“Butcher of Basra” Talks Out

Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, once known at the “Butcher of Basra” spoke with Ryan Mauro of WorldThreats.com and said that Iraq worked with Al Qaeda and the weapons of mass destruction are in Syria.

Tikriti is a former general under Saddam Hussein who defected to the United States prior to the first Gulf War in 1991. Tikriti says that Iraq provided intelligence, weapons and financing for Al Qaeda. He also said that Iraq and Syria had an agreement to hide each others weapons in the event that something, like the invasion of Iraq, were to happen.

Just last month, Saddam Hussein’s #2 Air Force man, Georges Sada, said that the weapons were moved to Syria on converted Beoing commercial jets. Sada said 56 flights were conducted during a time when Iraq was airlifting support to Syria in relief of a dam break in 2002.

Tikriti claims that in the beginning, Hussein and Al Qaeda leaders could not reach an agreement because each had differing plans for setting up Islamic regimes. Hussein wanted a secular Arab nationalist regime while Al Qaeda was attempting to establish an Islamic empire. They finally worked out their differences realizing that either way they both had the same long term objectives.

Tikriti says he has maintained many good contacts in Iraq and in the Middle East region and they also confirm the WMDs are in Syria.

I still to this day, have never understood why the Bush administration and the rest of the intelligence community in the U.S. gave up on the WMDs and now claim they were wrong. Making this claim was a huge victory for Saddam loyalists because their entire objective was to embarass Bush about his claims of WMDs. Of course proving the existence of WMDs in Syria is going to be difficult.

Tom Remington