A
previous diary on Safia al-Souhail, the Iraqi woman in the balcony during the state of the union speech, noted that although Bush had blamed the murder of her father on Saddam Hussein, the family had previously claimed that the US government was
involved in his murder.
Yet although two years ago Safia's sister blamed the US as a virtual accomplice in the murder of her father, the family appears to have changed its tune more recently.
In a more recent article Safia pins the blame for her father's murder on the UN's oil for food scandal.
In a sinister oil-for-murder plot, Saddam Hussein used the scandal-plagued U.N. oil-for-food program to set up the assassination of a prominent Iraqi exile politician, the slain man's family has charged.
A mysterious George Tarkhaynan appears on an Iraqi Oil Ministry list, published by a Baghdad newspaper, of 270 politicians and businessmen who received sweetheart oil deals under the U.N. humanitarian program.
Safia al-Souhail, a leading political figure in post-Saddam Iraq, told The Post she has evidence that Tarkhaynan is a former Beirut shirtmaker and once-trusted family friend who helped Iraq assassinate her father, anti-Saddam dissident Sheik Taleb al-Souhail al-Tamimi, in Lebanon in 1994.
"George Tarkhaynan was a good agent for them. He facilitated the killing of my father who was an enemy of the regime. This oil voucher was like a present for what he did," al-Souhail said by phone from Baghdad.
Curious. If true it might explain the family's change of heart, though it seems convenient for the Bushies if the UN rather than the US was involved in her father's murder. I wonder what George Tarkhaynan might have to say?