Saddam Hussein: Erotic Novelist

All right. Well, Saddam Hussein Abd almag Alto Crety was born on April ninety seven, and we know that much for sure. Everything else about Saddam's early life is kind of up in the air. Reading about his back stories a little like asking the Joker to explain, like where scars came from. You get different stories depending on who you talk to. Right, there's a Jared Letto version of Saddam Hussein, and then there's the Heath Ledger interpretation. Everyone

brings something different to the table. Yeah, and I went full Ledger on this one. Okay, spiring, Okay, well yeah, it is a little bit um. So you know, early on, Saddam is kind of an underdog from the start. His dad disappears like six months before he's born. He was probably murdered by bandits, but we don't really know. Uh. Saddam's older brother died while he was still in the womb. One common myth states that his mom tried to kill

herself and aboard her baby. After these deaths, she leapt in front of a bus and was reportedly saved by a local Jewish family, and after they stopped her from committing abortion slash suicide, she is alleged to have screamed, I'm carrying Satan in my belly. This fetus has already killed his father and his brother and wants to be

the only man in the family. Okay, yeah, really this I feel like where people bring up the baby Hitler paradox all the time of like if you could go back in time and kill a baby, if you could save six million people, would you. I feel like this anecdote effectively answers that lastion she tried. His own mom was like, you know what, something is awry. There's wow isn't going to end well, I can tell it like

the second trimester. So the real villains were the people who saved the babies, effectively answering the baby Hitler paradox, kill the baby. Yeah, the villain in this story definitely isn't Saddam's mom. She tried to do the right thing. No, God, she was sacrificing herself to kill this evil baby. To kill the evil baby. That's upset. I mean, yeah, kill the baby. Yeah, kill the baby. I'm learning kill the baby.

I feel like we answered that question. Well, please bring this argument to court in a few years when I killed the baby when time travel exists, are you just going to find another baby? I mean, there's gonna they'll they'll be other There's evil babies born all the time. That's the really horrifying thing is there are That's there's an evil baby born every day. Right now, someone is

being born who will later really hurt people. And yeah, I have that feeling because every time I see a baby, they almost all look like Dick Cheney, and it's like a percentage of them will turn out to be like Dick Cheney, Like we just know at it's crazy. My my best friend just had a baby, and I like, look at her son. I'm like, you're going to gaslight someone so hard one day. They're gonna be so upset,

arrate you're now, You're so damn cute right now. You haven't done anything terrible, but I can just see you kicking a dog in twenty four years and feeling nothing and just bone quiet on the inside. Um. So, Saddam's mom did eventually give birth to a healthy baby boy. She named him Saddam, which means one who confronts so solid name game. Okay, I mean, in terms of naming a baby, you already view to be satan. To be the devil seems a little on the nose, but sure.

I mean that's what he spent us whole life doing. That's true. That's true. His family was very, very poor. His hometown of Alaga was a very violent place, so he grew up tough. One version of the Saddam myth says that he was enchanted by math, learning, reading, and writing, but that his mother told him his destiny was as a farmer, and she wouldn't let him go to school. Okay, so she's trying to suppress the devil, Like, let's not educate the devil, Let's just give him a raake and

hope for the best. Yeah. The last thing this boy needs his math. Wow, you know I've got a lot of respect for Saddam's mom right now, she tried, she's doubling down on thinking her son is pure evil. Yeah she she really put in the work to try to stop this. Wow. Okay, um, but yeah, So Saddam's home was a one room, mud brick hobble, no electricity, no running water, just him and mom, Just him and mom. His brothers are dead or his brother is dead. He

said to have had a rough upbringing. The other kids in town mocked him for not having a dad. Uh. And because he had no older brother, there was nobody to defend him, so Saddam started carrying an iron bar as a weapon. This is like six year old Saddam walking her with an iron bar, just beating other kids. Wow, just like just like Tanya Harding. Yeah, there's a little galuling everyone in the village, all right. Yeah. Well, and he went up with a stepfather at one point, but

he was his stepfather was apparently quite vicious. His name was Hassan the Liar. So maybe not great choice on mom's part there. Maybe. Okay, Mom just lost me for the first time in this in this story. Yeah, maybe don't marry Hassan the Liar. I mean, especially if he comes with that title. Yeah, even imagining the house party, they meeters like, oh, yeah, I'm you know, so you know, I'm Hassan the liar. Hello. Maybe he like couchit. Maybe he's like, I'm Azon date five. You're like, oh, it's

the liar. That's what he was saying the whole time. Um. Hassan's weapon of choice was a large pipe soaked in boiling tar, which he would use to beat Saddam with. Yeah, oh that's horrible. I know there's a little bit of this story where you're kind of on Saddam's side. Okay, okay, I'm on this journey. So one of the peculiarities about writing about Saddam is that you either get really sympathetic towards him or wildly negative towards him, depending on who

writes his back story. But it's it's pretty safe to say either way. His childhood ship, Like if you look at the CIA analysis of Saddam, like you can see the CIA analysts like feeling sorry for little kids Saddam.

So yeah, that's like a normal part of learning about Saddam. Um. So, one night, when he was around ten, he was said to have snuck out of bed and gathered up his few possessions into a hobo bundle and made it to the town across the desert or whatever to uh find some other members of his family because he was the desert, well a little bit of a desert, not a lot of desert, like he wanted to he wanted to go

to school, and his mom wouldn't let him. So he sneaks out and he finds some relatives and he says, I want to go to the city where my uncle lives. Uh, can you guys help me get there? Uh? And they say yes, and they give him cab, fair and a gun. He's ten, he's ten, and he just this. Now I'm like, this kid just wants to learn math and he needs and and he's given all these weapons. You want to go to the city, Huh can you imagin mean? Ten

years old? And being like, I really I want to learn maths so much, I'm going to run away from my family. God, I would have just been a farmer in their answer being oh you okay, you want to learn math, Well, here's a gun and some money, like deal with the price of math. Maybe you're lying, yea, you may have to kill somebody to get to math, so no one goes with him. He goes by himself. Yeah, he goes by himself. He finds finds someone to drive him and and has a gun in case someone attacks

