Free Republic

Senior Iraqi officers have scattered across the Middle East after fleeing Baghdad as the assault on the city began, according to some senior Iraqis in London who have kept close links with key figures within the country. All of them have false passports and could try to later hide in countries like Pakistan or Malaysia or Indonesia, said Ali Haitham Rashid Wihaib, who was Saddam Hussain's former head of protocol. He added that the Syrian authorities were keeping some of their "embarrassing guests" including generals and ministers hidden because of the US pressure. He, claimed in a daily, that Saddam...

Nicole Martin shows a confidential handwritten memo found in the rubble of the looted Iraqi foreign ministry to the man who used to arrange the dictator's scheduleSaddam Hussein's former head of protocol said yesterday that the document found by The Daily Telegraph saying that George Galloway received substantial payments from the Iraqi regime was "100 per cent genuine". Haitham Rashid Wihaib, who fled to Britain with his family eight years ago after death threats, said he had no doubt that the handwritten confidential memorandum addressed to the dictator's office apparently detailing how the Labour MP benefited from Iraq's oil sales...

From leaky roofs to secret agents: how the files I found in Iraq's looted foreign ministry cast light on the paranoid world of Saddam Hussein How many Iraqi officials does it take to fix the leaky roof of a diplomat's house in London? How long does a skilled translator need to convert one of George Galloway's parliamentary speeches into Arabic? In almost 1, 000 pages of Arabic prose, each stamped with the Eagle crest of Iraq, the files found inside the foreign ministry in Baghdad cast a somewhat surreal light on the questions that turned the bureaucratic wheels of Saddam...

As US Forces tightened their grip on Baghdad, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, along with his two sons, fled the capital three days ago for his home town of Tikrit, 175 km to the north, media reports said. "I have been informed that once he had firm evidence that the Americans were closing in on Baghdad, he fled to his home town of Tikrit," claimed Haitham Rashid Wihaib, Saddam's former Chief of Protocol in The Mail. The dictator who used to being ferried around in a vast fleet of heavily armoured Mercedes left by way of anonymous taxis and battered pick...