Is this why the administration decided to announce yesterday that the Baath Party was no more? So perhaps nobody would notice this story?
Hussein Backers Regain Role in Government By Paul Watson, Times Staff Writer MOSUL, Iraq -- The U.S. Army has allowed several once-forceful supporters of Saddam Hussein's regime back into power here, including a religious leader who just weeks ago ordered Muslims to fight American troops to the death.Convinced that sweeping out all officials associated with Hussein would result in a government too weak to hold Iraq together, U.S. forces in Mosul hope to win over their enemies by allowing them to sit on a new interim city council.
It is a risky gamble that some say may undermine the long-term goal of a stable democracy. And it already has left some longtime opponents of Hussein in the northern city feeling left out of a new government that they say is shaping up as a reincarnation of the regime they struggled to overthrow.
"We're afraid the dictators left and the smugglers took power -- and the liars with them," said Sheik Bader Hilaly, an imam previously jailed for speaking out against Hussein.
A powerful member of the new council is Sheik Saleh Khalil Hamoody, who also heads the Mosul region's council of Islamic scholars. Several days after U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq began, Hamoody issued a fatwa, or edict, declaring that it was the religious duty of all Muslims to fight U.S.-led forces.
"Our valiant Iraq is facing a noble and faithful battle against imperialist and Zionist attackers who hate us," said the fatwa, which was approved by the Islamic scholars council. "They aim to destroy Islam and its existence to achieve their goals of world domination and to guarantee security for Zionism and its future."
Hamoody is widely known in northwestern Iraq for his close ties to the former Baath Party regime. He is a cousin of Hussein's former defense minister, Sultan Hashim Ahmad Jabburi Tai, who is on the U.S. military's list of most-wanted fugitives.