Friday, June 13, 2003

Now that's a useful idiot.

Operation Iraqi Freedom prompted Jim Taylor, a retired journalist and author who has interviewed some of the most high-profile figures in the Arab world, to initiate a letter-writing campaign to help "save the life" of Aziz.

Taylor said he grew close to Aziz after discovering they shared the Catholic faith and worshipped at the same church in Baghdad.

"Tariq Aziz was called one of the world's greatest statesmen, and now he is one of the world's greatest war criminals," Taylor said. "And the same people who praised him now want to try and execute him in some kind of kangaroo court, which would be illegal and have no standing at the U.N. or the World Court."

Who called Aziz one of the "world's greatest statesmen"? Taylor? People said the same about Stalin and Hitler at some point. Should they not be villified and have faced trial of captured?

Taylor, 79, who has lived in Scottsdale for 22 years, worked as a publicist for Saddam's regime from 1982 to 1984 during the Iran-Iraq war. He is one of the few Americans with an inside view of the oil-rich nation whose fortunes and misfortunes have split world opinion.

Though most Americans will remember Saddam as a brutal tyrant, Taylor said he doesn't feel hatred for him because of how well he was treated in Baghdad.

"I will always remember him because he sent me to hear the lilting strains of Tales of the Vienna Woods and other waltzes while drinking champagne," Taylor said through a drawl evolved from his native Tennessee.

Other gifts such as an Iraqi headdress from Saddam, which sits on Taylor's couch like a decorative pillow, and an autographed portrait of the late King Hussein of Jordan, are scattered about his house.

Hey, he started two wars to capture land? He ran a police state and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis? Forget all that, he was nice to Taylor and that's what really counts, I guess.

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