Saddam

On July 16, 1979, Saddam Hussein, who had been the number two man in Iraqi politics for eleven years, [wanted] to shove aside his superior, the ailing President Ahmad Hasan al-Bakar, and have himself declared President. At the time of his takeover, Saddam was convinced that at least 5 of his closest friends and colleagues in the Iraqi leadership had some reservations about his succession.

So, on the eve of his ascension, he had one of them arrested---Muhyi Abd al-Husayn al-Muashhadi, the secretary-general of the Iraqi Baath Party. Al-Mashhadi was then apparently tortured into agreeing to make a confession that he was planning to topple Saddam with some help of some other members of the leadership.

Then, on July 22, with real theatrical flair, Saddam convened an extraordinary meeting of the Iraqi Baath Party Regional Congress in order to hear al-Mashadi's confession---live. As al-Mashadi would tell his story and mention the name of someone else in the leadership involved in the bogus plot, that person would have to stand, and then a guard would drag him from the chamber. Al-Mashadi just “happened” to mention as co-conspirators the four other members of Iraq's ruling Revolutionary Command Council---Mohammed Ayish, Mohammed Mahjub, Husayn al-Hamdani, and Ghanim Abd al-Jalil---who Saddam felt were not totally supportive of him. A videotape of the confessions was then distributed to Baath Party branches across Iraq, as well as to army units; a few bootleg copies even made their way to Kuwait and Beirut.

A Lebanese friend of mine saw the video and described it as follows:

“This guy would be reciting his confession and he would come to a person and say, `And then we went to see Mohammed to ask him to join the conspiracy.' And this Mohammed would have to stand. And you could see this guy crying, his knees shaking, and he could barely stay on his feet. And then this guy would say, `But he refused to help us,' and then this Mohammed would slump back into his chair, exhausted with relief, and they would move on to the next guy. I had nightmares about this video for months...”

From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman, pg 97-98.

21 August 1911

The picture of dissatisfaction of a street, where everyone is perpetually lifting his feet to escape from the place where he stands.

Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1900-1913