Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, I am Robert Evans, and this is again
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything
Speaker 1: you don't know about the worst people in all of history.
Speaker 1: Today we are talking about Saddam Hussein, dictator genocide here
Speaker 1: and romance novelist. With me today is Jamie loftus writer, podcaster,
Speaker 1: other art makerer of things, yeah, and a comedian. Are
Speaker 1: you ready to get your Saddam on? I am fully ready?
Speaker 1: All right. Well, Saddam Hussein Abd almag Alto Crety was
Speaker 1: born on April ninety seven, and we know that much
Speaker 1: for sure. Everything else about Saddam's early life is kind
Speaker 1: of up in the air. Reading about his back stories
Speaker 1: a little like asking the Joker to explain, like where
Speaker 1: scars came from. You get different stories depending on who
Speaker 1: you talk to. Right, there's a Jared Letto version of
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein, and then there's the Heath Ledger interpretation. Everyone
Speaker 1: brings something different to the table. Yeah, and I went
Speaker 1: full Ledger on this one. Okay, spiring, Okay, well yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a little bit um. So you know, early on,
Speaker 1: Saddam is kind of an underdog from the start. His
Speaker 1: dad disappears like six months before he's born. He was
Speaker 1: probably murdered by bandits, but we don't really know. Uh.
Speaker 1: Saddam's older brother died while he was still in the womb.
Speaker 1: One common myth states that his mom tried to kill
Speaker 1: herself and aboard her baby. After these deaths, she leapt
Speaker 1: in front of a bus and was reportedly saved by
Speaker 1: a local Jewish family, and after they stopped her from
Speaker 1: committing abortion slash suicide, she is alleged to have screamed,
Speaker 1: I'm carrying Satan in my belly. This fetus has already
Speaker 1: killed his father and his brother and wants to be
Speaker 1: the only man in the family. Okay, yeah, really this
Speaker 1: I feel like where people bring up the baby Hitler
Speaker 1: paradox all the time of like if you could go
Speaker 1: back in time and kill a baby, if you could
Speaker 1: save six million people, would you. I feel like this
Speaker 1: anecdote effectively answers that lastion she tried. His own mom
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, something is awry. There's wow
Speaker 1: isn't going to end well, I can tell it like
Speaker 1: the second trimester. So the real villains were the people
Speaker 1: who saved the babies, effectively answering the baby Hitler paradox,
Speaker 1: kill the baby. Yeah, the villain in this story definitely
Speaker 1: isn't Saddam's mom. She tried to do the right thing. No, God,
Speaker 1: she was sacrificing herself to kill this evil baby. To
Speaker 1: kill the evil baby. That's upset. I mean, yeah, kill
Speaker 1: the baby. Yeah, kill the baby. I'm learning kill the baby.
Speaker 1: I feel like we answered that question. Well, please bring
Speaker 1: this argument to court in a few years when I
Speaker 1: killed the baby when time travel exists, are you just
Speaker 1: going to find another baby? I mean, there's gonna they'll
Speaker 1: they'll be other There's evil babies born all the time.
Speaker 1: That's the really horrifying thing is there are That's there's
Speaker 1: an evil baby born every day. Right now, someone is
Speaker 1: being born who will later really hurt people. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I have that feeling because every time I see a baby,
Speaker 1: they almost all look like Dick Cheney, and it's like
Speaker 1: a percentage of them will turn out to be like
Speaker 1: Dick Cheney, Like we just know at it's crazy. My
Speaker 1: my best friend just had a baby, and I like,
Speaker 1: look at her son. I'm like, you're going to gaslight
Speaker 1: someone so hard one day. They're gonna be so upset,
Speaker 1: arrate you're now, You're so damn cute right now. You
Speaker 1: haven't done anything terrible, but I can just see you
Speaker 1: kicking a dog in twenty four years and feeling nothing
Speaker 1: and just bone quiet on the inside. Um. So, Saddam's
Speaker 1: mom did eventually give birth to a healthy baby boy.
Speaker 1: She named him Saddam, which means one who confronts so
Speaker 1: solid name game. Okay, I mean, in terms of naming
Speaker 1: a baby, you already view to be satan. To be
Speaker 1: the devil seems a little on the nose, but sure.
Speaker 1: I mean that's what he spent us whole life doing.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. His family was very, very poor.
Speaker 1: His hometown of Alaga was a very violent place, so
Speaker 1: he grew up tough. One version of the Saddam myth
Speaker 1: says that he was enchanted by math, learning, reading, and writing,
Speaker 1: but that his mother told him his destiny was as
Speaker 1: a farmer, and she wouldn't let him go to school. Okay,
Speaker 1: so she's trying to suppress the devil, Like, let's not
Speaker 1: educate the devil, Let's just give him a raake and
Speaker 1: hope for the best. Yeah. The last thing this boy
Speaker 1: needs his math. Wow, you know I've got a lot
Speaker 1: of respect for Saddam's mom right now, she tried, she's
Speaker 1: doubling down on thinking her son is pure evil. Yeah
Speaker 1: she she really put in the work to try to
Speaker 1: stop this. Wow. Okay, um, but yeah, So Saddam's home
Speaker 1: was a one room, mud brick hobble, no electricity, no
Speaker 1: running water, just him and mom, Just him and mom.
Speaker 1: His brothers are dead or his brother is dead. He
Speaker 1: said to have had a rough upbringing. The other kids
Speaker 1: in town mocked him for not having a dad. Uh.
Speaker 1: And because he had no older brother, there was nobody
Speaker 1: to defend him, so Saddam started carrying an iron bar
Speaker 1: as a weapon. This is like six year old Saddam
Speaker 1: walking her with an iron bar, just beating other kids. Wow,
Speaker 1: just like just like Tanya Harding. Yeah, there's a little
Speaker 1: galuling everyone in the village, all right. Yeah. Well, and
Speaker 1: he went up with a stepfather at one point, but
Speaker 1: he was his stepfather was apparently quite vicious. His name
Speaker 1: was Hassan the Liar. So maybe not great choice on
Speaker 1: mom's part there. Maybe. Okay, Mom just lost me for
Speaker 1: the first time in this in this story. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: don't marry Hassan the Liar. I mean, especially if he
Speaker 1: comes with that title. Yeah, even imagining the house party,
Speaker 1: they meeters like, oh, yeah, I'm you know, so you know,
Speaker 1: I'm Hassan the liar. Hello. Maybe he like couchit. Maybe
Speaker 1: he's like, I'm Azon date five. You're like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: the liar. That's what he was saying the whole time. Um.
Speaker 1: Hassan's weapon of choice was a large pipe soaked in
Speaker 1: boiling tar, which he would use to beat Saddam with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh that's horrible. I know there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: this story where you're kind of on Saddam's side. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm on this journey. So one of the peculiarities about
Speaker 1: writing about Saddam is that you either get really sympathetic
Speaker 1: towards him or wildly negative towards him, depending on who
Speaker 1: writes his back story. But it's it's pretty safe to
Speaker 1: say either way. His childhood ship, Like if you look
Speaker 1: at the CIA analysis of Saddam, like you can see
Speaker 1: the CIA analysts like feeling sorry for little kids Saddam.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's like a normal part of learning about Saddam. Um. So,
Speaker 1: one night, when he was around ten, he was said
Speaker 1: to have snuck out of bed and gathered up his
Speaker 1: few possessions into a hobo bundle and made it to
Speaker 1: the town across the desert or whatever to uh find
Speaker 1: some other members of his family because he was the desert,
Speaker 1: well a little bit of a desert, not a lot
Speaker 1: of desert, like he wanted to he wanted to go
Speaker 1: to school, and his mom wouldn't let him. So he
Speaker 1: sneaks out and he finds some relatives and he says,
Speaker 1: I want to go to the city where my uncle lives. Uh,
Speaker 1: can you guys help me get there? Uh? And they
Speaker 1: say yes, and they give him cab, fair and a gun.
Speaker 1: He's ten, he's ten, and he just this. Now I'm like,
Speaker 1: this kid just wants to learn math and he needs
Speaker 1: and and he's given all these weapons. You want to
Speaker 1: go to the city, Huh can you imagin mean? Ten
Speaker 1: years old? And being like, I really I want to
Speaker 1: learn maths so much, I'm going to run away from
Speaker 1: my family. God, I would have just been a farmer
Speaker 1: in their answer being oh you okay, you want to
Speaker 1: learn math, Well, here's a gun and some money, like
Speaker 1: deal with the price of math. Maybe you're lying, yea,
Speaker 1: you may have to kill somebody to get to math,
Speaker 1: so no one goes with him. He goes by himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he goes by himself. He finds finds someone to drive
Speaker 1: him and and has a gun in case someone attacks
Speaker 1: him on the road. But he gets to He gets
Speaker 1: to de Crete, which is the big city comparatively, and
Speaker 1: his uncle takes him in and Saddam starts to attend school. Um.
