Ramadan and Me

On two occasions I had the chance to meet former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, who was executed by the Iraqi government on Tuesday. The first time was in the First Class section of an Air France flight, the second time during an Iraqi trade mission in Cairo. Generally Saddam and senior Iraqi leaders did not meet journalists, so I leapt at the chance to ask a question or two. He was a short man, looked tired and showed no friendliness toward me.

The encounters took place just before and after President Bush's election in 2000. Thus, I asked him whether he was concerned that the son of the first President Bush, who had gone to war against Saddam in 1991, was on the verge of leading the United States. Both times Ramadan's reply was more or less the same: "Neither Bush nor Gore concern us. Both are controlled by the Zionist lobby in America." He then offered this: "America has become the most hated administration in the world. The rulers may be on friendly terms with the U.S. government, but the people are against it." He asked me whether the embargo on Iraq served the interests of the American people. "I don't think so," he said. Turns out that Bush would decide a year or so later that an invasion to overthrow Saddam was better than an embargo against all Iraqis.

At the time I met Ramadan, Saddam's regime was actually beginning to feel more confident about the future. Ramadan was in Cairo to sign a Free Trade Agreement with Egypt, one of numerous signs that the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq were beginning to crack. During his visit to Cairo, I attended a lunch at the airport Sheraton hotel in his honor, in which several very prominent Egyptians, including a well-known actor who had visited Saddam in Baghdad, stood up and sang his praises. I don't know whether Ramadan had actually given Bush 43 much thought at that point. Neither of us knew that 9/11, which would provide the impetus for Bush's invasion of Iraq, was less than a year away. (Unless, of course, you believe that Saddam and Ramadan planned 9/11.)

The reports out of Baghdad today say that Ramadan was terrified upon being led to the gallows for the killings of 148 Iraqi Shiites in the village of Dujail in 1982. More than most people, perhaps, he would have understood the terror of facing an executioner. As one of Saddam's most-trusted, long-time associates, he served as Saddam's henchman. On one occasion he presided over a special court in 1970 that handed out sentences of immediate execution to 42 Iraqis suspected of involvement in a coup plot against the Baath Party regime which Saddam then served as a top leader. A more chilling case occurred five days after Saddam was formally inaugurated as president in 1979. In a display of macabre political theater, Ramadan announced at a Baath conference that the regime had uncovered another coup plot, this time involving senior Baath officials present at the conference. Ramadan then handed the microphone over to Saddam, who proceeded to read out the name of 22 Baath comrades who were led from the room and shot. On their way out, they were forced to chant the Baath slogan: "Unity! Freedom! Socialism!"

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo