IRAQ: A general’s painful fall from grace
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Late at night, when he can’t sleep, the Iraqi general paces past the dimly lighted model homes and construction sites of his Cairo neighborhood. He avoids the main streets, crammed with shopping malls and restaurants. He doesn’t want to run into other Iraqis. He has enemies.
He slips back in after 1 a.m., careful not to disturb his wife, children and grandchildren. But still he can’t drift off. It will be close to dawn when finally he shuts his eyes, after exhausting himself thinking about how he will protect his family, how long his money will last. How he fell so far and ended up banished by the Iraqi government and forgotten by the Americans.
The fate of Maj. Gen. Jawad Rumi Daini is more than the story of one man’s disgrace. As the fifth anniversary of the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein nears, he serves as a singular witness to the hopes and horrors of the last five years: a man haunted by his role in a terrible stampede on a Baghdad bridge that left nearly 1,000 people dead; a man targeted for his involvement in the discovery of a Shiite police torture chamber; a man devastated by the killing of his son.
— Ned Parker in Baghdad