him on the road. But he gets to He gets to de Crete, which is the big city comparatively, and his uncle takes him in and Saddam starts to attend school. Um. That does not go very well though, because he was Saddam Hussein um and he gets expelled. Um. And when he's expelled, he goes to his uncle, and his uncle gives him a gun and says, but he already has a gun. Yeah, well he gives him another gun. So far he has an iron bar and two guns. And he's not even eleven years old. Yeah, he's not even

eleven years old. And when he gets expelled, his uncle gives him a gun and says, go make the principal take you back into the school. Saddam does. He pulls a gun on the like a like age eleven. So he's like a fifth or sixth grader, yeah, and he has to go. He's like, I want to learn math, God, damn it, I want to read. And the Jesus. Okay, cheez, you gotta give him credit. He is dedicated to that education. He has had more of a life than both of

us at angel Leving. Okay, so he's put back into school after after threatening violence on the principle because he threatened the principle. Because threaten the principle. Okay, yeah, so he gets to go back into school. Um, his uncle became his childhood role model. His uncle's name was Kirla Uh and Kirala had before this point, spent six years in prison for fighting against the British occupation of Iraq. He was kind of a Nazi sympathizer, um, And by

kind of, I mean he was a sympathizer. So he's yeah, he's a can we like, okay, this is actually a question always a Nazi sympathizer, Are we just saying Nazi? Well, it's a little more complicated because, like he was a lot of why he liked the Nazis is because the Nazis were fighting the British and the British weren't control

of his country, so it's not. But he was also super anti Semitic, So he's like a Nazi sympathizer and also and also okay, well yeah, and the reason that Saddam idolized his uncle is because his uncle was an author. Um and his uncle's written work that was most famous was a pamphlet called those Whom God should not have created, Persians, Jews and flies. Okay, I was about to compliment his

use of whom, but I didn't take it back. I mean, he got he got the home right, he did a good use of whom and a bad use of everyone everyone else's time. Everything else is terrible. Um that that pamphlet would go on to have a big impact on a young Saddam because his foreign policy is Dictator of Iraq was based around opposing the per 's Iran Uh and Israel. I'm not aware of any anti fly policies, but I assumed they made it in there somehow too. So I'm now I'm like not on Saddam side again,

because it's like, imagine using one. I'm like, if I use my uncle's like weird, creepy fan fiction account as a way to like direct a country, we would all be, you know, like X files, be characters frantically having sex with each other. So you can't just take your uncle's literature and take it to heart too much. Well, big ups on your uncle. I mean mine is it's more like Frasier fan Thick, which is uncomfortable. That's a fancy uncle.

You know, I would prefer that to X files. I'm like where we're getting into genre stuff, you know, I mean, but molder in that like swamp monster thing. That's a hot mix. I'll give you his email. Yeah, really, I'm really into that. Um So. Saddam moves to Bagdad with his uncle to attend secondary school, which is what not Americans call high school. Now he's a teen. He teen, Saddam tena heart throb Saddam. Um, I'm gonna show you this picture of young Saddam. I saw that picture when

I came in. He was like, God, I hate that he's hot. He's not a bad looking guy, it says damn ye. That was the working title of this podcast. Um so uh. Saddam moves to Baghdad with his uncle. He graduates high school. He spends three years in law school before he drops out to join the radical bath political party, the Bathists in short, or a pan Arab party. They think that all the different Arab state should be one big country. This is after the Ottomans have fallen,

so that's kind of what they want. They're sort of socialist, but they're also anti communists, so the CIA really likes them at this point. Um. So in nineteen fifty eight, there's a big military coup that overthrows the king of Iraq and a new asshole named Kassam winds up in charge of the country. The CIA didn't like coss him because he was kind of pro Soviet Union, and since the Bath Party also hated Kassam, the CIA was like, these guys are clearly our friends. They've become sympathizers this

new Okay. So Saddam was working as a teacher during this period of time. Yeah, teaching, I'm not I'm not sure what. I haven't found any details about it. He's not gonna rate my professor. Where his students at? Yeah, Like, what kind of teacher was Saddam? Do we know what age he was teaching? I mean, I'm gonna guess like teenagers, But I really have no idea. We should not like

teens around Saddan. We should better if he's teaching like kindergarten, definitely funnier if he's teaching kindergartenda helping little kids put blocks in the right hole. You know, I think that that is a good way to neutralize a threat, is to just put them, put them around a little cutie pies and tell him what the color blue is. Yeah. Well, a lot of these monsters are really good with kids. Hitler probably would have been an all right kindergarten teacher. Jeez. Yeah,

so he's teaching probably teenagers. He's teaching probably teenagers. Um, but I don't know exactly. Um. Because teacher Hot Teacher Saddam, Hot Teacher Saddam and Hot Teacher Saddam and his friends wind up getting the attention of the CIA, and the CIA is like, you guys want to assassinate the president? Uh? And so dominous friends are like, yeah, we want to assassinate the president. And so the CIA gives them all

weapons and helps them plan a daring murder. It is crazy how many people are just down to give Sodam the same guns. That's his whole childhood. It's just people giving him guns. What is it about him? And then everyone's just like, we've got to arm this man, like the trustworthy man. You know what. This guy's problem is not enough guns. You know, I like everything, but what I really could use is more violence. Yeah, if we just strap a gun to him. Yeah. Now the CIA

is giving Saddama guns, so dominous friends. Yeah, and so there they get set up to go assassinate President Kassam Uh and Saddam's job in this assassination is to provide cover for everybody while they run up to the President's car with machine guns and gun him down. Um. Things

instantly got sucked up. Depending on who you believe. Saddam either got so excited when the gunfire started that he rushed up to shoot the president too, or he panicked before the attempt even started and fired his gun into the air. Um. We don't really know what happened, but the whole attempt has been described as a farce. One assassin was given the wrong bullets for his gun by the CIA. Another assassin got a hand grenade caught in the lining of his coat. Um, so it was just

a disaster. The president survived, Saddam got shot in the leg as he was fleeing. Very null coward vibe to that assassination, very silly sound. Yeah, you could imagine like yakety Sacks being a solid like Assassin a soundtrack for that. Are we in the sixties, yat or is he still like in college age? I think this is the early sixties because Cossum took power in fifty eight, so this is Saddam's sixties hilariously failed assassination attempts um so Saddam

getting shot in the leg. The official version of the story, and by that, I mean, like the Iraqi government's official version of the story, was that he and a friend had to remove the bullet with a razor blade and scissors, so they get a little like Boondocks Saints thing there um and they claimed he was still in high school at the time, but that doesn't track with the actual

time for a timeline. But like the version of the story that IM wanted people to believe is that he liked removed the bullet from his own leg, and then went back to school, went to maths. I mean that is that is a narrative, that is exciting, That is a cool narrative. I got Boondocks and then and then I went to algebra two. I wasn't gonna miss my fucking quiz or whatever. I don't know enough algebra can't

fault him for that my quiz division. Um, but we actually know that he fled the country immediately so he wouldn't get murdered as suffer of his friends were. Um, the CIA and the Egyptian intelligence forces helped him escape to Cairo, where he was put up in a nice apartment and apparently spent all of his time playing dominoes for several years. Wait for several years, Yeah, he's he's there for a few years. It's playing dominos and dominoes. That is a sinister game to be playing for many years.

