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I'd like to nominate Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (aka Baghdad Bob) for honorary celebrity status. His level of denial and creative bending of the truth put him right up there with 'I was researching a role', 'I'm checked in for exhaustion', 'She said she was 18' and my favorite, 'we can't stay married because our work schedule keeps us apart'
From AOL/AP Newswire:
(April 8) - The television pictures of U.S. tanks in Baghdad seemed undeniable, but Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's spokesman denied them anyway - with his usual flair for insult.
''There is no presence of American infidels in the city of Baghdad,'' Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf asserted outside Baghdad's Palestine Hotel on Monday.
'The infidels are committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates of Baghdad,' he told reporters gathered on the roof of the Information Ministry. 'As our leader Saddam Hussein said, 'God is grilling their stomachs in hell.' '
Undeterred by the black smoke billowing behind him over central Baghdad, and the sound of fighting echoing around the capital, he declared the city was safe and protected.
Wearing his trademark green military uniform, with a pistol at the hip, he hurled abuse and insults. The American forces, he said, were 'sick in their minds.'
A day later, when the hotel came under U.S. tank fire, the Iraqi information minister had to admit to the journalists staying there that coalition forces were in the capital. But, smiling, he made it sound like it was all part of Iraq's plan:
''We blocked them inside the city. Their rear is blocked,'' he said in hurried remarks that were a departure from his daily news conference.
Sahhaf, 63, who kept a low profile before the war, has become an unlikely media star and a hero to many in the Arab world, at the same time as Western audiences gasp at his bravado.
Across the region, Arabs hoping for victory over the United States - hated for its support of Israel and portrayed as attacking Iraq only for its oil - embrace Sahhaf's version. And even when they can't believe what he is saying, they like the way he says it.
They get a kick out of the way he ridicules President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in daily news conferences, broadcast live. Some call it the ''al-Sahhaf show.''
Sahhaf has even introduced insults virtually unknown to the Arab public. His use, for example, of ''uluj,'' an obscure and particularly insulting term for ''infidel,'' sent viewers leafing through their dictionaries and calling TV stations for a definition.
His enemies are never just the Americans or the British. They are ''outlaws,'' ''war criminals,'' ''fools,'' ''stooges,'' an ''international gang of villains.''
Sahhaf has singled out Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, describing him as a ''crook'' and ''the most despicable creature.''
Sahhaf's face, clean-shaven in contrast to most Iraqi officials who sport Saddam-style mustaches, has become a TV fixture, along with his black beret and green Baath party uniform.
''American cruise Tomahawk missiles bomb Iraq, and al-Sahhaf missiles of words deafen the American and allied ears,'' read a headline in the Saudi-owned pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.
Viewers don't ''pause at what he (Sahaf) says as much as they are eager to listen to his funny words,'' wrote Faisal Salman, managing editor of the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir, in his daily column.
'I believe Sahaf exaggerates a little, but he needs to do that to reassure his people,' said Hazem, a 25-year-old security guard in Cairo. 'Of course he knows that he is talking to the American soldiers as well, so his words are part of the psychological war that's going on.'
Abdul-Aziz, a Saudi writer who would not give his last name, said: 'Sahaf is vulgar but he is a brave liar...If the rest of the Iraqi government or army were this brave, they would inflict many more losses on U.S. and British forces.'
The view is different in the United States and Britain.
'With regard to the information coming out of Baghdad, spin is all very well and to be expected but it has to keep links with reality,' said Rear Admiral Richard Cobbold, director of the Royal United Services Institute think-tank.
Some Arab commentators have dubbed Sahaf the ''Iraqi Goebbels,'' after Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's master propagandist.
Sahaf is no stranger to the media and its impact - and to Iraq's rough politics.
He was studying to be an English teacher when he got his start in politics in 1963 by joining a violent group led by Saddam that targeted opponents of the Baath party. After a 1963 coup, he revealed the whereabouts of his brother-in-law, an army general and the country's military prosecutor, who was then killed by Baath party militias. By handing over his relative, Sahaf proved his loyalty to the Baath party.
A Baathist regime was overthrown in another coup the same year, but the party came back five years later. Sahaf was put in charge of securing the radio and television stations and then put at the helm of both. He was known for his temper - even kicking TV and radio employees who displeased him.
Sahaf has been information minister since 2001. Before that, he was foreign minister, from 1993 to 2001. He also has served as Iraq's ambassador to India, Italy and the United Nations.
Although Sahaf has become the most prominent face of the regime of late, he does not have the political or military clout of Saddam's relatives and clansmen.
Sahaf is from Iraq's majority Shiite Muslim community, long dominated by Sunnis like Saddam. He has middle-class roots - the family name refers to his father's bookbinding craft - and comes from Hilla, south of Baghdad, not Saddam's Tikrit power base.
Still, it was Sahaf who delivered a recent message in Saddam's name calling for jihad, or holy war, and urging Iraqis to fight on.
Saddam also used Sahaf to deliver some of his more conciliatory messages. Late last year, Sahaf apologized in a statement in the president's name to the people of Kuwait for the 1990 Iraqi invasion. The statement, though, went on to criticize the Kuwaiti leadership for relying on American help.
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