posted on February 26, 2003 01:50:07 PM new
Saddam says he'd rather die than face exile
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein says he would rather die than leave his country and that he would not destroy its wealth by setting fire to its oil wells in the event of a U.S.-led invasion.
Saddam, in an interview with CBS' Dan Rather, dismissed any idea of going into exile to avoid war.
"We will die here. We will die in this country and we will maintain our honor -- the honor that is required ... in front of our people," Saddam said according to excerpts of the interview. CBS said the comments would air tonight on 60 Minutes II.
President Bush said last month that he would welcome exile for Saddam, and some Arab countries -- most notably Saudi Arabia -- have proposed offering Saddam exile to avert war.
Saddam also indicated he would not set fire to Iraq's oil fields or destroy its dams if there is a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi set fire to hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells as they were driven out of that country. It took months to extinguish the fires whose thick, black smoke created an environmental disaster.
"Iraq does not burn its wealth and it does not destroy its dams," Saddam says in the interview filmed Monday in Baghdad.
The Iraqi also said his country had never had any links to Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terror network. "I think that Mr. bin Laden himself has recently, in one of his speeches, given such an answer that we have no relation with him."
In a portion of the interview broadcast this morning, Saddam directly rejected such a connection.
"Iraq has no connection with Mr. Osama bin Laden."
Saddam also said he would obey any new Security Council resolution if he determined it did not violate Iraqi rights.
"If there are new resolutions that violate our dignity, our security, our independence, then it will be clear that we will stand by our principles," the Iraqi leader said.
In a part of the interview that CBS aired Tuesday, Saddam indicated he would not heed a U.N. demand to destroy Iraq's Al Samoud 2 missiles. He said his missiles didn't exceed ranges allowed by the United Nations.
But Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, insisted Tuesday that the government had not yet decided whether to destroy the Al Samoud 2s. "It's being studied," Aziz said.
"Readiness for the aggression is continuing ... but this doesn't mean that we should stop our political and diplomatic work," Aziz said. "We should continue with it, but we should also prepare ourselves for the battle."
U.N. inspectors visited a pit where Iraq says it destroyed biological weapons in 1991, and Iraq reported finding two R-400 aerial bombs that can be filled with biological or chemical agents at a disposal site. [b]In New York, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said one of the R-400 bombs was filled with "a liquid that appears to be biological."
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posted on February 27, 2003 11:33:26 AM new
Rather didn't need to shoot him. If we could have traced Rather to his whereabouts we could have put a smart bomb on him during the interview. Rather would be a collaterally dead broadcasting hero who saved allthe supposed millions of innocent civilians that are supposed to die if we invade Iraq.
