Jim Gilbert on Georges Sada

Jim Gilbert is a global missionary now living and working out of Gainsville, Florida.
Georges Sada is a former staff member of Saddam Hussein whose just-published book, Saddam's Secrets, is an account of his experiences in that capacity.

The reader needs to scan the rest of this post, then go to Jim Gilbert's blog straightaway and read what he has written. Jim has become part of Sada's circle of Christian friends and has been let in on what he expects will soon become a big news story. Very big.

Saddam, who was constantly on guard against coup attempts, was known to murder people in plain sight if their deaths would keep onlookers in line. He might pull out a pistol from under the conference table and shoot them during a cabinet meeting, or nudge them into a swimming pool full of acid at one of his palaces, and then stand there watching them burn to death and dissolve.

Yet Georges remains tender, and in fact is downright forgiving of offenses against himself. Last week he invited my family and a few others to his cousin's home for Sunday afternoon dinner. We ate Assyrian food (one of the best meals I've ever had), and enjoyed Middle Eastern hospitality. Georges was especially taken with my four-year old daughter, scooping her up and holding her. Lexi so relished his hugs that when it came time to leave, she headed back into the General's arms. "Ah, children. They know who loves them," he said to me with a broad grin.

Georges also told a group of us about an assassination attempt against him last year. His assailants were caught setting up the bomb, and brought to him before being taken to jail. They were young men, unemployed, and should have been in college by now. They were terrified of course, and assumed their lives were over. But Sada spent time telling his young captives about his faith, and wound up releasing them with the promise that they would indeed enroll in school.

Later all three sets of parents came to him, thanking him profusely, saying also that their forever grateful sons now wanted to become the General's bodyguards. He refused, and today those young men, all three of them, are indeed in college.

Link to The Softer Side of General Sada