Text 21225, 90 rader
Skriven 2006-07-21 14:06:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: Sa
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Saddam is talking to the left and sounds just like them...


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/21/world/middleeast/21saddam.html?ei=5065
&en=b6f390835555742a&ex=1154145600&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

July 21, 2006
The Trial
In a 5,000-Word Letter, Hussein Blames Bush, Iran and Israel Supporters 
for Iraq’s Troubles 
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 20 — Saddam Hussein’s defense lawyers on Thursday 
released a letter Mr. Hussein recently wrote in prison that tries to 
convince the American people that the United States should leave Iraq 
because President Bush misled them into a deadly quagmire. 

The 5,000-word letter is a rambling treatise outlining what Mr. Hussein 
asserts are the false reasons the Bush administration used to justify 
the war in Iraq, from illicit weapons to links with Al Qaeda. Mr. 
Hussein said he had written it at the behest of Ramsey Clark, the former 
United States attorney general who serves on his defense team.

Mr. Hussein blames Iran and pro-Israel interests for helping lead the 
Americans into war. He invokes the specter of the Vietnam War and the 
spirit of Mao, saying the Chinese revolutionary is “laughing in his 
grave because his prediction has been fulfilled and America is a paper 
tiger.ö

The letter is dated July 7 and was handed by Mr. Hussein to Mr. Clark, 
said Rasha Oudeh, the office manager for Mr. Hussein’s eldest daughter. 

“People of America, the misfortunes that have afflicted you and 
afflicted our Arab nation and within it our heroic people — including 
the breakdown of America’s standing and reputation — were only caused by 
the reckless behavior of your government and by pressure from Zionism,ö 
Mr. Hussein wrote, according to a translation of the letter e-mailed to 
reporters by both his defense team and an insurgent Web site.

“The massacres and blood that now flows in the streets and countryside 
of Iraq in torrents — the responsibility for that falls on America 
before all others,ö he added.

The release of the letter came on the 14th day of a hunger strike by Mr. 
Hussein and three of his co-defendants. Mr. Hussein and seven other men, 
including his half-brother, have been on trial since October for the 
imprisonment and executions of 148 men and boys from the Shiite town of 
Dujail. The victims were killed after what Mr. Hussein said was an 
assassination attempt on him in 1982.

The trial is in its closing stages. Arguments are expected from the 
defense lawyers, but the main lawyers and defendants have been 
boycotting the trial for various reasons.

Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a spokesman for the American-run detainee 
system, said Thursday that Mr. Hussein was in “relatively good healthö 
and was being monitored every day by medical professionals. He said Mr. 
Hussein had rejected all his meals but drinks coffee with sugar, and 
water with nutrients.

The American military had no immediate comment on the letter, Colonel 
Curry added.

In the letter, Mr. Hussein said an American general tried to use 
intimidation and threats against him after his capture, and “tried to 
bargain with me, promising to let me live if I agreed to read in my own 
voice and sign a prepared announcement that was shown to me.ö

“That stupid announcement called on the people of Iraq and the 
courageous resistance to lay down arms,ö he wrote. “They said that if I 
refused, my fate would be that I would be shot like Mussolini.ö 

A week after that conversation, Mr. Hussein said, a group of Americans 
came to speak to him, saying they were from an American university. “I 
confirmed to them that Iraq didn’t have any of the things the American 
officials claimed,ö Mr. Hussein wrote.

Mr. Hussein sought to portray himself as a humanitarian in the letter, 
telling the American government to designate a neutral country where 
insurgents could hand over American prisoners “rather than executing 
them as currently is said to be taking place.ö That appeared to be a 
reference to the capture and killing of two American soldiers last month 
in the town of Yusufiya.

The letter ends with a final bit of advice: “Save your country, esteemed 
ladies and gentlemen, and leave Iraq.ö


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