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**AK47rulz** · 08-07-2010, 05:39 AM

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010...ariq-aziz-iran

Tariq Aziz: 'Britain and the US killed Iraq. I wish I was martyred'

• WMD an illusion was to deter Iran, says former minister

• Nostalgia for Saddam Hussein rule – but he calls on US to stay

• US troop pullout will destroy Iraq, says Tariq Aziz

Martin Chulov in Baghdad guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 August 2010 23.03 BST

Tariq Aziz is slumped on a tattered brown sofa seat cradling his walking stick and cigarettes, his gaunt face topped, incongruously for a practising Christian, by a Muslim prayer cap. It is perhaps only the familiar black-ringed spectacles that signal to the visitor that this was Iraq's former face to the world – Saddam Hussein's right-hand man, his most powerful deputy.

Apart from his captors and lawyers, Aziz, says he has not seen or spoken to a foreigner since the fall of Baghdad. But after years rotating between solitary confinement and a witness box in court, he is now more than ready to speak.

"It's been seven years and four months that I have been in prison," he told the Guardian. "But did I commit a crime against any civilian, military or religious man? The answer is no."

Iraq has been through hell since Aziz was last seen in public, days before Baghdad fell in April 2003, toppling Hussein and the totalitarian Ba'athist regime that Aziz had helped lead for 30 years.

In his first face-to-face interview since then, Aziz seemingly longed for the old days, while at the same time calling on the US president, Barack Obama, not to "leave Iraq to the wolves".

"Of course I was a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, a leader of the Ba'ath party, deputy prime minister, foreign minister – all of those posts were mine," he says inside the Iraqi prison that he now calls home. Aziz had just returned from another court hearing inside Baghdad's green zone, where the ghosts of Iraq under Saddam are being exorcised in a series of painstaking trials.

08-07-2010, 05:39 AM	#1
AK47rulz Join Date Nov 2005 Posts 612 Senior Member	Saddam Hussien's deputy wants U.S. troops to stay in Iraq http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010...ariq-aziz-iran Tariq Aziz: 'Britain and the US killed Iraq. I wish I was martyred' • WMD an illusion was to deter Iran, says former minister • Nostalgia for Saddam Hussein rule – but he calls on US to stay • US troop pullout will destroy Iraq, says Tariq Aziz Martin Chulov in Baghdad guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 August 2010 23.03 BST Tariq Aziz is slumped on a tattered brown sofa seat cradling his walking stick and cigarettes, his gaunt face topped, incongruously for a practising Christian, by a Muslim prayer cap. It is perhaps only the familiar black-ringed spectacles that signal to the visitor that this was Iraq's former face to the world – Saddam Hussein's right-hand man, his most powerful deputy. Apart from his captors and lawyers, Aziz, says he has not seen or spoken to a foreigner since the fall of Baghdad. But after years rotating between solitary confinement and a witness box in court, he is now more than ready to speak. "It's been seven years and four months that I have been in prison," he told the Guardian. "But did I commit a crime against any civilian, military or religious man? The answer is no." Iraq has been through hell since Aziz was last seen in public, days before Baghdad fell in April 2003, toppling Hussein and the totalitarian Ba'athist regime that Aziz had helped lead for 30 years. In his first face-to-face interview since then, Aziz seemingly longed for the old days, while at the same time calling on the US president, Barack Obama, not to "leave Iraq to the wolves". "Of course I was a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, a leader of the Ba'ath party, deputy prime minister, foreign minister – all of those posts were mine," he says inside the Iraqi prison that he now calls home. Aziz had just returned from another court hearing inside Baghdad's green zone, where the ghosts of Iraq under Saddam are being exorcised in a series of painstaking trials.
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