The Softer Side of General Sada

I spent the past few days with General Georges Sada, author of Saddam's Secrets, which rose to number 17 on the NY Times bestseller list a couple of weeks ago. Sada is best known, of course, as the man who said "no" to Saddam, and helped to prevent the erstwhile Iraqi dictator from attacking Israel.

Georges is a man's man, clearly unafraid to fulfill his current mission of bringing out the truth about Saddam, even though he in is grave personal danger for it. (Yes, I thought twice about spending too much time with him.) If you've kept up with Sada's name since I blogged about him last November (I scooped the world!), you'll know he's been on various network news shows, Sean Hannity's radio show, The 700 Club, and has also given various newspaper interviews, including this one with The New York Sun.

Although I do not believe that Sada has become desensitized to the violence he has seen during his career, he nonetheless reels off harrowing stories as calmly as I might reminisce about a Russian restaurant... He tells, for example, about negotiating the purchase of more than a billion dollars worth of Brazilian jets for Saddam some years ago. The negotiations had gone well, and the Brazilians were quite happy with the deal, so happy, in fact, that they had attempted to pay Georges and his partner (who was there to negotiate a separate military purchase), "fees" for their trouble. Georges' check was for four million U.S. dollars, but as a devout "follower of Jesus" -- he does not call himself a Christian for cultural reasons -- he had refused the bribe, applying it instead as a bottom-line discount on the contract. His partner, on the other hand, happily took the money.

What neither man knew, although it should have been a given, was that one of their fellow Iraqi delegates, a Tikriti like Saddam, was reporting on the trip to the president by telephone. Impressed by Georges' honorable conduct, he had told the Iraqi dictator of the savings. That had been the reason for the brand new white Mercedes that had been mysteriously delivered to Georges' home back in Baghdad the previous evening. Saddam was saying thanks.

Within the week Georges and the delegation were back home in Iraq. Shortly after their arrival, his negotiating partner, the one who had accepted the bribe, was executed. Georges Sada's honesty had not only saved his government four million dollars; it had saved his life.

Sada also confirms that Saddam, who was constantly on guard against coup attempts, was known to murder people in plain sight if their deaths would keep onlookers in line. He might pull out a pistol from under the conference table and shoot them during a cabinet meeting, or nudge them into a swimming pool full of acid at one of his palaces, and then stand there watching them burn to death and dissolve.

Yet Georges remains tender, and in fact is downright forgiving of offenses against himself. Last week he invited my family and a few others to his cousin's home for Sunday afternoon dinner. We ate Assyrian food (one of the best meals I've ever had), and enjoyed Middle Eastern hospitality. Georges was especially taken with my four-year old daughter, scooping her up and holding her. Lexi so relished his hugs that when it came time to leave, she headed back into the General's arms. "Ah, children. They know who loves them," he said to me with a broad grin.

Georges also told a group of us about an assassination attempt against him last year. His assailants were caught setting up the bomb, and brought to him before being taken to jail. They were young men, unemployed, and should have been in college by now. They were terrified of course, and assumed their lives were over. But Sada spent time telling his young captives about his faith, and wound up releasing them with the promise that they would indeed enroll in school.

Later all three sets of parents came to him, thanking him profusely, saying also that their forever grateful sons now wanted to become the General's bodyguards. He refused, and today those young men, all three of them, are indeed in college.

One little scoop to go: Watch the news over the next few months for more on the "Saddam tapes" that ABC so lightly covered two weeks back. Both ABC and CNN have in fact spiked the truth, that Saddam spoke with Tariq Aziz at length about the use of chemical weapons against the USA, and referred to both the French and Germans as willing partners in covering up his past shenanigans. Now it's time for both networks to either come clean or be exposed.

I think a good blogswarm would help, so here's a call to Kobayashi Maru, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Hootsbuddy's Place, GrannyTiger's Reality Check, and others: (1) Start poking around about those Saddam tapes; (2) ask ABC why they spiked General Sada's interview regarding the tapes; (3) ask CNN why they didn't treat them seriously when UN weapons inspectors gave them to them a couple of years back. That should get you started. Oh, and one more thing: The General will not be the only one talking about the tapes.