What Would Leopold Bloom Think of Finnegans Wake?

 2 AUGUST 1990

It was a day I would never forget.  Awareness that Iraq had invaded Kuwait dawned on me slowly.  I got up as usual on the morning of 2 August, 1990.  I was excited about going on vacation the next day.  I was scheduled to leave Kuwait on 3 August 1990 at 1:15 AM on British Airways.  When I got in my car that morning I turned on the radio as usual. The radio was silent except for the sound of static.  Although it seemed strange that the station was not broadcasting I thought it was possibly too early for the broadcast day to begin.  I drove to the laundry in a nearby shopping area that was close to a large apartment complex called the Silver Towers.  As I was returning to my car from the Bridge Laundry with my shirts I noticed Arab soldiers in fatigue uniforms running by.  I assumed the soldiers were Kuwaitis doing military exercises.  It was only later that I realized the soldiers were Iraqi soldiers headed for the Dasmah Palace where the Royal family, the Al Sabahs, lived.  Many hours earlier the Emir and Crown Prince had left for the safety of Saudi Arabia.  One member of the Royal family, Sheik Fahd, died defending the palace.

I drove to work.  I heard the sound of and saw puffs of black smoke from artillery being fired by the sea near the Kuwait Towers, the modern and distinctive landmark of Kuwait.  Naive as it may have been I thought the Kuwait army was executing military exercises.  When I got to the offices of my employer, the Kuwait Investment Company, people with their cars parked in our car park were leaving as they had already become aware of the invasion.  Our offices were located on the top floor of a building named the Souk Al Manakh building.  It was named after the famous speculative stock market, The Souk Al Manakh.  This stock market was housed on the ground floor of our building. The Souk Al Manakh collapsed from speculative excess in 1982.  Other than the offices on the ground floor and our offices on the fifth floor the building was a car park. When I got to our offices there were very few people there.  An associate, Fawzi Al Fozan, told me there were Iraqi soldiers down on the Gulf Road near the Seif Palace turning people back so they would not drive on the Gulf Road.  This brought the full realization that Kuwait City was indeed occupied by Iraqi armed forces.  I decided to return to my flat.  I was somewhat apprehensive about the danger from the invading army.  As I drove home it was apparent that the Iraqi Army had bigger fish to fry that day.  It later became apparent how different the attack focus is from the occupation focus.  On my way home I particularly remember the roundabout near the Dasmah Palace with soldiers and tanks outside the perimeter walls near the entrance gate.  The soldiers were intently focused on the Palace and I had no problem driving by.

As soon as I arrived at my flat in the Aisha Al Salem complex I called my dear friend Fahed Al Shaya who lived in block nine of the same complex.  We went to a nearby apartment complex, the Al Tammar, where Fahed had just moved from to watch CNN on TV.  Ironically we got a more complete picture of the invasion from the CNN report than we had by being there and experiencing it.  However being there was an experience that one could get no other way.  Seeing the horde of tanks rolling down the Gulf Road towards Saudi Arabia, going through Iraqi checkpoints, the sight of burned out troop carriers and tanks on the Fahaheel Expressway were vivid personal experiences.  There was one instance where an Iraq soldier hailed me down to get help with his car, which had stalled. 

A bit about Fahed.  Fahed was the son of Saleh Al Shaya one of the wealthy merchant families in Kuwait.  He had grown up in Bombay where his family had business interests.  However Fahed was very proud of his Bedouin roots, the Otaibi tribe to be exact.  One year during the winter in my first tour of duty in Kuwait, the period from July 1983 to April 1986, I camped out in the desert at the invitation of two close friends, Fahd Al Ajmee and Jaber Al Hunaif. The Al Ajmee tribe was another noble Bedouin tribe.  That night braggadocio abounded comparing the Otaibi and the Al Ajmee tribes. Fahed represented the Otaibi's and Fahd the Al Ajmee's.  Poor Jaber had a split personality since his mother and father were from different tribes, one an Al Ajmee and the other an Otaibi.  These desert camping parties, of which I attended several, occurred during the forty days from about December 10 to January 20.  This was winter when the temperatures at night could reach freezing give or take a little.     

Fahed was one of the three investment trainees assigned to me when I started at the Kuwait Investment Company in July 1983.  He had joined the company a few months before.  After graduating from American University in Washington D.C. he returned to Kuwait and traded stocks in the Souk Al Manakh.  His trading activities yielded huge profits for awhile, but in the end the profits turned to losses.  This was the experience of most investors and it took years for the problem to be resolved between debtors and the investors they owed money.  The company I worked for, the Kuwait Investment Company incurred huge losses as did many other investment companies.  

 After Fahed and I got our update on CNN that morning we went back to Fahed's flat and had a drink.  I then went to the U.S. Embassy, which was only one block away, carrying a bag with some of my belongings.  The bag in hand showed my naiveté.  I asked someone at the Embassy for advice on the course of action I should take.  The Embassy official simply told me to go back to my flat and keep a low profile.  That low profile got lower and lower until there was no profile at all.  Even allowing for all the limitations imposed by Saddam on embassies the U.S. Embassies in Kuwait and Baghdad performed poorly.  For instance on my first visit on 2 August 1990 they could have told me that a passport or even a drivers license would permit me to cross the border into Saudi Arabia.  At that time it was still possible to drive south to Saudi Arabia, before the attack army became an army of occupation.  Saudi Arabia's red tape for entry by a foreigner was legend.

I left the Embassy and went back to my flat.  Soon I went over to visit Fahed. Fahed's flat was always filled with people as Fahed is a likeable, sociable host and people gravitate to him.  Even though everyone was stunned the early days after the invasion took on an almost party mood.  People were not working so they had time on their hands.  Socializing gave people something to do and satisfied the need for human contact.  Everyone played parlor games trying to figure out whether Iraq would withdraw from Kuwait and if they did not withdraw how and when they would be forced to leave.  Few of us would have thought that "liberation day” would not come until 26 February 1991.  Soon after the invasion it became apparent that rationality is easily distorted by hope under conditions of war.  There was an instance when one of Fahed's friends looked down from the eleventh floor of the Al Tammar Complex at Iraqis loading booty on a truck to transport to Iraq and concluded that was evidence that the troops were withdrawing soon.

In the afternoon of 2 August I went back to my flat and made a number of international telephone calls.  Even though there were plenty of busy signals I did have conversations with several friends and my youngest daughter, Peggy. In my conversation with Peg I tried to be upbeat, but the conversation ended with, "I love you Dad" through a tearful voice that showed Peg understood just how serious the situation was.  It would be 6 December 1990 when I saw Peggy in a tearful reunion in front of the Al Mansur hotel in Baghdad.

In 1983 when I went to Kuwait to work Peggy went with me to visit for the first two weeks of my nearly three year residency in Kuwait.  When we arrived at the airport there was no entry visa for Peggy.  The necessary information had not reached my employer, the Kuwait Investment Company, in time so the immigration people had only a letter from my employer requesting that Peggy be permitted entry.  There was about an hour delay and during that time I could tell that Peggy was very scared.  Neither of us spoke Arabic and even though the immigration personnel spoke to us in English they spoke to each other in Arabic.  Our not being able to understand what they were saying to each other and the delay in a strange country made the experience a foreboding one.  Looking back I know they were very considerate and moved things along as fast as they could.  We were picked up at the airport by one of the Kuwait Investment Company drivers and taken to the Sheraton Hotel where we stayed.  

While Peggy was there we were invited by my former boss at the Arab Insurance Group in Bahrain, Bader Wahedi, to his family's seaside chalet.  Bader was from Kuwait as were several of the upper management of the Arab Insurance Group, a company organized by a consortium consisting of Libya, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.  The beach at the seaside chalet and the view of the waters of the Persian Gulf were beautiful.  By then the Iraq-Iran war had been going on for nearly three years.  Ayatollah Khomeini had taken power in Iran in 1979 after the Shah had been overthrown.  Khomeini was laying claim to the whole Persian Gulf with his fundamental and militant brand of Islam.  As I walked along the beach with Bader and Peggy I reached down and picked up a glob of oil that had washed ashore from an oil spill that occurred when an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf was bombed by Iran.  This probably should have foreshadowed some of the violence that would be done by the orders of both the Ayatollah and Saddam Hussein.  The book Sacred Rage by Robin Wright written in 1985 explores the essence of the Islamic fundamental movement and its attempt to capture the hearts and minds of Moslems everywhere.  Later on I will be writing more about the Islamic Fundamental Movement.  

Peggy seemed to enjoy her visit.  She especially liked the young British Band and the woman vocalist who entertained around the pool each night.  One day we drove from Kuwait City to near the Iraqi border where we saw a herd of camels and Peg got out and took some pictures of them.  When I was being bused to Baghdad on 25 September 1990 I saw a herd of camels at the same place and I had a mental flashback to that happier time more than seven years before.

On invasion day I spent the evening with Fahed and his family.  When I went back to my flat and while I was getting ready for bed I looked out over the waters of the Persian Gulf as the moon was rising and the beauty of the moon and the water was simply indescribable.  I'll leave that description for the poets.  I remember thinking they may take my freedom of movement, but they can't take away my enjoyment and appreciation of the beauty of the moon and the water.  I went to bed on that first day and sleep did come in spite of all the Iraqi soldiers camped just across the Gulf Road on the shore of the Persian Gulf.  The Arabs preferred that the Gulf waters be called the Arabian Gulf not the Persian Gulf.                           

OCCUPIED KUWAIT

It would be seven weeks from the Invasion Day before I was arrested and taken by the Iraqis.  This seven week period is divided into three phases.  During the first phase I could still drive my car and move around Kuwait City freely.  The second phase was after 17 August when Saddam told citizens of the Desert Storm coalition countries to report to several hotels in Kuwait City as "guests" of the State of Iraq.  He had already announced the policy of having these persons become human shields on strategic sites in Iraq.  Very few people accepted his invitation at that time.  As I was to find out the invitation became more direct later.  In Saddam's twisted logic this policy was done in the name of peace since it was expected to keep the United States from using its military might.  The third phase began somewhere around 1 September when the Iraqis went door to door to pick up people.

During the early days I spent a lot of time at the Al Shaya flat in Block Nine of Aisha Al Salem.  On Friday, 3 August Fahed called and asked if I wanted to go to the store with them to get food.  I went with him and his wife, Fatima.  Fatima's mother is German and her father is Syrian.  Fatima's Syrian side, with her disdain for Iraqis, displayed itself as she scowled at the Iraqi soldiers who stopped us at the checkpoints along the Gulf Road.  Fahed kept admonishing her to keep her feelings under control or at least not show signs of them to the Iraqis.  We were able to find most foodstuffs we wanted in ample supply then, but there was the worry food would run out later.