Speaker 1: That does not go very well though, because he was
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein um and he gets expelled. Um. And when
Speaker 1: he's expelled, he goes to his uncle, and his uncle
Speaker 1: gives him a gun and says, but he already has
Speaker 1: a gun. Yeah, well he gives him another gun. So
Speaker 1: far he has an iron bar and two guns. And
Speaker 1: he's not even eleven years old. Yeah, he's not even
Speaker 1: eleven years old. And when he gets expelled, his uncle
Speaker 1: gives him a gun and says, go make the principal
Speaker 1: take you back into the school. Saddam does. He pulls
Speaker 1: a gun on the like a like age eleven. So
Speaker 1: he's like a fifth or sixth grader, yeah, and he
Speaker 1: has to go. He's like, I want to learn math, God,
Speaker 1: damn it, I want to read. And the Jesus. Okay, cheez,
Speaker 1: you gotta give him credit. He is dedicated to that education.
Speaker 1: He has had more of a life than both of
Speaker 1: us at angel Leving. Okay, so he's put back into
Speaker 1: school after after threatening violence on the principle because he
Speaker 1: threatened the principle. Because threaten the principle. Okay, yeah, so
Speaker 1: he gets to go back into school. Um, his uncle
Speaker 1: became his childhood role model. His uncle's name was Kirla
Speaker 1: Uh and Kirala had before this point, spent six years
Speaker 1: in prison for fighting against the British occupation of Iraq.
Speaker 1: He was kind of a Nazi sympathizer, um, And by
Speaker 1: kind of, I mean he was a sympathizer. So he's yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a can we like, okay, this is actually a
Speaker 1: question always a Nazi sympathizer, Are we just saying Nazi? Well,
Speaker 1: it's a little more complicated because, like he was a
Speaker 1: lot of why he liked the Nazis is because the
Speaker 1: Nazis were fighting the British and the British weren't control
Speaker 1: of his country, so it's not. But he was also
Speaker 1: super anti Semitic, So he's like a Nazi sympathizer and
Speaker 1: also and also okay, well yeah, and the reason that
Speaker 1: Saddam idolized his uncle is because his uncle was an author.
Speaker 1: Um and his uncle's written work that was most famous
Speaker 1: was a pamphlet called those Whom God should not have created, Persians,
Speaker 1: Jews and flies. Okay, I was about to compliment his
Speaker 1: use of whom, but I didn't take it back. I mean,
Speaker 1: he got he got the home right, he did a
Speaker 1: good use of whom and a bad use of everyone
Speaker 1: everyone else's time. Everything else is terrible. Um that that
Speaker 1: pamphlet would go on to have a big impact on
Speaker 1: a young Saddam because his foreign policy is Dictator of
Speaker 1: Iraq was based around opposing the per 's Iran Uh
Speaker 1: and Israel. I'm not aware of any anti fly policies,
Speaker 1: but I assumed they made it in there somehow too.
Speaker 1: So I'm now I'm like not on Saddam side again,
Speaker 1: because it's like, imagine using one. I'm like, if I
Speaker 1: use my uncle's like weird, creepy fan fiction account as
Speaker 1: a way to like direct a country, we would all be,
Speaker 1: you know, like X files, be characters frantically having sex
Speaker 1: with each other. So you can't just take your uncle's
Speaker 1: literature and take it to heart too much. Well, big
Speaker 1: ups on your uncle. I mean mine is it's more
Speaker 1: like Frasier fan Thick, which is uncomfortable. That's a fancy uncle.
Speaker 1: You know, I would prefer that to X files. I'm
Speaker 1: like where we're getting into genre stuff, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: but molder in that like swamp monster thing. That's a
Speaker 1: hot mix. I'll give you his email. Yeah, really, I'm
Speaker 1: really into that. Um So. Saddam moves to Bagdad with
Speaker 1: his uncle to attend secondary school, which is what not
Speaker 1: Americans call high school. Now he's a teen. He teen,
Speaker 1: Saddam tena heart throb Saddam. Um, I'm gonna show you
Speaker 1: this picture of young Saddam. I saw that picture when
Speaker 1: I came in. He was like, God, I hate that
Speaker 1: he's hot. He's not a bad looking guy, it says
Speaker 1: damn ye. That was the working title of this podcast.
Speaker 1: Um so uh. Saddam moves to Baghdad with his uncle.
Speaker 1: He graduates high school. He spends three years in law
Speaker 1: school before he drops out to join the radical bath
Speaker 1: political party, the Bathists in short, or a pan Arab party.
Speaker 1: They think that all the different Arab state should be
Speaker 1: one big country. This is after the Ottomans have fallen,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of what they want. They're sort of socialist,
Speaker 1: but they're also anti communists, so the CIA really likes
Speaker 1: them at this point. Um. So in nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: there's a big military coup that overthrows the king of
Speaker 1: Iraq and a new asshole named Kassam winds up in
Speaker 1: charge of the country. The CIA didn't like coss him
Speaker 1: because he was kind of pro Soviet Union, and since
Speaker 1: the Bath Party also hated Kassam, the CIA was like,
Speaker 1: these guys are clearly our friends. They've become sympathizers this
Speaker 1: new Okay. So Saddam was working as a teacher during
Speaker 1: this period of time. Yeah, teaching, I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what. I haven't found any details about it. He's
Speaker 1: not gonna rate my professor. Where his students at? Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: what kind of teacher was Saddam? Do we know what
Speaker 1: age he was teaching? I mean, I'm gonna guess like teenagers,
Speaker 1: But I really have no idea. We should not like
Speaker 1: teens around Saddan. We should better if he's teaching like kindergarten,
Speaker 1: definitely funnier if he's teaching kindergartenda helping little kids put
Speaker 1: blocks in the right hole. You know, I think that
Speaker 1: that is a good way to neutralize a threat, is
Speaker 1: to just put them, put them around a little cutie
Speaker 1: pies and tell him what the color blue is. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of these monsters are really good with kids.
Speaker 1: Hitler probably would have been an all right kindergarten teacher. Jeez. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's teaching probably teenagers. He's teaching probably teenagers. Um,
Speaker 1: but I don't know exactly. Um. Because teacher Hot Teacher Saddam,
Speaker 1: Hot Teacher Saddam and Hot Teacher Saddam and his friends
Speaker 1: wind up getting the attention of the CIA, and the
Speaker 1: CIA is like, you guys want to assassinate the president? Uh?
Speaker 1: And so dominous friends are like, yeah, we want to
Speaker 1: assassinate the president. And so the CIA gives them all
Speaker 1: weapons and helps them plan a daring murder. It is
Speaker 1: crazy how many people are just down to give Sodam
Speaker 1: the same guns. That's his whole childhood. It's just people
Speaker 1: giving him guns. What is it about him? And then
Speaker 1: everyone's just like, we've got to arm this man, like
Speaker 1: the trustworthy man. You know what. This guy's problem is
Speaker 1: not enough guns. You know, I like everything, but what
Speaker 1: I really could use is more violence. Yeah, if we
Speaker 1: just strap a gun to him. Yeah. Now the CIA
Speaker 1: is giving Saddama guns, so dominous friends. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: there they get set up to go assassinate President Kassam
Speaker 1: Uh and Saddam's job in this assassination is to provide
Speaker 1: cover for everybody while they run up to the President's
Speaker 1: car with machine guns and gun him down. Um. Things
Speaker 1: instantly got sucked up. Depending on who you believe. Saddam
Speaker 1: either got so excited when the gunfire started that he
Speaker 1: rushed up to shoot the president too, or he panicked
Speaker 1: before the attempt even started and fired his gun into
Speaker 1: the air. Um. We don't really know what happened, but
Speaker 1: the whole attempt has been described as a farce. One
Speaker 1: assassin was given the wrong bullets for his gun by
Speaker 1: the CIA. Another assassin got a hand grenade caught in
Speaker 1: the lining of his coat. Um, so it was just
Speaker 1: a disaster. The president survived, Saddam got shot in the
Speaker 1: leg as he was fleeing. Very null coward vibe to
Speaker 1: that assassination, very silly sound. Yeah, you could imagine like
Speaker 1: yakety Sacks being a solid like Assassin a soundtrack for that.