You know. That's seen in V for Vendetta. It's like my least favorite scene of him all time, where like v has set up a room full of dominoes for this one, and it's like, who it took you? You only live here, This must have taken sixteen hours, and you're just like, hey, Natalie Portman, check this ship out. And then he knocks down the whole thing. You're just like, what are you doing? Such a crazy person move. It's so like it could there be a big, bigger red

flag other than refusing to show your face. That movie is infuriating. I'm sure the reality is he was like playing dominoes with other people at cafes. But I like to imagine him for just three straight years alone in his apartment just building dominoes, and right, we don't I guess yeah, dominoes. I forgot dominoes is also okay, and not just I imagined him in like a ballroom just assembling dominoes in different patterns and trying to get people

to be like, hey, you know, would be really cool. Um. So nineteen sixty three rolls around, uh, Cossom gets assassinated and Saddam is able to return to a rack, but person by a different crew. Yeah, somebody, somebody else, not Saddam. Um, I'm sure the CIA was still involved. Um. Saddam goes back to Iraq, but it turned out the new government wasn't a big fan of him and his fellow bathists either,

so he gets arrested in sixty four and sent to prison. Thankfully, Iraqi prisons in the sixties kind of acted on the honor system, So after two years of imprisonment, Saddam convinced his guards to let he and some friends go to a restaurant on their way to court. While he was in the bathroom, he walked out of the back door. I mean, that's fully on the jail, fully on them. That is a wild policy. I also thought you were going to say, fortunately, prisons in Iraq had dominoes. I

assume he's dominoing throughout this period, basically unchanged. So, um, he gets out, Yeah, he gets out. He rises through the ranks of the Bath Party, and in July nineteen sixty eight, he helps to launch a coup that finally puts his party in power. Um, here's a quote from a book I found about how that morning went down. He began by bringing out all of the weapons and

uniforms he had hidden in the house. His wife, Sagita, helped in the preparations, as did their son Udai, who ran around the room picking up hand grenades from the floor, bringing them one by one to his father as if they were toys. Oh scary. When did he get a son? Oh yeah, I mean he's got a wife and kids by this day. That that kind of happens after he's out of prison, and okay, okay, so he's like, you know, I'm really going to pull it together now, I'm going

to join an extremist party. I'm gonna have a wife and kid, and a kid he's getting shipped done God, and then and so his kids touching grenades. Good good, good, good good. I mean there's grenades all over I rack they love those things. Um yeah. That quote is from a Saddam sympathetic biography by Nita Renfrew. You can find it online if you want. It's very much questioned, but I am choosing to believe that particular depiction because it

warms my heart. I mean a moment for father hunt. Yeah, yeah, that's some quality dadding. Um, so the cougo's off without a hitch. Saddam becomes the vice president. He's number two to a guy named Hassan al Baker h Well. Vice President. Saddam finishes his law degree in enrolls in the University Baghdad, but he attends classes in disguise. Well that is a bad movie. That's a secret vice president. My yeah, student Mike Pence, he's just sitting in a biology class, getting

angrier and angrier. He can't say anything. Mike Pen's putting on a wig and going to someone's chem class. They're just explaining how like the age of the universe, and he's just like red faced, sweating and furious veins bulging on his neck. Do they say anything about what the disguise was, because if not, I'm going very silly, bigger mustache, gigantic classes. No. I found no details on how he was disguised, but he apparently had a life long habit

of going around in disguise disguise. Okay, I'm imagining the disguise kit from the Master of Disguise, one of my favorite movies. You just dress up like a gigantic cherry pie in a college class learning chemistry. That is so bizarre someone could have come to his house. Yeah, alright, Well,

we have some ads to break to. Uh. So we're gonna sing a little song for sweet Lady Capitalism, and then when we are back, we're going to talk about Saddam Hussein's love of reading, his rise to absolute power, and of course his career as a romance novelist. All that more after some ads, and we're back. Uh, and we are talking about Saddam Hussein, who, at this point in our story has gone from an adorable lead pipe

wielding child to the vice president of iraq Um. Saddam was vice president for eleven years, although for most of that time he was the are behind the scenes and he was actually in charge of the country. UM and one of the first things he decided to do as vice president was to spread his love of reading to everyone in Iraq with what was essentially the most brutal scholastic book fair in history. UM. He required every city and village interact a host reading programs. Attendance was mandatory.

Skipping was punished by three years in prison. Every man, woman and child in the country was forced to learn how to read, and it worked. Iraq went from majority of literate to the vast majority of people there being literate. UNESCO gave Saddaman Award see that that is an unusual move right for like an evil ruler to want people to be literate, Like usually you're You're like everyone needs

to be as dominobedient as possible. That's so, I was like, you're going to read and if you don't learn how to read, you're gonna go to fucking prison for three years to jail. Yeah, you're it was it. I imagine it was like specific things you had to read. I mean, I think like there's a lot of reading of religious

texts and whatnot. Like during the height of his regime, a lot of fiction was banned, but at this point they weren't banning a lot of books like you know what, just pick up a Juny B. Jones, pick up an Animals and that's a lot of anim warps in nineteen sixties. If you don't read a new Animals chapter book this week, you're going to jail, my friend. Yeah, they're big fans of the animals. I mean, Saddam was a big reader. He's a huge Hmmingway fan, which, of course, jeez, we're cock. Yeah.