Each morning I would go over to see the Al Shaya family around 9 or 10 o'clock.  In the lobby I would see their son Wahabi and his cousin Tamara who was staying with them with her mother and father, Ameena and Naji.  Wahabi, whose full name is Abdul Wahab, was born 27 September 1987.  I was very pleased and complimented when Fahed and Fatima called me in New York City where I was working at the time and asked if I would be Wahabi's godfather.  They were actually asking if I would have a godfather-like relationship with Wahabi since Moslems don't have godfathers as such.  The nature of the Arab family is what in the West we now call an extended family, so in the family a child has many persons who act as godfathers.  

Wahabi may or may not be as strict and literal in his interpretation of the Koran as his namesake, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab.  Robert Lacey in his book about the House of Sa'ud entitled "The Kingdom" describes a great alliance formed between Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab and Muhammad ibn Sa'ud around the year 1744.  This brought together a power base formed of religion and politics.  In the Twentieth Century Abdul Aziz ibn Sa’ud consolidated power in the Arabian Peninsula and The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was born.  Saudi Arabia is noted to this day for its strict enforcement of the Moslem religion.  So ibn Abdul Wahab left his mark on modern day Saudi Arabia.  It is unlikely that Abdul Wahab ibn Fahed will follow in his namesake's footsteps, especially if it depends on the influence of his father and godfather.

I spent much of my time in the first phase with Fahed and Fatima and the many guests that were always present in their home.  I also spent time with Abdelhadi Chouikha sometimes at Fahed's place and sometimes at his flat next door in the Al Tammar complex.  Abdelhadi's eleventh floor flat was new and luxurious and the view of the Gulf from there was breathtaking.  On 5 August, a Sunday, Dr. Chouikha, Fahed and I watched a long line of Iraqi tanks heading south along the Gulf Road.  Dr. Chouikha is Tunisian and since Tunisia sided with Iraq he left by bus with other Tunisians on 17 August for Baghdad in transit to Tunis.  I saw Dr. Chouikha in New York City in March 1991.  He said his countrymen displayed resentment towards him when he voiced support of Kuwait and condemnation of Saddam Hussein and the invasion.  In spite of his support of Kuwait he was not permitted to return to his job as training director of the Kuwait Investment Authority, because of his country siding with Iraq.  His doctorate is in finance and it was his job to train young Kuwaitis in investments and finance at the Authority.  I had known Dr. Chouikha before, but I got know him better in the two weeks after the invasion.  After he left I spent a lot of time at his flat watching TV since he had CNN and CNN was superb at keeping us briefed on Desert Shield and the George and Saddam show.  It was during that period that CNN introduced us to Christiane Amanpour since she was doing the coverage from Saudi Arabia.  During this period which was the last two weeks of August I read several very current books, The Politics of Rich and Poor by Kevin Phillips and Liars Poker by Michael Lewis.  Liars Poker is about the wheeler-dealer business culture of Salomon Brothers and little did I think then that in about one year the Salomon Brothers Chairman, John Gutfreund, would be fired for violating U.S. Treasury securities regulations.  Whether it’s the Persian Gulf or Wall Street it seems power does corrupt absolutely.  Liars Poker tells of a big bet foregone because of a bluff that made the stakes a little too high.  The Kuwait invasion was a big bet by Saddam and the stakes were higher than he expected.  

During the first phase I spent a lot of time in an apartment complex in Jabriya with friends, Miles Hoffman and Ron and Nina Ginn who lived there.  Ed Smiley had come to work for Ron the weekend before the invasion.  The night I met him we were having dinner at the Ginns.  Ed talked of his willingness to stand behind the Emir and fight for the cause of Kuwait.  To stand behind the Emir would have been a lot safer since he was secure, living comfortably, in Taif, Saudi Arabia.  To put it mildly Ed seemed a little weird that night.  In his defense he had quite a bit to drink, and that combined with culture shock and an Iraqi invasion made his actions more understandable.  The complex they lived in is owned by the institution they worked for, The Public Institution for Social Security.  We planned an escape over the border to Saudi Arabia.  It might have been successful if we had begun earlier.  Miles had struck up a friendship with the military attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait.  The military attaché was named Mike Schwartz and has the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy.  He was on the "Connally Flight" which was my "Flight to Freedom" on 8 December 1990 and I had to restrain myself or I would have told him off.  Schwartz may have read a few too many spy thrillers and probably dreamed of following in Oliver North's footsteps.  He talked to Miles in veiled terms laced with innuendo about escape plans and Miles who is very excitable anyway acted like the proverbial chicken with its head off.  On Tuesday, 14 August Miles came back from having seen the military attaché and beckoned me outside the flat out of the earshot of the Filipana maids.   He then said in very excited terms, "we're going".  Since no planning had been done I asked Miles, Ron and Nina to sit down and talk it through.  They decided to leave in haste at about 3 P.M.  They were back by 7 P.M.  Miles had a jeep like vehicle with four-wheel drive, but they had a flat tire when they reached the sands of the desert and Miles had no spare tire.  In the next few days we did systematic planning and preparation, including food, water, maps and changing to wider tires on the rear wheels of the vehicle.  Going is tough in the sand so wider tires deflated to about half the normal pressure cut down the chances of getting stuck.  The sun was almost as much of an enemy as the Iraqis with mid-afternoon August temperatures of about 115 degrees Fahrenheit.  One member of the party, that had now reached two vehicles full, claimed to know a Bedouin guide that would help us get across the border.  Guides were in short supply and for whatever reason the Bedouin guide was a "no show".  Then on Friday 17 August both BBC and Voice of America broadcast that there was an Iraqi order for citizens of Desert Shield coalition countries to surrender at one of several hotels with Americans reporting to the Kuwait International Hotel and the British reporting to the Regency Palace hotel.  With this order in effect it made an attempted escape much more dangerous.  I didn't report to the Kuwait International Hotel, but I had little doubt my day was coming.  Both Fahed and Fatima had tried to keep me from trying an escape out of concern for my safety.  

In the second phase I no longer drove my car around as I would have been arrested at a checkpoint.  I restricted myself to my flat and Dr. Chouikha's flat where I watched CNN.  I took great care going to and coming from his flat.  I could walk over on the grounds of my complex and in a moment I could be in the basement garage of the Al Tammar complex and take the lift up from there.  Dr. Chouikha had left food and I helped myself to the food because I could anticipate food shortages.  Food did not become a problem as Indian friends brought me food until 18 September when they departed for India.  Johnson David an associate was a loyal friend and brought me food until the very last. 

From the date of the Iraqi surrender order life became more and more difficult.  I could no longer go over and see Fahed and his family as the Iraqis had threatened to kill Kuwaitis if they harbored westerners who were subject to the surrender order.  A lawyer, Kevin Burke, had gone to live with a Kuwaiti family in Mishref about twenty miles out on the Fahaheel Expressway.  When he heard of the threat to kill Kuwaitis he waited until after sundown and walked back to his flat in the Aisha Al Salem complex.  It took him about five hours to make the hike and he arrived at about 11:30 P.M. disoriented from dehydration and showing great signs of stress.  I did not see Kevin that night, but he later told of looking at a family photograph of the host Kuwaiti family and feeling great anguish that harm might come to them.  

During the latter part of August I would see Fahed in Dr. Chouikha's flat and occasionally Fatima, Wahabi, Naji and Ameena would come over to visit and watch TV.  I know this was a very confusing time for Wahabi with people coming and going and people around like me but not coming to visit him.  In the early phase when I would see him and Tamara down in the lobby they would play tricks on me.  One day they pulled the cushion on a built in bench so I would fall down on the floor.  I went along with the trick and they got a real laugh.

I had stopped talking to Miles Hoffman by telephone because it was believed some people were arrested after their phone calls were monitored by Iraqis.  On the 27th of August I heard on BBC that an American was shot when he started running while they were in the process of capturing him.  The person's name was not given and the thought crossed my mind that the person might be Miles, but I then dismissed the thought.  It wasn't until 26 September in Baghdad that Steve the U.S. Embassy representative told me that it was indeed Miles who was shot.  Miles had planned to get married about the middle of August to a British woman he had met in Kuwait.  He often wondered out loud whether the Iraqis would release him so he could go to the United Kingdom to get married.  It didn't sound as though he was saying it tongue in cheek.  Miles was shot in the arm and a pin was inserted to hold the bone in place.  He evidently was taken back to Baghdad several times for treatment of his injury and I believe each time he was taken to a different strategic site.  Miles was released in early November and an operation was performed in the United States to undo the damage that had been done.     

In the last two weeks before my arrest I didn't leave my flat.  I did a lot of reading, watched some videos and did exercises on a rowing machine Fahed gave me.  An expatriate leaving Kuwait several months before had given Fahed the rowing machine and Fahed seemed almost insulted that anyone could think that he might use it.  I no longer went next door because Iraqis had begun door to door searches and broke doors down if there was no answer.  On 9 September every Westerner in our complex except me was arrested and taken to the Regency Palace.  I still don't know all the details, but Fahed had bribed an Iraqi officer and that was why I was not arrested at that time.  Kevin Burke who I have mentioned before was taken both on 9 September and on 19 September when I was arrested.  He had both a British passport and an Irish passport since he is Irish.  He took greater pride in his British passport and this was the passport in which his Kuwait work permit was recorded.  He soon got rid of the British passport and showed his Irish passport to the Iraqis so each time he was arrested he was released.  During this time Fahed was going through a lot of stress.  One day in early September he was interrogated by Iraqis because they thought he was a member of the Kuwait Resistance Movement.  The Iraqis had found Fahed's pistol with his fingerprints on it in an empty flat in the complex where he had hidden the pistol.  Not a wise move.  While Fahed was being interrogated the bottom of his feet were burned with a cigarette and a pistol was inserted in his mouth and the trigger was pulled, i.e., a mock execution.  I don't think he was in the armed Kuwait resistance, but he later did illegal things to help other Kuwaitis.  He told of successfully carrying five hundred thousand Iraqi Dinars through eight Iraqi checkpoints to aid in buying food for fellow Kuwaitis.   

One of the videos I was given in August to watch was "Death of a Princess", which is the story of a princess from the ruling family in Saudi Arabia being executed with her lover for having an adulterous relationship.  It occurred in the late 1970's and it was shown on U.S. television and while I remembered hearing something about it had little meaning to me then.  It was sobering and is an example how men can put an abstract idea of honor over human loving.  We in the United States would call the execution by the Saudi Arabian authorities barbaric, but we routinely do many things in the name of honor that are equally barbaric.

During these last days before my arrest more friends were leaving.  I mentioned that Johnson David left on 18 September.  On 13 September K.V. Unni a very close Indian friend came and said goodbye.  He worked for me in Bahrain and he came to work in Kuwait in 1984.  The time was short and tense because the Iraqi noose was tightening and almost everything seemed dangerous.  The circumstances made my appreciation of Unni coming even greater.    

On Saturday 15 September Fatima gave birth to a son Saleh.  She came home on 17 September and by that time I couldn't go over and see Saleh.  Fahed would sneak over to my flat through the basement car park and talk for a few minutes and on a number of occasions he brought me some beer.  When the Iraqis came they brought beer and liquor that were sold at the roundabouts.  Alcoholic beverages were forbidden for Moslems.  Kuwait professed to be dry especially after the Ayatollah Khomeini took power in Iran in 1979.  A story had it that the Emir of Kuwait wanted to know how much alcohol was being consumed in Kuwait so he hired a British firm to do a study.  They used a research method of inspecting garbage bins on Friday, the Sabbath, since Thursday night was the weekend party night.  They discovered that a lot of liquor was being consumed.  A bottle of bootlegged Black Label sold for about the equivalent of 175 U.S. dollars.  What Fahed brought me was usually Heineken and I savored the taste.  The Iraqis had a state run brewery and their beer, Farida, may not have been up to world standards, but it was not bad.  Having Fahed bring me an import beer was a real treat.  At one point Fahed told me that he had just gotten four large bags of rice and that as long as they had food I would have food.  

During these latter days of my freedom, if that's what it can be called, Fahed was also helping about a dozen Germans who were hiding in air conditioning ducts in the Al Tammar complex.  Talk about a loyal friend.  At one point towards the last Fahed suggested I take my bag and go to the new complex being built right across the street from the Al Tammar complex and find a flat that I could get in and hide out.  Thinking about scurrying around and hiding caused me more fear than being arrested.  So I resigned myself to waiting for the day.

The day came on Wednesday, 19 September.  Early in the afternoon Fahed called on the internal phone system and told me to watch out that there were Iraqis all over the place.  So I steeled my nerves and got ready.  About an hour or so later Fahed called again and said they had all left and that I was probably safe for the evening.  It seemed strange that they left since I was sure they had threatened the Palestinians who worked for the Aisha Al Salem complex so they would give information about the tenants.  Since they knew where I was and my nationality why hadn't they taken me then?  By then I also knew that the Iraqi Fahed had bribed was out of the picture, possibly permanently.  I didn't have to ponder these issues long.  The doorbell rang at about 5:30 P.M.  I was pretty sure it wasn't the Avon Lady calling. It is hard to explain how I felt when the doorbell rang.  Some fear, some relief, some loneliness, some excitement, I guess, but mainly a kind of ineffable feeling that accompanies adventure and the danger inherent in it.  When I opened the door there were two Iraqis in western style street clothes, evidently members of their secret police, the Mukhabarat.  They were probably in their late twenties or early thirties.  Behind them were two very young Iraqi soldiers with AK 47's on their shoulders.  They filled the whole area outside my entrance by the elevator.  One of the members of the Mukhabarat greeted me in well spoken English and then asked my nationality.  When I told him my nationality he asked for my passport and wanted to know why I had not registered with the Iraqi authorities.  I thing we both knew it was a stupid question and I had the urge to say something silly, like "thank you for shopping at K Mart".  I restrained myself.  He then informed me that I was to be a guest of Iraq and initially I would be taken to the Regency Palace hotel which was south along the Gulf Road about ten miles.  I took my one bag and was escorted downstairs to the lobby of our complex.  I saw Lutfi Al Mulla standing there and he managed a faint smile as if to wish me well.  He was with one of the Kuwait merchant families and managed a car rental agency bearing the family name Al Mulla.  I met him and watched CNN in his flat in the early days after the invasion.  It had been devastating for him as the Iraqis had stolen or damaged many of their cars and damaged the building where the cars were kept.  

Kevin Burke was arrested and brought down to the lobby as well although as I mentioned earlier he was held for only about one hour and then released.  One of the Iraqis in civilian clothes and one of the young soldiers took us by car to the Regency in an automobile.  The Iraqi had studied in Dublin and seemed proud to show off his knowledge of George Bernard Shaw to Kevin.

The Iraqis wanted to know about my car.  I had a brand new Chevrolet Caprice Classic that belonged to the Kuwait Investment Company.  When I was no longer able to drive in mid August I gave Fahed the keys to return to the Kuwait Investment Company when the Iraqi occupation ended.  I couldn't tell the Iraqis that Fahed had the keys so I lied and said that one of the Indians from work took the keys back to my work place.  They wanted to know the name of the person returning keys and I told them that it was one of those long Indian names and I couldn't remember it.  They also wanted to know where the keys were taken and I told them that I gave instructions to return the keys to anyone in the Real Estate Department since they had responsibility for the vehicles.  They finally gave up.

When we arrived at the Regency they checked me in including taking my passport, Kuwait identification card and driver’s license.  I was taken to my room.  Soon I went to another room where Brits and Americans were trying to party.  While I was there the Iraqis were looking frantically for me thinking I had escaped.  Fat chance!  I met a number of people who had also been arrested mainly Brits and Americans.  Two of the people Brian Wetheridge and Leon Corrall, both British, were with me on the strategic site in Iraq.  There were seven Americans who were there and made the trip to Baghdad with me.  They were; Gary Shreve, Don Bradbury, Bruce McKinnon, Serge Coletta, Orin Keathly, Chris Folsum and Ralph Leidholdt.  They were a nice group.  Don said that the first rule of being a hostage was to get along with each other.  At the time I thought he was being silly, but later I found out how right he was.  Bruce is married to a Thai woman and lives in Bangkok.  I last saw him on 27 September as I was being taken from the Al Mansour hotel in Baghdad to the strategic site.  Bruce runs two bars in Bangkok one a typical girly bar and the other a darts bar.  I asked Bruce how I could get a hold of him and he said, "just remember back to Square One".  Square One is the name of one of his bars.  

Some of the people there wanted to create a pseudo party atmosphere at the Regency in the five days we were there.  Two Brits, Geoff Jackson and Godfrey Butler, were the party organizers.  Some people still had booze.  Both Geoff and Godfrey made the trip to Baghdad and were with us in the hotel for two days.  In early December when I met Peg in Baghdad Godfrey was there as his wife was part of a British group trying to get his release.  He had lost a lot of weight and looked emaciated and sickly.  

Time dragged and we tried to get to know each other not really knowing how long we would be together.  Much of the socializing was done at meal times.  We all wondered how long we would be in the Regency hoping it would be a long time, but knowing it would be a short time.  

The first night we were there a young Brit by the name of John Dean was sitting in the lobby and all of a sudden he grimaced and clenched both of his fists and said, "God I hate this feeling of being out of control".  I have pondered what he said many times since.  It was obvious in a narrow sense what he meant.  In a more full sense it is not quite so obvious.  We want to feel in control of our lives, but a great deal of what we think we control is really an illusion.  The human condition is such that we have no control of our being born and little or no control over our dying.  Through our choices we try to create meaning in our lives.  We want to be rooted, have significant relationships and an identity we are happy with.  Our anxiety focuses on loneliness, lack of meaning, guilt and fear of fate and death.  Needless to say becoming a prisoner with my movement restricted put me out of control in the sense John was talking about.   

One of the wives was going back to the United Kingdom with her little baby and she took letters I had written to mail to my family.  The Regency Palace had a beautiful indoor sports facility including a track that I used several times.  On 24 September the word came that they had enough people to fill a bus and the next day we would travel to Baghdad.  We were supposed to be down stairs at 8 A.M. the next morning with our things.  I got up early the next day so I could see the sunrise over the Persian Gulf.  It was an awesome and beautiful experience.  

ON TO BAGHDAD

There were about thirty prisoners on the bus, eight Americans, about eighteen Brits, two Frenchmen, and several Germans.  Bruce had his two dogs and someone had several cats.  There was a woman on the bus as the wife of one of the Brits, Colin, was going to go to the site to be with him.  I think they probably did as the Iraqis permitted couples to stay together.  We got started late at about 11:30 A.M.  I had always wanted to go to Iraq, but not this way.  My friends Fahed, Fahd Al Ajmee and Jaber had promised to take me to Basra for a weekend.  Basra is near the southern border of Iraq and not that far from Kuwait City.  The Iraqis had already demolished the building housing the immigration entry at the border.  Presumably no such facility was needed for the nineteenth province of Iraq.  In southern Iraq near Basra the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow together into a waterway named the Shatt Al Arab.  Ostensibly the Iraq-Iran war was fought over the rights to this waterway, but by an executive order Saddam gave it all back in mid-August 1990 to lessen the hostility on his eastern border.

In southern Iraq near the Shatt al Arab we saw many Palm trees.  In southern Iraq things probably looked little different than they did one-hundred years ago.  There were primitive adobe houses and flocks of sheep and goats.  An occasional TV antenna rising from the home gave a hint that we were in the Twentieth Century.  The majority of the Iraqi Moslem Shiites live in southern Iraq.  Shiites make up fifty five per cent of the Iraq population.  Their holy places Kerbala and Najaf are southwest of Baghdad not far from the Euphrates river.  Kerbala was not far from the strategic site on which I was imprisoned near Fallujah.  While the Ayatollah Khomeni was in exile in Iraq he lived near the holy sites.  But back to our journey.  In late afternoon our bus broke down at the town of Amarah, which is about 175 miles from Baghdad.  It took one and one-half hours to get a bus replacement complete with a new driver and his ten or eleven year old son.  The father looked like Costello of the old comedy team of Abbott and Costello.  At first the guards were not going to let us get out of the bus.  They finally relented as it was very hot.  As we stood outside we could see Iraqis in Amarah going home from work, many dressed in western clothes, which was in contrast to Kuwait.  Pictures of Saddam were everywhere and Amarah was no exception.  We were near an avenue with a center grassy median and lo and behold there was an image of Saddam.  These pictures showed Saddam in many types of dress and I believe this one pictured him in a business suit, western style.  We resumed the last leg of our journey to Baghdad.  We got to Baghdad about 10:30 P.M. and were put up at the Al Mansour hotel on Haifa Street overlooking the Tigris River.  Our rooms were on the tenth floor.   We had a very good meal in the hotel dining room, even though it was close to midnight.  The dinner was a buffet, but waitresses kept our water glasses and coffee cups filled.  Gary Shreve and I stayed in the same room.  

