Ambassador Wihaib served as former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s Chief of Protocol. In this role, he met with heads of state and functioned as a translator and chauffer for the Hussein family. He now acts as Chairman of the Iraqi Green Party and is a major player in rebuilding postwar Iraq. In his interview, he expressed gratitude to President George Bush and the United States for the war in Iraq, deeming it necessary to “liberate” his country from a tyrannical dictatorship.
How did you become Saddam’s Chief of Protocol?
You don’t choose Saddam, Saddam chooses you. I worked for him in the late ‘70s, when I was working for the Protocol Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I also translated for him. It happened that the special interpreter for the Prime Minister was sick because of food poisoning and Saddam liked me [as translator]. After a while they called me to his private office and he thanked me there and he asked me what I would like to be. I said I would like to continue my studies in France so I can build up my French so I can serve him more. This was an excuse for me to go to France to finish my PhD degree and he gave me a gold watch and an amount of money equivalent to $20,000 and appreciation for my services.
But I was very frightened. Usually Saddam is not that generous with people like me. I was only a small employee in the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This showed that he wanted to promote me. After a while I was sent to the Iraqi embassy in Paris.
Saddam used to call me several times every month to go back to Baghdad. One member of his family used to come to France, and I would look after him for two reasons: I speak the language, and they also discovered through investigation that I was safe-I couldn’t harm them. In 1980, I was called to be in his Private Office Protocol Dept. I had nothing to do with security or military in the palace. My duty was in his private office arranging his meetings with his political and military leadership and also with his family. His family was ignorant-they can’t even fill out an application for one visa.
Any interesting anecdotes or notable peculiarities about Saddam?
Through this job I saw a lot of things of what happened in the palace. The palace is a very strange place and there are conspiracies inside. These people who come from his family were very strict so that no one comes to the palace unless he is from their tribe and from their family. So for me it was abnormal for them to hire me since I am half Shiite, but I was not accepted; I was insulted most of the time by Saddam’s cousins. They were telling me, “How come you are here, you are not us, you are not a Tikriti, you are not from our family!”
I’ll tell you an example. The first day they brought me from France to work in the palace, two of Saddam’s cousins and some of his body guards took me deliberately to one of the gardens. The palace is surrounded by huge gardens and they took me to a place where it is lighted by lamps-big lamps, the kind you see on a street, and they pointed to one of the lamps and said, “Do you know what this is?” I saw blood, but the blood was old and a little bit dark.
I said, “This is blood,” and they said, “Do you know where this blood came from?” And I said, “No, I have no idea.” By the way, they don’t call Saddam his Excellency or the President or the Prime Minister. His family and people serving in the palace call him uncle. They said, “Yesterday our uncle executed 10 generals there, putting each general on one lamp and shooting a full round of a machine into them.”
In Islam or in Christianity or Judaism or any other religion, it is acknowledged that you are not a human to put more bullets into a man if he is dead with one shot. But this is Saddam.
He puts a full round into one general. So their flesh scattered all over. So they take you there deliberately to show you that. So I asked what the crimes of these people were-they were very well known generals. And they said they were traitors, they did not do well in the Iraqi-Iranian war. So you see, this was a gesture or a signal from Saddam that if you try to betray, this is your end.
In the Presidential Palace, we used to have something that looked like a library, but it was not a library. This place was a huge telecommunications center. I visited it several times with Saddam. Nobody was allowed to go there. Only Saddam and very few of his family: his two sons and a couple of his cousins. This was a place where they spied on every single minister or general. In each of the general’s houses were cameras.
There was a general called Ahmid Assim Azbeckar who Saddam killed and took power from in the 1979. Azbeckar used to have a very faithful general working for him. What Saddam did in order to blackmail him, is he caught him in a lot of sexual scandals and he sent him the tapes. And he said to the general, “You have two choices. Either I show these tapes or you spy on the President of the Republic for me (at that time, Saddam was Vice President). So you can see their rule was built on suspicion and spying and intelligence. I don’t imagine that there was any ruler-even Hitler or Stalin-who had the abilities and methods of spying which Saddam had. He used them in a very careful, influential and effective way so that no one can ever be safe from him.
Why did Saddam trust you so much with his work, life and secrets?
One of his cousins told me that Saddam told him this story. Saddam said, “I look to the eyes of the person and I can see if I can trust that one or not. And if I trust him I will give him my trust and if I don’t, I feel that he threatens me and I will kill him.” And his cousin asked him, “Suppose, Excellency, that your point of view or thinking was wrong at that moment?” Saddam smiled in response and he said, “Inspector, it is better to kill an innocent man than be killed.” So, this is the message of Saddam.
The war in Iraq has received a lot of criticism in America and many have compared it to the Vietnam War. Why do you justify the war?
As I say when I talk at universities, I and a lot of Iraqis believe that this was not an invasion, it was liberation. American armed forces and American people and President Bush and everyone in America helped us raise ourselves from the worst dictator and tyrant in the history of humanity. Hitler didn’t kill as many of his own people as Saddam did. In Iraq, you see in every city mass graves. There are widows and there are people who were tortured and imprisoned for nothing. I myself suffered humiliation, torture and imprisonment for nothing, because these people are simply moody. One day, I congratulated a football team for winning against that of Oedu (the son of Saddam) as a kind gesture or simple courtesy. You know what Oedu did? He put me in prison and tortured me and asked me why I congratulated the team that won the game. So you can see what kind of people they are.
I justify the war because without the help of America, we would never get rid of this dictator and we would see the son and grandson of Saddam ruling Iraq. Don’t the four and a half million Iraqis who were killed under Saddam justify throwing out a dictatorial regime like Saddam? And to compare it with Vietnam War is incorrect. The people who are fighting now, called “insurgents” or the resistors-we call them terrorists because they are not Iraqis; they are coming from other countries.
Are there still WMDs in Iraq now?
I and a lot of Iraqis believe that Saddam used to have WMDs and he hid them in a very careful way. During the United Nations investigation, Saddam’s scientists destroyed them but they never told him because of the way he thinks. He always has to be in charge. There were scientists and security people who were brought from Eastern German and South America and they were helping Iraqis and teaching them how to torture, hide and deceive. A lot of Iraqis believe that there are WMDs still hidden. Not necessarily nuclear or missiles, but biological weapons.
Given the chance, what would you say to Saddam right now?
I would like to say to Saddam that the hour to pay for his crimes against the Iraqi people and against the whole of humanity is very near now. The newly elected government promises that it will put Saddam and his criminal regime on trial. All the evidence is being collected. He will pay the price of wasting the fortune of the Iraqi people, killing these people and torturing them. Taking the future from the children of the Iraqi people. Saddam created nothing. You can see every single problem of Iraq now is not due to the American invasion, not due to the Iraqi people who don’t understand the role of the law, but due to the dictatorship of Saddam. And Saddam used to say something, “If you kill one, you are a murderer, if you kill millions, you are a conqueror.” I myself am ready to act as a witness to what I have seen from his crimes and torture and his crimes against me personally.
