Sunday, November 12, 2006

Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri



Al-Quds al-Arabi publishes a summary of a statement by Baath resistance leader Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri denouncing the recent AP-originated story about laying down their arms, and attributing it to the occuption's disinformation campaign. Al-Duri writes: "Let the dogs of Rome (meaning the empire), and before them the Safavid dogs of Persia know, crouched in their Green Zone fortress, that the coming days will be darker for them than a moonless night..." which is his way of saying they haven't laid down their arms. Moreover, Al-Duri goes out of his way to deny that there are any contacts at all between the Baath resistance and the Americans, in Amman or anywhere else. And he says there won't be until the conditions that were originally laid down have been met (timetable for withdrawal, restoration of the Baath, and so on). Which suggests that at least from the Baath point of view, any contacts there may have been in the past have not led to any continuing contacts.

Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri (born July 1, 1942) was an Iraqi military commander and was vice-president and deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council until the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. [1][2][3]

His family hails from the region around Tikrit, where his father worked as an ice seller. At the time of the invasion, Al-Douri, along with President Saddam Hussein and Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, were the three surviving plotters who brought the Ba'ath Party to power in a coup in 1968. [3]Following the coup, he continued to retain a prominent position in the Ba'ath regime. This was aided by the fact that Al-Douri came from the same clan area as Saddam and had not disposed of a power base; thus he did not pose a threat to Saddam's ambitions.

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