabi Television, denied U.S. accusations that Iraq had violated the Geneva Conventions and accused...

Ex-Iraqi information minister says U.S. air strikes during Iraq war once came within 500 meters of hitting Saddam

Sun September 21, 2003 11:57 AM ET TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - The U.S. military on Sunday denied a British media report that Saddam Hussein had offered money and information on weapons of mass destruction in return for safe passage to the ex-Soviet republic of Belarus. The Sunday Mirror newspaper said an aide of the fugitive ex-president had approached U.S. forces in Tikrit and led them to a house in the suburbs. There, they were given a letter, purportedly handwritten by Saddam, proposing talks. It said negotiations had been going on for nine days covering weaponry and bank accounts containing tens...

Soldier kills zoo's tiger in Baghdad The Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A U.S. soldier shot and killed a tiger at the Baghdad zoo after it bit another soldier who had reached through the bars of its cage to feed it, a zoo security guard said Saturday. The soldiers had been drinking beer when they entered the zoo Thursday night after it closed, said the guard, Zuhair Abdul-Majeed. "He was drunk," Abdul-Majeed said of the bitten soldier. After the man was bit, the other American shot the tiger three times in the head and killed it, Abdul-Majeed said. It was...

Al-Sahaf Talks about the US-UK War on IraqThe First Interview Muhammed Sa'id Al-Sahaf, Iraqi Information Minister talking to Abu Dhabi TV Anchorman Jassem ObaidAljazeerah, September 18, 2003 The following is a summary, not detailed word for word, translation of the interview Question 1: Were there any relations or communication between Iraq and the United States after the 1991 Gulf War in order to avoid conflict and war later?Al-Sahaf: There were few times in which some contacts had happened. The US government rejected any attempts to open any communication since 1995. However, some US companies had some work in Iraq through European companies. Once a...

Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf (Better known in America as Baghdad Bob) DUBAI (AFP) - Former Iraqi information minister Mohammad Said as-Sahhaf said that Saddam Hussein never considered stepping down to avert war but maintained that Baghdad had scrapped its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) long before the United States invaded. "I don't think" Saddam ever considered stepping down, Sahhaf told Abu Dhabi Television in the first of a series of interviews to be aired over the coming several weeks. "No one dared tell him" to leave, he said in the interview, which was interspersed with footage in which the ousted...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) Iraq's former information minister said Wednesday that ousted President Saddam Hussein made tactical errors in his fight against U.S.-led forces. Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, who drew international attention during the war for making obviously absurd claims of Iraqi military victories, criticized Saddam's decision to divide Iraq into four military zones five days before the war. ''It (the decision) was a direct mistake of the president and the leadership,'' al-Sahhaf said on Abu Dhabi Television. That ''led to fatal mistakes.'' He complained that the zones were placed under the control of civilians, including Saddam's younger son...

<p>There were correspondents who thought it appropriate to seek the approbation of the people who governed their lives. This was the ministry of information, and particularly the director of the ministry. By taking him out for long candlelit dinners, plying him with sweet cakes, plying him with mobile phones at $600 each for members of his family, and giving bribes of thousands of dollars. Senior members of the information ministry took hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes from these television correspondents who then behaved as if they were in Belgium. They never mentioned the function of minders. Never mentioned terror.</p>

DUBAI (AFP) - Abu Dhabi Television is to broadcast a series of seven interviews with former Iraqi information minister Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf, during which the channel has also promised exclusive and previously unbroadcast footage on the US-led war. The first interview will be aired on Wednesday between 10:30 pm (1830 GMT) and midnight (2000 GMT), and over the following six weeks at the same time. Channel director Ali al-Ahmad also told AFP Tuesday the entire series would include previously untelevised scenes from the US-led war on Iraq, launched March 20. Ahmad said Sahhaf will not stand accused nor is...

Al Jazeera reports on its Web site that Abu Dhabi television has interviewed the infamous Mohammed Saeed Al Sahhaf, the former Iraqi information minister known to Americans as "Baghdad Bob." Al Jazeera wrote that Al Sahhaf will "reveal part of the war secrets and how ousted president Saddam Hussein felt he would lose the war." "He was more frank and direct than previous interviews after the war ... he revealed many secrets before and during the war ... it was an exciting interview," his interviewer, Jaber Obaid, told Gulf News. "You will notice that he has changed since the end...

