For more than fifteen years, Saman Abdul Majeed served as President Saddam Hussein\u2019s personal interpreter for English and French, as well as the head of the presidential press office. He also served Uday, the president\u2019s eldest son. These roles granted him access to approximately one hundred meetings held at the presidential palace or the president\u2019s private residence in Tikrit.
\nHe was, therefore, a witness to both formal and informal conversations involving politicians\u2014such as Jean-Pierre Chev\u00e8nement, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and Yevgeny Primakov\u2014journalists\u2014including Christine Ockrent, Patrick Poivre d\u2019Arvor, and Dan Rather\u2014and diplomats arriving from Paris, the Vatican, the Kremlin, and the White House.
\nSaman Abdul Majeed remained in President Saddam\u2019s service until the fall of Baghdad, making him a key insider who witnessed the collapse of the regime and the disarray of its loyalists as they found themselves lost, with every door closed to them. His account, rich in secrets from behind the scenes of the Iraqi dictatorship, offers the reader a deeper understanding of the character of President Saddam Hussein.
\nFurthermore, he provides answers to many long-standing mysteries: whether President Saddam had one or several body doubles; the personal ties certain Western figures maintained with Baghdad; Iraq\u2019s financial support for various Third World leaders; the secret mediation by an envoy of Bill Clinton; the private dialogue with Kofi Annan; and the eventual rift with France.
\n*Saddam\u2019s Years* stands as a unique document chronicling an era defined by political maneuvering and crises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A documentary account that reveals the inner workings of governance in Iraq during the era of Saddam Hussein, exploring the secrets of life inside the presidential palace and the nature of political and diplomatic relations\u2014all the way up to the fall of Baghdad\u2014as witnessed by an individual close to the regime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":33669,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_cat":[839,832,854],"product_tag":[1072,1084,1343],"class_list":["post-33671","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","product_cat-history-and-geography","product_cat-politics","product_cat-biography-and-memoirs","product_tag-history","product_tag-politics","product_tag-thought","pa_book-author-saman-abdul-majeed","first","onbackorder","sale","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/33671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=33671"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=33671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}