ALLAWI: (Arabic) The curfew will take effect at 6 oclock ... that's in half an hour ... after that, operations will commence targeting the terrorist elements.
V/O: Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister of Iraq, has just unleashed 20,000 Iraqi and US troops on Falluja.
ALLAWI: (Arabic) We will attack these criminals and arrest them, and to hell with those who get killed... be strong ...
TROOPS: Yes, President. God willing !! (troops sing)
V/O: Allawi has promised elections in January, and in the struggle to stabilize the country, he's shown he's prepared to be ruthless.
BAER: (18:37 - 18:46) Using extreme force against the population fits within his philosophy, or his understanding of Iraqi history ...(38:00 - 38:13) He's a pragmatist, in order to rule in Iraq, as the Americans have found out, or as the allies have found, you got to kill people, it's that simple ... he knew it, we know it now ...
AZAWI: (25:41 - 25:53) Iyad Allawi will have another Saddam government for Iraq ... he is so power-hungry, and he was always power-hungry ... the main reason he went back to Iraq was to get power.
IGNATIUS: He's an unlikely political leader, in a sense, but I think he's made himself, at least from the American standpoint, the indispensable man ...
V/O: Once a spy for the Iraqi regime in Europe, Iyad Allawi went on to play a key role in selling the war in Iraq to the West. Although he's operated out of the public eye for most of his career, since his meteoric rise to power, disturbing rumours and allegations about his past have begun to surface. Tonight, Dateline tells the story of how Saddam's man in London has become America's man in Baghdad.(music, bit of breather)
AZAWI: I remember him and most all the students who went to Baghdad medical school between 1961 and 1971, know Iyad Allawi very well.
V/O: Dr Haifa Azawi now runs this obstetrics and gynecology practice in Los Angeles. But in the 60's she studied at Baghdad University with Allawi. In 1970, like many other Iraqi medical students, they both went to London after graduating. She was close to the family of Allawi's first wife, and recalls that he was a prominent member of the Iraqi Baath Party, and a political allay of Saddam Hussein.
AZAWI: I knew that he was on a big salary from the Baath Party and they helped him a lot in England ... (how did you know that ?) ... we used to go sometimes to the Iraqi embassy, and we hear from the employees that so and so is a Baath Party representative, he's getting big money.
V/O: The foot soldiers of Saddam's regime in Baghdad also remember Allawi...Dateline tracked down a former Iraqi intelligence officer who was stationed in London in the mid-80's. Now back in Baghdad, Wisam Khazal remembers Allawi helping to spy on fellow students in Europe for the former Iraqi government.
WISAM KHAZAL: There were Baathist students spread around, you know, They were spread throughout most European countries. And they were sources.
JOHN MARTINKUS: Originally when young Allawi went to London was he also a good source of info for Iraqi Intelligence?
KHAZAL: Thats not wrong
V/O: But Iraqi intelligence was doing much more than just gathering information in Europe in the 70's. Abdul Razzak al-Naif, a former Iraqi Prime Minister, was gunned down outside this London hotel in 1978. It was the third attempt on his life here, and just one of a string of violent attacks on Iraqi dissidents in Europe.
V/O: There is no hard evidence to show Allawi planned any of these attacks, but Haifa Azawi says his family spoke of his involvement.
AZAWI: He one time left the house, and his father-in-law was visiting them ... he leave the house and then he come back to the door and tell his father in law don't open the door to the mail man, and if you see any box delivered in the house dont accept it because it might be a bomb.
V/O: David Ignatius, a journalist at the Washington Post, is in regular contact with Allawi and has been closely following his career for the last fifteen years. He believes that Allawi must have approved or at least known of the attacks on Iraqi dissidents in the early 70's.
IGNATIUS: Even if he did not himself kill people, or plot their assassination he certainly was witting about some just monstrous acts, I don't see how you can get around that... if we think that Saddam Hussein was a man who governed by torture and cruelty, someone who was as senior in the Baath Party as Iyad Allawi was, you know, doesn't have clean hands from that period. He was part of a machine that did monstrous things.
