Free Republic

BAGHDAD As Ayad Allawi recounts the story of how he was nearly hacked to death by Saddam Hussein's agents 26 years ago, he slips out of his earnest role as a member of the Iraqi Governing Council and into a narrative of flickering images and half-heard noises. Listen to his account and you begin to understand why the struggle to create a new Iraq is so brutal and frustrating. The attack came about 3 o'clock on the morning of Feb. 4, 1978. Allawi was asleep in bed with his wife at his home in Surrey, outside London. He was awakened...

WASHINGTON — On Saturday night, I stuffed myself on lamb chops and potato pancakes at a holiday party at the home of Don and Joyce Rumsfeld. Along with other media bigfeet, I chatted up Rummy and C.I.A. chief George Tenet, both of whom were in on the secret of the capture of Saddam a few hours before. Neither man even hinted at a thing. So much for being a Washington Insider. After the news broke Sunday morning, I asked a source in Iraq to speak to members of the Governing Council who had spent a half-hour with the prisoner after...

LONDON, DECEMBER 14: The mastermind of the September 2001 attacks in the US, Mohammad Atta, was trained in Baghdad by a Palestinian terrorist at the instance of deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, a media report said today. Atta, who was trained by Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, visited Baghdad just weeks before the terror attack, The Sunday Telegraph reported. The details of Atta’s visit are contained in a secret memo, written to Hussein by the former head of Iraqi intelligence service Tahir Jalil Habbush Al-Tikriti, it said. The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained by the daily is...