Speaker 1: Are we in the sixties, yat or is he still
Speaker 1: like in college age? I think this is the early
Speaker 1: sixties because Cossum took power in fifty eight, so this
Speaker 1: is Saddam's sixties hilariously failed assassination attempts um so Saddam
Speaker 1: getting shot in the leg. The official version of the story,
Speaker 1: and by that, I mean, like the Iraqi government's official
Speaker 1: version of the story, was that he and a friend
Speaker 1: had to remove the bullet with a razor blade and scissors,
Speaker 1: so they get a little like Boondocks Saints thing there
Speaker 1: um and they claimed he was still in high school
Speaker 1: at the time, but that doesn't track with the actual
Speaker 1: time for a timeline. But like the version of the
Speaker 1: story that IM wanted people to believe is that he
Speaker 1: liked removed the bullet from his own leg, and then
Speaker 1: went back to school, went to maths. I mean that
Speaker 1: is that is a narrative, that is exciting, That is
Speaker 1: a cool narrative. I got Boondocks and then and then
Speaker 1: I went to algebra two. I wasn't gonna miss my
Speaker 1: fucking quiz or whatever. I don't know enough algebra can't
Speaker 1: fault him for that my quiz division. Um, but we
Speaker 1: actually know that he fled the country immediately so he
Speaker 1: wouldn't get murdered as suffer of his friends were. Um,
Speaker 1: the CIA and the Egyptian intelligence forces helped him escape
Speaker 1: to Cairo, where he was put up in a nice
Speaker 1: apartment and apparently spent all of his time playing dominoes
Speaker 1: for several years. Wait for several years, Yeah, he's he's
Speaker 1: there for a few years. It's playing dominos and dominoes.
Speaker 1: That is a sinister game to be playing for many years.
Speaker 1: You know. That's seen in V for Vendetta. It's like
Speaker 1: my least favorite scene of him all time, where like
Speaker 1: v has set up a room full of dominoes for
Speaker 1: this one, and it's like, who it took you? You
Speaker 1: only live here, This must have taken sixteen hours, and
Speaker 1: you're just like, hey, Natalie Portman, check this ship out.
Speaker 1: And then he knocks down the whole thing. You're just like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Such a crazy person move. It's
Speaker 1: so like it could there be a big, bigger red
Speaker 1: flag other than refusing to show your face. That movie
Speaker 1: is infuriating. I'm sure the reality is he was like
Speaker 1: playing dominoes with other people at cafes. But I like
Speaker 1: to imagine him for just three straight years alone in
Speaker 1: his apartment just building dominoes, and right, we don't I
Speaker 1: guess yeah, dominoes. I forgot dominoes is also okay, and
Speaker 1: not just I imagined him in like a ballroom just
Speaker 1: assembling dominoes in different patterns and trying to get people
Speaker 1: to be like, hey, you know, would be really cool. Um.
Speaker 1: So nineteen sixty three rolls around, uh, Cossom gets assassinated
Speaker 1: and Saddam is able to return to a rack, but
Speaker 1: person by a different crew. Yeah, somebody, somebody else, not Saddam. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm sure the CIA was still involved. Um. Saddam goes
Speaker 1: back to Iraq, but it turned out the new government
Speaker 1: wasn't a big fan of him and his fellow bathists either,
Speaker 1: so he gets arrested in sixty four and sent to prison. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: Iraqi prisons in the sixties kind of acted on the
Speaker 1: honor system, So after two years of imprisonment, Saddam convinced
Speaker 1: his guards to let he and some friends go to
Speaker 1: a restaurant on their way to court. While he was
Speaker 1: in the bathroom, he walked out of the back door.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's fully on the jail, fully on them.
Speaker 1: That is a wild policy. I also thought you were
Speaker 1: going to say, fortunately, prisons in Iraq had dominoes. I
Speaker 1: assume he's dominoing throughout this period, basically unchanged. So, um,
Speaker 1: he gets out, Yeah, he gets out. He rises through
Speaker 1: the ranks of the Bath Party, and in July nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight, he helps to launch a coup that finally
Speaker 1: puts his party in power. Um, here's a quote from
Speaker 1: a book I found about how that morning went down.
Speaker 1: He began by bringing out all of the weapons and
Speaker 1: uniforms he had hidden in the house. His wife, Sagita,
Speaker 1: helped in the preparations, as did their son Udai, who
Speaker 1: ran around the room picking up hand grenades from the floor,
Speaker 1: bringing them one by one to his father as if
Speaker 1: they were toys. Oh scary. When did he get a son?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean he's got a wife and kids
Speaker 1: by this day. That that kind of happens after he's
Speaker 1: out of prison, and okay, okay, so he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm really going to pull it together now, I'm going
Speaker 1: to join an extremist party. I'm gonna have a wife
Speaker 1: and kid, and a kid he's getting shipped done God,
Speaker 1: and then and so his kids touching grenades. Good good, good,
Speaker 1: good good. I mean there's grenades all over I rack
Speaker 1: they love those things. Um yeah. That quote is from
Speaker 1: a Saddam sympathetic biography by Nita Renfrew. You can find
Speaker 1: it online if you want. It's very much questioned, but
Speaker 1: I am choosing to believe that particular depiction because it
Speaker 1: warms my heart. I mean a moment for father hunt. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's some quality dadding. Um, so the cougo's off without
Speaker 1: a hitch. Saddam becomes the vice president. He's number two
Speaker 1: to a guy named Hassan al Baker h Well. Vice President.
Speaker 1: Saddam finishes his law degree in enrolls in the University Baghdad,
Speaker 1: but he attends classes in disguise. Well that is a
Speaker 1: bad movie. That's a secret vice president. My yeah, student
Speaker 1: Mike Pence, he's just sitting in a biology class, getting
Speaker 1: angrier and angrier. He can't say anything. Mike Pen's putting
Speaker 1: on a wig and going to someone's chem class. They're
Speaker 1: just explaining how like the age of the universe, and
Speaker 1: he's just like red faced, sweating and furious veins bulging
Speaker 1: on his neck. Do they say anything about what the
Speaker 1: disguise was, because if not, I'm going very silly, bigger mustache,
Speaker 1: gigantic classes. No. I found no details on how he
Speaker 1: was disguised, but he apparently had a life long habit
Speaker 1: of going around in disguise disguise. Okay, I'm imagining the
Speaker 1: disguise kit from the Master of Disguise, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite movies. You just dress up like a gigantic cherry
Speaker 1: pie in a college class learning chemistry. That is so
Speaker 1: bizarre someone could have come to his house. Yeah, alright, Well,
Speaker 1: we have some ads to break to. Uh. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna sing a little song for sweet Lady Capitalism, and
Speaker 1: then when we are back, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein's love of reading, his rise to absolute power,
Speaker 1: and of course his career as a romance novelist. All
Speaker 1: that more after some ads, and we're back. Uh, and
Speaker 1: we are talking about Saddam Hussein, who, at this point
Speaker 1: in our story has gone from an adorable lead pipe
Speaker 1: wielding child to the vice president of iraq Um. Saddam
Speaker 1: was vice president for eleven years, although for most of
Speaker 1: that time he was the are behind the scenes and
Speaker 1: he was actually in charge of the country. UM and
Speaker 1: one of the first things he decided to do as
Speaker 1: vice president was to spread his love of reading to
Speaker 1: everyone in Iraq with what was essentially the most brutal
Speaker 1: scholastic book fair in history. UM. He required every city
Speaker 1: and village interact a host reading programs. Attendance was mandatory.
Speaker 1: Skipping was punished by three years in prison. Every man,
Speaker 1: woman and child in the country was forced to learn
Speaker 1: how to read, and it worked. Iraq went from majority
Speaker 1: of literate to the vast majority of people there being literate.
Speaker 1: UNESCO gave Saddaman Award see that that is an unusual
Speaker 1: move right for like an evil ruler to want people
Speaker 1: to be literate, Like usually you're You're like everyone needs
Speaker 1: to be as dominobedient as possible. That's so, I was like,
Speaker 1: you're going to read and if you don't learn how
Speaker 1: to read, you're gonna go to fucking prison for three
Speaker 1: years to jail. Yeah, you're it was it. I imagine
Speaker 1: it was like specific things you had to read. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think like there's a lot of reading of religious
Speaker 1: texts and whatnot. Like during the height of his regime,
Speaker 1: a lot of fiction was banned, but at this point
Speaker 1: they weren't banning a lot of books like you know what,
Speaker 1: just pick up a Juny B. Jones, pick up an
Speaker 1: Animals and that's a lot of anim warps in nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: If you don't read a new Animals chapter book this week,
Speaker 1: you're going to jail, my friend. Yeah, they're big fans
Speaker 1: of the animals. I mean, Saddam was a big reader.
Speaker 1: He's a huge Hmmingway fan, which, of course, jeez, we're cock. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I really loved Old Man in the Sea. Man. I
Speaker 1: wonder if you ever picked up any David Foster wallet,
Speaker 1: just don't get sad dump started. He won't shut up.
