Sun (tabloid)

Saddam would use arms

AS ONE of 1,200 British “human shields” seized by the Iraqis in 1990, five-year-old Stuart Lockwood was the boy who famously refused to sit on Saddam Hussein’s knee for the TV cameras.

Now 16, the Worcester lad tells why he wants the tyrant disarmed.

WHENEVER I look at the pictures of myself with Saddam Hussein, I can hardly believe it is me.

My family were among hundreds captured during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, where we lived while my dad, Derek, worked as an electronics engineer.

We were taken to Baghdad but I was so young I can only remember flashes.

My family went to great lengths to protect me. But I remember my meeting with Saddam in every detail.

We were being held with a small number of other families at an industrial installation just outside Baghdad.

One day we were ushered into the communal lounge. The President was paying us a surprise visit.

I recognised him straight away and realised he was important because there were pictures of him everywhere and he was surrounded by heavily-armed soldiers.

About 50 people were in that small room and the atmosphere was threatening.

There were ten other children there but he singled me out straight away. He wanted me to sit on his lap so he could be filmed as a kindly father figure who should not be feared. I refused to go near him.

I remember all the other hostages watching me and looking scared.

The Iraqis had brought a television crew with them, so the flashes and glare of the arc lamps made it even more daunting and frightening.

Saddam kept speaking to me in Arabic, which of course I couldn’t understand, while an interpreter translated.

He kept asking me daft questions about whether I had been getting my morning breakfast cereal and was I being given milk.

I don’t quite know why I shrank away from him. It was instinct, just something I knew I had to do.

I think most five-year-olds would have done the same. After all, he was a stranger and not a very nice one.

It is only now that I fully realise what a sinister and ruthless man he is.

As I have grown older I have come to see what a serious business war is and how disputes should be resolved without it wherever possible.

Ordinary Iraqi people are in many ways just like us and I do not want to see them hurt any more.

But I also worry about what biological and other weapons of mass destruction Saddam may have. He is a dangerous man and I believe he really might use them.

He does have to be disarmed.

President Bush, Tony Blair and other world leaders have a very difficult decision to make.

It is not one I would like to be facing.

All I can suggest is that they should act with the backing of the United Nations and that war should only be used as a last resort, when every possible peaceful means has failed.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2002

Answers

Well, if the memories of a five year old are needed to help make the decision for war, this will come in handy.

I would imagine we could find someone to say the same things about Hitler, but that would be a person in their seventies now.

-- Anonymous, September 19, 2002