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To: T L Comiskey who wrote (23516)	7/27/2003 1:31:43 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 89467

"Feet dont Fail me now" Exit...stage Left.... Mosul Iraqis vent anger at family of suspected informant on Saddam's sons 23 minutes ago Add Mideast - AFP to My Yahoo! MOSUL, Iraq (AFP) - Angry residents of this northern city warned Nawaf al-Zaidan, the tribal chief who owned the mansion where Uday and Qusay Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) died in a fierce battle, that revenge is on the way. AFP Photo "He's a traitor to his country and religion," said a shopkeeper across from Zaidan's gutted home, destroyed in the long but one-sided battle between Saddam Hussein's sons and US forces last Tuesday. And whether they loved Saddam's regime or not, many here view Zaidan, the suspected informant who tipped off the Americans, as a traitor for the sake of a 30 -million-dollar pricetag on Uday and Qusay's heads. "Nawaf and his son and the money he received will all end up in a grave," predicted Zaidan's old neighborhood shopkeeper on Sunday. The Americans will not say if Zaidan is the man who turned in Saddam's sons, but neither will they deny it. Asked Sunday about the fate of the informant, a top officer from the US Army's 101 Airborne Division in Mosul said: "We'll take care of our sources." And Zaidan could very well need protection. Ashraf Khalid, 23, a restaurant owner, expressed hatred for Zaidan and his family, including two brothers. "The informer is considered a killer. Iraqis feel in general the killer must be killed," Khalid said. Abdul Karim al-Yuzbaky, 53, a real estate broker, who sold Zaidan his home, all but assumes his one-time client sold out the ousted president's sons. "Nawaf and his family are our friends but his soul has been weakened. Thirty million dollars is tempting," he said. "The brothers had full trust in Nawaf and he betrayed them." And this, Yuzbaky forecast, promised a hard road ahead unless Zaidan was proven innocent or built a fortress around him wherever he goes with his alleged multi-million-dollar bounty. "Sure they are living in fear, but they are under the protection of the Americans. I don't think they will ever sleep in comfort. He is considered a traitor now," said Yuzbaky. "Sometimes, you want your name in history. Nawaf has entered history through the sewer," he said of his erstwhile friend. While he personally was against revenge killings, he expressed fears about Zaidan's extended family outside his two brothers and son, who are also thought to be in custody. "Nawaf has a supportive family, but they are in trouble now, God help them," Yuzbaky said. A local juvenile court justice, Qassam Mohammed Sulayman, 36, said he did not think there would be any revenge attacks. And Colonel Hussein Ali, the police chief for station five in Mosul, said the city "has been very calm" since the July 22 raid which eliminated Uday and Qusay, and he had no information on the potential for revenge killings. But another local in Mosul had a cautious warning. "The cousins of Uday and Qusay and Saddam are arranging to kill the family. Naturally, the family will be killed," the man, also a real estate broker, said on condition of anonymity. Even if they were not saddened that Saddam's sons were gone, many in Mosul felt it was their own personal business, not the Americans, to dole out justice. Most Iraqis wanted to deal with Saddam and his sons according to Iraqi principles, explained Mohammed Taher al-Abid Rabu, a member of the Mosul city council. Yet Rabu also sees Nawaf's shirking of his responsibilities as an Arab, particularly the sheltering of two Muslims seeking aid, as a prime reason why he was labeled a traitor in this city. "According to our Arab traditions and principles, he who seeks refuge must be protected."