Speaker 1: I'm not shut up about it. Every stands for friends
Speaker 1: and and and sufferable. Okay, Um, so we're almost at
Speaker 1: the end of our positive Saddam stuff. But I do
Speaker 1: need to mention that he was a surprisingly progressive leader
Speaker 1: when it came to women's rights. We're talking about the
Speaker 1: Middle East in the seventies here, so don't expect like
Speaker 1: a lot. But they were allowed to live, they were
Speaker 1: allowed to work and be in the military. Um. And
Speaker 1: it said that he preferred women's advice and insight because
Speaker 1: he thought they were more honest than men. Uh. So
Speaker 1: this concludes the good part of Saddam Hussein being in
Speaker 1: charge of Iraq. Uh he becomes the full president in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine. Um, he went from you know, during
Speaker 1: the time when he was VP, he'd go around and
Speaker 1: disguise a lot and kind of undercover boss the country. Um,
Speaker 1: it seems unnecessary. It seems like something you could delegate
Speaker 1: to a second party. It's like a thing though an
Speaker 1: Arab folklore. There's stories going back a thousand years of
Speaker 1: like rulers hiding amongst the people to learn about like
Speaker 1: their lives and stuff. So it's kind of a thing
Speaker 1: you do for the pr It's like, but behaving like
Speaker 1: a fictional character would be like a good like if
Speaker 1: I was just like I'm gonna I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: of a good example of like I'm gonna be a
Speaker 1: mermaid and die at the end, and that's a half
Speaker 1: proved that I'm a cool leader. So as president, Saddam
Speaker 1: went from yeah, doing the whole undercover thing to making
Speaker 1: frequent televised visits to various random neighborhoods around the country.
Speaker 1: Here's another quote from that Renfrew book. One day, he
Speaker 1: would turn up suddenly at an ancient Christian monastery. Another day,
Speaker 1: who would visit Kurdish peasants in their homes, inspecting their
Speaker 1: sanitary and refrigeration facilities, perhaps poking a bit of meat
Speaker 1: to see if it was fresh before long. It was
Speaker 1: understood that the president could drop in anywhere, at any moment. Oh,
Speaker 1: he sounds like you know what he sounds like. He
Speaker 1: sounds like Bill Murray. I find that behavior to be
Speaker 1: absolutely despicable. I don't like living in a world where
Speaker 1: Bill Murray is just allowed to show up wherever he
Speaker 1: wants and it's news. It's like he's intrude to either.
Speaker 1: Bill Murray showed up at my wedding like he should not.
Speaker 1: He was not invited. He should leave. Saddam's infamous meat poke. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the president just showing up at your I was poking
Speaker 1: your meat, Murray and your wedding. I just wish Bill
Speaker 1: Mury didn't do that. So Saddam at this point is
Speaker 1: very popular, Uh, popular amongst also the other people he's
Speaker 1: in power with, the other members of the Bath Party. Uh,
Speaker 1: they thought he was intellectual and practical and uh, just
Speaker 1: a generally nice guy. Uh. He was of course hiding himself. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen seventy nine, as he becomes president, Saddam
Speaker 1: purges the Bath Party of all of his rivals. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was able to get one member of the party,
Speaker 1: a guy named Mashadi, to inform on all of his enemies. Uh.
Speaker 1: Maschadi was given the choice to either number one, confess
Speaker 1: everything and roll on twenty two other members of Congress,
Speaker 1: basically that Saddam when had purged, or to watch his
Speaker 1: wife and daughters get raped in front of him before
Speaker 1: being murdered. Oh my god, Yeah, so that's the choice
Speaker 1: Saddam gives this guy. Mashadi rolls on his colleagues. Saddam
Speaker 1: executes all of them. He videotapes the executions and sends
Speaker 1: copies of the tape to other members of the Bath Party.
Speaker 1: That is horrifying and also uh bold to document. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's okay. So we're we're we're in it now, we're
Speaker 1: in a nightmare. Boss. Saddam has arrived. No more book fairs,
Speaker 1: No more booksairs. Well, I mean everyone can read now,
Speaker 1: that's good. Yeah. And in nineteen eighties, Saddam Hussein invades Iran,
Speaker 1: starts an eight year war that kills like a million
Speaker 1: people in bankrupts Iraq. Uh. In nineteen eighty eight, he
Speaker 1: launches a series of chemical weapon attacks against Curtis civilians
Speaker 1: in northern Iraq and killed around two hundred thousand people,
Speaker 1: most of them women and children. Uh. But I thought
Speaker 1: he was a feminist icon well, as we just cussed earlier.
Speaker 1: Maybe too strong, okay, Um, although he gassed all genders,
Speaker 1: he did not discriminate me who he would ruthlessly murder.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't call it a misogynist chemical weapons attack. It
Speaker 1: was a woke genocide and extremely woke genocide. Um. So Yeah,
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety, Saddam invades Kuwait. We all know how
Speaker 1: that worked out. It's not great for him. So Saddam's
Speaker 1: life kind of goes off the rails after the Gulf War.
Speaker 1: Honestly incredible that it makes it that far. We could
Speaker 1: do a whole podcast at how messed up Iraq was
Speaker 1: during that particular time. I'm going to pick just a
Speaker 1: few of the wildest stories. So Saddam had a son
Speaker 1: in law and a second cousin both at the same time,
Speaker 1: because you know a little bit of Texan. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh named Hussain Kamel. He was one of Boss Saddam's favorites,
Speaker 1: and he was appointed both Minister of Oil and head
Speaker 1: of Iraq's weapons development program. Mr of Oil sounds like
Speaker 1: a fake job. Minister of oil. Yeah, you keep being
Speaker 1: a fuel Well, no, actually get into the get into
Speaker 1: the we gotta sell them. You're actually gonna want to
Speaker 1: move right, Okay. So in n though, he becomes he
Speaker 1: and his brother uh Saddam Kamel. So Hussein Kamel and
Speaker 1: Saddam Kamel. I know that's a little sake. Wait, So
Speaker 1: Saddam's son in laws, the men who marry his daughters
Speaker 1: are named Hussein and Saddam Kamel. So Hussein Kamel, and
Speaker 1: I know it's it's a little like they're like pranking him.
Speaker 1: It's a common name. Um. So they're married to Saddam's daughters.
Speaker 1: But they wind up falling a foul of Saddam's son Uday,
Speaker 1: who's still well, I don't think he's the heir apparent anymore,
Speaker 1: but he's very powerful. So they think he's going to
Speaker 1: kill them, and they fleeted Jordan's along with Saddam's daughters
Speaker 1: and a bunch of their friends. Jordan grants them asylum.
Speaker 1: Hussein Kamel promises to give the CIA a bunch of
Speaker 1: inside info on Iraq's w m D program, but he
Speaker 1: didn't actually have much to give because Iraq wasn't making
Speaker 1: w m D s anymore, as we all learned a
Speaker 1: few years later. Yeah. Um, so he starts to become
Speaker 1: less and less useful for Jordan and the c I
Speaker 1: A uh, and for some reason nobody can really explain,
Speaker 1: he decides to go back to Iraq along with his brother. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is after he's gone on CNN to accuse Saddam
Speaker 1: of surrounding himself with idiots. Um. So they do that,
Speaker 1: They talked to the CIA, and then they head back home.
Speaker 1: Everyone's like, you're gonna get murdered the instant you set
Speaker 1: foot in Iraq, but they still do it. They're like,
Speaker 1: what if he didn't it. Saddam's like, it'll be fine,
Speaker 1: it'll be fine. Is this there like Selma and Louise moment.
Speaker 1: That's the that's as close as I can get to
Speaker 1: unpacking that one. There is a little bit of a
Speaker 1: Thelma and Louise moment coming in a bit okay, Um,
Speaker 1: first off, so that we don't get to Uh, we
Speaker 1: don't want anyone feeling too sorry for Saddam Kamel and
Speaker 1: Hussain Kamel. Saddam Kamel. One of the things he was
Speaker 1: famous for doing a couple of years before this point
Speaker 1: was he got angry at a guy and he made
Speaker 1: him drink gasoline and then he shot him with incendiary
Speaker 1: rounds so he would catch on fire. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: nobody in this story is a good guy. Okay, So
Speaker 1: he's like a tarantino. Yeah, this is the kind of
Speaker 1: ship that said. I'm like, if you were close to
Speaker 1: the Hussain family, Uh, you know, when he was in charge,
Speaker 1: you could do stuff like that. You could really get creative.
Speaker 1: You could really get creative with being a mons here.