We were confined to the tenth floor while we were in the Al Mansour.  We had a balcony outside the room and it was great to overlook the city of Baghdad and the Tigris river.  It looked like a beautiful city, a little drab, but very modern.  The Tigris river was disappointing as it was muddy and polluted.  We could visit with each other and we got to go to the main floor for meals and to meet the representative from the U.S. Embassy.

We met with the person from the embassy, Steve Thilbeaut, on both days we were in the hotel.  He was a fun fellow and helpful, but didn't seem to take the whole thing too seriously.  He was the one who told me about Miles Hoffman being shot by the Iraqis when he was captured, having his fractured arm set with a pin and his being brought back from his original site for more medical attention to his arm.  Steve took our letters to send to the family.  He also brought football scores, some books, a Wall Street Journal and a bottle of Black Label that the CBS crew had left on a visit to Baghdad.

OUR STRATEGIC SITE, THE AMIRIYA COMPLEX

On 27 September several groups had been taken from the hotel and Gary and I thought we had another night in the hotel.  Not so.  At 6:55 P.M. they came and took Brian Wetheridge, Leon Corrall,  Vincent Troia, Gary Shreve and me. Vincent was a pianist who played at hotels in Kuwait.  He held a French passport, was born of Italian parents in Tunisia and lived in Seville Spain.  It was still light when we left, but much of the one and one-half hour trip was in darkness.  We saw road signs that indicated we were going in the direction of Fallujah and Ramadi.  At about 8:30 P.M. we went off the main road and soon saw a sign saying we were entering the Amiriya Complex.  We found out later that we were about sixty miles southwest of Baghdad.  That day I had made a mental note that it was my godson Wahabi's, third birthday.

The young Iraqi assigned to us was named Fadel.  He was very friendly and knew English well enough to communicate with us.  Fadel simply would not believe, or could not bring himself to believe, that Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait were looting and raping.  Fadel said that he was twenty three years old and from a family of five children.  He would not tell us his last name or the town where he lived.  Fadel had to fill out some paper work on us and I found it impossible to explain what I did for the Kuwait Investment Company.  He obviously didn't understand what a Chief Investment Strategist was, but I mentioned stocks, bonds, stock exchange, interest rates, currencies and investments all to no avail.  At one point Leon heard Fadel refer to himself as a mohandis the Arabic word for engineer.  Fadel was only with us for two weeks and we were not able to find where he was sent.

The day after we arrived two Japanese, Atsuichiro Saisho and Harunobu Yamamoto, came from a dam site one-hundred fifty miles northeast of Baghdad near the Iranian border.  At the dam site they could fish and swim and play several sports.  They had been at the dam site since 25 August.  The Japanese Embassy in Kuwait had asked all Japanese to come to the Embassy which they did.  Yamamoto was one of two persons who cooked while they were housed at the Embassy.  All the Japanese men paid their own airfare to Baghdad thinking they were on their way home; instead they were arrested en masse.  They continued to be very angry at their Embassy.  Yamamoto was an engineer with the Kuwait National Petroleum Company.  He gained fame with us for being a nice guy, cooking fried rice and explaining how to tell the difference in physical appearance between Japanese, Koreans and Chinese.  We teased him by naming his rice recipe Hostage Fried Rice and suggesting he start a restaurant featuring it.

Saisho was regional manager for the Middle East for Japan Airlines with Iraq as one of the countries he was responsible for.  He was fifty years old and very sensitive about it.  He didn't want his girl friend’s to know his age.  Ironically when Saisho went home on the Nakasone flight on 7 November with seventy-seven other Japanese hostages the reason given was age.  Saisho was probably one of the highest paid persons who were taken hostage by Iraq.  He wanted to be the person who fixed and served tea to us.  We kidded him about being the highest paid Tea Boy of all time.  He was also relentless in his pursuit of flies with a folded magazine, his fly-swatter, in his hand at all times.  Saddam's uncle had written a tract entitled, "Three Whom God Should Not Have Created, Persians, Jews and Flies".  We certainly agreed about the flies.  They were everywhere in large numbers.    

Gary Shreve was taken from our site on 1 October after having been with us for four nights.  Evidently the intent of the Iraqis was to keep the distribution of prisoners, by nationality, on each site representative of the total number of prisoners.  Only persons from key coalition nationalities were prisoners.  There were British, Japanese, a Frenchman, and me as the American on our site.  Most of the time the persons were Brian, Leon, Saisho, Yamamoto, Vincent and me.  On 27 November Mike Banks was brought to our site.  Mike had the misfortune of being on the British Airways flight that landed in Kuwait for refueling.  Repairs to the plane's air conditioning in London caused a two hour delay. W Without the time lost by the delay their plane would refuel in Kuwait and been on its way before Iraqi troops took the Kuwait Airport over.  This was the flight that received a lot of attention on CNN, since one of the passengers was an unaccompanied ten-year old American girl.  She was released within a day or so.  Mike spent most of the time in Kuwait near Kuwait University.  Vincent went home on 27 October when the French went home, Saisho went home on the Nakasone flight on 7 November, and Brian was transferred to another site, presumably because of bad behavior, on 4 December.  

A common question is, "how did you spend the time?"  I developed a routine to add structure to each day.  I got up in the morning and meditated complete with a creative visualization of being reunited with my family at the Des Moines airport.  I pushed the Iraqis for regular exercise outside, which we got, but every so often they would backslide and we would have to push them again.  Leon and I were the regulars.  Leon walked with a limp from an accident he had when he was young.  The Iraqis had expected Brian to be the regular, since he was the Diving Coach for the Kuwait national diving team.  Brian seemed subject to wide mood swings and many times he would sleep in during the day after having stayed up all night.  They seemed confused that a man with a limp and another with a stocky build and an age they found inconsistent with exercise as the two prisoners who were agitating for a regular exercise program.  We were driven to a site about one mile away, which had been the compound where Yugoslav construction workers lived while they built the huge Munitions Plant nearby.  Most of the time we went for an hour of exercise at 11:00 A.M. and a second hour at 4:00 P.M.  When we got back to our site after the morning session we had our noon meal and after the afternoon session we had our evening meal.  Exercise and meals accounted for about four hours each day.

On 2 November Gary Shreve, Paul Moss, Oskar Wucher, Mineo Harada, Ryoichi Naguchi were transferred from the Munitions Plant to the compound, which was the site where we exercised.  It was good to see Gary again.  Harada and Naguchi were as easy to get on with as Saisho and Yamamoto, but there was a big difference as they both maintained a very active exercise program, mainly tennis.  Harada and Naguchi were in the Al Mansour on 6 December as their wives had come from Japan at the same time that Peggy and Tom came to see me.  Paul and Oskar were both soft spoken pleasant people.  It was nice to have five more fellow-hostages to visit with.  The Iraqis soon built a wall around their quarters on the compound and we had different exercise times than they did.  We had some contact with them, but much less than we did in the first few days they were on the exercise site compound.   

Reading was the staple activity.  I usually don't read many novels, but I did during this time.  I read; "The Kappillan of Malta, by Nicholas Monsarrat", "Night of Error, by Desmond Bagley", " Magic Army, by Leslie Thomas" and "Hiroshima Joe" by Martin Booth.  Leon gave me one to read titled "The Messianic Legacy, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln".  They also wrote, "The Holy blood and The Holy Grail".  The Iraqis brought us reading material, but most of it was either propaganda or not worth reading.  They did bring, "The Epic of Gilgamesh", which I enjoyed.  One propaganda book entitled, "The Long Days" was set in 1963-1964 when Abdul Salam Arif was the President of Iraq and the Baath party was trying to gain power.  The hero of the book is named Mohammad Saqr, and while Mohammad is fictional the character represents Saddam Hussein and his exploits, which were exaggerated and glorified.

One of the novels entitled, "Sad Cypress, by Agatha Christie", was intriguing.  Hercule Poirot is told nothing but lies as he tries to solve the crime.  Through the logic of lies he is able to detect who the guilty person is.  In, "Sad Iraq, by Saddam Hussein" the lies and crimes are intertwined and ongoing and the villain is not brought to justice.  In mid October it was broadcast that Saddam had a dream in which the Prophet told him that his missiles were pointed the wrong way and that they should be pointed at Israel.  What a military strategist the Prophet was!  He was so good that Saddam used that strategy during the war and fired Scud Missiles at Israel to enlist Arab support for his war cause.  Even Saddam's dreams are lies.

I had heard so much about Arab brotherhood from my Kuwaiti friends.  Saddam invading Kuwait seemed to make a mockery of Arab brotherhood.  Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states and Jordan were members of the Desert Shield-Desert Storm coalition.  Egypt gets substantial foreign aid from the United States.  Hafez Assad of Syria hated Saddam, plus he wanted to gain de facto control of Lebanon, so Syria would again be the historic Greater Syria.  Assad accomplished that objective with the tacit approval of the United States.  Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States were afraid they too might be Saddam's territorial targets.  Yemen sided with Iraq and under some pretext Saudi Arabia sent three hundred thousand Yemeni guest workers back to Yemen.  The so called Plucky Little Monarch, King Hussein of Jordan, tried to straddle the fence between Iraq and the U.N. Coalition.  In addition Palestinians sided with Iraq and this is in spite of the fact that Kuwait had opened its doors to Palestinians.  Kuwait was home for about three hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians.  With this in mind a quotation from Jonathan Swift in the foreword to the novel, “Night of Error" seemed appropriate.

          

          And when with grief you see your brother stray, 

          Or in a night of error lose his way,

          Direct his wandering and restore the day

          To guide his steps afford your kindest aid,

          And gently pity whom you can't persuade:

          Leave to Avenging Heaven his stubborn will,

          For, O, remember, he's your brother still.

                            Jonathan Swift

Since the Arab brothers couldn't persuade, gentle pity for Saddam was an option, but instead they got on the side of Avenging Heaven, alias Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopp.  Now back to the ordinary.