V/O: Eventually, this machine turned on Allawi himself. Saddam Hussein began to suspect Allawi was working against him in London, and in 1978 Allawi was brutally attacked as he slept.
IGNATIUS: He was attacked with a hatchet in bed with his wife ... his leg was nearly severed, and his chest was cut open with a hatchet, and his wife never recovered from the trauma ... certainly by then, he was well gone from the party.
V/O: No one knows exactly when or why Allawi turned against Saddam. But when Wisam Khazal was sent to London in the mid-80's, he discovered Allawi was being cultivated by both MI6 and the CIA.
KHAZAL: He had a relationship with MI6, unquestionably. Nobody disagrees on that. Im as certain as Im sitting here with you, Im certain that Iyad Allawi was in contact with MI6 and that MI6 packaged Iyad Allawi and delivered him as a gift to the CIA.
V/O: During the 80's, while Saddam was still in favour in the west, Allawi kept a low profile. But his moment came after the first Gulf War in 1990.
V/O: With funding from the US, he set up an opposition group, the Iraqi National Accord. By the mid-90's, it had offices in Jordan and Kurdistan.
IGNATIUS: (R7 22:48 - 23:07) He was trying to create this network, that's what his group, the Iraqi National Accord was, a network of military officers, intelligence officers, Baath Party members, unfortunately it was never as widespread or as strong as Allawi liked to claim ...
V/O: This was underscored by a disastrous coup attempt that Allawi launched from Amman in June 1996. Allawi had claimed that once the coup began, it would spark mass defections from the Iraqi military.
BAER: That's like one of the greatest myths there ever was ... there's like four people involved in this network out of Amman... I've seen the planning for this thing, this division and that division, there was no contact between Allawi and these division commanders, end of story ... he had a whole list of all these divisions, he said he had intermediaries he could get to these people, all ready to move simultaneously on Bagdad he had a couple of officers in the army. There was no 96 coup.
V/O: Bob Baer now lives high in the Rocky mountains in Colorado. But in the mid-90's, he was sent into the mountains of northern Iraq by the CIA. He worked closely with Iyad Allawi, and his archrival Ahmad Chalabi to try to overthrow Saddam Hussein. But according to Baer, Allawi's plot was doomed from the start.
BAER: Saddam hears about these things ... he controlled this 96 thing from the beginning ... and Saddam said round up the usual suspects and make it a warning to other people, execute them, in public or in front of their families usually ... there's very few things I'm certain about, but there was no imminent coup against Saddam in 96.
IGNATIUS: Whatever his strengths and weaknesses, he was not a successful coup plotter ... the Brits and later the Americans kept hoping that he would be able to deliver a strike against Saddam but he was not able to do it. It showed in part good and tough Saddams own intelligence services were but it also showed that Allawis network was weaker than perhaps he was telling people
V/O: While it failed at getting a coup off the ground, the Iraqi National Accord was more successful at running its own bombing campaign within Iraq. It apparently managed to blow up this theatre in Baghdad in 1995... one of a series of bombings of public buildings across Iraq in the mid-90's. In which dozens of civilians were killed. A man known as Amneh al-Khadami claimed responsibility for the attacks on behalf of the INA.
V/O: Patrick Cockburn, a journalist at the Independent newspaper in London, obtained a recording of Khadami's confession in 1996.
COOKES: As I understand it, Khadami admits that he ran a bombing campaign on behalf of the Iraqi National Accord, the organisation run by Iyad Allawi, that's right?
COCKBURN: Thats right, yep, well he says that and he says that several times in this recording he made.
COOKES: And the INA at the time was funded by the United States?
COCKBURN: Yes, and he refers again to the worries within the organisation that US funding would stop unless the organisation could show that it was doing something in Baghdad against Saddam.
COOKES: What sort of places were bombed, and what sort of casualties were involved in these bombings?
COCKBURN: There seem to have been about a hundred people killed, it's difficult to estimate how many died.
V/O: The Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmad Chalabi, was the bitter rival of Allawi's group, the INA, and a competitor for US funds. Chalabi's headquarters in Iraqi Kurdistan was blown up in October 1995, killing almost 30 people, and Patrick Cockburn's source claims the INA was responsible for this.
