Let's be cosmopolitan this morning and read XINHUA in French:
Saddam Hussein a été capturé par les troupes américaines seulement après avoir été fait prisonnier par les forces kurdes, drogué et abandonné aux mains des soldats américains, rapporte l'hebdomadaire dominical londonien Sunday Express.Selon Sunday Express citant un responsable des services secrets militaires britannique, Saddam est tombé aux mains du Front patriote kurde après avoir été trahi par un membre de la tribu al-Jabour, dont la fille a été violée par le fils de l'ancien président irakien, Uday, ce qui a entraîné une vengeance sanglante.
Selon le journal, l'histoire complète des évènements qui ont conduit à la capture de Saddam hussein, le 13 décembre, près de son fief de Tikrit dans le nord de l'Irak, "montre que la version colportée par les conseillers américains est incomplète".
Un ancien responsable des services secrets irakiens, dont le Sunday Express ne cite pas le nom, a raconté que Saddam Hussein a été fait prisonnier par un dirigeant du Front patriotique kurde qui a combattu contre les forces américaines pendant la guerre en Irak avant de conclure avec elles un accord.
L'accord aurait apparemment procuré un avantage politique à ce mouvement dans la région.
Une source anonyme des services de renseignement occidentaux au Moyen-Orient a déclaré au journal: "Saddam n'a pas été capturé à la suite d'une action des services secrets américains ou britanniques. Nous savions que quelques-uns voudraient se venger de lui, c'était juste une question de temps". Fin
Trans: The claims made in the arabic press six days ago, and universally dismissed by right-minded people everywhere -- that Saddam was drugged when apparently captured, appear to be true, not false.
Trans: The KPF has held Saddam for some time prior to the "we got him" moment.
If either element of the Sunday Express' story holds up, things will be interesting over at the corral.
Newsweek of a few minutes ago is still reporting the nitty gritty story of a Kurdless capture.
Here's an interesting link: click.
Posted by at December 21, 2003 06:42 AM | TrackBackA caveat: The British paper _Sunday Express_ that Xinhua News Service is quoting (http://www.french.xinhuanet.com/htm/12211622032.htm)
is one of those notorious London tabloids, as can be seen from their webpage: http://www.express.co.uk/
This isn't to say the story's wrong. I personally wish the serious mainstream media began following up on this story. However, alas, the Sunday Express while definitely mainstream in Britain, isn't serious. (At the risk of insulting the intelligence of the highly cosmopolitan readship of this blog: by "mainstream" I mean it must be appreciated that in the UK most tabloids have circulations comparable if not exceeding the Big 4 "serious" papers (listed from left to right): The Guardian, The Independent, The (London) Times, and The Telegraph. British tabloids, though they revel in celebrity gossip and (in)famously have topless women on page 3, are a major source of news for many Brits. They're not like American tabloids. However, they really aren't serious journalism either.)
Posted by: Bill at December 22, 2003 02:46 AMHere's one of the things I find interesting about the story: that INRA quotes Jalal Talabani and credits him with being first to break the story.
A secondary item of interest is who reports the story as news, and who doesn't. I've seen the story now in most of the mainstream Fracophone press in Europe and Canada, in the Arabic language press, and in the English language press in India and Austrailia.
Where I haven't seen the story is in any English language press in North America.
This may be simply an artifact of using the French and English news aggregator faces of the Google search and ranking engines, as the story is nearly invisible in Google-en, and top-of-page in Google-fr when it broke (yesterday).
Having lived in London, I was aware of your point. The Gruniad is _always_ right, esp. on issues of typography, and then one checks the sodding Rhino (Telegraph) and reason itself (Times). However, every working journalist at XINHUA, Figaro, Libre Belgique, Le Soir, RTBF, RTL, Nouvel Obs, ... know that too.
I need to check the Arabic language press of the week of the 14th. I dimly recall that there was mention of the appearance of druging on the first tapes broadcast by print journalists in Syria or Jordan.
Cowering in a hole, living on chocolate and not shooting at US soldiers or self makes a great end story.
Captured by previously hostile autonomous Kurdish armed forces operating within the American zone of control, placed under chemical restraints, and left for likely American discovery, that is a very different story.
I still think the transition of Saddam from location unknown to location known is a non-story itself, a diversion from hard issues of politics and policy to personality -- one of the Bush administration and the US media's strengths.
Posted by: The SO at December 22, 2003 10:07 AMI remember reading in the L.A. Times that Saddam's daughter said he looked drugged.
Posted by: David at December 22, 2003 04:57 PMold and stale, whether or not its actually true. the subtly changing story circled the globe immediately.
the iranian news agency IRNA breaks it on 14 dec. at 13:21:55 (local time?) attributing the news to talabani
http://www.irna.ir/?LANG=EN&PART=_ARCHIVE&TYPE=_NARCHIVE&start_grd=30#2003_12_1413_21_55F23
27 minutes later talabani states he is citing american forces for the news
at 15:10:30 IRNA cites SCIRI as confirming the news, but no other official kurdish statements are made
debka breaks it to the west on 14 dec. (GMT+02:00)
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=743
the PUK is now claiming a role
kurdishmedia makes the claim for a role the same day (probably 4pm local time)
http://www.KurdishMedia.com/news.asp?id=4517
PUK claims a role
chalabi notes in a 14 dec. interview that the PUK had a role but doesn't specify
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2003/12/14122003171647.asp
the alleged PUK role was even mentioned in the sydney morning herald on the 15th
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/14/1071336822038.html?from=top5
xinhua and cosmopolitan bloggers have taken their time catching up to this story. shall we move on?
Posted by: alex at December 22, 2003 08:15 PMCes Kurdes sont stupides...
(if story is true)
Why did they give him to the Americans? What did the US ever do for them, besides help Saddam escape censure for Halabja, and betray them after encouraging them to rise up against Saddam after Gulf War I? They won't even see any of the reward money; they've got nothing to bargain with.
L'Humanite picked it up on the 22nd.
Posted by: The SO at December 24, 2003 07:10 AMSee also http://www.sundayherald.com/38816
Posted by: Eric at December 27, 2003 03:16 PMYou are joking, right? Honestly - anyone who would believe tripe such as this should be euthanized. Now I'm no big fan of the handling of the Iraq issue, but to give any credence to ridiculous reports like this gives us no chance to ratain any credibility when REAL issues arise. Sheesh.
Posted by: WooWatcher at December 30, 2003 07:53 AM