The food was okay.  We always had fresh vegetables and fruit and usually eggs and cheese.  Tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, peppers, date figs and grapes were supplied regularly.  Iraq has two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates.  The Al Mansour was on the Tigris and we crossed the Euphrates at Fallujah only about twenty miles from our site.  The bridge over the Euphrates at Fallujah was one of the so called surgical air missile strikes that were shown again and again on CNN during the war.  Our food was brought from Fallujah in the early days of our stay, but later there was a woman cook who did a great job.  She even cooked peppers stuffed with rice that were delicious.  Rice was a staple and I previously told about Yamamoto taking the left over rice and cooking, "Hostage Fried Rice".  When we had meat it was usually chicken.  The Arabic word for chicken is dejaaj.  On one occasion Leon asked the Iraqis to put fish on the menu.  They did.  When they brought the flat white fish caught in the Euphrates Yamamoto referred to it as a garbage disposal.  So much for fish. 

Life goes on for human shields on strategic sites.  People have Birthdays!  Yamamoto was forty two on 18 October and Leon was forty six on 21 October.  People have jealous fantasies.  Leon's wife and three little children left Kuwait in early September.  In referring to the sights in Kuwait after their departure Leon described a surrealistic scene, Kafkaesque in his words, of vacant streets, bombed out buildings, and shadows of children past.  Leon had expected to hear from his wife through Gulf Link the BBC program that broadcast messages from home and when he had not heard from her by his birthday his anxiety was quite high.  I tried to reassure and console him, but it wasn't until he got a message a short time later that dark images were replaced with bright ones.  A barber came and cut our hair.  Doctors came from time to time.  Vincent had high blood pressure, so we had many visits from doctors while he was with us.  We took note of things happening outside.  Peggy's twenty third birthday was on 28 October.  In the World Series the Cincinnati Reds beat the Oakland Athletics in four games.  We celebrated the first anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall on 9 November.     

We had a TV and towards the last we had a VCR.  Every so often there would be a feature movie on TV usually on Thursday night, the night before the Sabbath.  One night we saw, "Crocodile Dundee II" and another night the movie about the life of Frances Farmer.

We got an uncensored version of the video cassette "9 1/2 Weeks with Kim Basinger".  Many of the Iraqis watched it intently, as they don't see many uncensored movies with sexy scenes of a beautiful blonde actress.  Most of the programs on TV were in Arabic and filled with propaganda.  The propaganda made Leon and Brian mad, but I took the point of view that it was all a learning experience.  I watched Saddam visiting the troops in Kuwait.  I watched Saddam sitting while pre-pubescent little girls in white dresses danced for his amusement.  I watched Saddam receiving world leaders such as Heath from Britain, Brandt from Germany, Nakasone from Japan, and Primakov from Russia.  I watched Saddam receiving broadcast journalists.  When Peter Jennings from the U.S. TV network, ABC, came to Baghdad Brian was really upset as he thought it helped Saddam's propaganda effort.  I watched Saddam receive Muhammed Ali. Ali's flight left with a number of Americans the week before Saddam gave the blanket release.  I understand Ramsey Clark was in Baghdad, at least once, but I didn't see him on TV.  There was fifteen minutes of News each night broadcast in English.  Most of us usually watched it.  It was late October before I realized that Voice of America had a program, "Messages from Home" similar to the BBC program Gulf Link. One of the Brits found it.  They were trying to tune in Gulf Link and heard Messages from Home.  Soon after learning of this the Iraqis came to me and wanted me to be on TV.  I thought it was a terrible program, propaganda laden, called "Guest News".  I agreed to be on the program if they would send a video cassette of it to my family.  This was the basis of a fight with Brian as he thought I was a terrible traitor to agree to be on the program.  I was not allowed to go for exercise at 11 o'clock on Friday, 2 November as they expected the interview would be done then.  That afternoon while we were all watching TV the interviewers arrived.  To our surprise they were from the Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.  This was more than a Guest Interview.  Later I pieced together that Bush had been critical of the way hostages were being treated and Iraq wanted to show the United States and the world that we were being treated well.  The Associated Press interview of me describing the conditions on our site evidently aired all over the world.  I was picked because I am American.  Why I was picked to the exclusion of other Americans I have no idea.

The blackout period had ended.  From 3 November on we were able to make telephone calls to family and friends.  My first telephone call was to Cathi and luckily Cathi and Peggy were together on a Saturday afternoon, so I got to talk to both of them.  They told me of the letter writing campaign being waged by Iowans on my behalf, of a trip to Washington D.C. by Cathi and Tom to see the Iowa Senators and the Iraq Ambassador, and of American Republic employees and Unitarian Church members writing letters for me.  Cathi and Tom's trip to Washington D.C. was in early October.  Both Iowa Senators, Thomas Harkin and Charles Grassely, went with Cathi and Tom to see the Ambassador from Iraq, Mohammed Al Mashat. When Cathi and Tom returned to Des Moines, a number of well wishers met them at the Airport.  The next day I talked to Steve.  He said that he, Cathi, and Peggy were interviewed by Garrick Utley on the NBC Evening News about my call to Cathi and Peg mentioned above.  I listened to the Voice of America World Report at 12:30 A.M. on 6 November and they said my daughters characterized my discussion with them as "evasive" when discussing the conditions at the site.  

The whole situation seemed bizarre.  TV interviews aired worldwide, long distance calls to my family and friends, and feedback by radio of how I sounded.  Don't get me wrong, this sure beat not being in communication with the outside world.  The harsh reality was that I was on the same site that I had been for nearly six weeks with no end in sight.  I knew my family was trying to get me out based on my thyroid condition.  Also if Saddam wanted to let some, but not all, Americans go older persons would probably go first.       

For much of November, until Mike Banks came in late November, Leon, Brian, Yamamoto and I held down the fort.  No pun intended!  After the wall went up on the exercise site we had very little contact with the hostages held there, but gradually that eased up and we had some contact with them at the tennis court.  My exercise routine was to walk in the morning, usually with Leon, and do my running in the afternoon.  Leon was an interesting person.  He had been a cost estimator for a construction company in Kuwait.  Back home in Devon, England he ran a bookshop called, "The Pocket Bookshop".  He was very well read and enjoyed doing crossword puzzles.  He also had an extensive knowledge of plant life and birds.  As we walked around the exercise site, with piles of rubble everywhere, he would see and name beautiful little plants that probably would have gone unnoticed by someone less knowledgeable and less sensate like me.

We talked a lot about what Saddam might do.  One theory had him as a master of brinkmanship with his backing down and pulling out of Kuwait when he was finally confronted with war.  A variation on this theme had him retreating, but keeping the oilfields on the border and possibly one of the islands.  Leon had a "South Sea Monkey Metaphor" that went this way.  In the South Seas monkeys are trapped by making a small hole in a coconut shell just large enough to accommodate an extended paw reaching for rice inside the shell.  When the monkey puts it paw inside the shell and grabs the rice its fist cannot be withdrawn unless it lets go of the rice.  They catch monkeys this way.  They are really caught by their own greed.  Leon was convinced that Saddam was the monkey and that he had his paw around Kuwait and wouldn't let go.  Under this theory Saddam would have gone to his own destruction.  Leon was right about Saddam trying to hold on to Kuwait, but wrong about his going to his own destruction. 

Much of the focus in November was on, "messages from home" on Voice of America and messages to home via the telephone.  During November I talked to my family Cathi, Peggy, and Steve, my brother Rob, my cousin Warren, my friends Marjorie Cadek, Bill Dickerson, and Don & Shirley Morris.  Each time I talked to people back home I heard about the efforts on my behalf.  Don was trying to mount an effort to bribe Iraqis to get me out.  Don had a contact that had been in the State Department, but was then with the Republican National Committee, who in turn knew a person with the Public Relations firm that represented Iraq.  Between these parties and a good deal of money, ten thousand dollars or more, the plan was supposed to be worked out and executed.  To minimize the number of parties involved a transfer from one site to another would take place and I simply would not be taken to the next site.  Don was told that it would have been better if my party affiliation were Republican. “Red, white and blue I am for you, honest you're a grand old flag" if you are a Republican that is.  

It was great to get the messages on Voice of America.  I made sure I had the correct times and frequencies, so I would be sure I got every message.  The messages were on three times a day for thirty minutes each time at 5:30 A.M., 11:30 A.M., 1:30 A.M.  One message came from Chelsi in her tiny little voice, "Grandpa I'm five now, I had a birthday, I go to school, I love you".  Her message brought tears to my eyes.  I so wished I could reach out and hug her!   I heard of snow on the ground back home, about the Hawkeyes standing a good chance of going to the Rose Bowl, and the Free Keegan effort.

On 14 November one of the guards at the gate to our compound, Molud, and a soldier driver took me to Baghdad to the Red Crescent Hospital for a physical examination.  The physicians asked about my thyroid condition and gave me a routine physical.  My blood pressure reading was 100/70.  On the way home we stopped at a little restaurant and Molud and the driver treated me to a meal.  On the edge of Baghdad we stopped at Molud's home and little children ran out to greet their dad.  It was dark by then, but I could see joy in their silhouettes and hear the resonance of joy in their voices at this opportunity to be with their dad for just a few minutes.  It made me wonder again what this whole mess was all about.  Molud's children would have been trying to get him out for medical reasons if the tables had been turned.  I don't think the results of my physical helped my case much.  

Believe it or not the Iraqis had a Thanksgiving Day celebration for Americans at another site on the Amiriya Complex.  It was held on Thursday, 22 November at 7:00 P.M.  It was evidently suggested by a British couple on that site, the Richardson’s.  He was a minister for some religious denomination in England.  So Reverend and Jean Richardson honored a day that to a great extent symbolizes what is probably the first and greatest loss of a colony by the United Kingdom, the good old United States of America.  Two Americans I mentioned earlier were there, Serge Coletta and Chris Folsum.  Two British who made the trip to Baghdad with us on 25 September were there, Roy Collins and Nigel McKenzie.  Roy entertained us that evening by playing the spoons, as he had done while we were in the Regency Hotel in Kuwait during September.  I also met J.B. Bhatt, originally from India, from near Houston in League City who had been on the same British Airways flight as Mike Banks.  J.B. is a gentle and nice person.  On 6 December J.B. would be taken with me to Baghdad to meet with our loved ones who were coming to see us as a part of a "Coming Home Group".  Although I did not see J.B. after I got back to the United States, Kim Cobb of the Houston Chronicle did a story on 14 January, 1991 that featured J.B. and me.  Kim was in Baghdad in early December of 1990 covering the events.   The story was entitled, "Seeing their faces" and it tells about J.B.'s mental images of some three hundred Iraqi faces he had known while he was a hostage and the sadness he felt for them on the eve of a war they couldn't win and didn't want.  We had turkey that night and Farida, a beer brewed in Iraqi breweries.  There were persons of nationalities other than American there that night, so it seems strange that the British and Japanese from our site were not invited.  Although on Thanksgiving Day I still didn't have any idea if and when I would be let go it, nonetheless, it was a good time to pause and give thanks.