COOKES: Do you know if Iyad Allawi was aware of this bombing campaign, or if he's been held accountable for it at all?
COCKBURN: He's certainly never been held accountable ... I dont see that he could have been unaware of it because the INA was not doing very much at the time this was its main activity. In fact it wanted to show that it had some presence in Iraq, so I cant see how he could be unaware of this.
V/O: When the US government was trying to build the case for war in Iraq, its years of support for Iyad Allawi and other opposition leaders began to pay off. The Iraqi opposition was more than happy to manufacture intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and his links to the September 11 attacks. According to former CIA officer Bob Baer, much of this information was clearly bogus.
BAER: 10 Downing St and the Whitehouse, the way it worked was that we wanted to go to war ... and they went to the opposition and said give us talking points, Chalabi and Allawi, who then proceeded to go out and make things up. Its that simple. This was a deductive process. We decided to do this, its good for our strategy on terrorism, we have no information, you guys give us talking points which we can then re-circulate in the press...
V/O: In December last year, an extraordinary story appeared in the Sunday Telegraph in London. A one page memo, supposedly handwritten by the head of Iraqi intelligence had been discovered ... it claimed the September 11 hijackers were trained in Baghdad by Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, with the blessing of Saddam Hussein. On the same page, it also conveniently discussed how Iraq was planning to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger.
V/O: The memo was provided by Iyad Allawis Iraqi National Accord. He told the newspaper, "We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Quaeda, but this is the most compelling evidence we have found so far".
V/O: Bob Baer says Allawi had a long record of providing forged documents and dubious information to the CIA.
BAER: The whole thing's just crazy ... You could sit Allawi down and say "this is crazy, come on, if this really happened lets see some evidence. Hed say of course Ive got no evidence but when there was a willing audience this all changed. I found Allawi extremely credible. If you sat him down and just said this is bullshit this is not true, then hed laugh about it and move on.
V/O: Allawi's rival, Ahmed Chalabi, was well known in the west and was widely expected to be installed as Iraqi Prime Minister. But he fell out with the Americans when they accused him of leaking intelligence to the Iranian government.
V/O: In June this year, it was Iyad Allawi who got the top job. But it didn't take long for more allegations of his ruthlessness to appear.
V/O: Fairfax journalist Paul McGeough reported in July that just prior to the handover of power in Iraq, Iyad Allawi personally executed six prisoners in the back of a Baghdad police station. McGeough spoke to two men who claimed to be eyewitnesses to the shootings.
MCGEOUGH: And according to both witnesses, Allawi pulled a pistol from his own belt, and proceeded to shoot them ... they both gave me a very similar imitation of the hand going down the line, stopping on each of them and shooting dead six of them, wounding the seventh in the line.
V/O: David Ignatius was in Baghdad when the story broke, and questioned Allawi about it.
IGNATIUS: I asked him about the most recent story that appeared in the Australian press about him executing prisoners when I was there in July, the story had just broken ... he laughed and dismissed it, but then he would... I also asked people at the American Embassy who were in a position to check his whereabouts because they have the records of his bodyguards who were traveling with him and I think are either an American company or whatever, and they said they had, when this allegation first surfaced, looked carefully and had concluded that he couldnt be at the place that he was supposed to have been when this took place because he was somewhere else and they had the evidence to show that.
COOKES:MCGEOUGH: Both US government and public commentators weve spoken to in the Middle East and in Washington say that they can prove, that the US government can prove, that Allawi was not there at the time this was supposed to have taken place. How do you respond to those claims?It's interesting they say they can do that, they've never done it. They have never gone out of their way to prove that he was or wasn't there, other than to claim it in very loose terms. If they have got logs of movements, or the names of officers who were assigned to him at the time, where they were, let's see them!
IGNATIUS: The interesting thing about this is that for some Iraqis the notion that they have a Prime Minister who is prepared to pop people in a police station which we find horrifying ... they find encouraging, in the sense that oh we have a tough guy back in control.
MUSIC:
V/O: Mr Allawi declined repeated interview requests from Dateline's reporter in Baghdad. And at the time of going to air, there'd been no response to a detailed list of questions sent to his office.
