Tariq Aziz

Tariq Aziz (1936 –2015) was Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister (1979–2003) and Foreign Minister (1983–1991) and a close advisor of President Saddam Hussein.

Their association began in the 1950s when both were activists for the then-banned Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. Although he was an Arab nationalist, he was in fact an ethnic Assyrian, and a member of the Chaldean Catholic Church.

Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush claimed Aziz as one of the Iraqi regime who was responsible for hiding Iraqi WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction).

President Bush expressed unshakable confidence about finding banned weapons in Iraq and complained that Tariq Aziz was not cooperating with U.S. forces who had him in custody. Bush said the deputy prime minister, the most visible face of the former Iraqi government other than Hussein, 'still doesn't know how to tell the truth'…