This is bizarre:
Iraq’s president said Tuesday that Saddam Hussein had confessed to killings and other “crimes” committed during his regime, including the massacre of thousands of Kurds in the late 1980s.
President Jalal Talabani told Iraqi television that he had been informed by an investigating judge that “he was able to extract confessions from Saddam’s mouth” about crimes “such as executions” which the ousted leader had personally ordered.
Asked about specific examples, Talabani, a Kurd, replied “Anfal,” the codename for the 1987-88 campaign which his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan maintains led to the deaths of about 182,000 Kurds and the destruction of “dozens of Kurdish villages.”
Those villages included Halabja, where thousands of Kurdish villagers were gassed in 1988.
However, Abdel Haq Alani, a legal consultant to Saddam’s family said Saddam did not mention any confession when he met Monday with his Iraqi lawyer.
Make of it what you will.