V/O: Allawi has certainly demonstrated his tough guy credentials in the attack on Falluja, accepting the likelihood that civilians would be caught in the crossfire.
V/O: But as he declares war on insurgents in city after city, Allawi is rapidly running out of internal support. The Sunni Cleric Association held this press conference after troops went into Samarra.
MARTINKUS: (17:31) John Martinkus, SBS Australia - do you blame the government of Allawi for the move into Samarra, or do you blame the American military directly?
CLERIC: (from sub reel 3:44) We stated that the Iraqi government is responsible for the events in Samarra on the basis of their own statements. Theyre saying on TV, every hour or so, that they authorized the Americans to conduct this serious operation. They are Americas partner. We hold the Iraqi government wholly responsible and we believe they are taking the wrong path.
V/O: The Sunni Clerics believe they offered Allawi a chance to work together, but they say that opportunity is now gone.
CLERIC: (J014 33:43 - 33:57) He wasted it when he bombed Najaf. The Iraqis are emotional and they will not accept Iraqi forces taking Iraqis along with the occupiers and, sadly, thats what Iyad Allawi did.
V/O: As a result of the attack on Falluja, the Sunni Clerics have declared they will not take part in the elections in January.
V/O: Despite this, Allawi is still claiming the elections will go ahead
ALLAWI: So, let me be absolutely clear, elections will occur in Iraq, on time in January, because Iraqis want elections on time.
V/O: Bob Baer's mission in Iraq for the CIA was to help overthrow Saddam, and install a democratic government. He says Allawi has always been an old-school strong man, with little interest in democracy. But not even he believes elections will go ahead in January.
BAER: It's just total bullshit, it's just crap... holding elections in Iraq in January, it's just not going to happen, credible elections. Allawi knows it but what can you do. The administration in Washington says were going to hold elections in January and were going to hold you in power, hes got to go along but he cant get into these cities, they never will be Oh yeah, you can get into them if you can flatten them, you have to flatten all of Samarra, Falluja, Najaf, Karbala, and disperse the population, but that's not exactly the way you impose democracy...
V/O: Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister of Iraq, has just unleashed 20,000 Iraqi and US troops on Falluja.
ALLAWI: (Arabic) We will attack these criminals and arrest them, and to hell with those who get killed... be strong ...
TROOPS: Yes, President. God willing !! (troops sing)
V/O: Allawi has promised elections in January, and in the struggle to stabilize the country, he's shown he's prepared to be ruthless.
BAER: (18:37 - 18:46) Using extreme force against the population fits within his philosophy, or his understanding of Iraqi history ...(38:00 - 38:13) He's a pragmatist, in order to rule in Iraq, as the Americans have found out, or as the allies have found, you got to kill people, it's that simple ... he knew it, we know it now ...
AZAWI: (25:41 - 25:53) Iyad Allawi will have another Saddam government for Iraq ... he is so power-hungry, and he was always power-hungry ... the main reason he went back to Iraq was to get power.
IGNATIUS: He's an unlikely political leader, in a sense, but I think he's made himself, at least from the American standpoint, the indispensable man ...
V/O: Once a spy for the Iraqi regime in Europe, Iyad Allawi went on to play a key role in selling the war in Iraq to the West. Although he's operated out of the public eye for most of his career, since his meteoric rise to power, disturbing rumours and allegations about his past have begun to surface. Tonight, Dateline tells the story of how Saddam's man in London has become America's man in Baghdad.(music, bit of breather)
AZAWI: I remember him and most all the students who went to Baghdad medical school between 1961 and 1971, know Iyad Allawi very well.
V/O: Dr Haifa Azawi now runs this obstetrics and gynecology practice in Los Angeles. But in the 60's she studied at Baghdad University with Allawi. In 1970, like many other Iraqi medical students, they both went to London after graduating. She was close to the family of Allawi's first wife, and recalls that he was a prominent member of the Iraqi Baath Party, and a political allay of Saddam Hussein.