On 22 November I got the thyroid medicine Cathi had sent and letters dated 27 & 28 September from Cathi, Steve, Peggy, and my brother Rob.  Rob with his fine sense of humor and in the tradition of Stan Laurel of Laurel & Hardy began his letter with, "this is a fine mess you've gotten yourself into this time Ollie".

As I talked to my family by telephone I heard more and more about the "Free Keegan" efforts by Iowans.  Evidently Cathi was the Mother of the idea to have a letter writing campaign with the letters written to Saddam Hussein.  Her husband, Tom, had many media contacts because of his position as the public relations person for the Des Moines Police Department.  WHO TV, the NBC affiliate, started publicizing the letter writing campaign and it caught on like wildfire.  Even though they told me about the efforts on my behalf I couldn't imagine how mammoth the effort was.

On 24 November in a telephone conversation with my son-in-law, Tom, he told me that he was coming to Baghdad with a "Coming Home Group" on 5 December.  If necessary my brother Rob would come with a second group on 19 December.  A priest from Detroit who played a role in the hostage crisis in Iran (1979-1981) was coming with the group.  Some of the leaders who refused to come were: Jimmy Carter, Senator Tom Harkin, Susan Eisenhauer and former Iowa Senator Harold Hughes.  Ramsey Clark was willing to come.  The United States stood alone in not being represented by someone of the stature of Heath, Brandt, Nakasone and Primakov. 

Even though we had talked about a group coming, now it was definite.  It wasn't until about one week later when I found out that my daughter, Peggy, was coming too!  Now my focus was on their coming including telling them what to bring in case they were unsuccessful in getting Saddam to release me. 

It was hard to imagine that I would be released, but it was also hard to imagine that I would not be released.  I still remember walking around the construction yard at the exercise site with Leon and feeling down deep that there was very little chance of getting out in a few weeks.  On 18 November Saddam told of a hostage release program under which hostages would be released in batches beginning on Christmas day.  The release program would continue over the next several months with the last departure on 25 March.  The program was dependent on a so-called, "climate of peace" existing.  Saddam had authorized the release program for 3,500 Western and Japanese hostages, "if nothing comes to disturb the climate of peace".   This seemed to be a ploy to use the "hostage pawns" to delay a coalition attack during the winter months when the weather was favorable.  He thought western soldiers wouldn't be able to adapt to the intense heat of the desert.  Saddam also seemed to think he could wear down the resolve of members of the Coalition.   

On 29 November the United Nations Security Council voted in favor of using force to get Iraq out of Kuwait.  This was resolution 678.  It authorized Coalition members to use, "all necessary means to uphold and implement the Security Council Resolution 660 and all subsequent relevant resolutions" and restore, "international peace and security in the area".  There were twelve affirmative votes with China abstaining and Yemen and Cuba voting no.  By the time resolution 678 was passed many of the, "human shield hostages" had already been released.  The French and Germans were gone and some British, Americans and Japanese were released.  The numbers remaining were; British 1400, Americans 700 and Japanese 150.  There were still a number of hostages in Kuwait who had not been permitted to leave.  There were Italians, Irish, Dutch, Swiss and Danes still living in Kuwait.  

The main focus in those last two weeks was on families coming to see us.  The wives of Leon, Mike, Harada and Naguchi were coming and as I mentioned earlier Harada and Naguchi were in Baghdad at the same time I was.  Other topics of discussion centered on Saddam's hostage release plan and when and how force would be used by the Coalition forces in what would be known as Desert Storm.  Little did I think then that I would be watching the air war begin on the Sports Barn TV in Chattanooga, Tennessee in fewer than two months.

HOMECOMING  

I had called the Al Mansour hotel on the night of 5 December and by chance my son-in-law was in the lobby near the telephone operator, so I got to talk to him.  I knew that the group had arrived in Baghdad and that my daughter Peggy was there too.  I was picked up by a driver and a guard about 9 A.M.  The guard had been on the site for the whole time I was there.  He didn't speak English, but I could tell he was a kind-hearted, sensitive person.  One day he sensed that I was depressed and he said, "Allah Kareem" which I think means, "God Will Provide".  At the entrance to the Amiriya Complex another vehicle was waiting with J.B.Bhatt.  I was happy to have the company on the way to Baghdad and we had a lively conversation.  I tried to be very observant of the details of the country side as we crossed the Euphrates River at Fallujah and headed towards Baghdad.  The closer we got to Baghdad the more excited I got.

We pulled up the semi-circular driveway in front of the Al Mansour hotel and there on the front steps stood my daughter, Peggy, and my son-in-law.  I jumped out and hugged and hugged Peggy and yelled and cried.  She was surprised to see me drive up in a pickup truck and to find that I was wearing the only suit and tie I had with me.

The guard took me to the tenth floor and checked me in with the authorities.  When the guard had finished and was in the process of leaving we embraced, which is usual for men in the Arab culture, but it was unusual considering the fact I was not an Arab and considering the guard-prisoner relationship.  Peggy was staying on another floor, but she could come up to my floor and I could go to her floor and downstairs to the ground floor for meals.  Since I was a hostage I was not supposed to go to the lobby floor, although on several occasions I violated that rule.  One of those times was the afternoon of 6 December just after a blanket release of hostages had been announced.  A CNN reporter put a microphone in front of me and asked me what I thought of the decision.  He had to explain about the blanket release before I could respond.  That was a very happy moment, but I was still skeptical that it wasn't true.

It was a strange time!  I was happy to know I would be released in a few days, but nonetheless I was still a hostage.  It was great to see and be with Peggy.  We did some silly things.  I locked Peggy and I out on the balcony and we were unable to get back into my room.  We looked down from the tenth floor of the Al Mansour at the Tigris River and the people below.  After a while we were able to jar the glass sliding door open.  We spent a lot of time just hanging out.  Even though we couldn't go to the ground floor we all ate together and that included the media people.  The reporters were not supposed to interview hostages, but they ate with us so it was easy for them to talk to us.  I remember having an extensive discussion with the reporter from the New York Times.  The photographer from People Magazine shot a number of photos of Peggy, Tom and I on the balcony right outside the hotel dining room.  The woman from CNN seemed to be everywhere.

Robert Vinton was there.  He was a fifty-eight year old man who worked for Johnson Controls in Baghdad.  His wife was on the flight with Peggy.  I first saw him on CNN in August soon after the invasion.  CNN would call and interview him by telephone and his picture would be shown on the screen while he was being interviewed.  Then it was reported that the Iraqis had arrested him.  He had lost a tremendous amount of weight.  In late January of 1991 we heard from his wife that he had died of a heart attack.  His wife said he was very angry.  She felt the unresolved anger contributed to his death.  He had been moved around to five different strategic sites all near Baghdad.  It is too bad that Saddam Hussein could not have felt the force of his fury, but anger turned inside does to you what you would like to have it do to the target of your anger.      

I saw Ed Smiley at the Al Mansour in early December.  His wife had also been a part of the "Coming Home Group" and was on the flight with Peggy.  He had also lost a lot of weight.  He acted a bit strange, but he had also acted a little strange in mid-August when I met him at the Ginns.

Uvwe Jahnke was also there.  He is an upbeat guy and he was still upbeat.  We had a nice visit.  It was the first time we had visited since the early August dinner with him and Abdelhadi.      

Godfrey Butler was also there and he too had lost a lot of weight.  As you will recall he was one of the party organizers while we were held briefly in the Regency Hotel in Kuwait.  I remember him well on our bus trip to Baghdad.

Harada and Naguchi were there with their wives so I got to meet them.  I was happy to see Harada and Naguchi as they seemed like such nice people.  Gary Shreve was on the same site with them.  For some reason Gary had not been invited to the Thanksgiving Day dinner, but he said he would not have gone unless they too had been invited.  

Scott Pope and Mike Borland from WHO-TV, the Des Moines NBC Affiliate, came with Peggy and Tom to cover the story.  They were reporting back to Des Moines while we were there.  Scott was the reporter and Mike was the photographer.  It was a while before I got to see them.  They were able to get on the flight that would take me home.  WHO had picked up on the letter writing campaign to "Free Keegan."  It turned out being the second biggest story in the Des Moines TV market in 1990.  Scott and Mike were staying in the Al Rasheed Hotel, which is where the Media people stayed.

Scott called it the "biggest story of my life".  They were the only Iowa journalists from Iowa in Baghdad to cover the story.

The focus turned to going home.  I would hear bits and pieces about getting on the Coastal Corporation flight that was leaving soon.  I thought that all the members of the "Coming Home Group" were planning to be on that flight and oblique remarks were made about me that made me think they were going and I was being left behind.  I thought this because I had gotten in to it with a hotel security guard and they had threatened to keep me another six months.  I found, to my surprise, that I would be on the Coastal Corporation flight and the others wouldn't.  The efforts by my family and friends to get me out because of my medical condition evidently put me at the top of a list for early release.  It seems that I was real close to getting on the Muhammed Ali flight that left the week before.  The Coastal Corporation also agreed that Scott Pope and Mike Borland could go back on the flight.  At any point red tape might have held things up.  Saturday December 8 came and we were anxious about getting out.  In late afternoon they gathered us in a conference hall on the ground floor of the hotel and returned our passports.  While I was in the process of getting my passport Mike Boetcher of NBC came over and talked to me for awhile.  He seemed down to earth and friendly.  We were put in Vans and driven to the Airport.  The sun was low in the sky and was setting about the time we got to the Airport.  We did the normal processing through Passport Control.  And finally we were on the Coastal Corporation plane on a flight that was named, "Flight to Freedom".