Speaker 1: It's just important you don't feel sorry for anyone for
Speaker 1: what comes next, because this is a hell of the
Speaker 1: story if you can get past that. Um. So they
Speaker 1: go back to Iraq. Uh Saddam orders them to divorce
Speaker 1: their wives and orders them to show up for judgment
Speaker 1: and justice, and instead they hold up in their family house. Uh.
Speaker 1: Saddam doesn't send the police after them, he doesn't send
Speaker 1: the military after them. He sends the boy's uncle and
Speaker 1: his enforcer, whose nickname was Chemical Ali because he carried
Speaker 1: out the genocidal chemical weapons attacks along with a forty
Speaker 1: man tribal hit squad, and before the hit squad arrives,
Speaker 1: Chemical Ali sends the brothers a Honda van filled with
Speaker 1: weapons and ammunition so that they can fight. What follows
Speaker 1: is a thirteen our firefight that kills at least two
Speaker 1: members of the tribal hit squad. It ends with a
Speaker 1: rocket barrage that kills one of the others, and Hussein
Speaker 1: Kamal staggers out of the smoky rubble of the house
Speaker 1: with just like in the wake of this rocket attack,
Speaker 1: screams out his name to the sky and then is
Speaker 1: cut down in a hail of gunfire. Why, because that's
Speaker 1: how they did ship. They just that's some poppet master ship.
Speaker 1: He was like, we could just do this, or I
Speaker 1: could take him to prison or gunbattle. Gun battle, which
Speaker 1: is more fun to hear about later. Yeah, and it,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty badass, and it ends biblically. It
Speaker 1: does your name to the sky and then being yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like that's almost like giving them a better
Speaker 1: way to die than just sending someone to you know,
Speaker 1: like you know, cut their throat and leaf like they're like,
Speaker 1: you're going to go down in a very dramatic way, Saddam.
Speaker 1: Apparently these two guys Saddam was really cared about, like
Speaker 1: actually did care about. So this is nice Saddam. How
Speaker 1: a nice Saddam executes you? Is he let you die? Fight,
Speaker 1: you get to you get to die. Like it's sort
Speaker 1: of like mission impossibly, like there's a lot of high drama.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's music playing. We don't know, we weren't there.
Speaker 1: I hope there was music playing. I hope that someone
Speaker 1: just threw on like a Hans Zimmer score in the
Speaker 1: background and just kept rewinding the gazette and playing the
Speaker 1: just keep going, well, what years is coming on in?
Speaker 1: What sounds like there's a there's a Zimmer. I'll figure
Speaker 1: it out. Yeah there's something in there. Yeah. Um So
Speaker 1: on the on the less murder and explosiony sort of thing,
Speaker 1: Saddam had a friendship with Jordan's King Hussein Um. During
Speaker 1: one of the king's visits, the two went fishing, and
Speaker 1: King Hussein thought it was suspicious that Saddam and only
Speaker 1: Saddam caught a bunch of fish. After a couple of
Speaker 1: fishing trips, he developed the theory that Saddam had ordered
Speaker 1: a diver to put fish on the end of his
Speaker 1: fishing line and only his fishing line. Was it true?
Speaker 1: What we There's no way to know for sure, but
Speaker 1: one trip there was maybe a funk up with the
Speaker 1: diver in a fish wound up on King Hussein's line
Speaker 1: and he pulled it up, and immediately after that a
Speaker 1: fish winds up on Saddam's line. But King Hussein's fish
Speaker 1: looks bigger, and so Saddam has both of the fish
Speaker 1: go off with one of his runners to get weighed,
Speaker 1: and the guy comes back and it's like, no, Saddam's
Speaker 1: was a quarter pound bigger. Oh what a stressful friendship.
Speaker 1: So that's the kind of man Saddam Hussein was to
Speaker 1: his buddies. I wonder if he's like insecure in any
Speaker 1: way if any time you catch a fish, it's like
Speaker 1: who's Basically he's just like, well, whose dig is bigger?
Speaker 1: And then just like have some go away the fish.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean that sounds a kind of
Speaker 1: a fun way to torture a friend of me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, only I may catch fish. So as the
Speaker 1: years after the Gulf War, drew on. Saddam gets more
Speaker 1: and more paranoid. He's constantly afraid of being poisoned, and
Speaker 1: so he has all of his food, which is mostly
Speaker 1: fresh lobster and fresh fish, flown in daily and inspected
Speaker 1: by nuclear scientists before being fed to him. Um, I
Speaker 1: think by the nuclear scientist. By the nuclear scientists. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they're feeding it to him, but
Speaker 1: they're inspecting his food. Jesus Christ. Okay, because they're not
Speaker 1: working on nukes anymore. You get to do something with
Speaker 1: your scientists, right right, I mean if your w m
Speaker 1: D is not popping, you know that's I mean, keeping
Speaker 1: people employed. Make sure this lobsters fresh. Um. He passed
Speaker 1: a lot of time reading books about Joseph Stalin, who
Speaker 1: was his hero and very chill your time, and watching
Speaker 1: movies his Some of his favorites were The Godfather, Enemy
Speaker 1: of the State, and The Day of the Jackal. Seems
Speaker 1: a little on the nose. Yeah, let's throw in some
Speaker 1: what if it was like? He loved Enemy of the State,
Speaker 1: The Godfather and like all about ten things I hate
Speaker 1: about you stop watching that movie. He had us offside
Speaker 1: to him. Yeah, No, he was not a subtleman no um.
Speaker 1: In his sixties, his doctors advised him to start getting
Speaker 1: two hours a day of walking exercise. Since he was Saddam.
Speaker 1: He did this in the craziest way possible. I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote from an Atlantic article called Tales of the
Speaker 1: Tyrant here. He used to take these walks in public,
Speaker 1: swooping down with his entourage in the neighborhoods and bagdad
Speaker 1: his bodyguards, clearing sidewalks and streets. As the Tyrant past,
Speaker 1: anyone who approached him unsolicited was beaten nearly to death.
Speaker 1: But now it is too dangerous to walk in public.
Speaker 1: The limp must not be seen, so Saddam makes no
Speaker 1: more unscripted public appearances. He limps freely behind the high
Speaker 1: walls and patrolled fences of his vastest states. Often he
Speaker 1: walks with a gun, hunting deer or rabbit in his
Speaker 1: private preserves. He is an excellent shot. Jeez, okay, he's
Speaker 1: just extra extra as hell on every single every That
Speaker 1: does sound a little bit similar to like when they
Speaker 1: were trying to hide the fact that like Roosevelt was
Speaker 1: like paralyzed, Like we're just gonna go way out of
Speaker 1: our way to make sure that people don't know the
Speaker 1: ruler has a lamp like but also by calling attention,
Speaker 1: like he could have just granted a place. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I think I think going on limping walks with a
Speaker 1: gun and murdering random animals is the better way to
Speaker 1: get exercise. He needs listen. He can't go somewhere without
Speaker 1: a gun. He was basically born with a gun, basically
Speaker 1: born with a gun in his um. So, one of
Speaker 1: the things you get when you study Saddam and you
Speaker 1: read his writings is it seems like you kind of
Speaker 1: started to sour on being in charge of Iraq during
Speaker 1: the late nineteen nineties, um he started taking more naps
Speaker 1: and playing hookey and government meetings. His former vice president
Speaker 1: said it sometimes took three days to get in touch
Speaker 1: with him. So what was Saddam doing with all of
Speaker 1: his time? Now? What was he doing? He'd become a novelist.
Speaker 1: Reading is a theme that kind of runs through Saddam's
Speaker 1: entire career. And while the standard like Arab hero thing
Speaker 1: is to be a poet, like that's the thing that
Speaker 1: they really emphasize, like Russians, it's your novelist. If you're
Speaker 1: a if you're an Arab hero, you're a poet. Saddam
Speaker 1: instead chose to write trashy romance novel wow. Uh. And
Speaker 1: we're going to get into those trashy romance novels and
Speaker 1: exactly what happened with Saddam's career as an author after
Speaker 1: the break. But first we have more ads for things
Speaker 1: that you can buy or things that can buy you.
Speaker 1: I don't know how ads work. Here we go, we
Speaker 1: are back, and we are talking about Saddam Hussein, dictator, murderer,
Speaker 1: pipe wielder, and romance novelist. Just further proof that there
Speaker 1: really is nothing more dangerous in this world than a
Speaker 1: failed artist. Like there's so I mean, limitless examples of
Speaker 1: a failed artist doing something truly holacious to the world.