AZAWI: I knew that he was on a big salary from the Baath Party and they helped him a lot in England ... (how did you know that ?) ... we used to go sometimes to the Iraqi embassy, and we hear from the employees that so and so is a Baath Party representative, he's getting big money.
V/O: The foot soldiers of Saddam's regime in Baghdad also remember Allawi...Dateline tracked down a former Iraqi intelligence officer who was stationed in London in the mid-80's. Now back in Baghdad, Wisam Khazal remembers Allawi helping to spy on fellow students in Europe for the former Iraqi government.
WISAM KHAZAL: There were Baathist students spread around, you know, They were spread throughout most European countries. And they were sources.
JOHN MARTINKUS: Originally when young Allawi went to London was he also a good source of info for Iraqi Intelligence?
KHAZAL: Thats not wrong
V/O: But Iraqi intelligence was doing much more than just gathering information in Europe in the 70's. Abdul Razzak al-Naif, a former Iraqi Prime Minister, was gunned down outside this London hotel in 1978. It was the third attempt on his life here, and just one of a string of violent attacks on Iraqi dissidents in Europe.
V/O: There is no hard evidence to show Allawi planned any of these attacks, but Haifa Azawi says his family spoke of his involvement.
AZAWI: He one time left the house, and his father-in-law was visiting them ... he leave the house and then he come back to the door and tell his father in law don't open the door to the mail man, and if you see any box delivered in the house dont accept it because it might be a bomb.
V/O: David Ignatius, a journalist at the Washington Post, is in regular contact with Allawi and has been closely following his career for the last fifteen years. He believes that Allawi must have approved or at least known of the attacks on Iraqi dissidents in the early 70's.
IGNATIUS: Even if he did not himself kill people, or plot their assassination he certainly was witting about some just monstrous acts, I don't see how you can get around that... if we think that Saddam Hussein was a man who governed by torture and cruelty, someone who was as senior in the Baath Party as Iyad Allawi was, you know, doesn't have clean hands from that period. He was part of a machine that did monstrous things.
V/O: Eventually, this machine turned on Allawi himself. Saddam Hussein began to suspect Allawi was working against him in London, and in 1978 Allawi was brutally attacked as he slept.
IGNATIUS: He was attacked with a hatchet in bed with his wife ... his leg was nearly severed, and his chest was cut open with a hatchet, and his wife never recovered from the trauma ... certainly by then, he was well gone from the party.
V/O: No one knows exactly when or why Allawi turned against Saddam. But when Wisam Khazal was sent to London in the mid-80's, he discovered Allawi was being cultivated by both MI6 and the CIA.
KHAZAL: He had a relationship with MI6, unquestionably. Nobody disagrees on that. Im as certain as Im sitting here with you, Im certain that Iyad Allawi was in contact with MI6 and that MI6 packaged Iyad Allawi and delivered him as a gift to the CIA.
V/O: During the 80's, while Saddam was still in favour in the west, Allawi kept a low profile. But his moment came after the first Gulf War in 1990.
V/O: With funding from the US, he set up an opposition group, the Iraqi National Accord. By the mid-90's, it had offices in Jordan and Kurdistan.
IGNATIUS: (R7 22:48 - 23:07) He was trying to create this network, that's what his group, the Iraqi National Accord was, a network of military officers, intelligence officers, Baath Party members, unfortunately it was never as widespread or as strong as Allawi liked to claim ...
V/O: This was underscored by a disastrous coup attempt that Allawi launched from Amman in June 1996. Allawi had claimed that once the coup began, it would spark mass defections from the Iraqi military.
BAER: That's like one of the greatest myths there ever was ... there's like four people involved in this network out of Amman... I've seen the planning for this thing, this division and that division, there was no contact between Allawi and these division commanders, end of story ... he had a whole list of all these divisions, he said he had intermediaries he could get to these people, all ready to move simultaneously on Bagdad he had a couple of officers in the army. There was no 96 coup.
V/O: Bob Baer now lives high in the Rocky mountains in Colorado. But in the mid-90's, he was sent into the mountains of northern Iraq by the CIA. He worked closely with Iyad Allawi, and his archrival Ahmad Chalabi to try to overthrow Saddam Hussein. But according to Baer, Allawi's plot was doomed from the start.
