what well-informed dictators read

His
collection also includes an
autobiography of Moshe Dayan
… and ‘Hitler’s War,’ by
David Irving, about the German
dictator to whom the Iraqi
leader has sometimes been
compared.

SO, according to journalist
Jonathan Finer (and what do we suspect about him
that’s relevant to this story) looters ransacking the abandoned home of Tariq Aziz found copies of Cosmopolitan,
Vogue and my flagship work
Hitler’s
War!

It’s official: I’m part of President Bush’s
Axis of Evil. Why is it that ever since the liberators reached
Baghdad I have somehow been expecting to see the familiar jacket of my book pop up on
American television screens as having been “found” among the ruins.

It is surprising how often the US media — or the people behind them — run with this gag. I can think of three or four instances in the last five years in which that book has surfaced in the wrong hands. of course, I may be doing the media an injustice — mea culpa, for they have
NEVER done an injustice to me. Not in the last four or five days, anyway. Maybe Tariq really did read my 1,200 page tome.

Maybe his minister of information read my biography of
Goebbels
(more likely that the Pentagon did, however).

SO, Tariq, wherever you are, if you are now missing that bedtime read, give me an address and I’ll mail a new copy to you. It’s back in print (and it always will be, not withstanding the pranks of the US press).

The story ran on p. A-1 of the April 11, 2003 Washington
Post.

Correspondents tell us that it also ran in
The
Age (Melbourne,
Australia), Der
Spiegel (Germany) and countless other newspapers.
With his big-framed glasses and gray mustache, Aziz is widely recognized abroad because of his career as foreign minister and longtime defender of Hussein’s rule.

A fluent English speaker educated at the
University of Baghdad, he was the only
Christian among the senior leaders of the
Baath Party. One rumor had him defecting last month as the Bush administration gathered forces for war, but Aziz popped up on television two days later to publicize his continued loyalty. Since
U.S. troops closed in on Baghdad, he has dropped out of sight, with Hussein and all the country’s other top leaders.

Aziz, born Mikhail Yuhanna in
1936 near Mosul in northern Iraq, left behind a riverfront home full of personal effects that shed light on the grandeur and the normality of his everyday life.
The contents indicate that, with all his denunciations of the United States, he had a vivid interest in American authors and popular culture, from political memoirs to the personality profiles of Vanity
Fair.

The four-story
home sits on an oxbow of the Tigris
River, near a highway overpass. Outside
the front door is a worn woven mat that
reads “welcome.” Throughout the home
are understated pieces of Christian
iconography: a small portrait of
Christ, a Virgin Mary figurine in the
kitchen and a wallet-sized photo of an
Eastern Orthodox priest attached to a
mirror in the bedroom.

Aziz’s study is an airy room on the ground floor, its shelves heaving with writings by and about his adversaries, such as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
and former president George H.W.
Bush, as well as dozens of volumes of works attributed to Hussein.

He owns several histories of the Iran-Iraq war and a collection of works on the Central
Intelligence Agency, including Bob
Woodward’s “Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987.” He also owns several
Western works on politics in the region, including Judith Miller’s “God Has
Ninety-Nine Names: Reporting From a
Militant Middle East,” and Daniel
Yergin’s “The Prize,” about the politics of oil.

True to his role as a former foreign minister, Aziz owns two major works by former secretary of state Henry A.
Kissinger: “Diplomacy” and “White
House Years.” And tucked away on the top of one shelf is “The Greatest Threat,” by
Richard Butler, who led a U.N. weapons inspection team in Iraq in the
1990s.

His collection also includes an autobiography of Moshe Dayan, an
Israeli general and statesman, and several works on the subject of Zionism.

He owns
“Saddam’s War,” an account of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the international response to it, written by John Bulloch and Harvey
Morris, and “Hitler’s
War,” by David Irving, about the German dictator to whom the
Iraqi leader has sometimes been compared.

Alongside the collection of books are dozens of Vanity Fair magazines and a large glass cabinet overflowing with more than 50 American movies on DVD. The titles include dramas, such as “The
Godfather” series, lighter fare, such as
“Sleepless in Seattle,” and action films, such as “Dragon,” the story of martial arts expert Bruce Lee.

As for Aziz’s official reading, U.S.
Marines blew open several safes when they arrived at the abandoned house Wednesday night and removed reams of documents, which will be analyzed by intelligence experts.

In a ground floor office are photographs of a man in his forties who appears to be Aziz’s son. White business cards bearing the name Ziad Tariq Aziz are on a large oak desk. On the floor is a box of cigars, a backgammon set and a bottle of Cartier cologne. Brochures advertising
Smith & Wesson and Remington firearms are scattered on the office floor. A
Princeton Review test preparation book, titled “Cracking the GMAT,” is marked with notes in the margins.

On the second floor of the house is a master bedroom with dressers stacked high with unopened bottles of cologne: Drakkar
Noir and Obsession for men. The attached bathroom is filled with American magazines: Vogue, Cosmopolitan and
GQ, along with a few dog-eared novels by Danielle
Steel.

[… Rest of article is about
Saddam’s residence]