I really loved Old Man in the Sea. Man. I wonder if you ever picked up any David Foster wallet, just don't get sad dump started. He won't shut up. I'm not shut up about it. Every stands for friends and and and sufferable. Okay, Um, so we're almost at the end of our positive Saddam stuff. But I do need to mention that he was a surprisingly progressive leader when it came to women's rights. We're talking about the Middle East in the seventies here, so don't expect like

a lot. But they were allowed to live, they were allowed to work and be in the military. Um. And it said that he preferred women's advice and insight because he thought they were more honest than men. Uh. So this concludes the good part of Saddam Hussein being in charge of Iraq. Uh he becomes the full president in nineteen seventy nine. Um, he went from you know, during the time when he was VP, he'd go around and disguise a lot and kind of undercover boss the country. Um,

it seems unnecessary. It seems like something you could delegate to a second party. It's like a thing though an Arab folklore. There's stories going back a thousand years of like rulers hiding amongst the people to learn about like

their lives and stuff. So it's kind of a thing you do for the pr It's like, but behaving like a fictional character would be like a good like if I was just like I'm gonna I'm trying to think of a good example of like I'm gonna be a mermaid and die at the end, and that's a half proved that I'm a cool leader. So as president, Saddam went from yeah, doing the whole undercover thing to making frequent televised visits to various random neighborhoods around the country.

Here's another quote from that Renfrew book. One day, he would turn up suddenly at an ancient Christian monastery. Another day, who would visit Kurdish peasants in their homes, inspecting their sanitary and refrigeration facilities, perhaps poking a bit of meat to see if it was fresh before long. It was understood that the president could drop in anywhere, at any moment. Oh, he sounds like you know what he sounds like. He sounds like Bill Murray. I find that behavior to be

absolutely despicable. I don't like living in a world where Bill Murray is just allowed to show up wherever he wants and it's news. It's like he's intrude to either. Bill Murray showed up at my wedding like he should not. He was not invited. He should leave. Saddam's infamous meat poke. Yeah, the president just showing up at your I was poking your meat, Murray and your wedding. I just wish Bill

Mury didn't do that. So Saddam at this point is very popular, Uh, popular amongst also the other people he's in power with, the other members of the Bath Party. Uh, they thought he was intellectual and practical and uh, just a generally nice guy. Uh. He was of course hiding himself. Uh. And in nineteen seventy nine, as he becomes president, Saddam purges the Bath Party of all of his rivals. Uh. He was able to get one member of the party,

a guy named Mashadi, to inform on all of his enemies. Uh. Maschadi was given the choice to either number one, confess everything and roll on twenty two other members of Congress, basically that Saddam when had purged, or to watch his wife and daughters get raped in front of him before being murdered. Oh my god, Yeah, so that's the choice Saddam gives this guy. Mashadi rolls on his colleagues. Saddam

executes all of them. He videotapes the executions and sends copies of the tape to other members of the Bath Party. That is horrifying and also uh bold to document. Yeah, that's okay. So we're we're we're in it now, we're in a nightmare. Boss. Saddam has arrived. No more book fairs, No more booksairs. Well, I mean everyone can read now, that's good. Yeah. And in nineteen eighties, Saddam Hussein invades Iran, starts an eight year war that kills like a million

people in bankrupts Iraq. Uh. In nineteen eighty eight, he launches a series of chemical weapon attacks against Curtis civilians in northern Iraq and killed around two hundred thousand people, most of them women and children. Uh. But I thought he was a feminist icon well, as we just cussed earlier. Maybe too strong, okay, Um, although he gassed all genders, he did not discriminate me who he would ruthlessly murder. You wouldn't call it a misogynist chemical weapons attack. It

was a woke genocide and extremely woke genocide. Um. So Yeah, In nineteen ninety, Saddam invades Kuwait. We all know how that worked out. It's not great for him. So Saddam's life kind of goes off the rails after the Gulf War. Honestly incredible that it makes it that far. We could do a whole podcast at how messed up Iraq was during that particular time. I'm going to pick just a few of the wildest stories. So Saddam had a son in law and a second cousin both at the same time,

because you know a little bit of Texan. Yeah, yeah. Uh named Hussain Kamel. He was one of Boss Saddam's favorites, and he was appointed both Minister of Oil and head of Iraq's weapons development program. Mr of Oil sounds like a fake job. Minister of oil. Yeah, you keep being a fuel Well, no, actually get into the get into the we gotta sell them. You're actually gonna want to move right, Okay. So in n though, he becomes he and his brother uh Saddam Kamel. So Hussein Kamel and

Saddam Kamel. I know that's a little sake. Wait, So Saddam's son in laws, the men who marry his daughters are named Hussein and Saddam Kamel. So Hussein Kamel, and I know it's it's a little like they're like pranking him. It's a common name. Um. So they're married to Saddam's daughters. But they wind up falling a foul of Saddam's son Uday, who's still well, I don't think he's the heir apparent anymore,

but he's very powerful. So they think he's going to kill them, and they fleeted Jordan's along with Saddam's daughters and a bunch of their friends. Jordan grants them asylum. Hussein Kamel promises to give the CIA a bunch of inside info on Iraq's w m D program, but he didn't actually have much to give because Iraq wasn't making w m D s anymore, as we all learned a

few years later. Yeah. Um, so he starts to become less and less useful for Jordan and the c I A uh, and for some reason nobody can really explain, he decides to go back to Iraq along with his brother. Uh. This is after he's gone on CNN to accuse Saddam of surrounding himself with idiots. Um. So they do that, They talked to the CIA, and then they head back home. Everyone's like, you're gonna get murdered the instant you set foot in Iraq, but they still do it. They're like,

what if he didn't it. Saddam's like, it'll be fine, it'll be fine. Is this there like Selma and Louise moment. That's the that's as close as I can get to unpacking that one. There is a little bit of a Thelma and Louise moment coming in a bit okay, Um, first off, so that we don't get to Uh, we don't want anyone feeling too sorry for Saddam Kamel and