BAER: Saddam hears about these things ... he controlled this 96 thing from the beginning ... and Saddam said round up the usual suspects and make it a warning to other people, execute them, in public or in front of their families usually ... there's very few things I'm certain about, but there was no imminent coup against Saddam in 96.
IGNATIUS: Whatever his strengths and weaknesses, he was not a successful coup plotter ... the Brits and later the Americans kept hoping that he would be able to deliver a strike against Saddam but he was not able to do it. It showed in part good and tough Saddams own intelligence services were but it also showed that Allawis network was weaker than perhaps he was telling people
V/O: While it failed at getting a coup off the ground, the Iraqi National Accord was more successful at running its own bombing campaign within Iraq. It apparently managed to blow up this theatre in Baghdad in 1995... one of a series of bombings of public buildings across Iraq in the mid-90's. In which dozens of civilians were killed. A man known as Amneh al-Khadami claimed responsibility for the attacks on behalf of the INA.
V/O: Patrick Cockburn, a journalist at the Independent newspaper in London, obtained a recording of Khadami's confession in 1996.
COOKES: As I understand it, Khadami admits that he ran a bombing campaign on behalf of the Iraqi National Accord, the organisation run by Iyad Allawi, that's right?
COCKBURN: Thats right, yep, well he says that and he says that several times in this recording he made.
COOKES: And the INA at the time was funded by the United States?
COCKBURN: Yes, and he refers again to the worries within the organisation that US funding would stop unless the organisation could show that it was doing something in Baghdad against Saddam.
COOKES: What sort of places were bombed, and what sort of casualties were involved in these bombings?
COCKBURN: There seem to have been about a hundred people killed, it's difficult to estimate how many died.
V/O: The Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmad Chalabi, was the bitter rival of Allawi's group, the INA, and a competitor for US funds. Chalabi's headquarters in Iraqi Kurdistan was blown up in October 1995, killing almost 30 people, and Patrick Cockburn's source claims the INA was responsible for this.
COOKES: Do you know if Iyad Allawi was aware of this bombing campaign, or if he's been held accountable for it at all?
COCKBURN: He's certainly never been held accountable ... I dont see that he could have been unaware of it because the INA was not doing very much at the time this was its main activity. In fact it wanted to show that it had some presence in Iraq, so I cant see how he could be unaware of this.
V/O: When the US government was trying to build the case for war in Iraq, its years of support for Iyad Allawi and other opposition leaders began to pay off. The Iraqi opposition was more than happy to manufacture intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and his links to the September 11 attacks. According to former CIA officer Bob Baer, much of this information was clearly bogus.
BAER: 10 Downing St and the Whitehouse, the way it worked was that we wanted to go to war ... and they went to the opposition and said give us talking points, Chalabi and Allawi, who then proceeded to go out and make things up. Its that simple. This was a deductive process. We decided to do this, its good for our strategy on terrorism, we have no information, you guys give us talking points which we can then re-circulate in the press...
V/O: In December last year, an extraordinary story appeared in the Sunday Telegraph in London. A one page memo, supposedly handwritten by the head of Iraqi intelligence had been discovered ... it claimed the September 11 hijackers were trained in Baghdad by Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, with the blessing of Saddam Hussein. On the same page, it also conveniently discussed how Iraq was planning to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger.
V/O: The memo was provided by Iyad Allawis Iraqi National Accord. He told the newspaper, "We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Quaeda, but this is the most compelling evidence we have found so far".
V/O: Bob Baer says Allawi had a long record of providing forged documents and dubious information to the CIA.
BAER: The whole thing's just crazy ... You could sit Allawi down and say "this is crazy, come on, if this really happened lets see some evidence. Hed say of course Ive got no evidence but when there was a willing audience this all changed. I found Allawi extremely credible. If you sat him down and just said this is bullshit this is not true, then hed laugh about it and move on.
V/O: Allawi's rival, Ahmed Chalabi, was well known in the west and was widely expected to be installed as Iraqi Prime Minister. But he fell out with the Americans when they accused him of leaking intelligence to the Iranian government.
