Georges Sada

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Georges Hormiz Sada
Born c. 1939
Northern Iraq
Allegiance Iraq Iraq
Service/branch Iraqi Air Force
Years of service 1958-1986, 1990-1991
Rank Air Vice-Marshal [1]
Other work Iraqi National Security Advisor, Author

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, former Iraqi National Security Advisor and retired general officer of the Iraqi Air Force.

Background and career

Georges Sada was born in 1939 in Iraq into a Christian family of Assyrian ethnicity (see his account). As a boy, Sada attended the Assyrian Church of the East with his family, later becoming a 'born-again' Christian and attending a more evangelical church. Throughout his childhood, Sada had a keen interest in military aircraft and the Air Force, playing as a boy at the RAF Base where his father was stationed, and imagining himself flying the fighters he saw taking off. In this time he did 'odd jobs' at the base, befriending both the pilots and the technicians who repaired their aircraft, resolving that one day he himself would have a career in the Air Force as a pilot. In 1958 at the age of nineteen, Sada applied to the air academy in Iraq and was accepted as a cadet, graduating from the Iraqi Air Academy in 1959. Over the following years he served as an Air Force Officer, including periods studying overseas in Britain, the USSR and the United States. Between 1964–1965 he was a student at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. Sada's career in the air force spanned 28 years, from 1958 to 1986. He officially retired in 1986 as a two-star officer, but was later called back to active service as an Air Vice Marshall for the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. During the conflict Sada defied the orders of Saddam Hussein by refusing to execute POWs, attributing this disobedience to his strong Christian convictions. In interviews, Sada has described his attempts to persuade Saddam not to harm the prisoners (an action which would have violated the Geneva Convention and would have been a war crime): Saddam eventually relented and spared the POWs, although Sada himself was subsequently imprisoned for a time. In his book Saddam's Secrets, Sada states that Saddam did not want him harmed after his release, but wanted no further contact with him thereafter.

Activities since retirement (1991–present)

After he retired Sada was living a quiet life in Iraq, but when after 2003 Invasion of Iraq by the United States armed forces, Sada sided with the US government in their invasion of Iraq and aided in the fight against Saddam Hussein. During the invasion of Iraq, Sada served as spokesman for the interim leader Iyad Allawi, and he was appointed as National Security Advisor.

In August 2004 Sada announced that he would be signing a bill to introduce the death penalty in Iraq. The bill introduces the death penalty for anyone who is "threatening national security". (on al-Jazeera)

On January 24, 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 WMD's and control the Arab world." 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. After the release of his book, Sada was interviewed by Fox News, and he stated:
"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 during his interview with Fox News if there was any chance that there were nuclear weapons or on their way to nuclear weapons when USA invaded, he said "Not in Iraq". Sada made a guest appearance on The Daily Show on March 21, 2006 to promote Saddam's Secrets. His (Sada's) 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.

Personal life

Sada was born in 1939, in Northern Iraq. Sada attended the Assyrian Church of the East when he was a child, before he eventually became a born-again Christian. Sada has a high faith, and 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 and still is presently active in advocating that Iraq was historically Assyrian and Christian in nature, and not Arab and Muslim.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Sada is often described as a General which is the generic equivalent of Air Marshal and is more commonly understood in the United States.

References

See also

Authority control
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