FLIGHT TO FREEDOM

It felt great to be sitting in Coastal Corp's Boeing 707.  There were only 24 hostages aboard.  They had room for more and they had tried to get more on, but the Iraqis wouldn't go along with it.  I didn't know any of the other hostages on the plane, except of course Lieutenant Commander Mike Schwartz.  Oscar Wyatt, the Coastal Corporation Chairman, and John S. Connally, the former Governor of Texas were both on the flight and I found later that the U.S. State Department named it the "Connally Flight".  They fed us chili they had cooked in a crock pot and served us beer.  We cheered as we became airborne and again as we left airspace over Iraq. We were all in ebullient mood.

Wyatt and Connally moved about the plane talking to ex-hostages and family members.  Connally had on a long flannel nightshirt and had a sleeping bunk about at the center of the aircraft.  Peg took sleeping pills and slept much of the way.  I slept very little since it felt so good to be free and alive.

We stopped for refueling at Shannon, Ireland.  We whooped and hollered when we crossed the Canadian-U.S. border only a few hours from Houston.  For the last hour or so it was a feeling of I can't wait.  We landed at Ellington Field at Houston, Texas at 4:35 A.M. Sunday morning December 9, 1990.  I was wearing an Iowa Hawkeyes sweatshirt in honor of all the Iowans who had worked so hard for me.  As we came down the stairs descending from the plane there were bright lights everywhere as there were news people and photographers everywhere.  When I got down on the tarmac I had the urge to kiss the ground so I did.  I recall thinking some people might think that was a little too much, but I thought, "oh, what the heck".  All of a sudden I looked up and there was Cathi holding Emily with Chelsi beside her.  We hugged and as we embraced we yelped and cried.  Emily didn't know me and photos show her looking very surprised by all that went on.  Then I looked over and there was Steve and we had a joyous reunion.  There was more, Don and Shirley Morris had also flown to Houston to meet me.  This was totally unexpected and we had our hugs and hellos.

Coastal Corporation put us up at a motel close by for several hours.  Their hospitality was wonderful.  They even paid the airfare to Des Moines for the whole party.  We left later that morning on American Airlines with a stop in Dallas to change planes.  I called my sister Barb in Dallas, but I wasn't able to make contact.  We got on the plane for the last leg of the journey.  On the flight to Des Moines I got to sit in the first class section.  We were surrounded by Professional wrestlers.  I didn't realize what a big deal that was.  A well known wrestler by the name of Randy Savage was sitting nearby.  All of them seemed intelligent, far from the stereotype, and one said he had been and English Teacher in high school at one time.  

When we arrived at the Des Moines airport we were kept in the plane until everyone else got off.  I was carrying Chelsi as I got off the plane.  We were greeted by about three-hundred people, including a number of close friends, and the media.  We stayed at the airport while I talked to the people and reporters.  Then it was on to Pleasant Hill, where Cathi and Tom lived.  Our party was driven there in two limousines with a Police escort and the streets were lined with people cheering in Pleasant Hill.  When we got to Cathi's house family, friends and the media were there.  Several interviews were done in Cathi's living room.  I accepted an invitation to be on the "Today Show".  The other two networks had hounded Cathi to have me be on their shows, but WHO-TV was the NBC Affiliate and their coverage by Pope and Borman with the "Flight to Freedom" had been wonderful so the choice wasn't difficult to make.  I was suffering from jet-lag, but I was on such a freedom-high that getting up at 5:30 A.M., Monday, December 10, to go to the WHO studio was no problem.  I was picked up and driven to Des Moines by a Limo service.  The Limo driver asked if I would be willing to be interviewed by a Des Moines radio station via telephone while we were en route, which I did.

The Today Show interview was done by Debra Norville and was the usual kind of TV interview with questions that would elicit sound bite responses.  It seemed strange to be sitting in a studio wired with microphone and staring at a camera participating in electronic dialogue with Ms. Norville in what seemed like pretty stark and detached circumstances.  A few days later Scott Pope wrapped it up for WHO-TV with an interview of Tom and me that was broadcast shortly thereafter.  The story had been an important one for WHO since it got such a strong response from viewers that WHO moved ahead of KCCI, the CBS affiliate, in the ratings.  Cathi, Tom and I were interviewed on WHO radio by Jim Zabel on Wednesday of that week.  We were told on the Zabel show that I would be the guest of the Rose Bowl Committee at the Rose Bowl on January 1, 1991.  The Iowa University Hawkeyes were playing Washington University in the Rose Bowl and since I was wearing a Hawkeye Sweatshirt when I got off the plane in Houston I was the Hostage chosen to receive the honor of a Rose Bowl trip.  None of my children were able to go with me so Tom, his brother Larry, and my friend Roger Evans and I went to the Rose Bowl as I represented the Americans who had been held hostage by Iraq.  It was exciting.  We went to the Hawkeye luncheon the day before and attended the Rose Bowl Parade on New Year's Day.  The Hawkeyes were outclassed by Washington, but the experience of being at the Rose Bowl was fantastic.  At the half-time there was a fly over of U.S. fighter planes in honor of the American hostages.

During the month of December I stayed with the Van Baale family in Pleasant Hill.  It was great to be with the granddaughters, Chelsi and Emily, and my daughter Cathi.  The day after I returned, December 10, was Cathi's thirty-third birthday.  I went out to dinner with her and Tom and Scott Pope and his wife.  On December 9 in 1989 Cathi's grandmother had died and ironically it was December 9 in 1990 that I returned to the United States.  She was grieving on her birthday in 1989 and had some anxious moments leading up to her birthday in 1990.

People called who I hadn't heard from for a long time some as long as thirty-years.  I gave talks at many schools, service clubs, churches, both in Des Moines and Chattanooga.  I won't try to catalog all of them.  One school in Minburn, Iowa was special.  Cathi had gone to talk there in October.  I went in December.  They were third or fourth graders and they had followed the news about me daily.  They asked great questions and when a group photo was being taken one cute little girl with blond hair, who hadn't asked any questions, came and stood by me, gave me a gift of a little figurine, and slipped her little arm around my waist while the picture was being taken.  It was also special going to Chelsi's school in Pleasant Hill.

I gave talks in the Sermon slot in the Unitarian Churches in both Des Moines and Chattanooga.  These were special since I felt a real kinship with the people there.  The service in Chattanooga was standing room only.  The night before the Church Service Linda and Doug Graydon had a party for me at their place.  Bill and Sandy Kurtz gave me Lewis Grizzard's "If I Ever Get Back to Georgia I'm Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground".  The suggestion was that I needed to think about nailing my feet to the ground.  Some of the themes in my talks were on relationships, loss of control and creating one's own reality.  These themes were the focus of my imagination in Iraq.  George Bernard Shaw said, "an Irishman's heart is nothing but his imagination".  My imagination kept me going while I was there and much of it was heart-felt.

Pleasant Hill treated me royally.  The City Council declared December 9, 1990 "Charles Keegan Day" and they held a party for me at the pavilion in the City Park.

Peggy was seeing me off at the Des Moines airport for my Rose Bowl trip on December 30, 1990 and she brought me a copy of the Des Moines Sunday Register.  My picture and homecoming story were featured as a full-page advertisement for the Des Moines Register in an advertising series they had called, "You Meet The Most Interesting People In The Register".  It ran several times after that.  Peggy got me the metal plate of the advertisement as a gift.  I have it mounted as you would a poster.  The picture is the one in which I am holding Chelsi as I get off the plane at the Des Moines Airport.

On my return from the Rose Bowl I went for a visit in Chattanooga.  I stayed with my friend Clive Kileff.  At this time the Persian Gulf War had not yet started.  I was sitting in the bar at the Sports Barn the evening the air war started.  In Chattanooga the time was about 6:30 P.M on January 16, in Baghdad it was 2:30 A.M. on January 17.  The story of my arrest and subsequent imprisonment was what people were interested in so that was the story I told and retold.  As I mentioned I gave a talk at the Unitarian Church to a standing room only crowd.  This was a very poignant event since many of my close friends were there. The Minister, Jack Young, challenged me to think through the "loss of control" theme I referred to earlier.  I talked to a number of service clubs including the Kiwannis which Mickey Robbins arranged.  I also talked at several high schools including the Girls Preparatory School and Soddy Daisy.  One of the classes at the Girls Preparatory School had written letters on my behalf.  My friend Gloria Moore invited me to speak at Soddy Daisy where she taught. Both of the newspapers interviewed me and did stories.  The Chattanooga News Free Press did a very good story.  Lee Anderson, the Editor, and a reporter did the interviewing.  The Chattanooga Times sent their religious reporter who was more interested in getting me to predict the probability that there would be a war than doing a good story.  The TV stations had me in for an interview the night the air war started.  Mickey Robbins also interviewed me for Point of View TV Program which is the Arts and Education Council current affairs program.  Chattanooga State asked me to speak and I was amazed that the size of the audience was about 650 people.  Although there were talks and media interviews in Chattanooga it was a much smaller scale than Des Moines had been.  Also many of my close friends were in Chattanooga so I felt more at home than I had felt in Des Moines where strangers would recognize me.

I travelled to Des Moines in late January where I would live until January 1993.  I lived with my son Steve and his friend Craig Laws.  Steve left to work in Davenport, Iowa in November 1991 and I continued to live with Craig until I returned to Chattanooga to live in January 1993.

In February of 1991 I gave a number of talks.  There was some media attention, but very little.  WHO-TV never again called after their post-Flight to Freedom sign-off interview with Tom and me.  When the land war started in late February WOI-TV called and told me that wanted me to describe the geography of Kuwait City.  I spent the day visualizing the whole scene and key landmarks.  In the actual interview they asked me very little and certainly nothing about what the troops would be seeing as they moved into Kuwait City.  

Getting my fifteen minutes of fame was as bizarre as being a hostage.  I never really understood the role I was playing in the performance of the Persian Gulf War Theater.  Although I have to admit I enjoyed being the center of attention I also found aspects of it very frustrating.  The media-people have a sound-bit love you and leave you mentality.  They take from you until you are fully depreciated with very little salvage value left.  I wondered what all of this represented in the minds of kids like the ones I met with at Minburn and Pleasant Hills who followed my experience as a way of following first, "Desert Shield" and then "Desert Storm".  I was embarrassed by any characterization of my being Hero.  It seemed that people had a difficult time seeing us as political pawns.  We were pawns as Saddam Hussein originally thought he had a strong bargaining chip when he devised his policy of placing us on strategic sites as human shields.  George Bush paid lip service to our plight, but I am convinced that is all it was.  I would not have liked to have been on our site on the Amiriya Complex in the early hours of January 17, 1991.  I'm convinced he would have blown us to Kingdom Come.  This ends the personal part of my story.  In the next chapter I will be discussing the political, economic and military aspects of relations between the United States and Iraq and how George Bush had as much to do with permitting Iraq to enter Kuwait as he did with forcing them out of Kuwait.  Everyone focuses on the latter and especially the Kuwaitis.  They even renamed Baghdad Street in Kuwait City, "George Bush Street".  

