Tony Benn: War will only strengthen Saddam's position among his people
Iraqis rally round Saddam
By Andrew Cawthorne
LONDON (Reuters) - Iraqis are stoical in the face of potential war and will rally round Saddam Hussein if bombs start falling, according to radical politician and peace activist Tony Benn who conducted a rare interview with the Iraqi leader.
"They may not want Saddam but at the moment there's no hope whatsoever of democracy while you kill their people and threaten to obliterate the country," veteran leftwinger Benn, 77, told Reuters on Wednesday after his weekend visit to Iraq.
Calling Western sanctions "weapons of mass destruction" that had already killed more than one million Iraqis "in a deliberate policy of starvation," Benn said military action would strengthen Saddam's position among his people.
"If you bomb them -- as we have done now for five years almost every night north and south -- people are going to rally round the leader just as people did in Britain in 1940," he said, referring to support across the political spectrum for Winston Churchill during World War Two.
Washington and London flatly disagree with that interpretation, saying Iraqis despise and fear Saddam and would rise against him given half a chance.
Benn said his short visit to Baghdad -- during which he recorded an interview with Saddam that was broadcast here on Tuesday -- had shown him Iraqis were calm despite the buildup of British and U.S. forces on their doorstep.
"Iraqis as a whole are quite self-confident. They have a civilisation that goes back 7,000 years and they regard the British and the Americans not exactly as barbarians because they like Britain very much, but as not very experienced," he said.
"They keep talking about when the Mongols arrived in 600 AD...they have absorbed invasions over many centuries. So there is a certain cultural confidence faced with a massive air attack which is being planned, which will destroy Baghdad, kill maybe up to 400,000 or 500,000 people.
"They say, well that's it, that's Fate, that's Allah."
Benn, a prominent figure in the anti-war movement, said he was moved by imagining the destruction coming to Iraq if U.S. President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair carry out their threats of military strikes to disarm Saddam.
"The saddest thing of the visit was to see the children in the street and to think that many of them may be dead soon because of the bombs sent by Mr. Blair," Benn said, recalling his own childhood experience of German Nazi bombing of London.
The politician was heavily criticised by some quarters for his interview with Saddam.
The Sun called it "fawning" and "stomach-churning propaganda" for "the Butcher of Baghdad" while Blair quipped that one of the country's star interviewers, Jeremy Paxman, had nothing to fear from Benn's technique.
Saddam used the interview to deny Iraq had banned weapons or links with the al Qaeda network headed by Osama bin Laden. "If I went to see Bush, would I be a stooge of Bush?" Benn argued. "I tried to get an interview with Blair, but he wouldn't see me."
Benn said he was neither a supporter of Saddam nor of war.
"I take the same view as the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela. I don't feel lonely in supporting the view they're taking."
He accused London and Washington of deciding on war six months ago and fabricating a link between Saddam and al Qaeda. "I tell you who knows more about al Qaeda than anyone else, the Americans. After all, they funded Osama bin Laden, they sent him to Afghanistan as a terrorist to get rid of the Russians."
Start Date: 2003-02-05 00:00:00-05
End Date: 2003-03-07 00:00:00-05
Created By: Yvonne Woods