UAE official: Hussein was open to exile

[TomClash]

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (CNN) -- Days before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein agreed in principle to accept an offer of exile from the United Arab Emirates, but the deal fell through, a UAE government senior official told CNN.

The reported offer came before an emergency Arab League meeting in Egypt in discussions between UAE officials and a Hussein aide, said the senior official, who was then a member of the UAE delegation to the Arab League.

The Iraqi president issued conditions, and the proposal went nowhere, the UAE official said.

The Hussein aide, Abed Hmoud, is now in jail in Iraq.

The UAE official's account was repeated by another source who attended the Arab League summit and, separately, by a senior UAE government official. (Watch: Exile plan faltered -- 2:58)

At the time, President Bush was calling for regime change in Iraq.

Hussein wanted guarantees and international assurances, including a resolution by the Arab League giving its approval for his exile, the senior official said.


http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/11/02/saddam.exile/index.html

[Tesla]

1. So why have 2035 Troops and HUNDRED THOUSAND Iraqi Women and Children die?

If he was going to go anyway????

I mean, he could have just left and no WAR!!!

Is this BIGGER than KKKARL?????

[TomClash]

2. Exactly

"Saddam the Dictator" "Weapons of Mass Destructon" "Freedom and Democracy"

All Bushit.

O-I-L and Money.

I wonder how much cash has been kicked back to this neo-con crowd.

$1 billion? $10 billion? I'll bet it's more.

[xchrom]

4. we'll never know.

but indeed this war was never about hussein or wmd's.

if only america was the kind of place that thought more about anything else besides it's ability to consume..

[TomClash]

6. Probably not.

But note that illicit drug smuggling has risen dramatically since the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The two wars have now cost over a quarter of a trillion dollars.

Oil prices have risen from $25 per barrel in March of 2002, before the war was a certainty, to $60 per barrel today.

Defense spending has skyrocketed from about $260 billion, which was Clinton's last budget, to $420 billion today, NOT COUNTING spending for "Homeland Security," CIA and the two Wars.

Oil, defense, insurance, banking and Wall Street profits are all up substantially.

Who benefits?

[Yupster]

7. Yes he could have just left

But he didn't. He stayed.

In Bush's tv speech before the war he gave Saddam and his sons 48 hours to leave the country or the war would begin.

About five different countries stepped up and offered their place as a haven for him.

But he diden't leave. If he wanted to leave he would have left.

At the time I was on DU telling everyone to not worry. That there would be no war because at the last minute Saddam would go to Saudi Arabia and take the mansion next to Idi Amin's.

I didn't do too well on that prediction.

[NYC Liberal]

10. We would still be in the same boat!!

Sorry to "yell" but this is a lie that Repugs have perpetuated. If Saddam had left, all our troops on the Iraq-Kuwaiti border would have simply moved into Baghdad and taken over. Same situation. We went in and invaded without Saddam doing anything anyway and he was hiding out for 9 months.

Repugs want people to believe that "Oh well SADDAM could have prevented this whole thing!" Not true.

[amandabeech]

3. By all accounts, Saddam was much more interested in saving

his own skin than going down in a hail of bullets.

I remember reading something about it, but could not figure out why the idea just seemed to drop. Obviously, we weren't pushing it, but why did some Arab League members fail to show any enthusiasm and who were they? Could they have been so much under our sway?

Any leader who didn't push this deserves what he (and in the case of Condi)or she gets.

[ClintonTyree]

5. I remember talk of this at the time.........

and thought it was an excellent way to alleviate the situation. For whatever reason this never happened (U.S./Israeli pressure, the UAE not trying hard enough, bush's Oedipal hard-on for war at any cost...) and now thousands are dead because of it? This solution should have been pursued to the ends of the earth, but the beating of bush's war drums drowned out much logical and less drastic solutions. bush had his war hard-on and at that point nothing was going to stand in his way of liberating Iraq's oil.
Another piece of the pre-war plotting falls into place. I'm sure the bush administration wanted no part of this deal, they only wanted to flex their military muscle on a country that was ill prepared to fight back. They wanted their cake walk, the roses thrown at the feet of the conquering heroes, the complete admiration of all Iraqis greeting U.S. soldiers as liberators.....they wanted to finish the job bush's daddy had started but was much too smart to get entangled with. Baby bush was not that smart and the rest, as they say, is history.

[leesa]

8. Yup. And the Taliban offered to hand over OBL 3 times before we invaded

Afghanistan. THEIR condition was that Bush and Blair give them proof that OBL did the crime. They had no proof and Bush rejected the offers. Remember the infamous "white papers" Phony Tony promised us that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, blah, blah, blah. He never coughed em up.

[daleo]

9. Bush I wouldn't take yes for an answer (from Saddam)

Bush II, even more so.

Neo-cons/PNAC wanted war, and that was that.