PA daily op-ed mourns death of Saddam’s deputy, praising him for fighting US soldiers “to the end”
Op-ed by Hafez Al-Barghouti, regular columnist for Al-Hayat Al-Jadida
“The killing of [Iraqi military commander and Saddam Hussein's former deputy] Izaat al-Douri with a non-American bullet completed the Americans’ list of wanted persons to be assassinated from among the Ba’ath party leaders, a set of playing cards of which Al-Douri was the sixth. Al-Douri is the only Ba’ath movement leader who fought to the end and opposed the Americans and [former Prime Minister of Iraq Nour] Al-Maliki’s Iranian regime… Al-Douri is the only brave one who has fought to the end and has fallen in the battlefield, which he will get credit for, and which will be written in his history, [the history] of an Arab-Iraqi who refused to surrender and chose to resist to the very end, regardless of his past and his role in the conquest of Kuwait. Izaat Ibrahim Al-Douri, together with [Saddam Hussein’s grandson] Mustafa Qusay Saddam, are the only ones who resisted the occupation to the end, for the youth Mustafa, who was then 14, fought with a sniper rifle even after his father and his uncle Uday had died, and killed 13 American soldiers in Mosul. We do not know the details of Al-Douri’s death, but undoubtedly, he resisted to the end.”
“The killing of [Iraqi military commander and Saddam Hussein's former deputy] Izaat al-Douri with a non-American bullet completed the Americans’ list of wanted persons to be assassinated from among the Ba’ath party leaders, a set of playing cards of which Al-Douri was the sixth. Al-Douri is the only Ba’ath movement leader who fought to the end and opposed the Americans and [former Prime Minister of Iraq Nour] Al-Maliki’s Iranian regime… Al-Douri is the only brave one who has fought to the end and has fallen in the battlefield, which he will get credit for, and which will be written in his history, [the history] of an Arab-Iraqi who refused to surrender and chose to resist to the very end, regardless of his past and his role in the conquest of Kuwait. Izaat Ibrahim Al-Douri, together with [Saddam Hussein’s grandson] Mustafa Qusay Saddam, are the only ones who resisted the occupation to the end, for the youth Mustafa, who was then 14, fought with a sniper rifle even after his father and his uncle Uday had died, and killed 13 American soldiers in Mosul. We do not know the details of Al-Douri’s death, but undoubtedly, he resisted to the end.”