Hussain Kamel. Saddam Kamel. One of the things he was famous for doing a couple of years before this point was he got angry at a guy and he made him drink gasoline and then he shot him with incendiary rounds so he would catch on fire. Oh my god, nobody in this story is a good guy. Okay, So he's like a tarantino. Yeah, this is the kind of ship that said. I'm like, if you were close to the Hussain family, Uh, you know, when he was in charge,

you could do stuff like that. You could really get creative. You could really get creative with being a mons here. It's just important you don't feel sorry for anyone for what comes next, because this is a hell of the story if you can get past that. Um. So they go back to Iraq. Uh Saddam orders them to divorce their wives and orders them to show up for judgment and justice, and instead they hold up in their family house. Uh. Saddam doesn't send the police after them, he doesn't send

the military after them. He sends the boy's uncle and his enforcer, whose nickname was Chemical Ali because he carried out the genocidal chemical weapons attacks along with a forty man tribal hit squad, and before the hit squad arrives, Chemical Ali sends the brothers a Honda van filled with weapons and ammunition so that they can fight. What follows is a thirteen our firefight that kills at least two

members of the tribal hit squad. It ends with a rocket barrage that kills one of the others, and Hussein Kamal staggers out of the smoky rubble of the house with just like in the wake of this rocket attack, screams out his name to the sky and then is cut down in a hail of gunfire. Why, because that's how they did ship. They just that's some poppet master ship. He was like, we could just do this, or I could take him to prison or gunbattle. Gun battle, which

is more fun to hear about later. Yeah, and it, I mean, it's pretty badass, and it ends biblically. It does your name to the sky and then being yeah, I feel like that's almost like giving them a better way to die than just sending someone to you know, like you know, cut their throat and leaf like they're like, you're going to go down in a very dramatic way, Saddam. Apparently these two guys Saddam was really cared about, like actually did care about. So this is nice Saddam. How

a nice Saddam executes you? Is he let you die? Fight, you get to you get to die. Like it's sort of like mission impossibly, like there's a lot of high drama. Maybe there's music playing. We don't know, we weren't there. I hope there was music playing. I hope that someone just threw on like a Hans Zimmer score in the background and just kept rewinding the gazette and playing the just keep going, well, what years is coming on in? What sounds like there's a there's a Zimmer. I'll figure

it out. Yeah there's something in there. Yeah. Um So on the on the less murder and explosiony sort of thing, Saddam had a friendship with Jordan's King Hussein Um. During one of the king's visits, the two went fishing, and King Hussein thought it was suspicious that Saddam and only Saddam caught a bunch of fish. After a couple of fishing trips, he developed the theory that Saddam had ordered a diver to put fish on the end of his fishing line and only his fishing line. Was it true?

What we There's no way to know for sure, but one trip there was maybe a funk up with the diver in a fish wound up on King Hussein's line and he pulled it up, and immediately after that a fish winds up on Saddam's line. But King Hussein's fish looks bigger, and so Saddam has both of the fish go off with one of his runners to get weighed, and the guy comes back and it's like, no, Saddam's was a quarter pound bigger. Oh what a stressful friendship. So that's the kind of man Saddam Hussein was to

his buddies. I wonder if he's like insecure in any way if any time you catch a fish, it's like who's Basically he's just like, well, whose dig is bigger? And then just like have some go away the fish. I don't know, I mean that sounds a kind of a fun way to torture a friend of me. Yeah, you know, only I may catch fish. So as the years after the Gulf War, drew on. Saddam gets more

and more paranoid. He's constantly afraid of being poisoned, and so he has all of his food, which is mostly fresh lobster and fresh fish, flown in daily and inspected by nuclear scientists before being fed to him. Um, I think by the nuclear scientist. By the nuclear scientists. Well, I don't know if they're feeding it to him, but they're inspecting his food. Jesus Christ. Okay, because they're not

working on nukes anymore. You get to do something with your scientists, right right, I mean if your w m D is not popping, you know that's I mean, keeping people employed. Make sure this lobsters fresh. Um. He passed a lot of time reading books about Joseph Stalin, who was his hero and very chill your time, and watching movies his Some of his favorites were The Godfather, Enemy of the State, and The Day of the Jackal. Seems a little on the nose. Yeah, let's throw in some

what if it was like? He loved Enemy of the State, The Godfather and like all about ten things I hate about you stop watching that movie. He had us offside to him. Yeah, No, he was not a subtleman no um. In his sixties, his doctors advised him to start getting two hours a day of walking exercise. Since he was Saddam. He did this in the craziest way possible. I'm going to quote from an Atlantic article called Tales of the

Tyrant here. He used to take these walks in public, swooping down with his entourage in the neighborhoods and bagdad his bodyguards, clearing sidewalks and streets. As the Tyrant past, anyone who approached him unsolicited was beaten nearly to death. But now it is too dangerous to walk in public. The limp must not be seen, so Saddam makes no more unscripted public appearances. He limps freely behind the high

walls and patrolled fences of his vastest states. Often he walks with a gun, hunting deer or rabbit in his private preserves. He is an excellent shot. Jeez, okay, he's just extra extra as hell on every single every That does sound a little bit similar to like when they were trying to hide the fact that like Roosevelt was like paralyzed, Like we're just gonna go way out of our way to make sure that people don't know the ruler has a lamp like but also by calling attention,

like he could have just granted a place. Yeah, no, I think I think going on limping walks with a gun and murdering random animals is the better way to get exercise. He needs listen. He can't go somewhere without a gun. He was basically born with a gun, basically

born with a gun in his um. So, one of the things you get when you study Saddam and you read his writings is it seems like you kind of started to sour on being in charge of Iraq during the late nineteen nineties, um he started taking more naps and playing hookey and government meetings. His former vice president said it sometimes took three days to get in touch with him. So what was Saddam doing with all of his time? Now? What was he doing? He'd become a novelist.

Reading is a theme that kind of runs through Saddam's entire career. And while the standard like Arab hero thing is to be a poet, like that's the thing that they really emphasize, like Russians, it's your novelist. If you're a if you're an Arab hero, you're a poet. Saddam instead chose to write trashy romance novel wow. Uh. And we're going to get into those trashy romance novels and exactly what happened with Saddam's career as an author after

the break. But first we have more ads for things that you can buy or things that can buy you. I don't know how ads work. Here we go, we are back, and we are talking about Saddam Hussein, dictator, murderer, pipe wielder, and romance novelist. Just further proof that there really is nothing more dangerous in this world than a failed artist. Like there's so I mean, limitless examples of a failed artist doing something truly holacious to the world.