In an interview with "Baghdad Bob", Abu Dahbi Television reports that he said Iraq was smuggling banned weapons right up to the beginning of the war. The report will be broadcast on Arab televison on 9/17. "Why should we believe him now?"'asked Rita Cosby of Fox News. The reporter for Abu Dahbi replied he believed him as Baghdad Bob "has nothing to gain from telling us this".

Al Jazeera reports on its Web site that Abu Dhabi television has interviewed the infamous Mohammed Saeed Al Sahhaf, the former Iraqi information minister known to Americans as "Baghdad Bob." Al Jazeera wrote that Al Sahhaf will "reveal part of the war secrets and how ousted president Saddam Hussein felt he would lose the war." "He was more frank and direct than previous interviews after the war ... he revealed many secrets before and during the war ... it was an exciting interview," his interviewer, Jaber Obaid, told Gulf News. "You will notice that he has changed since the...

Iraq's former information minister who became a superstar with his controversial rhetoric and statements during the US-led invasion will go on television next week to reveal part of the war secrets and how ousted president Saddam Hussain felt he would lose the war. Mohammed Saeed Al Sahhaf has been booked by Abu Dhabi television for an extensive interview stretching more than five hours and which will be broadcast in five parts. Al Sahhaf, who kept assuring an army of journalists that Iraq remained under control despite the advance of US forces into Baghdad, will also disclose secret meetings had taken...

<p>September 3, 2003 -- THE Arab satellite station Al- Jazeera re-launched an English-language Web site Tuesday, five months after hackers brought down its site at the height of the Iraq war. Susi Sirri, news coordinator and spokeswoman, said the site aims "to fill a niche for English speakers who want to get the other side of the story, the Arab perspective."</p>

The Associated Press DUBAI, United Arab Emirates Sept. 1 — The Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera launched an English-language Web site Monday, five months after hackers brought down a temporary site at the height of the Iraq war. Susi Sirri, news coordinator and spokeswoman, said the site aims "to fill a niche for English speakers who want to get the other side of the story, the Arab perspective." "We are following Al-Jazeera's model: opinion and counter-opinion. That is the motto of the (organization)," Sirri told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Qatar. The English site works closely with the...

<p>An extract from "May the Cannibals be Cursed!" by Fatma Abdallah Mahmoud, published recently in Al-Akhbar, an Egyptian government daily. That government has received nearly $60 billion in aid from the U.S. taxpayer since 1979.</p> <p>Every place that it destroys, annihilates, and plunders treasure and oil [from], America does no less than what primitive cannibal tribes did in the prehistoric era!!</p>

A U.S. soldier in Iraq wonders: 'How many more must die?' August 24, 2003 By TIM PREDMORE "Shock and Awe" were the words used to describe the awesome display of power the world was to view upon the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was to be an up-close, dramatic display of military strength and advanced technology within the arsenal of the United States and the United Kingdom's military. But as a soldier preparing for the invasion of Iraq, the words "shock and awe" rang deeper within my psyche. These two great superpowers were about to break the very rules...

BEIRUT (AFX) - A previously unknown Islamist group claims to have captured two US soldiers in Iraq, Lebanon's LBCI satellite television reported showing what it said were photocopies of the pair's military identity cards. The group, calling itself Fukat al-Madina al-Munawara, or Medina Faction, after the Muslim holy city in Saudi Arabia, named the two as Katherine Rose and Andrew Peters, and said that they had been taken in a clash in which two US soldiers were also wounded, LBCI reported. There was no immediate independent confirmation of the claim. newsdesk@afxnews.com

<p>A previously unknown group claimed to have captured two U.S. soldiers in an attack on a military convoy west of Baghdad, according to a statement broadcast Friday by the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp.</p> <p>Pentagon officials said they were looking into the report and said they had no information if it was true.</p>

Last updated: Friday, August 15, 2003Surprise! There was no war Did you ever get the sinking feeling that we have all recently been the victims of a gigantic hoax? With all the television coverage, all the “embedded” journalists, did you ever see on TV or elsewhere the U.S. armed forces engage a significant sized Iraqi army unit, the famed Republican Guard, for example, in the so-called war? Did you ever see evidence of a major or minor military battle in Iraq during the “war”; tanks arrayed against tanks, armored columns of Iraqi army troops fighting against the U.S. Marines or...