Speaker 1: One of the weird things I found, because we're doing
Speaker 1: a podcast that touches on Stalin later, is that so,
Speaker 1: like Saddam is a novelist, and but like the like
Speaker 1: the traditional Arab warrior hero thing is to be a
Speaker 1: poet as well as a warrior. Joseph Stalin wrote poems
Speaker 1: and the standard like Russian man of substance things to
Speaker 1: be a novelist. I don't know which is weird to
Speaker 1: me that they Saddam is a big fan of Stalin,
Speaker 1: and they kind of wind up chips in the night,
Speaker 1: babies in the night. They would have been great friends,
Speaker 1: they would I mean, I'm sure it sounds like Saddam
Speaker 1: is a little bit like fan boying out over over Stalin.
Speaker 1: For sometimes you could call him a Stalin nerd. He's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a Stalin's down if you will. Alright,
Speaker 1: So Saddam Hussein publishes his first novel, Zabiba and the King,
Speaker 1: in two thousands. It's an instant bestseller in Iraq and
Speaker 1: sells millions upon millions of copies under his regular name,
Speaker 1: uh no, under the name that it was published under
Speaker 1: is basically he who wrote the book. What can basically
Speaker 1: like the middle finger emoji? Written by whose fucking businesses?
Speaker 1: By the guy who wrote it? Asshole J D Rob. Sure,
Speaker 1: but everyone knows Saddam. The word gets out, and of
Speaker 1: course they all buy a copy because like, you don't
Speaker 1: want to be caught without your copy of Saddam's stupid
Speaker 1: fucking book. Um. You can buy the English translation of
Speaker 1: this book online right now for twelve dollars. It was
Speaker 1: republished by an American during the war and it's the
Speaker 1: cover is just Saddam. It's just Saddam with a beard
Speaker 1: on a red background. It's not the original cover and
Speaker 1: a pretty gnarly looking font. I would argue it looks
Speaker 1: like it was self published on Amazon. It kind of was.
Speaker 1: It was just a guy who translated it, who got
Speaker 1: a copy, translated it and published it as quick as
Speaker 1: he could. He like, his justification was I thought americans
Speaker 1: fighting over there might want to read this book of
Speaker 1: the guy they deposed. I I mean, I see that,
Speaker 1: and there's definitely a historical value to Saddam's creepy book. Wait,
Speaker 1: what's it about? Well, okay, first off, short review, it's
Speaker 1: not good. It's not good. It may lose something translation
Speaker 1: from Arabic, but it is not a good book structurally.
Speaker 1: I think we're okay to not give Saddam Hussein the
Speaker 1: benefit of the doubt. You lose that after the first genocide, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: when once you hit a million people, you've killed your
Speaker 1: year out about a million and a half deaths at
Speaker 1: this point, probably conservatively something like that. But he's fine
Speaker 1: in the time to to follow his bliss, he actually
Speaker 1: wrote like three books in four years something like that.
Speaker 1: So he's very, very dedicated. He's Stephen king his way
Speaker 1: through the ship. Right, he's like banging coke lines and
Speaker 1: writing garbage. Okay, So the basic plot is that a
Speaker 1: king who represents Saddam Hussein Um falls in love with
Speaker 1: a beautiful local woman named Zebiba, who represents collectively all
Speaker 1: of Iraq. I wonder if she's much younger than him, yes, okay, good. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Zebiba has a husband the United States who became betrothed
Speaker 1: to her during an arranged marriage, and she spends a
Speaker 1: lot of the book being forced to have sex with no. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's sad. So we've got Saddama is a protagonist.
Speaker 1: We've got a much younger, hotter female avatar. I'm assuming
Speaker 1: she doesn't have a personality, and we've got a ripe fantasy.
Speaker 1: She does have a personality. She's the smartest one in
Speaker 1: the book, and she spends the whole book right lecturing
Speaker 1: everybody icon. It's it's kind of weird, but like, she
Speaker 1: is not the character you'd guess from that plot synopsis,
Speaker 1: where she's just like hollow, like like she isn't just
Speaker 1: instantly in love with him for no good reason, but
Speaker 1: he's she like spends the whole time lecturing him about politics,
Speaker 1: and he's portrayed as kind of a dumb guy. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it is. It is weird, it's not the book
Speaker 1: you'd expect, and it has a really strange structure. So
Speaker 1: it's framed as a story being told to a group
Speaker 1: of young children by an old, grandmotherly woman, like a
Speaker 1: princess bride kind of set up. Yeah, it's exactly that.
Speaker 1: It's a princess bride kind of set up, and it's
Speaker 1: sort of works at the start. But the whole book
Speaker 1: is has periodic rants by Saddam Hussein put into these
Speaker 1: characters mouths. So a lot of Saddam's rants wind up
Speaker 1: in the mouth of an old lady talking to children.
Speaker 1: So at one point, this old woman spends a whole
Speaker 1: page lecturing small children about how sexy mouths are. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from the book here. And if the meaning
Speaker 1: of the mouth is that great, should not a man
Speaker 1: be jealous about the mouth of the one he loves her? Laughter,
Speaker 1: every movement of her lips. Clearly one understands. Why then,
Speaker 1: are mothers and grand mothers cover their mouths in front
Speaker 1: of strangers? So that is a quote from an old
Speaker 1: lady talking to children. Oh God, I feel like maybe
Speaker 1: he forgot that was happening times of the book he did,
Speaker 1: because he forgets for like a hundred pages to bring
Speaker 1: it back to her. And then he brings it back
Speaker 1: to her. He's like, hopefully every won't forget about that
Speaker 1: whole time when she was telling kids how hot mouths are.
Speaker 1: Just wait, so on page a hundred and seven, Saddam
Speaker 1: rights and again put this into the mouth of an
Speaker 1: old lady talking to kids. Even an animal respects a
Speaker 1: man's desire if it wants to copulate with him. Doesn't
Speaker 1: a female bear try to please a herdsman when she
Speaker 1: drags him into the mountains as it happens in the
Speaker 1: north of Iraq? How would you know that? Where's the info?
Speaker 1: Was just throwing shade on the curds by saying they
Speaker 1: have sex with bears and putting that in the mouth
Speaker 1: of an old woman talking to kids. Yeah, okay, how wait?
Speaker 1: How long is this that? It's like three I read.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I read all of it. I fell
Speaker 1: asleep four or five times because it is there's just
Speaker 1: pages of rants, Like it's not a good book. I've
Speaker 1: pulled the highlights out here. Okay, Um, So yeah, we've
Speaker 1: gotten through the bear sex, the weird mouth rant. Um.
Speaker 1: So the main purpose of the book is to allow
Speaker 1: Saddam to throw shade at his enemies, kind of like
Speaker 1: Michael Crichton in that regard Rest in Paradise. Um. Some
Speaker 1: of it's what you'd expect. He attacks the U S
Speaker 1: and Israel a bunch, you know, he's Saddam Hussein. But
Speaker 1: weirdly enough, he spends most of the book raging against businessmen,
Speaker 1: the concept of a hereditary monarchy, and apparently all of
Speaker 1: the people who worked for him. Um, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a wild platter topics. So at one point, like there's
Speaker 1: a Zebiba is visiting the castle and the king. She
Speaker 1: has an altercation with some guy and the king apologizes,
Speaker 1: and she's like, isn't it true that those who surround
Speaker 1: the king are exceedingly more cruel than the king himself.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like Saddam being like, I didn't kill
Speaker 1: all those Is I just bad people working? Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I trust no bit lesson learned, right. Um. There's also
Speaker 1: a lot of points in the book that make it
Speaker 1: clear he's kind of tired of being a dictator. Um
Speaker 1: did not the soul of the one who had surrounded
Speaker 1: himself with a multitude of useless things become burdened by
Speaker 1: the intricate maze of his palaces, their furniture and thick walls,
Speaker 1: had not his soul died as a result, having completely law.
Speaker 1: It's aesthetic sense. WHOA, Yeah, that's a little emolarious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of like, so I'm feeling sorry
Speaker 1: sitting in his palace feeling sorry for himself. This is
Speaker 1: so lame. I'm the prisoner. When you think about it,
Speaker 1: everyone should feel bad for me. Do you think sadd
Speaker 1: I'm ever like pulled out bright eyes and was like,
Speaker 1: you know what I always imagine it's more of the
Speaker 1: cure guy. Okay, great. Um, So it's it's a surprising book.
Speaker 1: When I went through the synopsis other people had put up,
Speaker 1: it sounded like a straightforward propaganda diet tribe against America
Speaker 1: and pro Saddam. But it went not being way more
Speaker 1: complicated than that and not good because again, this is
Speaker 1: an awful book, but it's complicated. Um. So, at one point,
Speaker 1: Zebiba asks Saddam, does a common woman like me need freedom?
Speaker 1: And so I was like, yes, I want my people
Speaker 1: to be free. It's good for people to be free.
