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| 注册日期：2002-04-15 |
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6月21日阅读,纽约时报~
Searching for Saddam
Iraqi people still guessing the whereabouts of Hussein
By Tina Susman
Staff Correspondent
June 21, 2003
Baghdad, Iraq -- The arrest of Saddam Hussein's top aide, as he hid in the home of an Iraqi family too polite to turn him away, has revved up interest in a question that seemed to have fallen by the wayside in recent weeks: Where is Hussein?
Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, arrested Tuesday in Tikrit, was Hussein's most trusted companion after his two sons and was rarely far from the president's side.
"We couldn't tell him to leave our house," Kafi Awad told The Associated Press after soldiers raided her home, where al-Tikriti had stayed since a friend brought him there on Sunday. "We are Arabs. We always respect visitors to our house."
U.S. officials hope al-Tikriti will reveal if Hussein survived the war and, if so, where he is hiding. Until a few weeks ago, they professed to not being overly concerned with his whereabouts, reasoning that he was firmly out of power and they had more pressing concerns, like creating a new government in Iraq. A spate of attacks on U.S. forces, which have killed 16 Americans since May 1, seems to have changed that.
"I'd much prefer we had clear evidence of Saddam being dead, or that we had captured him alive," the chief U.S. administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, said Tuesday at a press briefing. Having either a corpse or the man in custody would reassure Iraqis who might be afraid to cooperate with coalition forces for fear Hussein will resurface and come after them, Bremer said.
Iraqis themselves are as divided on the "Where is Saddam?" issue as they are united in their complaints about crime, traffic and power shortages in post-war Iraq, and their speculation as to his whereabouts reflects both their suspicions about the U.S. invasion and their venom toward the man it toppled.
"Saddam is working in a butcher shop ... because he can't kill people anymore, so now he's just killing animals," one man told The Iraqi Witness, a newspaper that blared on its front page one day earlier this month: "Where is Saddam? The ANSWER is on page 5!!!"
There were nine answers, actually, from nine people with guesses ranging from Israel to Russia to "an Australian island."
"Saddam is working in the power station, and that's why the electricity is going off and on without any reason," suggested one man. Another insisted he was driving a taxi in Baghdad. "My cousin saw him," he added, as if that was proof enough. One respondent said he must be in Baghdad "because no other place will accept him."
A quick polling of Iraqis produced a variety of strange theories on Hussein's whereabouts. One of the more surprising came from Wahab Ahmed Al-Shemary, security chief at a hospital in a middle-class Baghdad neighborhood. He also claimed to know where Osama bin Laden is hiding.
Both are in Washington, he said decisively, slapping his hand down on a desk for emphasis, "because he's an old American agent, just like bin Laden."
Al-Shemary insisted the proof was in the U.S. government's backing of both men in the 1980s, when Hussein was at war against Iran and bin Laden was fighting Soviet rule of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, he said, Hussein was committing human rights abuses at home.
"For America to have sat quietly during all those years and done nothing about him, that really convinces me he is an agent," Al-Shemary said, adding that he thinks the U.S. government spirited Hussein to safety before it bombed Iraq as part of a scheme to seize its oil.
His colleague, Ahmed Hashim, was not so circumspect. "I hope he's in hell now," he said.
At a boys school nearby, the head mistress, Ibtisam Rasheed, wouldn't guess where Hussein might be. "I think he must be out of the country, though, because with all these changes that have happened here, how could he stand to stay?"
Mohammed Abdul Kareem seemed sure Hussein has been dead since long before the war. Rumors circulated for years that the president had cancer, and his swollen face and shrinking body were evidence of that, said Kareem, an antiques dealer. The Hussein who appeared on television during the war was too robust to be the real thing, he said, echoing suspicions voiced by some U.S. officials that body doubles were at work.
"Before the war we'd see him and he'd be slim. Then, sometimes we'd see him and his belly would be like that," Kareem said, sticking out his gut and patting it like a beach ball.
Despite the glee with which they speculate about Hussein, Iraqis do not seem overly concerned with his fate, perhaps because they're too busy figuring out how to live in an occupied country with an uncertain future. Coalition officials, though, figure if anyone can lead them to Hussein, it should be al-Tikriti, who was No. 4 on the list of the 55-most wanted, behind Hussein and his sons.
And no matter how they find Hussein, Bremer is convinced they eventually will. "We will get him, sooner or later, if he's alive."
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long arm of coincidence here~
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2003-06-21 16:52:43