One of the weird things I found, because we're doing a podcast that touches on Stalin later, is that so, like Saddam is a novelist, and but like the like the traditional Arab warrior hero thing is to be a poet as well as a warrior. Joseph Stalin wrote poems and the standard like Russian man of substance things to be a novelist. I don't know which is weird to me that they Saddam is a big fan of Stalin, and they kind of wind up chips in the night,

babies in the night. They would have been great friends, they would I mean, I'm sure it sounds like Saddam is a little bit like fan boying out over over Stalin. For sometimes you could call him a Stalin nerd. He's a little bit of a Stalin's down if you will. Alright, So Saddam Hussein publishes his first novel, Zabiba and the King,

in two thousands. It's an instant bestseller in Iraq and sells millions upon millions of copies under his regular name, uh no, under the name that it was published under is basically he who wrote the book. What can basically like the middle finger emoji? Written by whose fucking businesses? By the guy who wrote it? Asshole J D Rob. Sure, but everyone knows Saddam. The word gets out, and of course they all buy a copy because like, you don't want to be caught without your copy of Saddam's stupid

fucking book. Um. You can buy the English translation of this book online right now for twelve dollars. It was republished by an American during the war and it's the cover is just Saddam. It's just Saddam with a beard on a red background. It's not the original cover and a pretty gnarly looking font. I would argue it looks like it was self published on Amazon. It kind of was. It was just a guy who translated it, who got a copy, translated it and published it as quick as

he could. He like, his justification was I thought americans fighting over there might want to read this book of the guy they deposed. I I mean, I see that, and there's definitely a historical value to Saddam's creepy book. Wait, what's it about? Well, okay, first off, short review, it's not good. It's not good. It may lose something translation from Arabic, but it is not a good book structurally. I think we're okay to not give Saddam Hussein the

benefit of the doubt. You lose that after the first genocide, Yeah, yeah, yeah, when once you hit a million people, you've killed your year out about a million and a half deaths at this point, probably conservatively something like that. But he's fine in the time to to follow his bliss, he actually wrote like three books in four years something like that. So he's very, very dedicated. He's Stephen king his way through the ship. Right, he's like banging coke lines and

writing garbage. Okay, So the basic plot is that a king who represents Saddam Hussein Um falls in love with a beautiful local woman named Zebiba, who represents collectively all of Iraq. I wonder if she's much younger than him, yes, okay, good. Unfortunately, Zebiba has a husband the United States who became betrothed to her during an arranged marriage, and she spends a lot of the book being forced to have sex with no. Yeah, it's it's sad. So we've got Saddama is a protagonist.

We've got a much younger, hotter female avatar. I'm assuming she doesn't have a personality, and we've got a ripe fantasy. She does have a personality. She's the smartest one in the book, and she spends the whole book right lecturing

everybody icon. It's it's kind of weird, but like, she is not the character you'd guess from that plot synopsis, where she's just like hollow, like like she isn't just instantly in love with him for no good reason, but he's she like spends the whole time lecturing him about politics, and he's portrayed as kind of a dumb guy. Um, it's it is. It is weird, it's not the book

you'd expect, and it has a really strange structure. So it's framed as a story being told to a group of young children by an old, grandmotherly woman, like a princess bride kind of set up. Yeah, it's exactly that. It's a princess bride kind of set up, and it's sort of works at the start. But the whole book is has periodic rants by Saddam Hussein put into these characters mouths. So a lot of Saddam's rants wind up in the mouth of an old lady talking to children.

So at one point, this old woman spends a whole page lecturing small children about how sexy mouths are. I'm gonna quote from the book here. And if the meaning of the mouth is that great, should not a man be jealous about the mouth of the one he loves her? Laughter, every movement of her lips. Clearly one understands. Why then, are mothers and grand mothers cover their mouths in front of strangers? So that is a quote from an old

lady talking to children. Oh God, I feel like maybe he forgot that was happening times of the book he did, because he forgets for like a hundred pages to bring it back to her. And then he brings it back to her. He's like, hopefully every won't forget about that whole time when she was telling kids how hot mouths are. Just wait, so on page a hundred and seven, Saddam rights and again put this into the mouth of an old lady talking to kids. Even an animal respects a

man's desire if it wants to copulate with him. Doesn't a female bear try to please a herdsman when she drags him into the mountains as it happens in the north of Iraq? How would you know that? Where's the info? Was just throwing shade on the curds by saying they have sex with bears and putting that in the mouth of an old woman talking to kids. Yeah, okay, how wait? How long is this that? It's like three I read.

I'm pretty sure I read all of it. I fell asleep four or five times because it is there's just pages of rants, Like it's not a good book. I've pulled the highlights out here. Okay, Um, So yeah, we've gotten through the bear sex, the weird mouth rant. Um. So the main purpose of the book is to allow Saddam to throw shade at his enemies, kind of like Michael Crichton in that regard Rest in Paradise. Um. Some of it's what you'd expect. He attacks the U S

and Israel a bunch, you know, he's Saddam Hussein. But weirdly enough, he spends most of the book raging against businessmen, the concept of a hereditary monarchy, and apparently all of the people who worked for him. Um, that's a that's a wild platter topics. So at one point, like there's

a Zebiba is visiting the castle and the king. She has an altercation with some guy and the king apologizes, and she's like, isn't it true that those who surround the king are exceedingly more cruel than the king himself. It's kind of like Saddam being like, I didn't kill all those Is I just bad people working? Like, yeah, I trust no bit lesson learned, right. Um. There's also a lot of points in the book that make it

clear he's kind of tired of being a dictator. Um did not the soul of the one who had surrounded himself with a multitude of useless things become burdened by the intricate maze of his palaces, their furniture and thick walls, had not his soul died as a result, having completely law. It's aesthetic sense. WHOA, Yeah, that's a little emolarious. Yeah, there's a little bit of like, so I'm feeling sorry sitting in his palace feeling sorry for himself. This is

so lame. I'm the prisoner. When you think about it, everyone should feel bad for me. Do you think sadd I'm ever like pulled out bright eyes and was like, you know what I always imagine it's more of the cure guy. Okay, great. Um, So it's it's a surprising book. When I went through the synopsis other people had put up, it sounded like a straightforward propaganda diet tribe against America and pro Saddam. But it went not being way more complicated than that and not good because again, this is

