The latest on Saddam is that he’s still in Iraq and is moving around the country constantly, in order to evade detection, according to Ahmad Chalabi, of the anti-Saddam Iraqi National Congress. He says his group is tracking Saddam, but stays around half a day behind him. “We have received information about his movements and the movements of his sons,” he says. “?We are aware of his movements and we are aware of the areas that he has been to, and we learn of this within 12 to 24 hours?We received intelligence about his son Qusay yesterday.” Chalabi says he doesn’t want any role in the new Iraqi government. In 1992, he was convicted in absentia by a Jordanian court of embezzlement, fraud and breach of trust after a bank he ran collapsed with about $300 million in missing deposits. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison. He says, “Everybody knows [the conviction] was a naked act of aggression, of the Jordan Government acting on behalf of Saddam” and says he will soon provide evidence to support his statement.
Chalabi doesn’t think the United Nations should not play a major role in rebuilding Iraq because “It has little credibility in Iraq and the people of Iraq view it as a de facto ally of Saddam” since Iraqis have seen UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on TV “smoking a cigar with Saddam.” Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz support Chalabi as part of the new Iraqi government, while the CIA’s George Tenet does not.
Saddam certainly understood rule by secrecy.
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