csua.org/u/bec -> www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saddam/etc/script.html
ABURISH, Author, "Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge": He never sleeps in the same place. ABURISH: His immediate purpose now is to survive, but survival is a victory. ANNOUNCER: Nine years after the Gulf war, why is he still in power? AHMAD CHALABI, Iraqi Opposition Leader: Saddam is a far better plotter, a more accomplished plotter, than the CIA will ever be. ANNOUNCER: Tonight FRONTLINE investigates The Survival of Saddam. The White House orders the CIA to organize a coup d'etat. FRANK ANDERSON, CIA Near East Division Chief (1991-1994): It's frequently the case that the CIA is called upon to develop some kind of a covert action program in response to intractable and maybe even insoluble problems that confront the government. NARRATOR: In Baghdad, a special unit of Iraqi intelligence has studied every coup of the 20th century. AHMAD CHALABI, Iraqi Opposition Leader: Saddam is a far better plotter, a more apt and accomplished plotter, than the CIA will ever be. NARRATOR: Saddam believes he knows who will betray him even before they know it themselves. The CIA thinks it has recruited officers within Saddam's tight inner circle. TARIQ AZIZ, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister: They don't know the officers in the army. How could they manage a coup d'etat, a military coup d'etat? NARRATOR: The plotters have been told that America would recognize them as Iraq's new leaders. They have been given special mobile phones with direct lines to the CIA. If you take a look at what it took to get rid of Adolf Hitler, if you take a look at the fact that Joseph Stalin died in his bed- with the exception of the leaders of the Eastern Europe in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, it's generally been the case that somebody who's on top of a totalitarian system stays there until he dies. In the past year alone, they have flown more sorties over Iraq than NATO flew during the war in Kosovo. BILL CLINTON: So long as Saddam remains in power, he will remain a threat to his people, his region and the world. The best way to end the threat that Saddam poses to his own people and the region is for Iraq to have a different government. TARIQ AZIZ: Maybe they are dead serious about changing the government, I don't know. NARRATOR: Saddam's survival continues to mystify and frustrate Western leaders. But Saddam has always been misunderstood and underestimated by the outside world. This is the story of what made Saddam Hussein a master survivor. He once had a vision that galvanized his nation and attracted true believers. ABURISH, Author, "Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge": We supported him because we wanted one Arab country to move ahead and be strong economically and militarily. NARRATOR: Said Aburish, author of a new biography of Saddam and a consultant to this program, worked closely with Saddam's government. Like many educated Arabs of his generation, Aburish - a Palestinian - looked to Saddam for leadership. Beginning in the mid-'70s, Aburish was a go-between for Western arms manufacturers doing business with Iraq. He was part of Saddam's secret plan to acquire chemical weapons and an atomic bomb. ABURISH: I don't think there was any Arab in the '70s who did not want Saddam Hussein to have an atomic weapon. The Arabs wanted an Arab country to have atomic weapons. And he stopped delivering the benefits to the Iraqi people with time. This sounds like a German talking about aiding and abetting the rise of Hitler. It is pretty much the same, but he represented potential, and we loved the idea of him being there. NARRATOR: Saddam Hussein came from nowhere, a tough, ambitious kid stuck in a remote village. As a young boy, he had to steal so his family could eat. He heard that his cousin could read and write and demanded that he be afforded the same opportunity. NARRATOR: As a teenager, he moved to Baghdad and later became an enforcer for a new revolutionary movement known as the Ba'ath, or Renewal Party. Political violence was Saddam's ticket to a better life. They were planning to assassinate Iraq's strongman, General Abdul Kareem Kassem. ABURISH: What they needed is just a gunman, and they remembered this fellow who had already been accused of murdering someone in his village. Years later, Saddam hired a James Bond director to reenact his attack on General Kassem's motorcade. The next morning, Saddam escaped in a daring swim across the river Tigris. ABURISH, Author, "Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge": The created just a monumental legend around this incident. NARRATOR: Now an exile, Saddam became the leader of the Ba'ath Party's student cell in Cairo. The Ba'ath Party had sparked the interest of the CIA, and Saddam reportedly became a regular visitor to the American embassy. ABURISH: The visits to the American Embassy by Saddam Hussein and other members of the Ba'ath party had one purpose and one purpose only: to cooperate with the Americans towards the overthrow of General Abdul Kareem Kassem in Iraq. Diplomat in Baghdad (1963): Iraq clearly was very strongly under the influence of the Soviets. And I think that we decided that something should be done. NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: The storied city of Baghdad, capital of Iraq, has been the scene once more of bloody revolt that has seated a new government- NARRATOR: With CIA help, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party seized power in 1963. The CIA provided lists of suspected communists for Ba'ath Party hit squads, who liquidated at least 800 people. Saddam Hussein rushed home to join in as a interrogator, torturer and killer. He made himself indispensable to the party leader, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a distant uncle. After Bakr became president in 1968, he made his 31-year-old protege vice president. A rising star in a rabidly anti-communist party, Saddam once led some visitors into his private library. They were shocked to see shelf after shelf devoted to Saddam's role model, Joseph Stalin. MAHKMOUD OTHMAN, Kurdish Negotiator: When we went in, actually, and we saw those books, I was amazed, you see. Saddam Hussein models himself after Stalin more than any other man in history, consciously and very, very deliberately. NARRATOR: With Stalin's methods, Saddam believed he could control and modernize Iraq. TARIQ AZIZ, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister: Saddam Hussein is a patient man. He served under the presidency of Al-Bakr very, very faithfully and honestly. But then President Al-Bakr, you see, became older and older. In July, 1979, he staged a palace coup and named himself president. Adnan Hamdani had been Saddam's close friend for 20 years. AHMAD CHALABI, Iraqi Opposition Leader: And this drama, where you either get a reprieve from the life-giver or you get a finger by the devil, who would then- and the thugs would come, and they would beat this man up and take him away to be executed. The whole thing was bizarre, but very characteristically Saddam. NARRATOR: After sending some of his closest friends to their deaths, Saddam wept. Saddam wanted the elite to know what kind of man was now ruling Iraq. Secure at home, Saddam was ready to step onto the world stage. There he persuaded Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to give him military aid. TARIQ AZIZ: We were friends with the Soviet Union, and we wanted to be friends with the Soviet Union. But we didn't want to be a part of the Soviet bloc, and we kept our independence very, very carefully and very, very sharply. Saddam was manipulating the rivalry between the superpowers so that he could turn Iraq into the Arab world's most advanced and modern nation. TARIQ AZIZ: You know, at that period development was our main obsession. NARRATOR: The Soviets applauded Saddam when he nationalized Iraq's oil industry. They were astonished when he used the oil money to attract American companies into Iraq. JAMES CHRITCHFIELD, Former CIA Near East Division Chief: We were obviously impressed that the Iraqis were greatly ahead of the rest of the Arab world, and so, of course, we thought that Saddam Hussein might be brought along in that sense. NARRATOR: On Saddam's orders, 5 percent of Iraq's oil income was siphoned into Swiss bank accounts. Throughout the '70s and '80s, Saddam used the money to buy we...
|
http://csua.com/feed/