an awful book, but it's complicated. Um. So, at one point, Zebiba asks Saddam, does a common woman like me need freedom? And so I was like, yes, I want my people to be free. It's good for people to be free. Say one thing, do the other. And so Zebiba tells him it would be a good idea to have a people's counsel where he lets elected leaders from the populace help the king reform the country and maybe even run the country someday, and sam Is the king is like,

that's a great idea. So like, there's weird stuff in here. Yeah. Yeah. The whole book carries a very strong anti royalty line. It's made repeatedly clear that the hereditary rule of a country is really dumb. The book is also filled with you know, casual anti semitism, chauvinism, and weirdness. But there are some oddly woke passages, like this one when Zebiba comes after the king for his privileged life. Have you

ever known famine? Have you ever had to borrow money to buy a piece of bread for your family, or paid rent for your house so that you would know the afflictions of the needy? And have you ever tried to convince a woman like a common man that you are worthy to sleep with her, that your relationship would grow stronger if you did so? In your case, does the woman who was supposed to sleep with you even have the right to decline? He wrote a passage on consent. Yeah,

Saddam's he's a consented Saddam. He's a surprising guy. He's literally addicted to consent. Okay, he's having people murdered at the same time he's writing about like consent, he's having women ripe, but he's also like consent rules. Okay, Yeah there. I feel like to me that that passage is very much like I was raised poor with a single mom. Yeah,

that is what that passage screens. And I think there's some of that in there because he you know, he was pro the king getting overthrown and he just like hates people who grew up rich because he had a rough upbringing. I mean same. But like, there's ways to manage those feelings. You don't have to a million people. There's other ways have a feeling that they were not all extremely wealthy people. Have you tried alcohol and pain killers? Yes,

it works great for America. Love self medicating. It neutralizes you as a person, It neutralizes your potential. Yeah, I would like if I could have just gone to Saddam in nineteen seventy and them and like these are viking in like you're kind of really like this hot tips medicaid and never learn man, and you will be a neutral force in the world. How to avoid being Saddam. Yeah yeah, Um, I'm not going to complain. The book

is a bastion of progressive thought. Um. And and just so I'm being totally fair here here's another paragraph that Saddam wrote about women that's significantly less woke. Uh, truly a woman if she decides to do so, we'll get a man by any means. And if she chooses to destroy a woman or wages a war with her in the process for the one she loves, she will not hesitate to go as far as murder. Wow, woman on woman violence. Yeah, there's a lot of that in here, too.

Should be lifting each other up. There's a subplot where the king's first wife hates Zebiba, and YadA, yadda, YadA. Um it's a bad book. Um. So it's not at all the book I'd expected, though. Zebiba winds up getting raped by her husband America when she tries to leave him her her husband is stands in for America. Oh I thought that was his literal name. No, it's a little more subtle than that. He doesn't have a name

like Joey. His name is Joey. We don't find out the king's name until like a third of the way through the book. It's not like What's the Annihilation where they're not using people's names as a stylistic choice. It's just a bad book. We'll get around, We'll name some of the characters. Also, the king's name is Arab. Oh. Okay, he's not He's not good. He's not good. Um so yeah.

The Zebiba is raped by her husband America when she tries to leave him in America, and an evil prince who represents Israel raise up an army to try to invade the kingdom. Um again a surprising part. The king does basically nothing in the defense of the kingdom, like he's fighting there, but we don't hear anything about him. Instead, Zebiba leads the defense. She puts on armor and leads the army of the country to defend the kingdom, and

she dies fighting. She pulls a fatal mulan. Basically, yeah, again, surprising, that is interesting. That's actually that's the first time, like, whow I didn't that's a good twist, and after her death, the king appoints a council made up of normal men and women from around the country and then dies off screen. Uh. So the book ends with this council of like grandmother's and bakers and whatnot in charge of the country, uh, figuring out how to move forward. So she did not

die in vain. She didn't die in vain. I'm not used to used to things that female characters do having impact. Yeah, he is a He is more woke than a lot of Hollywood screenwriters. That is wild. He's doing laps around Sorkin right now, especially since it's two thousand. I think I didn't double check, but I think this passes the Bechtel test um. But I'd have to go through it

again to know for sure. I mean, very important to be Wait what other things came out in two thousand that this is more woke then a short list work then Gladiator, more walk than Almost Famous, more work than American Psycho, more work than Memento, more work than Requiem for a Dream. Damn. Yeah, I am impressed. I should note also that one of this democratic Council's first access to kick out a Jewish guy and take all of

his stuff. This is still Saddam we're talking about. Um, but it's to add like an asterisk to the Bechtel test, be like you cannot possibly pass the Backtel test and badam, it's just not allowed. Yeah. Yeah, that that that's a good the back to the Saddam corollary to the to the Bechtel test. A lot of asterisks. It's not a

perfect system. Um so yeah, and all of this weirdly progressive stuff is actually why a lot of experts on Saddam are pretty sure he wrote this himself and he didn't have a ghostwriter, because no ghostwriter would have been allowed to like end a book with Saddam's self insert dying uh and a democracy being established, like right, they'd get killed. Yeah, they'd get killed. So it's probable Saddam actually wrote this, and maybe than his other books too.

Um yeah. He wrote like four novels in his last three years in power, which is pretty impressive. Um. So in two thousand three, you know, the United States is getting ready to invade Iraq, one of Saddam's last actions in power, as like the first marine units are crossing into his country. Uh. One of the final things he does is send off a draft of his last novel,

Begone Demons to Tarik Disease God Drama drama Queen. I got a deal with defending my country from an invasion, but first first I need some notes, Like, can I get some notes? I'm not sure that I quite used the kmma correctly. Yeah, I didn't go with the Oxford I switched about halfway through. Where does Sam stand on the Oxford comma? I don't know because it's they're originally written in Arabic, so there's no way to know how he did it. Yeah, I mean there is a way,

but I don't read Arabic. You have to go. You'd have to ask a lot of people. Yet. Um, So I have been unable to find a copy of Begone Demons in English. Uh, we are, We're king on that because it was translated into Japanese. So we may be doing a special Japanese Begone Demons podcast something like that. I was able to find a Telegraph article that contains some extracts from this novel, and it's amazing. So the basic plot appears to be that Romans and Jews invade

Iraq and Iraq beats them by nine elevening them. Um. So here's a quote. So the in this quote, Ezekiel Heschel is the king of the Jewish people. Um quote. Then Ezekiel Heschel and the King of the Romans saw the twin towers of the Roman city on fire. Ezekiel Heschel was beating his face and saying, everything I've collected is gone. One of the Romans was laughing at Ezekiel and advised him, try building another two towers and sell the one and rent the other to the Roman king.