Speaker 1: Say one thing, do the other. And so Zebiba tells
Speaker 1: him it would be a good idea to have a
Speaker 1: people's counsel where he lets elected leaders from the populace
Speaker 1: help the king reform the country and maybe even run
Speaker 1: the country someday, and sam Is the king is like,
Speaker 1: that's a great idea. So like, there's weird stuff in here. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The whole book carries a very strong anti royalty line.
Speaker 1: It's made repeatedly clear that the hereditary rule of a
Speaker 1: country is really dumb. The book is also filled with
Speaker 1: you know, casual anti semitism, chauvinism, and weirdness. But there
Speaker 1: are some oddly woke passages, like this one when Zebiba
Speaker 1: comes after the king for his privileged life. Have you
Speaker 1: ever known famine? Have you ever had to borrow money
Speaker 1: to buy a piece of bread for your family, or
Speaker 1: paid rent for your house so that you would know
Speaker 1: the afflictions of the needy? And have you ever tried
Speaker 1: to convince a woman like a common man that you
Speaker 1: are worthy to sleep with her, that your relationship would
Speaker 1: grow stronger if you did so? In your case, does
Speaker 1: the woman who was supposed to sleep with you even
Speaker 1: have the right to decline? He wrote a passage on consent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Saddam's he's a consented Saddam. He's a surprising guy. He's
Speaker 1: literally addicted to consent. Okay, he's having people murdered at
Speaker 1: the same time he's writing about like consent, he's having
Speaker 1: women ripe, but he's also like consent rules. Okay, Yeah there.
Speaker 1: I feel like to me that that passage is very
Speaker 1: much like I was raised poor with a single mom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is what that passage screens. And I think there's
Speaker 1: some of that in there because he you know, he
Speaker 1: was pro the king getting overthrown and he just like
Speaker 1: hates people who grew up rich because he had a
Speaker 1: rough upbringing. I mean same. But like, there's ways to
Speaker 1: manage those feelings. You don't have to a million people.
Speaker 1: There's other ways have a feeling that they were not
Speaker 1: all extremely wealthy people. Have you tried alcohol and pain killers? Yes,
Speaker 1: it works great for America. Love self medicating. It neutralizes
Speaker 1: you as a person, It neutralizes your potential. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would like if I could have just gone to Saddam
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy and them and like these are viking
Speaker 1: in like you're kind of really like this hot tips
Speaker 1: medicaid and never learn man, and you will be a
Speaker 1: neutral force in the world. How to avoid being Saddam.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Um, I'm not going to complain. The book
Speaker 1: is a bastion of progressive thought. Um. And and just
Speaker 1: so I'm being totally fair here here's another paragraph that
Speaker 1: Saddam wrote about women that's significantly less woke. Uh, truly
Speaker 1: a woman if she decides to do so, we'll get
Speaker 1: a man by any means. And if she chooses to
Speaker 1: destroy a woman or wages a war with her in
Speaker 1: the process for the one she loves, she will not
Speaker 1: hesitate to go as far as murder. Wow, woman on
Speaker 1: woman violence. Yeah, there's a lot of that in here, too.
Speaker 1: Should be lifting each other up. There's a subplot where
Speaker 1: the king's first wife hates Zebiba, and YadA, yadda, YadA.
Speaker 1: Um it's a bad book. Um. So it's not at
Speaker 1: all the book I'd expected, though. Zebiba winds up getting
Speaker 1: raped by her husband America when she tries to leave
Speaker 1: him her her husband is stands in for America. Oh
Speaker 1: I thought that was his literal name. No, it's a
Speaker 1: little more subtle than that. He doesn't have a name
Speaker 1: like Joey. His name is Joey. We don't find out
Speaker 1: the king's name until like a third of the way
Speaker 1: through the book. It's not like What's the Annihilation where
Speaker 1: they're not using people's names as a stylistic choice. It's
Speaker 1: just a bad book. We'll get around, We'll name some
Speaker 1: of the characters. Also, the king's name is Arab. Oh. Okay,
Speaker 1: he's not He's not good. He's not good. Um so yeah.
Speaker 1: The Zebiba is raped by her husband America when she
Speaker 1: tries to leave him in America, and an evil prince
Speaker 1: who represents Israel raise up an army to try to
Speaker 1: invade the kingdom. Um again a surprising part. The king
Speaker 1: does basically nothing in the defense of the kingdom, like
Speaker 1: he's fighting there, but we don't hear anything about him. Instead,
Speaker 1: Zebiba leads the defense. She puts on armor and leads
Speaker 1: the army of the country to defend the kingdom, and
Speaker 1: she dies fighting. She pulls a fatal mulan. Basically, yeah, again, surprising,
Speaker 1: that is interesting. That's actually that's the first time, like,
Speaker 1: whow I didn't that's a good twist, and after her death,
Speaker 1: the king appoints a council made up of normal men
Speaker 1: and women from around the country and then dies off screen. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the book ends with this council of like grandmother's
Speaker 1: and bakers and whatnot in charge of the country, uh,
Speaker 1: figuring out how to move forward. So she did not
Speaker 1: die in vain. She didn't die in vain. I'm not
Speaker 1: used to used to things that female characters do having impact. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is a He is more woke than a lot
Speaker 1: of Hollywood screenwriters. That is wild. He's doing laps around
Speaker 1: Sorkin right now, especially since it's two thousand. I think
Speaker 1: I didn't double check, but I think this passes the
Speaker 1: Bechtel test um. But I'd have to go through it
Speaker 1: again to know for sure. I mean, very important to
Speaker 1: be Wait what other things came out in two thousand
Speaker 1: that this is more woke then a short list work
Speaker 1: then Gladiator, more walk than Almost Famous, more work than
Speaker 1: American Psycho, more work than Memento, more work than Requiem
Speaker 1: for a Dream. Damn. Yeah, I am impressed. I should
Speaker 1: note also that one of this democratic Council's first access
Speaker 1: to kick out a Jewish guy and take all of
Speaker 1: his stuff. This is still Saddam we're talking about. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's to add like an asterisk to the Bechtel test,
Speaker 1: be like you cannot possibly pass the Backtel test and badam,
Speaker 1: it's just not allowed. Yeah. Yeah, that that that's a
Speaker 1: good the back to the Saddam corollary to the to
Speaker 1: the Bechtel test. A lot of asterisks. It's not a
Speaker 1: perfect system. Um so yeah, and all of this weirdly
Speaker 1: progressive stuff is actually why a lot of experts on
Speaker 1: Saddam are pretty sure he wrote this himself and he
Speaker 1: didn't have a ghostwriter, because no ghostwriter would have been
Speaker 1: allowed to like end a book with Saddam's self insert
Speaker 1: dying uh and a democracy being established, like right, they'd
Speaker 1: get killed. Yeah, they'd get killed. So it's probable Saddam
Speaker 1: actually wrote this, and maybe than his other books too.
Speaker 1: Um yeah. He wrote like four novels in his last
Speaker 1: three years in power, which is pretty impressive. Um. So
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, you know, the United States is
Speaker 1: getting ready to invade Iraq, one of Saddam's last actions
Speaker 1: in power, as like the first marine units are crossing
Speaker 1: into his country. Uh. One of the final things he
Speaker 1: does is send off a draft of his last novel,
Speaker 1: Begone Demons to Tarik Disease God Drama drama Queen. I
Speaker 1: got a deal with defending my country from an invasion,
Speaker 1: but first first I need some notes, Like, can I
Speaker 1: get some notes? I'm not sure that I quite used
Speaker 1: the kmma correctly. Yeah, I didn't go with the Oxford
Speaker 1: I switched about halfway through. Where does Sam stand on
Speaker 1: the Oxford comma? I don't know because it's they're originally
Speaker 1: written in Arabic, so there's no way to know how
Speaker 1: he did it. Yeah, I mean there is a way,
Speaker 1: but I don't read Arabic. You have to go. You'd
Speaker 1: have to ask a lot of people. Yet. Um, So
Speaker 1: I have been unable to find a copy of Begone
Speaker 1: Demons in English. Uh, we are, We're king on that
Speaker 1: because it was translated into Japanese. So we may be
Speaker 1: doing a special Japanese Begone Demons podcast something like that.
Speaker 1: I was able to find a Telegraph article that contains
Speaker 1: some extracts from this novel, and it's amazing. So the
Speaker 1: basic plot appears to be that Romans and Jews invade
Speaker 1: Iraq and Iraq beats them by nine elevening them. Um.
Speaker 1: So here's a quote. So the in this quote, Ezekiel
Speaker 1: Heschel is the king of the Jewish people. Um quote.
