Would I have done the same ... if I had been born in Iraq?

We all know that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and very evil person. But what if I, Mediawingnuts, had been born in Iraq and worked hard so as to become Saddam's foreign minister as a Roman Catholic? I was a Roman Catholic early in my life and know that I was trained in my religion to obey authority and indeed, was taught to "love" Pope Pius whom we now know supported both Hitler and Mussolini during the runup to World War II. In fact, I belonged to the only parish in America (or so I was told), St. Scholastica, that was directly under the Vatican and not under the bishop in Detroit, Michigan where I lived.

Now, consider Tariq Aziz (upper left) who was a very diplomatic and careful foreign minister whom we all became used to seeing on television. He too was a Roman Catholic (not a separate sect of Catholicism even) and was caught in the middle, so to speak, between the tyrant, Saddam, and persons like us whom he addressed regularly on television. He supported the regime in Iraq and yes, it was murdering its own citizens -- even during the twelve years that we had it "contained," before the invasion of 2003, although not to the extent that our "puppet" Shiite militias are murdering civilians today -- at least not after we put his country under complete containment (no-fly zones in the north and south, sanctions,inspections, etc.) after 1991.

At the same time, he (like his boss, Saddam) feared and refused to cooperate in the least with the al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, and was devastated (his words -- which might be self-serving, I admit) by the attacks against America on 9/11. In the time since, he has been under detention (below) wearing the familiar orange jumpsuit prison garb that we supply.

The two questions I ask are:

1. In his position -- were I unlucky enough to have been born and raised as a Roman Catholic Iraqi -- would I have done differently than he did?

and

2. How should we deal with him now?

Tough questions for me to even contemplate, less answer.


Tariq Aziz today