The Prisoner in His Palace Page 10

  CHAPTER 21

  Baghdad, Iraq—2006

  My boys were always getting in trouble when they were young, Saddam said to his interpreter, Joseph, and to Hutchinson one evening as they sat together outside at the Rock. As usual, the men relaxed on flimsy white patio chairs in the rec area, a cocoon of tranquility that Saddam could retreat to after having the eyes of the world on him in the courtroom. The prison walls insulated him from the violence ravaging Baghdad, though he could occasionally hear the faint crackle of gunfire in the distance. As the fall season set in, it could get cool in the evening, and on this night the men clustered around Saddam’s “fire”—the name he’d given a small space heater that he’d sometimes bring out once the sun had faded below the concrete wall. Saddam seemed to enjoy naming inanimate objects, like the antiquated exercise bike he referred to as his “pony.” He was in a good mood, reflective and talkative, puffing contentedly on his cigar and occasionally nibbling on dinner leftovers from a Tupperware container. One would never have guessed that he was on trial for his life.

  Always getting in trouble, Saddam said again, almost to himself this time, as if replaying scenes of his boys’ hijinks in his head. You couldn’t take your eye off them for one minute, or they’d be grabbing sweets they weren’t supposed to have, he continued. What about your boy, how is he doing? Saddam asked Hutch.

  He’s doing good, Hutch answered about his son, who was still a baby. I can’t wait for him to get bigger so we can go fishing together. Hutch had always been an outdoorsman, and he was raring to teach his son a few tricks.

  Saddam’s eagerness to hear stories about the soldiers’ children suggested to Hutch that maybe the anecdotes reminded him of raising his own kids. He was curious if Saddam ever had doubts about how he’d raised them. He couldn’t be sure, but he felt that beneath the blustery facade he could detect a hint of regret at how Uday, in particular, had turned out.

  While Saddam and Hutch enjoyed trading stories of their respective families, there frequently seemed to be an element of delusion on Saddam’s part. When Hutch was having these discussions with Saddam he was unfamiliar with the extent of Uday’s savagery, which subsequently became the stuff of nightmarish legend.

  “All I knew at the time about Uday was from skimming a Maxim magazine article,” Hutch recalls.

  In fact, as all of Iraq and much of the world would come to know, Uday Hussein was a monster. Adjectives failed to do justice to his catalog of cruelty. When asked about Uday, everyone, even those who might be described as Saddam apologists, agreed that he was as close to evil incarnate as a human being can be. That Saddam could affectionately reminisce about his son’s childhood, and feign parental indignation at the theft of some treats—as if that captured the extent of Uday’s shortcomings—reveals either the depth of Saddam’s delusion or the deliberateness of his manipulation.

  While Saddam had busied himself with the affairs of state, gradually delegating more responsibility to his second son, Qusay, Uday descended deeper and deeper into a netherworld in which he gorged himself on perverse sexual pleasures and sadistic deviancy. His ravenous sexual appetite struck fear in attractive young women and their families across Baghdad. The terrifying reality was that no one was safe from his wolfish lust. He’d have friends and associates recruit scores of women five days a week—with the other two days reserved for what he called “fasting”—and deliver them to the Baghdad Boat Club on the Tigris. There, following gluttonous consumption of alcohol and drugs, he’d line the women up for inspection and select one or two for the evening. If they were lucky, they’d be released the following morning, perhaps rewarded with a few hundred dollars and some jewelry, along with strict instructions to keep their mouths shut.

  Uday displayed a particular interest in young brides, whose husbands were often forced to stand by impotently as he had his way with them. One groom, devastated by the thought that his love had been ravaged by Uday on the night of their wedding reception at Baghdad’s posh Hunting Club, shot and killed himself. Not long before the American invasion, an eighteen-year-old bride who’d dared to resist Uday’s advances had been dragged by Uday’s goons into a bathroom, where they tore her wedding dress from her body and locked her in to await Uday’s arrival. Shortly after Uday got there, a maid heard screams emerging from a nearby bedroom. She later saw the girl’s limp body dragged out on a military blanket, acid burns covering it, her life extinguished just as it had begun to blossom.

