Tag: Saddam Hussein

Bulent Ecevit, Saddam Hussein and Turkmen issue

My journalist journey extends to more than 25 years, starting from my capital Baghdad, which is the center of my culture and the source of my academic achievement and my beginnings for journalistic work by passing through the capitals of states such as Cairo, Amman, Damascus, Ankara ,Baku, Nicosia and Washington.

During this journalist trip, God enabled and helped me to interview international politics ,thinkers And some presidents of state, ministers and diplomats, Iraqis, Arabs, Turks, Americans and the British.

However, this trip sometimes brought me some troubles from the closed minds and the mercenaries, but my passion for my profession gave me the continuity in the journalistic work.

Among the dozens of television interviews that I conducted and I can’t express and reveal them with a few words, which left inside me a passionate basis for the press and media field, is my distinguished and historical meeting with former Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit in 2004 in his house in the Oran district of the Turkish capital, Ankara.

Bulent Evevit , who was born in 1925 in Istanbul and died in 2006, and his presidency took over the ministers of Turkey for different periods until 2002 .He was not only a political man, but was an author, poet, writer and translator.

He graduated from Robert American College in Istanbul in 1944, where he studied English and literature. During interview ,Bulent Ecevit was speaking Turkish literary language in elegant words and political phrases characterized by depth and Easter, and he was the last press interview in his political life.

Bulent Ecevit was an accomplished politician who played an important role in Turkish and international policy, When he was prime minister in 1974 ,he led the liberation of the Turkish island of Cyprus which was called the Cyprus peace process .. He was also more popular politician, as he described as popular Ecevit due to his sympathy and solidarity with workers and peasants.

The meeting I held with his excellency carries many meanings, and it was a historical document concerning the Turkmen people in Iraq. During the interview Bulent Ecevit mentioned about the number of visits to Iraq and his meeting with former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. He discussed that he met Saddam Hussein three times for a period of three hours at a time, and that was before, during and after the first American attack in the first Gulf war (the eighties and nineties of the last century).

Here, in one of his meetings with Saddam Hussein, Bulent Ecevit revealed the controversial topic, that related to the Turkmen people in Iraq and how Saddam Hussein intensified and raged when he defended and demanded the rights of Turkmen in Iraq.

We will now narrate some of the important dialogue excerpts that took place between me and Mr. Bulent Ecevit , the former Turkish Prime Minister in Ankara, on 2004 on the issue of his defense of the Turkmen rights upon his meeting with former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Q/ Mr.Prime Minister … As one of the most prominent politicians in Turkey … You met with former President Saddam Hussein and you discussed with him the conditions of the Turkmen in Iraq, and you defended their rights … Can we return to that date and know the details of that meeting?
A/ Of course, I met Saddam Hussein three times for a period The year … Saddam spoke to me about the damage to Iraq and all fields after the first American attack … especially since Iraq had just emerged from a long war with Iran … He also spoke to me about the resistance that the Iraqis showed regarding the American attack and its repercussions on The country … and outside these meetings, I had special visits with my wife to some of the role of our Turkmen brothers … We visited one of the children’s hospitals and we met with the sick children and their mothers and their parents … I saw closely what the Iraqi people suffer from difficult conditions and a cruel economic blockade and other Inherited social and economic problems.

I also noticed how the Iraqis were able, during a short period of time, to achieve an important technological advancement despite the difficult circumstances that we referred to were surrounding them from every side … and I realized at the time that the Iraqi people in general and Turkmen in particular are able to build their homeland and practice democracy if they have the appropriate opportunity for that. .

In one of my previous meetings with Saddam Hussein … I explained to him that the Turkmen were not at any time a problem for the Iraqi regime or the Iraqi governments … and they did not harm anyone, neither against power nor against any other social component … and explained to him It is better to give them their entire legitimate rights … or deal with them in a more flexible way … and explained to him how if the Turkmen rights were given … this step will improve from the image of the regime abroad and that they (Turkmen) will be able to persuade some opposition bodies in Outside of her position and changed her discourse.

And by the surprise (stood) Saddam from his council in a troubled manner … and my friend and my friend stood as well … then Saddam left us and left the hall without uttering one word.

We and the journalist stood up in amazement … Then they entered a group of accompanying and officials and asked us about the reasons for Saddam’s departure from the place so quickly … and we answered them in the negative … and then they also left the place … and then they (the accompanying) returned again and told us Saddam went to pray and will not return again .

I was insisting to say all my words and opinions of Saddam as a matter of political and moral advice, and I believe that these tips would have been in the interest of the Iraqi people first and the same system second … except that it seems as if the regime is not prepared to accept such tips … I was aspiring that The Iraqi people receive their full rights because they are a civilized and authentic people, and I thought that these advice would be in the interest of Iraq and Turkey together.

December 26, 2024
George W Bush memoirs: foreign powers and Tony Blair

George W Bush, the former US president, has launched his memoirs and given a series of interviews, which provide fascinating insights into his views on foreign powers, among them Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister.

By Andy Bloxham

On Tony Blair:

He compared Mr Blair to Winston Churchill and disclosed that, on the eve of the war in Iraq, the British PM was willing to risk bringing down the Government to push through a vital vote. He cites Mr Blair’s “wisdom and his strategic thinking as the prime minister of a strong and important ally”, adding: “I admire that kind of courage. People get caught up in all the conventional wisdom, but some day history will reward that kind of political courage.”

