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BAGHDAD (AP) — Tariq Aziz, the debonair Iraqi diplomat who made his name by staunchly defending Saddam Hussein to the world during three wars and was later sentenced to death as part of the regime that killed hundreds of thousands of its own people, has died in a hospital in southern Iraq, officials said. He was 79.

...

Elegant and eloquent, Aziz spoke fluent English, smoked Cuban cigars and was loyal to Saddam to the last, even naming one of his sons after the dictator. His posts included that of foreign minister and deputy prime minister, and he sat on the Revolutionary Command Council, the highest body in Saddam's regime.

His main role was as the regime's go-to man to communicate with the West. To the world, he was one of the most recognizable faces from Iraq during Saddam's rule: silver haired, with a mustache and trademark dark-rimmed glasses. A skilled operator in the halls of the United Nations, he was the regime's front-man in dealing with U.N. inspectors trying to track and assure the dismantling of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

His interlocutors variously described him as courtly, articulate, arrogant and unhesitant to make even the most preposterous denials of evidence put before him by inspectors about weapons programs.

"He didn't agree with our basic tasks and I didn't agree with his tasks to hide and mislead us. But I think we respected each other," Rolf Ekeus, head of the inspectors from 1991 to 1997, later said of Aziz.

As bombs rained down on Baghdad during the U.S.-led 2003 invasion, Aziz said of American forces, "We will receive them with the best music they have ever heard and the best flowers that have ever grown in Iraq ... We don't have candy; we can only offer them bullets."

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The interesting thing about the article to me was the acknowledgement, the reminder of the fact that Iraq blatantly and belligerently misled the UN weapons inspectors for the duration of the Clinton years.