Both you and the Roman king will rotten hell. So that's completely unhinged. It's very unhinged fan faction. And once the Iraqis burned their towers down, the Romans and the Jewish people all run away because they've lost their power and money, which was maybe optimistic because we we did lose our power and money in Iraq, but we did not leave. We are still there. Buddy. Oh jeez, demons yeah,

begon demons um weirdly like Hemingway ask title. Yeah, yeah, yes, it was in The King, ye know, yeah, very true, very true. Um. So, the character of Salim is the King of the Arabs in this and he's Saddam's self insert uh S's Harry Potter if you want, Yeah, exactly, And I'm just going to read an excerpt from a battle scene that Saddam describing himself fighting the king of the Romans, gave his orders to begin the charge. The first line of Salim's army shot at the Roman writers

with arrows. When the Roman writers fell down, the women of the tribe beat them with sticks or killed them with swords. So again loves women. In battle, Selim freed his long hair. He was so strong. He was fighting the Romans like a hawk. He was riding a white horse and shouting Allah Akbar, Long live the Arabs and long lives long. How many masturbation breaks do you think he had to take in the rending of that and that want long hair and just pecks out to hear

he wanted to just be Fabio strong. He was so strong, so strong. I feel like that's basically him being like, Okay, this is what I want for cover art. He is so strong, his hair is so long long the Glorio commercial her all the way I'm worth it. Two. He was so strong as maybe the most vulnerable sentence my entire life. That really cuts to the core of his whole body reaction hearing that, Oh my god. Um So,

Saddam was captured on December two thousand three. He was taken into coalition custody and eventually tried by the Iraqi government. During his incarceration, he was watched over by a team of twelve young American soldiers. Um Now. Their story and a lot of other stories, are chronicled in the excellent book The Prisoner in His Palace by Will Barton Worker. I'm I'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail here. I recommend reading that book because it's

it's filled with great anecdotes. But the gist of it is, these young kids, they didn't know Dictator Saddam. They didn't know massacring people. Saddam. They knew he had done all that, but when they met him, he was a sweet, old bearded man who talked to them about their lives and their problems. So one of his medics, they weren't all young. One of his medics was like a fifty one year old black guy from Compton who he and Saddam kind

of clicked because Saddam had a rough upbringing too. They both have a lot of experiences with like violence in their youth. Again, this sounds like a bad movie. There's a scene where that guy the medics brother dies and he goes over to see Saddam before he like gets flown back home to attend the funeral, and he's like, I'm gonna be gone for a few days. My brother just died. And he's clearly broken up about it. And Saddam grabs him by the shoulders and looks him in

the eyes and says, I will be your brother. How do you politely be? Like, you know what, I'm good. They all liked him, They all really like, like, at least most of them really liked him. He would smoke cigars with him, He would give them an advice on girls and advice on life, and like he didn't seem like said um. He was a sweet old man to them, and they really dug him, like they would do nice stuff like find him furniture and help him set up his like his little cell so that he could live

kind of nicely. He had cigars the whole time. We don't know who gave them to him. Someone would just give these soldiers money every week for Saddam cigars. Nobody knows who it was. It had to be someone with some clout, maybe Bush. I don't know, I don't know. Um, that's I want to read that book now. It's a it's a very good book. The Prisoner in his Palace.

Like the weird thing is that when he gets tried and executed on December thirty, thousand and six, Um, these poor kids who have been guarding him for months have to escort him to the gallows and they like him, and there's like tears in their eyes as they lead him off to die, and they have to like take his body back. And years later a bunch of them have PTSD because of what they did with Saddam. I guess you couldn't have predicted they would have loved Saddam.

But you should rotate them, like, don't have the same guys with him the whole time and then make them

see him die. That's messed up. That's so and now, I mean, there's like so many levels to that guilt of like I killed my friend, but also my friend killed a million people, so it makes sense, and like they're they're all like he was like none of them don't believe he was a monster, but they were also like and and part of it is like anyone who becomes a dictator, you're good at being charming, like you're

good at making people like you. And yeah, like in a way you could say that was his last fucked up thing, was like making all these young American kids be his buddy before he gets hung in front of them, his final gaslight. Yes, final, I just want to do one more shitty thing before I do, Like, let me just fuck twelve more people up, the last twelve people I had access to. I just haven't given quite enough

people PTSD. Wow. So that is the story of Saddam Hussein and all twelve people like copped to liking him later on, not all of them, but most of them, so probably all yeah, yeah, they were all pretty like nobody was like, oh he was just a monster the whole time. Like everyone was like, he was a very nice, polite old man. I mean, they have rules like that at nursing home so that like people aren't too traumatized when their patients die. Yeah, military probably should have called

that one ahead of time. Major oversight. But I guess in theory, you're like, oh, a dictator might charm you, but when once you're that deep in casualties. You you kind of expect them to drop the acts. Yeah, yeah, you wouldn't. Seems like most some would. This sounds like an outlier. Yeah, Saddam's an outlier in a lot of ways. Um wow, yeah, Saddam Hussein. I feel weird. Yeah weird. That's that's the Saddam effect. Yeah, kind of like you both need a shower and a jog. Yeah, I need.

I needed one of Saddam's weird murder jogs, murder limb. I just got to go on a walk and shoot some animals. Yeah wow. All right, Um, well, Jamie, you wanna plug your plug doubles up? Please? I will. You can listen to my podcast, the beck Del Cast uh comes out every Thursday. Uh. And you can follow me on You used to be able to follow me on twere now you can't. Now you can follow me on Instagram at Jamie christ Superstar. And that's where I can be found fantastic Uh. Joined this next week when we

will be talking about someone else terrible. I am Robert Evan. You can find Behind the Bastards on social media at Bastards Pod. You can find us on the internet at www dot Behind the bastards dot com, where we'll have pictures and videos and all sorts of other content about these terrible people in their weird, weird lives. Uh So, catch me every Tuesday. I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at at I write okay to letters and um I'll be doing this every week, so be

sure to check in and learn something fascinating about someone awful. Bye.