![]() As predicted, troops were most vulnerable when in transit, especially from "the people of the countryside," thanks to improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Sahaf wasn't just right about the fact that Iraqis would reject American invasion. Attacks by members of the resistance will only go up." Therefore, these foreigners, wherever they go or travel, they will be rained down with bullets from everyone. "The simple fact is this: they are foreigners inside a country which has rejected them. He was also right about how that rejection would manifest itself. He wasn't just right that Iraqis would reject the American invasion. The grassroots of the Ba'ath Party will be busy attacking them. "Are they not going to find themselves besieged by the people of the countryside which they have to cross in order to reach Baghdad? Civilians will be busy. We are in our country, among our kith and kin.Faltering forces of infidels cannot just enter a country of 26 million people and lay besiege to them! They are the ones who will find themselves under siege." " How can you lay siege to a whole country?. What Adelman didn't realize-and Sahaf did-was that occupation, not invasion, would be the bitter pill. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time (2) they've become much weaker (3) we've become much stronger and (4) now we're playing for keeps." Wars are serious, and this guy was adorable.Īdelman was right that beating Hussein's military power would be easy-ish, though it took longer than George Bush Sr.'s 100-hour incursion in 1991. In 2002, Kenneth Adelman, a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, wrote in the Washington Post, "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. They do not know in what mud they are wading." One day, they start facing bitter facts." "They are trying to say that the Iraqi is easy to capture, in order to deceive the world that it is a picnic. A decade of war was based on things that had never taken place. Nor did Iraq have 18 mobile laboratories for making anthrax and botulism, as Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed before the United Nations in February 2003, nor had Saddam Hussein recently tried to buy large quantities of uranium from Africa, as President Bush asserted in his 2003 State of the Union address. " I assure you that those villains will recognize, will discover in appropriate time in the future how stupid they are and how they are pretending things which have never taken place."Īs a 2012 CIA study concluded definitively, Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction. "The crook Rumsfeld said yesterday that they are hunting mass destruction weapons in Baghdad and Tikrit, and yesterday I replied to that cheap lie." But when read beside the eventual cost of America's decade in Iraq, "Baghdad Bob" isn't so funny anymore. Sahaf's nickname, "Baghdad Bob," now denotes someone who confidently declares what everyone else can see is false-someone so wrong, it's funny. Sahaf had bad information, sure, but several of his more ludicrous predictions have since come true-some in the ways he meant, and, more chillingly, some in ways no one (else) could have foreseen. "My information was correct, but my interpretations were not," he explained.īut in retrospect, the opposite seems truer. He surfaced in Abu Dhabi in July of 2003, gave a couple of interviews, and settled into obscurity. Then he surrendered to American forces, was interrogated and promptly released, suggesting a lowly spot on the Ba'ath party totem pole. Sahaf stuck to his post-and his story-until the day before Baghdad fell. But in retrospect, the opposite seems truer. ![]() They are suffering from the shock and awe, okay?" "My information was correct, but my interpretations were not," he explained. Even if you opposed the Iraq invasion, you had to admit it's hard to respect a government whose official mouthpiece told a reporter, "Shock and awe? It seems that we are the awe on them. Wars are serious, and this guy was adorable. ![]() Besides adding levity to news cycles otherwise filled with fuzzy green explosions, Sahaf represented everything that made Iraq's invasion seem not quite like a real war. Sahaf became the subject of T-shirts, mugs, adoring websites, a pop song, and an action figure. "Someone accused us of hiring him and putting him there. Bush said of Sahaf, admitting that he occasionally interrupted meetings to watch Sahaf's briefings. Sporting a kicky black beret and delightfully bombastic lexicon, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf appeared on TV daily to predict American failure and deny the Baghdad invasion-sometimes even as U.S. In March of 2003, Saddam's Minister of Information was everybody's favorite inadvertent comedian. Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf speaks during news conference in Baghdad on March 24, 2003.
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