BEFORE THE INVASION 

When I went to work in Bahrain in May of 1982 I didn't recognize the danger inherent in living and working in the Persian Gulf.  At an intellectual level I was aware that the Ayatollah Khomeini had returned on January 31, 1979 from exile to be the spiritual leader and to a great extent the political leader of Iran.  The Ayatollah established Iran as an Islamic Republic.  The Shah of Iran, Mohammed Riza Pahlevi, had been driven from Iran.  He first went to Egypt, then Morocco, then the Bahamas, after that Mexico and he was permitted to come to the United States on October 22, 1979 for medical treatment in New York City.  Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller had used their immense influence to badger President Carter to let the Shah come to the United States.  Kissinger had said in a speech on April 9, 1979 that the United States must stop treating the Shah like "a flying Dutchman looking for a port of call".  Permitting the Shah to come to the United States set the stage for the Iranian students to take over the U.S.Embassy on November 4, 1979 and to hold the Embassy personnel as hostages until President Reagan's inauguration day on January 20, 1981.

The hostage crisis in Iran is described in a book "No Hiding Place" published by the New York Times and written by Robert D. McFadden, Joseph B. Treaster and Maurice Carroll.  There were fifty-two hostages who were imprisoned for 444 days.  President Jimmy Carter is described as becoming the fifty-third hostage and losing the 1980 presidential election because of this crisis.  Gary Sick, who was in the Carter Whitehouse, would later write a book, "The October Surprise" with the thesis that Reagan promised arms to Iran in exchange for their withholding the release of the hostages until after he took office.  Immediately after Mr. Reagan was inaugurated the hostages were released.  The book provides circumstantial evidence and the word of some very unsavory characters to support its claim.  It wasn't enough evidence to convince the American people that their beloved President Reagan had connived with the enemy for his personal political gain.  This affirms President Reagan as the Teflon President. Later President Reagan would even deflect criticism in the Iran-Contra affair, where arms were traded to Iran in violation of the Arms Export Control Act with the money from the arms sales going through Swiss bank accounts to the Nicaragua Contras in violation of the law called the Boland Amendment.  There was a congressional investigation of the "October Surprise" and they too could not find sufficient evidence to proceed further.  Barry Goldwater, in referring to Reagan's culpability in the Iran-Contra affair said in effect that he either knew about it or was incompetent.  It is likely that both were true.

President Carter had the policy of putting the hostages' lives first.  Henry Kissinger not only was the proximate cause of the Tehran Embassy personnel becoming hostages, he continued to criticize Carter's policy after they became hostages.  The following quote from "No Hiding Place" shows how little human decency Henry Kissinger has and I quote, “Two weeks after the embassy takeover, in a controversial speech to a meeting of Republican Governors in Austin, Texas.  Kissinger argued passionately for "a reassertion of American will," and an end to a policy of "self-abasement" in dealing with the Iranian regime.  "I think it is crucial," he said, "for the United States to remember the question of national honor."  More on Kissinger later when we get to Iraqgate.

The Ayatollah had been in exile in Iraq for many years.  Under an agreement between Saddam Hussein and the Shah, Ayatollah Khomeini was expelled from Iraq in October 1978.  He was sent to Kuwait, but the Kuwait authorities would not permit him to stay.  He went to Paris and was in exile there for a few months until he returned to Iran in January 1979 to lead the Islamic Revolution.  It was September 22, 1980 that Saddam Hussein launched a full-scale war operation against Iran.

In December 1981 there was a coup attempt in Bahrain that failed.  I went to work in Bahrain in May 1982.  I don't remember being aware of the coup attempt.  I doubt that it would have changed my decision if I had been aware of it.  Bahrain is a tiny little island country about thirty-five miles long and twenty miles wide.  When I was there I would drive to a beach called the Sheik's beach.  It belonged to the Emir of Bahrain, Sheik Isa ibn Salman Al Khalifa.  The beach was about twenty miles from where I lived in Manama.  I once tried to drive farther south but the southern part of the island was restricted because the coup attempt had been mounted there.  The Sheik's beach permitted western expatriates, but Arabs were not permitted.  Cameras had to be checked with the guards at the gate.  It seemed bizarre that I could go there, but a Bahraini could not.  The Emir did not seem to be doing anything wild, but at a minimum the bikini bathing suits worn by the western women would not have met Islamic standards.  Most of the population of Bahrain practices the fundamental, Shi'ite Moslem religion.  

An illness would bring me in closer touch with one of the holy days for Shi'ites not shared by Sunni Moslems.  Soon after I went to Bahrain I joined a running group called the Hash House Harriers.  They met on Monday at 4:30 P.M. and ran various courses through the desert and then went back and drank beer.  The course had hidden markers that the leaders had to find to determine the course, so there was a lot of stopping and starting.  On one of these runs in early October 1982 I scratched my leg on a rock formation in the desert.  The scratch developed into what I thought was blood poisoning.  I thought it was blood poisoning because I had it from an accident with an axe when I was nineteen-years old and got blood poisoning.  The British doctor at the American Hospital in Bahrain convinced me I was wrong.  When I broke out in a sweat at work I mistook it for a virus, which I suffered through in my flat for about two days.  When I called my friend to come and get me and take me to the hospital I was nearly delirious and barely able to walk from my bedroom in the back of the flat to the front door.  In the hospital I was given Intravenous solutions with antibiotics for several days before I was operated on for the removal of a huge abscess on my leg.  During this period, which lasted about ten days, I was told Shi'ite Moslems would be brought into the hospital for treatment during this their holy celebration of Ashura.  They beat themselves with chains and injure themselves in honor of the death of Hosain who died as a martyr.  Hosain was the son of Ali.  Ali was the son-in-law and first-cousin of the Holy Prophet Mohammed.  It was late October for this Ashura and there was a lot of rain.  I can remember peering out of my hospital window into the rainy darkness and hearing the wailing of the Shi'ite flagellates.

I had just arrived in Bahrain when Israel invaded Lebanon, and that was in June of 1982.  Farid Haddad had hired me and he and his wife were from Lebanon.  Farid's wife's parents and other family members lived in Beirut.  I remember our having dinner at the Gulf Hotel when we were interviewing Kunio Inoue who became the Japanese investment manager.  Farid's wife, I believe her name was Amal, was sick with worry about what might happen to her family as the fighting in Beirut intensified.  George Haddad, no relation to Farid, began work at the Arab Insurance Group at the same time I did.  He worked in the Accounting Department.  His wife and little children had to flee to Greece that summer while the fighting was going on in Beirut, but the Bahraini authorities took their time in granting their visas in spite of the fact George had been granted his.  Even though Bahrain and Lebanon were both Arab countries there was not a presumed trust level based on their being Arab brothers, evidently based on past experience with the Lebanese.  

There had been a civil war in Lebanon since April 1975.  Fahed was going to school at American University in Beirut at that time.  His father told him to get back to Kuwait right away and Fahed took his time.  He describes sitting on the balcony of his flat and watching missiles that were fired by the opposing forces.  He finally took off in his fancy sports car and made his way through Syria and back to Kuwait.  One of the factions was Maronite Christian or a number of Maronite Christian families all of whom had their own militias.  Many times the families would be fighting among themselves, even killing each other, but they would unite when it served their common interests.  Thomas L. Friedman, in From Beirut to Jerusalem describes some of the internecine warfare among families, "Only two years before the Israeli invasion I was on hand to witness what became known as the “Day of the Long Knives."  On July 7, 1980, Bashir Gemayel tried to wipe out his main Christian militia allies-cum-rival in East Beirut, Danny Chamoun's Tigers.  This was not a battle over dogma or sacred texts.  It was about whose militia would control the illegal ports and patronage and insurance rackets in East Beirut."  Friedman describes the atrocities of that battle and points out that two years before Bashir Gemayel had another rival, Tony Franjieh, and his whole family murdered.  Franjieh was the son of Suleiman Franjieh who had formerly been President of Lebanon.  The Christian families were allies of Israel when Israel invaded Beirut in June of 1983.  Israel wanted to drive the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Beirut, which they were successful in doing.  There is an Arabic saying, "If you are an enemy of my enemy you are my friend" and this described the relationship between the Israelis and the Christians.  By September Israel appeared to have things well under control and a Phalangist militia leader from one of the prominent Christian families. Bashir Gemayel was elected President of Lebanon under the strange governing system the country had.  Four days later he was assassinated by an assassin assumed to be Palestinian.  A few days later in reprisal for Gemayel's assassination Phalangist Militiamen massacred the occupants of two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Sabra and Shatila, while the camps were surrounded by Israeli forces.

It wasn't until much later that I realized that there was a connection between all the events that occurred in the Middle East, whether they take place in Bahrain, Lebanon or Iran.

I left Bahrain in May 1983 to take a job that would begin in Kuwait in July 1983.  An oil tanker had been bombed in the Persian Gulf by Iran as a part of the on-going Iraq-Iran war.  There was fear that the oil-slick from the tanker would hit Bahrain and ruin its water supply.  It didn't.  As I mentioned before when I went to Kuwait in July 1983 my daughter, Peggy, went with me and we walked the Kuwait beach with Bader Wahedi and found globs of oil deposited on the beach from the oil spill.  Peggy stayed with me in the Sheraton Hotel for about ten days and then returned home.  I stayed in the Sheraton Hotel for the remainder of the month of July and then moved to a flat near the U.S. Embassy in August.  The Flat was only a few blocks away from where I lived when Kuwait was invaded in August 1990.  When I moved into the Flat in August 1983 I joked about it being too close to a vital target such as the U.S. Embassy, but little did I think anything serious would really happen.

Before I left the Sheraton Hotel I remember driving by the U.S. Embassy and being told that there was not currently a U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait since Kuwait had rejected the Ambassador proposed.  Later we would get Anthony Quainten as Ambassador, who was a jerk if there ever was one.  Shortly after moving into the area I remember walking by the U.S. Embassy and have a guard say in Arabic, "shway, shway" which means "little, little" and he was asking and motioning for me to move from near the compound wall to the outside of the sidewalk.  It somehow seemed strange that it was my Embassy so to speak and I was being asked to move away.