V/O: In June this year, it was Iyad Allawi who got the top job. But it didn't take long for more allegations of his ruthlessness to appear.
V/O: Fairfax journalist Paul McGeough reported in July that just prior to the handover of power in Iraq, Iyad Allawi personally executed six prisoners in the back of a Baghdad police station. McGeough spoke to two men who claimed to be eyewitnesses to the shootings.
MCGEOUGH: And according to both witnesses, Allawi pulled a pistol from his own belt, and proceeded to shoot them ... they both gave me a very similar imitation of the hand going down the line, stopping on each of them and shooting dead six of them, wounding the seventh in the line.
V/O: David Ignatius was in Baghdad when the story broke, and questioned Allawi about it.
IGNATIUS: I asked him about the most recent story that appeared in the Australian press about him executing prisoners when I was there in July, the story had just broken ... he laughed and dismissed it, but then he would... I also asked people at the American Embassy who were in a position to check his whereabouts because they have the records of his bodyguards who were traveling with him and I think are either an American company or whatever, and they said they had, when this allegation first surfaced, looked carefully and had concluded that he couldnt be at the place that he was supposed to have been when this took place because he was somewhere else and they had the evidence to show that.
COOKES:MCGEOUGH: Both US government and public commentators weve spoken to in the Middle East and in Washington say that they can prove, that the US government can prove, that Allawi was not there at the time this was supposed to have taken place. How do you respond to those claims?It's interesting they say they can do that, they've never done it. They have never gone out of their way to prove that he was or wasn't there, other than to claim it in very loose terms. If they have got logs of movements, or the names of officers who were assigned to him at the time, where they were, let's see them!
IGNATIUS: The interesting thing about this is that for some Iraqis the notion that they have a Prime Minister who is prepared to pop people in a police station which we find horrifying ... they find encouraging, in the sense that oh we have a tough guy back in control.
MUSIC:
V/O: Mr Allawi declined repeated interview requests from Dateline's reporter in Baghdad. And at the time of going to air, there'd been no response to a detailed list of questions sent to his office.
V/O: Allawi has certainly demonstrated his tough guy credentials in the attack on Falluja, accepting the likelihood that civilians would be caught in the crossfire.
V/O: But as he declares war on insurgents in city after city, Allawi is rapidly running out of internal support. The Sunni Cleric Association held this press conference after troops went into Samarra.
MARTINKUS: (17:31) John Martinkus, SBS Australia - do you blame the government of Allawi for the move into Samarra, or do you blame the American military directly?
CLERIC: (from sub reel 3:44) We stated that the Iraqi government is responsible for the events in Samarra on the basis of their own statements. Theyre saying on TV, every hour or so, that they authorized the Americans to conduct this serious operation. They are Americas partner. We hold the Iraqi government wholly responsible and we believe they are taking the wrong path.
V/O: The Sunni Clerics believe they offered Allawi a chance to work together, but they say that opportunity is now gone.
CLERIC: (J014 33:43 - 33:57) He wasted it when he bombed Najaf. The Iraqis are emotional and they will not accept Iraqi forces taking Iraqis along with the occupiers and, sadly, thats what Iyad Allawi did.
V/O: As a result of the attack on Falluja, the Sunni Clerics have declared they will not take part in the elections in January.
V/O: Despite this, Allawi is still claiming the elections will go ahead
ALLAWI: So, let me be absolutely clear, elections will occur in Iraq, on time in January, because Iraqis want elections on time.
V/O: Bob Baer's mission in Iraq for the CIA was to help overthrow Saddam, and install a democratic government. He says Allawi has always been an old-school strong man, with little interest in democracy. But not even he believes elections will go ahead in January.
BAER: It's just total bullshit, it's just crap... holding elections in Iraq in January, it's just not going to happen, credible elections. Allawi knows it but what can you do. The administration in Washington says were going to hold elections in January and were going to hold you in power, hes got to go along but he cant get into these cities, they never will be Oh yeah, you can get into them if you can flatten them, you have to flatten all of Samarra, Falluja, Najaf, Karbala, and disperse the population, but that's not exactly the way you impose democracy...