The reason that Baghdad fell so easily, according to the sources interviewed by Hamuda, is that the CIA paid millions of dollars to a core group of Iraqi generals not to put up a fight.

---

Thursday, Apr. 24, 2003

COMMENTARY

Hussein in Cuba? Let it be true

by Jim DeFede

David Irving comments: WE were one of the first English-language news sources to report the extraordinary allegations (which may of course be a massive wodge of particularly nasty disinformation) that the US government had used some of the billions it saved in its failed Turkey buy-out to bribe its way out of a square fight in Baghdad instead.    After all, it made sense -- if you have that kind of taxpayer money to burn, and you don't intend spending it on hospitals, education or the welfare of the ordinary US citizen, it is better to bribe a few Iraqi generals than to waste money pooping off expensive missiles at a million dollars a bang. (The US arms industry would disagree).    Am I however the only one who is still uneasy at the facility with which the new White House has adopted the course of "targeted killing" pioneered by those nice gentlemen in Israel (and for that matter their immediate forebears, the Stern Gang and the Irgun Zwei Leumi in Palestine in the 1940s)?    Somewhere in heaven, the battered, indeed shredded, figure of Lord Moyne may well be wagging an admonishing finger at George Bush Jr for having made salonfähig, fashionable, a practice which his predecessors Roosevelt and Churchill rightly condemned as "terrorism" in World War II and the immediate aftermath.    The United States is however the home of that phrase "What goes around comes around." If an Islamic assassin comes around to Texas one day, and that smirk gets wiped off that face, don't say that Lord Moyne didn't warn you. I WISH we could hear today what Robert H Jackson would have to say about what Bush and his mafia have done to his legal achievements. Jackson was the Chief American Prosecutor at Nuremberg in 1945-1946, and one of my heroes for his simple-minded and straightforward belief that it might yet be possible to lay a basis for legislating against war crimes.    There is a nauseating stench of hypocrisy in two governments, the British and US, which -- for whatever concealed motives of their own -- use weapons of mass destruction against a country which has done them no wrong and bore them no malice.    Here were two countries totaling some 320 million inhabitants, setting upon a nation of rather under 25 millions "like wolves," as George Galloway so rightly said.    They have killed, from a safe altitude and distance or from behind foot-thick walls of armourplate, tens of thousands of citizens of that country, using cannon fire, machine-guns, "daisy-cutters," vacuum blast warheads, scatter bombs, and for that matter sheer starvation; they have ignored their Geneva obligations to protect civilians, respect the infrastructure, and leave hospitals inviolate; and now they are seizing its remaining leaders and declaring them to be the war criminals.    The world is asked to applaud a United States president who has announced in advance and entrenched in US law two fearful new principles - his country will remain outside the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court -- because Tony Blair, George W Bush and their henchmen might well qualify to become very early candidates for the dock and have their real motives examined; and -- his government will reserve the right to invade any country where US soldiers and politicians may find themselves put on trial for war crimes, and release them by force from custody.    This is in case some of them visiting Belgium for example at some time in the future might find themselves indicted.    It is a thought provoking situation. Bob Jackson, wherever you are, please give us a sign. What do you make of it all?

SADDAM Hussein is alive and living in Cuba. Don't just take my word for it. I got this information straight from the April 21 issue of the Egyptian newspaper Soat el Umma, which in Arabic means Voice of the Nation.

OK, I know what you are saying: "Soat el Umma? Soat el Umma! That scandal sheet. I wouldn't wrap 3-day-old samak in Soat el Umma.'

Maybe you're right. Soat el Umma is sort of The National Enquirer of Cairo. But even The National Enquirer is right once in a while.

The report by Adel Hamuda is quite detailed and claims to be based on interviews with unnamed British intelligence officials.

The reason that Baghdad fell so easily, according to the sources interviewed by Hamuda, is that the CIA paid millions of dollars to a core group of Iraqi generals not to put up a fight. Some of those generals were given U.S. passports and are now living in the United States.

'But the surprise that is highly believed in the political and strategic British circles,' according to Hamuda's story, "is that ex-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is still alive and he participated himself in sealing a deal to hand over Baghdad to American forces without the firing of one bullet. In return, he was allowed to leave Iraq in a convoy that included the Russian ambassador in Baghdad and consisted of 17 cars, which is much larger than the customary number of cars used by the embassy.'

Russia was one of the last countries to pull out of Baghdad. As U.S. troops were marching on the Iraqi capital, a caravan of Russian diplomats left Baghdad on April 6 and crossed into Syria. Ever since, there have been rumors that Hussein was in that convoy.

'The cars crossed the Syrian borders, and there Saddam Hussein and some of his family members and some of his assistants rode a plane, which was ready to take off, to the Cuban capital of Havana,' Hamuda reported.

Even more shocking, Hamuda wrote that Hussein left with the blessing of the United States.

'The Americans agreed to the deal, which was supervised in Moscow by American National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and contributed to by the ex-Soviet Prime Minister Primakov, who was the last Russian official to meet Saddam Hussein,' Hamuda wrote.

As one would expect, the corporate-controlled media in America have been slow to pick up this story. And just as one might expect, officials in the United States seemed cagey and evasive when confronted with the Soat el Umma exposé.

'The Soat el what? You probably want to call the Department of Defense,' said a State Department spokesman.

Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Lapan said reports of Hussein in Cuba are "interesting, but absolutely false.'

'If we knew where he was, we'd be after him,' he added.

I almost believed him.

Joe Garcia, of the Cuban American National Foundation, said Fidel Castro "doesn't have the [fill in the blank] to take in Saddam Hussein.'

Too bad. If Hussein really was in Cuba, it would be just like the old TV show The Odd Couple. But instead of Felix and Oscar, we'd have Saddam and Fidel.

On April 6, Saddam Hussein was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. [Sound effect of cruise missile exploding.] That request came from the United States.

Deep down, he knew she was right. But he also knew that someday he would return to Iraq.

With nowhere else to go, he appeared at the home of his longtime friend Fidel Castro. Sometime earlier, the United States had tried to throw him out, requesting that he never return.

Can two dictatorial men share an apartment without driving each other razy?

All I can say is: "Please, God, let it be true and I'll never ask for anything again.'

Saddam Probably Hiding says Hoon

Iran Media Leaks Secret Deal Behind Demise Of Baghdad

The Buyout of Baghdad? Tales of a secret arrangement between the Bushies and the Republican Guard persist

Arabic press discovers How US Government bribed Saddam's Republican Guard generals to abandon Baghdad: Are now already in USA