Tariq Aziz Speaks

It took 7 years (and a miraculous recovery!) but somebody in the lefty media finally got an interview with Tariq Aziz. And he didn't disappoint...

"I was encouraged when [Obama] was elected president, because I thought he was going to correct some of the mistakes of Bush. But Obama is a hypocrite. He is leaving Iraq to the wolves."

Ouch. But after the invasion Aziz once told reporters:

"When we succeed in deterring them, when we succeed in inflicting too many losses on them, and in the end they will find themselves obliged to stop and withdraw. That's a great victory."

"We can end this war when the invaders withdraw totally and unconditionally from the Iraqi territory. Nothing less.

And now he begs Obama to stay? OK then. BTW, this..

Aziz says the events of 9/11 were shocking to him and Saddam. "We were against that at the time, but we were not speaking to the American government. Saddam Hussein called me and said he would like me to write a letter to Ramsey [Clark, a former US attorney general] and say that we condemn the attack. I did that."

..makes no real sense. Even Arafat knew it wasn't good form to apologize to a guy like Ramsey Clark and call it an apology to America. That was an in-your-eye statement. His two open letters to the American people were basically more apt, echoing many of the same beefs expressed by bin Laden, Michael Moore, Reverend Wright and Imam Rauf.

It was Aziz who once tried to bribe UN weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus into showing Iraq as disarmed. Quite the elaborate ruse. And why did Saddam kill his own son-in-law for defecting to Jordan and admitting they had weapons if the goal was to make people believe they had weapons? The defecting makes sense, but the killing? Again, a fairly complex acting job, and if nothing else indicative of a barbaric ruthlessness.

Bottom line, Aziz is a professional liar. It's one of the reasons Bush and Blair and others never took their word on anything. After all--they have now admitted to lying about WMDs, both of having them and not.