Saddam Wanted Out

Apparently Saddam has negotiated his exile out of Iraq prior to our invasion but the plan was shot down by the Arab League: (h/t Daily Scorecard)

Deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had secretly accepted a last-minute plan to go into exile to avert the 2003 Iraq war, but Arab leaders shot the proposal down, Al Arabiya television reported today.

UAE President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan made the proposal for Saddam to go into exile at an emergency Arab summit just weeks before the US-led war began in March 2003.
But the 22-member Arab League, led by Secretary-General Amr Moussa, refused to consider the initiative.

“We had got the final agreement from the different parties, the main players in the world and the person concerned ? Saddam Hussein ? within 24 hours,” Mohammed bin Zayed, deputy head of the UAE armed forces and crown prince of Abu Dhabi, told the UAE-based channel in a documentary.

“So we were coming to put facts on the table, and there would have been results had it been discussed,” he said.

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak says in the documentary that the US had signalled its support for the proposal.

The documentary says the Iraqi delegation at the summit in Egypt had been unaware of Saddam’s “secret consent” to the plan, which Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri dismissed as “silly”.

It was not clear why Arab opposition alone scuppered the arrangements, which Al Arabiya said would have seen Saddam go into UAE exile with a promise of protection from legal action.

Is this any surprise given the countries that belong to the League such as Lebanon, Sudan, Yemen, Comoros, Mautitania, Syria, Palestine, & Tunisia. All dictatorships. They believed they evil satan could be beaten obviously.

Ed Morrissey points us to the League’s statement shortly after our invasion:

Amr Moussa, the league’s secretary general, said: “I salute the Iraqis and wish them victory.”
Moussa, Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmood Hamood and others at the meeting say the war is an example of renewed Western imperialism.

They say the war is part of a long-term plan is to change the Middle East map and remove national leaders such as Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

They must have believed we would cut and run like Clinton did in Somalia, it’s the only way to explain it.

They must have believed we would cut and run like Clinton did in Somalia, it’s the only way to explain it.

Curt

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