Speaker 1: Then Ezekiel Heschel and the King of the Romans saw
Speaker 1: the twin towers of the Roman city on fire. Ezekiel
Speaker 1: Heschel was beating his face and saying, everything I've collected
Speaker 1: is gone. One of the Romans was laughing at Ezekiel
Speaker 1: and advised him, try building another two towers and sell
Speaker 1: the one and rent the other to the Roman king.
Speaker 1: Both you and the Roman king will rotten hell. So
Speaker 1: that's completely unhinged. It's very unhinged fan faction. And once
Speaker 1: the Iraqis burned their towers down, the Romans and the
Speaker 1: Jewish people all run away because they've lost their power
Speaker 1: and money, which was maybe optimistic because we we did
Speaker 1: lose our power and money in Iraq, but we did
Speaker 1: not leave. We are still there. Buddy. Oh jeez, demons yeah,
Speaker 1: begon demons um weirdly like Hemingway ask title. Yeah, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: it was in The King, ye know, yeah, very true,
Speaker 1: very true. Um. So, the character of Salim is the
Speaker 1: King of the Arabs in this and he's Saddam's self
Speaker 1: insert uh S's Harry Potter if you want, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And I'm just going to read an excerpt from a
Speaker 1: battle scene that Saddam describing himself fighting the king of
Speaker 1: the Romans, gave his orders to begin the charge. The
Speaker 1: first line of Salim's army shot at the Roman writers
Speaker 1: with arrows. When the Roman writers fell down, the women
Speaker 1: of the tribe beat them with sticks or killed them
Speaker 1: with swords. So again loves women. In battle, Selim freed
Speaker 1: his long hair. He was so strong. He was fighting
Speaker 1: the Romans like a hawk. He was riding a white
Speaker 1: horse and shouting Allah Akbar, Long live the Arabs and
Speaker 1: long lives long. How many masturbation breaks do you think
Speaker 1: he had to take in the rending of that and
Speaker 1: that want long hair and just pecks out to hear
Speaker 1: he wanted to just be Fabio strong. He was so strong,
Speaker 1: so strong. I feel like that's basically him being like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is what I want for cover art. He is
Speaker 1: so strong, his hair is so long long the Glorio
Speaker 1: commercial her all the way I'm worth it. Two. He
Speaker 1: was so strong as maybe the most vulnerable sentence my
Speaker 1: entire life. That really cuts to the core of his
Speaker 1: whole body reaction hearing that, Oh my god. Um So,
Speaker 1: Saddam was captured on December two thousand three. He was
Speaker 1: taken into coalition custody and eventually tried by the Iraqi government.
Speaker 1: During his incarceration, he was watched over by a team
Speaker 1: of twelve young American soldiers. Um Now. Their story and
Speaker 1: a lot of other stories, are chronicled in the excellent
Speaker 1: book The Prisoner in His Palace by Will Barton Worker.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not going to go into a huge amount
Speaker 1: of detail here. I recommend reading that book because it's
Speaker 1: it's filled with great anecdotes. But the gist of it is,
Speaker 1: these young kids, they didn't know Dictator Saddam. They didn't
Speaker 1: know massacring people. Saddam. They knew he had done all that,
Speaker 1: but when they met him, he was a sweet, old
Speaker 1: bearded man who talked to them about their lives and
Speaker 1: their problems. So one of his medics, they weren't all young.
Speaker 1: One of his medics was like a fifty one year
Speaker 1: old black guy from Compton who he and Saddam kind
Speaker 1: of clicked because Saddam had a rough upbringing too. They
Speaker 1: both have a lot of experiences with like violence in
Speaker 1: their youth. Again, this sounds like a bad movie. There's
Speaker 1: a scene where that guy the medics brother dies and
Speaker 1: he goes over to see Saddam before he like gets
Speaker 1: flown back home to attend the funeral, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be gone for a few days. My brother
Speaker 1: just died. And he's clearly broken up about it. And
Speaker 1: Saddam grabs him by the shoulders and looks him in
Speaker 1: the eyes and says, I will be your brother. How
Speaker 1: do you politely be? Like, you know what, I'm good.
Speaker 1: They all liked him, They all really like, like, at
Speaker 1: least most of them really liked him. He would smoke
Speaker 1: cigars with him, He would give them an advice on
Speaker 1: girls and advice on life, and like he didn't seem
Speaker 1: like said um. He was a sweet old man to them,
Speaker 1: and they really dug him, like they would do nice
Speaker 1: stuff like find him furniture and help him set up
Speaker 1: his like his little cell so that he could live
Speaker 1: kind of nicely. He had cigars the whole time. We
Speaker 1: don't know who gave them to him. Someone would just
Speaker 1: give these soldiers money every week for Saddam cigars. Nobody
Speaker 1: knows who it was. It had to be someone with
Speaker 1: some clout, maybe Bush. I don't know, I don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: that's I want to read that book now. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a very good book. The Prisoner in his Palace.
Speaker 1: Like the weird thing is that when he gets tried
Speaker 1: and executed on December thirty, thousand and six, Um, these
Speaker 1: poor kids who have been guarding him for months have
Speaker 1: to escort him to the gallows and they like him,
Speaker 1: and there's like tears in their eyes as they lead
Speaker 1: him off to die, and they have to like take
Speaker 1: his body back. And years later a bunch of them
Speaker 1: have PTSD because of what they did with Saddam. I
Speaker 1: guess you couldn't have predicted they would have loved Saddam.
Speaker 1: But you should rotate them, like, don't have the same
Speaker 1: guys with him the whole time and then make them
Speaker 1: see him die. That's messed up. That's so and now,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's like so many levels to that guilt
Speaker 1: of like I killed my friend, but also my friend
Speaker 1: killed a million people, so it makes sense, and like
Speaker 1: they're they're all like he was like none of them
Speaker 1: don't believe he was a monster, but they were also
Speaker 1: like and and part of it is like anyone who
Speaker 1: becomes a dictator, you're good at being charming, like you're
Speaker 1: good at making people like you. And yeah, like in
Speaker 1: a way you could say that was his last fucked
Speaker 1: up thing, was like making all these young American kids
Speaker 1: be his buddy before he gets hung in front of them,
Speaker 1: his final gaslight. Yes, final, I just want to do
Speaker 1: one more shitty thing before I do, Like, let me
Speaker 1: just fuck twelve more people up, the last twelve people
Speaker 1: I had access to. I just haven't given quite enough
Speaker 1: people PTSD. Wow. So that is the story of Saddam
Speaker 1: Hussein and all twelve people like copped to liking him
Speaker 1: later on, not all of them, but most of them,
Speaker 1: so probably all yeah, yeah, they were all pretty like
Speaker 1: nobody was like, oh he was just a monster the
Speaker 1: whole time. Like everyone was like, he was a very nice,
Speaker 1: polite old man. I mean, they have rules like that
Speaker 1: at nursing home so that like people aren't too traumatized
Speaker 1: when their patients die. Yeah, military probably should have called
Speaker 1: that one ahead of time. Major oversight. But I guess
Speaker 1: in theory, you're like, oh, a dictator might charm you,
Speaker 1: but when once you're that deep in casualties. You you
Speaker 1: kind of expect them to drop the acts. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't. Seems like most some would. This sounds like
Speaker 1: an outlier. Yeah, Saddam's an outlier in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: Um wow, yeah, Saddam Hussein. I feel weird. Yeah weird.
Speaker 1: That's that's the Saddam effect. Yeah, kind of like you
Speaker 1: both need a shower and a jog. Yeah, I need.
Speaker 1: I needed one of Saddam's weird murder jogs, murder limb.
Speaker 1: I just got to go on a walk and shoot
Speaker 1: some animals. Yeah wow. All right, Um, well, Jamie, you
Speaker 1: wanna plug your plug doubles up? Please? I will. You
Speaker 1: can listen to my podcast, the beck Del Cast uh
Speaker 1: comes out every Thursday. Uh. And you can follow me
Speaker 1: on You used to be able to follow me on
Speaker 1: twere now you can't. Now you can follow me on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Jamie christ Superstar. And that's where I can
Speaker 1: be found fantastic Uh. Joined this next week when we
Speaker 1: will be talking about someone else terrible. I am Robert Evan.
Speaker 1: You can find Behind the Bastards on social media at
Speaker 1: Bastards Pod. You can find us on the internet at
Speaker 1: www dot Behind the bastards dot com, where we'll have
Speaker 1: pictures and videos and all sorts of other content about
Speaker 1: these terrible people in their weird, weird lives. Uh So,
Speaker 1: catch me every Tuesday. I'm Robert Evans. You can find
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at at I write okay to letters
Speaker 1: and um I'll be doing this every week, so be
Speaker 1: sure to check in and learn something fascinating about someone awful. Bye.