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (23516)	7/27/2003 4:49:11 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Bush Chases Saddam, Ignores Real Threats _____________________ by Joe Conason 7/28/2003 edition of The New York Observer www2.observer.com For the past year, George W. Bush has faced a choice between a real nuclear crisis and a fake nuclear crisis. Unfortunately for the nation and the world, he chose wrongly—and his mistake has made solving the real crisis more difficult and dangerous. The phony crisis, as we now learn in greater detail with every passing news cycle, was Saddam Hussein’s alleged effort to develop nuclear weapons in Iraq. The President and the National Security Advisor, among others, told us that we faced the threat of a "mushroom cloud" over an American city if our military didn’t move swiftly to overthrow the Iraqi despot. The Vice President warned us that Saddam had already "reconstituted" his defunct nuclear program. Administration officials cited various bits of intelligence material to support these dire assertions—including Baghdad’s importation of machined aluminum tubes, satellite images of construction activity at former nuclear sites and documents concerning the importation of partially enriched uranium "yellowcake" from impoverished Niger in Africa. In his State of the Union address, Mr. Bush adduced this evidence as part of his brief for war. This propaganda campaign was quite effective. By last March, when our troops invaded Iraq, many Americans believed that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles that he was plotting to use against the United States. Since then, we have learned that the President’s "evidence" was cooked. The aluminum tubes weren’t for uranium enrichment. The construction had nothing to do with any nuclear program. The Niger documents were obvious forgeries. And the excuse for all this falsification is that the President and his aides, notably Condoleezza Rice, only skimmed the relevant reports provided to them by the C.I.A. and the State Department. That might be acceptable for a legacy student at Yale, but it isn’t quite good enough for an American President. Meanwhile, in North Korea, the real nuclear crisis has festered, with only fitful attention from the Bush administration. Kim Jong-Il has told us he is creating both uranium and plutonium weapons, and we have reason to know that the eccentric dictator isn’t bluffing. Yet when the President alluded to the dire Korean situation in his State of the Union address, it was only to justify his urge to invade Iraq. Mr. Bush declared that we "must learn the lessons of the Korean peninsula and not allow an even greater threat to rise up in Iraq." A greater threat? Apparently not, at least as far as our intelligence and inspection teams have determined to date. There certainly aren’t any nukes in Iraq; in fact, there aren’t any "weapons of mass destruction" that were ready for deployment, and it’s conceivable that there aren’t any at all. Pyongyang probably has one or two nuclear devices already, and may have the means to fire a bomb at a target as distant as the West Coast. As a longtime seller of missile technology, North Korea could also market its uranium, plutonium or finished bombs to our terrorist enemies. What has Mr. Bush done about this actual threat? He has threatened Mr. Kim with further international isolation, as if that would frighten the most isolated state on earth. He has hinted at the possibility of military action, as if we are willing to sacrifice 50,000 soldiers and a million residents of Seoul. He has insisted that he won’t submit to "blackmail," which is his response to North Korean demands for bilateral talks with the United States. He has importuned Russia and China for help, although those regimes are not eager to assist the unilateralists in the White House. By alienating Moscow and Beijing, the invasion of Iraq may have rendered the Korean problem more intractable. Despite their irritation with the White House, other states worried by Korean instability have tried to come up with an acceptable pretext for negotiations. If the United States won’t agree to bilateral negotiations, then everyone can pretend to hold multilateral discussions instead. Then, during the breaks, the North Korean and U.S. diplomats can meet and talk at the vending machines. Faced with a paranoid, proto-nuclear dictatorship, Mr. Bush has exacerbated the problem with loud rhetoric and dithering policy. Unable to decide whether to negotiate or to seek "regime change" in Pyongyang, his administration has done nothing useful to contain the Korean threat. The United States has no policy, no plan, no discernible purpose in its posture toward North Korea. What would we do for Pyongyang if its leaders decided to forswear nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in a verifiable agreement with its neighbors and the United States? And what are we prepared to do if Pyongyang refuses to negotiate a secure deal? Nobody knows, including the President himself. Or if he does know, he isn’t telling anyone. Earlier this month, the North Koreans announced that they had finished converting 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods into plutonium. If you feel safer because our troops are in Baghdad, you haven’t been paying attention. You may reach Joe Conason via email at: jconason@observer.com. Joe Conason is the author of The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton