Word: iraq
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ANNALS OF BAD BETS, THE ONE Hussein Kamel al-Majid made last week may never be surpassed. What are the odds that someone who defects from Iraq, advocates the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and spills secrets about Saddam's weapons program would be allowed to return to Baghdad and live a long and fruitful life? Not very good, you would think. And as Hussein Kamel learned, you would be right...
...Iraq's program for developing weapons of mass destruction and had brutally suppressed the Kurds after the Gulf War. He was also married to Saddam's favorite daughter. Then one night six months ago, he suddenly drove across the desert to Jordan, accompanied by his wife, brother and sister-in-law, who is also a daughter of Saddam's, and the couples' children. Last week, equally suddenly, they all went home...
...reverse defection, Hussein Kamel and his brother piled their families and flotsam pieces of luggage into a convoy of Mercedes and drove to the Jordan-Iraq border. There they were received by Saddam's sons Qusay and Uday, a wanton killer who is Hussein Kamel's sworn enemy. When word of the return reached the West, Madeleine Albright, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a woman who rarely finds herself at a loss for words, said simply, "I have given up trying to understand the Iraqi elite...
Hussein Kamel, better than most, was in a position to understand how brutal his reception was likely to be. Defecting was bad enough. Once in exile, however, he denounced Saddam as a tyrant and murderer and gave the U.N. valuable information about Iraq's weapons program. Saddam has ordered countless executions for far less serious transgressions. Hussein Kamel knew all this, but if he had any remaining uncertainty about his father-in-law's attitude toward him, it should have been dispelled by Iraq's state-controlled media, which branded him a thief, a coward, a spy and a "traitor...
Disappointment, unhappiness and marital strife seem to be the main reasons. When Hussein Kamel arrived in Jordan, he hoped to take command of Iraq's exiled opposition, which might have placed him in line to succeed Saddam eventually. Soon, however, it became clear that this was not to be. Foreign officials who met him were unimpressed by his character: "Completely inflexible," said a senior Jordanian security official, "and sick in his mind to the extent that he believes only he can be the savior of Iraq and anyone else who attempts to save Iraq is a traitor." As for those...