So some general who was, until about three months ago, in charge of Iraq’s mobile Scud missiles, has turned up dead.
Gen Muhammad Sa’id al-Darraj, who was in charge of Iraq’s mobile Scud missiles until three months ago, died 24 hours after talks with Saddam’s officials, according to Arab newspaper reports. The officials wanted to discuss how the general would conceal his knowledge if he were called for interview by the UN.
The London-based Al-Zaman newspaper said that Gen al-Darraj told “indignant” relatives shortly before he died that he had been slipped a poisoned drink during the meeting at one of Saddam’s presidential palaces.
So, was the late General killed by Iraqi intelligence, trying to keep him from blabbing damaging info to UN inspectors, et al?
Or was he done in by western intelligence as a provocation, to make people think that Iraq has something to hide?
The latter idea would work, of course, because the Iraqi regime has shown itself willing to kill anyone it considers a threat.
But the latter idea is only credible because we know that intelligence operations sometimes work that way.
Heck, we haven’t seen the body, have we? Maybe the General has been spirited away and is being interrogated, while the body of a double, burned and damaged beyond easy recognition, was left in his place.
But spirited away by whom?
Heck, maybe the story is a hoax by the Telegraph. Or by the “Arab newspaper” it quotes.
Who do you trust? And what do you do when you don’t know?