Georges Sada
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Georges Hormiz Sada | |
|---|---|
| circa 1939 – | |
 Georges Sada |
|
| Place of birth | Northern Iraq |
| Allegiance |  Iraq |
| Service/branch | Iraqi Air Force |
| Years of service | From (or before) 1959 to 1986 |
| Rank | Air Vice-Marshal [1] |
| Other work | Iraqi National Security Advisor |
General Georges Hormiz Sada (aka Gewargis or George Hormis; Arabic: كوركيس هرمز ساده, Syriac: ܓܘܪܓܝܣ ܗܪܡܙ ܣܕܐ; born 1939?) is an Iraqi of Assyrian descent, an author and retired general officer of the Iraqi Air Force.
Sada was born to an Assyrian family (see his account) in Northern Iraq, that belonged to the Chaldean Catholic Church before becoming a 'born-again' Christian. In 1959 he graduated from the Iraqi Air Academy, and over the following years served as an Air Force Officer, including stints studying overseas in Britain, the USSR and the United States. Through 1964-1965 he was a student at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.
He officially retired in 1986 as a 2 star officer, but was called back to active service for the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. According to his autobiography, he was briefly imprisoned in 1991 for refusing to execute POWs. He was told that Saddam didn't want him harmed but that he never wanted to see him again either.
After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, Sada sided with the US-led government, and served as spokesman for the interim leader Iyad Allawi, and was appointed as National Security Advisor.
In August 2004 Sada announced that he would be signing a bill to introduce the death penalty for those "threatening national security". (on al-Jazeera)
He serves as the Senior Warden of the St. Georges Anglican Church and as the President of the National Presbyterian Church, both in Baghdad. The former President of the Evangelical Churches of Iraq, Sada is also chairman of the Assembly of Iraqi Evangelical Presbyterian Churches. He has been active in advocating that Iraq was historically Christian in nature, and not Muslim.
On January 24th 2006, he announced the publication of a book he had written entitled Saddam's Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied And Survived Saddam Hussein, with the tagline "An insider exposes plans to destroy Israel, hide WMDs and control the Arab world."[1] Sada, the former Air Vice-Marshal under Hussein, appeared the following day on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, where he discussed his book and reported that other pilots told him that Hussein had ordered them to fly portions of the WMD stockpiles to Damascus in Syria just prior to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.
Well, I want to make it clear, very clear to everybody in the world that we had the weapon of mass destruction in Iraq, and the regime used them against our Iraqi people...I know it because I have got the captains of the Iraqi airway that were my friends, and they told me these weapons of mass destruction had been moved to Syria. Iraq had some projects for nuclear weapons but it was destroyed in 1981. (When asked if there was any chance there were nuclear weapons or on their way to nuclear weapons when USA invaded, he said): Not in Iraq. [2]
His claims, though, tend to contradict the findings of the Duelfer Report, which "judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place," though analysts were unable to rule out the possibility.
Sada made a guest appearance on The Daily Show on March 21st, 2006 to promote Saddam's Secrets.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Sada is often described as a General which is the generic equivalent of Air Marshal and is more commonly understood in the United States.
