Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Saddam’s dismal future

Friday, March 21, 2003 | 9:21 a.m.

WHEN IN NORTHERN IRAQ HELPING THE KURDS hold their first free election 11 years ago, I took the time to listen, look and learn. The remains of a Saddam Hussein secret police station still had blood and scratches from fingernails on the stone walls. It was their interrogation room.

All the blood wasn't shed in the interrogation rooms. One lady thought I was a German and wanted me to take a message to her son who had escaped Saddam in 1982 and went to Frankfurt. After he left Iraq, his father was tortured and killed by the secret police. "They tied his feet and dragged him up and down the stone steps until his brains came out," the 70-year-old woman told me.

A conversation with one Kurd in line to vote reminded me that all of the torture didn't draw blood or show bruises. A man with sad eyes told me "on behalf of our people, we must all vote. Four of my children have been taken by Saddam. I don't know where they are." Almost 90 percent of the eligible Kurds voted, despite the threat from Saddam he would attack them. An 82-year-old man in tribal dress told me, "What can I say? I'm happy! I once had to vote for Saddam by force."

I noted that more women than men were standing in line to vote and learned that large numbers had been made widows by Saddam's army and secret police. The men stood in one line and the women in their own line as they waited, in some places for several hours, to vote.

After a few days with the Kurds, I wrote that something almost as big as the election was taking place in northern Iraq. All boxed up someplace nearby was the evidence needed to eventually connect Saddam Hussein to brutal atrocities against the human race. Pictures, videos and tons of documents had been ferreted out by Peter Galbraith from a U.S. Senate committee and Andrew Whitley of Middle East Watch. Then it was up to the U.S. military to get this vital material out of Iraq and into the hands of Western officials.

A couple of days later, in a column, I wrote about watching as four helicopters brought the evidence to Zakho. The following morning, as I crossed the border into Turkey, the same choppers were winging their way toward a U.S. base in that country. The prior evening, Whitley told me he was somewhat concerned about the safety of the documents because of political leaks letting Hussein know the documents were on their way out of his country. I smiled with satisfaction the next day because Whitley was aboard one of those choppers loaded with legal evidence needed to prosecute the Butcher of Baghdad.

Conveniently, Saddam's army and secret police kept very precise notes and even pictures of several murders. Someplace in our archives are these records which, if necessary, can be used to prosecute him and many of his secret police and military officers. Of course, all of that effort would be unnecessary if one of our snipers get him in their sights.

If Saddam is captured, the sense of the U.S. Senate was expressed in an amendment four years ago. The amendment sponsor was Nevada's senior Senator Harry Reid and called for the President and Secretary of State to -

So let's get it on.