On British and European public opinion:

The former president was frank about the lack of weight he attached to how he was thought of in the UK both while he was in power and since he left it, saying: “It doesn’t matter how people perceive me in England. It just doesn’t matter any more. And frankly, at times, it didn’t matter then.” He said: “People in Europe said: “Ah, man, he’s a religious fanatic, cowboy, simpleton.” All that stuff… If you believe that freedom is universal, then you shouldn’t be surprised when people take courageous measures to live in a free society.”

On Saddam:

“There were things we got wrong in Iraq but that cause is eternally right,” he said. “People forget he was an enemy, he had invaded countries, everybody thought he had weapons of mass destruction, it became clear that he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction. What would life be like if Saddam Hussein were [still] in power? It is likely you would be seeing a nuclear arms race.” He also adds that Saddam disclosed his reasons for pretending to have WMDs when he could have avoided war were because “he was more worried about looking weak to Iran than being removed by the coalition.”

On Afghanistan:

“Our government was not prepared for nation building. Over time, we adapted our stratedy and our capabilities. Still, the poverty in Afghanistan is so deep, and the infrastructure so lacking, that it will take many years to complete the work.”

On Iran:

“A government not of the people is never capable of being held to account for human rights violations. Iran will be better served if there is an Iranian-style democracy. They play like they’ve got elections but they’ve got a handful of clerics who decide who runs it.”

On China:

He believes its internal politics will stop it being a superpower economy to rival the US for many years. “China, no question, is an emerging economy. China has plenty of internal problems which means that, in my judgment, they are not hegemonistic. They will be seeking raw materials.”

On Syria:

Mr Bush recounts an incident when Israel’s then-prime minister Ehud Olmert called him to ask him to bomb what Mossad agents had discovered was a secret nuclear facility in Syria. He said no but Israel destroyed it without warning him. Telling the story appears to signal his displeasure at not being told.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8119227/George-W-Bush-memoirs-foreign-powers-and-Tony-Blair.html, 09 Nov 2010

November 13, 2010
45-minute WMD claim ‘came from an Iraqi taxi driver’

Tory MP and defence specialist Adam Holloway says MI6 got information from a taxi driver who had heard Iraqi military commanders talking about weapons

An Iraqi taxi driver was the source of the discredited claim that Saddam Hussein could unleash weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, a Tory MP claimed today.

Adam Holloway, a defence specialist, said MI6 obtained the information indirectly from a taxi driver who had overheard two Iraqi militarycommanders talking about Saddam’s weapons.

The 45-minute claim was a key feature of the dossier about Iraq‘s weapons of mass destruction that was released by Tony Blair in September 2002. Blair published the information to bolster public support for war.

After the war the dossier became hugely controversial when it became clear that some of the information it contained was not true. An inquiry headed by Lord Butler into the use of intelligence in the run-up to the war revealed that MI6 had subsequently accepted that some of its Iraqi sources were unreliable, but his report did not identify who they were.

Today, in an interview with the Daily Mail, Holloway said the key piece of information about 45 minutes came from an Iraqi officer who was using a taxi driver as his own sub-source.

“[MI6] were running a senior Iraqi army officer who had a source of his own, a cab driver on the Iraqi-Jordanian border,” said Holloway, a former Grenadier Guardsman and television journalist.

“He apparently overheard two Iraqi army officers two years before who had spoken about weapons with the range to hit targets elsewhere in the Middle East.”

Holloway made his comments to coincide with the publication of a report he has written claiming that MI6 always had reservations about some of the information in the dossier but that these reservations were brushed aside when Downing Street was preparing it for publication.

According to the Mail, Holloway says in his report: “Under pressure from Downing Street to find anything to back up the WMD case, [MI6] were squeezing their agents in Iraq for anything at all.

“In the [MI6] analysts’ footnote to their report, it flagged up that part of the report describing some missiles that the Iraqi government allegedly possessed was demonstrably untrue. The missiles verifiably did not exist.

“The footnote said it in black and white. Despite this the report was treated as reliable and went on to become one of the central planks of the dodgy dossier.”

Holloway claims that MI6 was not to blame for the fact that the footnote was ignored. “It seems that someone, perhaps in Downing Street, found it rather inconvenient and ignored it lest it interfere with our reasons for going to war,” his report says.

The report is due to be published on the first defence website.

Butler concluded that, although the claims in the Iraq dossier went to the “outer limits” of what the intelligence available at the time would sustain, there was no evidence of “deliberate distortion”.

Today Sir John Scarlett, the key figure responsible for the preparation of the dossier, will give evidence to the Iraq inquiry. Scarlett was chairman of the joint intelligence committee at the time and he went on to become head of MI6.

He is expected to be asked about the dossier, although he is unlikely to provide detailed information about MI6 sources in public. The inquiry has said that, if witnesses want to discuss confidential issues relating to national security, they can do so in private.

The September dossier did not specify what weapons Iraq could deploy within 45 minutes. Intelligence officials subsequently revealed that it was meant to be a reference to battlefield weapons, not long-range missiles.

But, when it was published, some British papers interpreted the dossier as meaning that British troops based in Cyprus would be vulnerable to an Iraqi attack. At the time the government did not do anything to correct this error.

Guardian

December 8, 2009