  Uday’s rampages, and the state apparatus that enabled them, reminded many of the reigns of the most depraved Roman emperors. Tongues were clamped in place with pliers so that they could be sliced off with a scalpel, ears were lopped off, and welder’s torches were pressed against bodies convulsing with terror. One friend of the family says that “the day Uday discovered the Internet was a black day for Iraqis,” as he took to researching ever more exotic torture techniques. He even obtained—or created—an iron maiden that was discovered at one of his properties following the U.S. invasion.

  Uday was drunk with a power that only one man in Iraq could even try to restrain. Sadly for Iraq, Saddam didn’t try very hard.

  Uday’s least destructive addiction was cars. In a country whose economy had been shattered as a result of ruinous wars and crippling international sanctions, he accumulated an extraordinary collection of hundreds of high-end sports cars. One staffer’s entire job was to fill binders with pictures and information on expensive cars so that Uday could make his selections.

  Saddam enjoyed discussing cars with his American guards, perhaps recognizing that this was one topic that could unite a sixty-nine-year-old former Arab dictator with his twentysomething American minders. Adam Rogerson specifically remembers one cool evening spent talking cars with Saddam. Specialist Art Perkins was also on duty, though he would periodically excuse himself to duck inside and freshen Saddam’s glass of tea. While Rogerson did his best to maintain a degree of professional distance from the man he was tasked with guarding, something of a rapport had developed between the men.

  “If you went in there and you were intimidated, he could smell it, and he’d have his way with you,” Rogerson says. “But if you went in and were like, ‘This is who I am, this is who you are, this is how it’s going to work, and either we’ll get along or we won’t’—if you were stern but friendly, he respected you for that.”

  As the three men sat in the outdoor rec area on this night, Saddam’s transistor radio spitting out its mix of American and Arabic tunes in the background, Saddam volunteered: You know, I am looking for some love. When I get out of here, I’m going to get married again. I’m not done. He was dressed in his dishdasha and favorite dark jacket to help ward off the evening chill of the Baghdad night.

  Really? Rogerson asked, returning Saddam’s lecherous smile, suggesting he was in on the joke. How do you do it? he said, feigning amazement at the old man’s professed virility. Rogerson was amazed at how easily Saddam could transition from penning nostalgic poems about his family to fantasizing with his guards about bedding more women.

  Soon the conversation shifted. How is your family doing, my friend? Saddam asked.

  I miss them, sir, Rogerson responded. By this point in the evening he was tired, the result of one of the long runs across the sunbaked base that Sergeant Luke Quarles, who was training for Army Special Forces selection, had dragged him on. Hopeful that some conversation would help the shift go by quickly, he explained to Saddam that he’d married his high school sweetheart when they were both very young by U.S. standards. He was only twenty, and his bride had just finished high school. He went on to tell Saddam how much he missed his three brothers back home, sprinkling his remarks with colloquialisms that may have been sailing over his listener’s head. Saddam nodded, though, quietly visualizing the wholesome portrait of Americana that Rogerson was unselfconsciously painting.

  Something in the young soldier’s narration must have stirred a memory, because during a lull in the conversation Sadda
m piped up with: My son had so many cars . . . you wouldn’t believe it.

  Oh yeah, Rogerson responded, what kind?

  Just about all of them, Saddam said, laughing. One time, though, Uday made a terrible mistake. He made me very angry.

  Sensing that Saddam was heading down a dark road, Rogerson braced himself for what might be coming. What happened? he asked.

  I was very angry with him so I burned all his cars, Saddam said.

  Rogerson was struck by Saddam’s cavalier tone. The former president was at his most entertaining—and inscrutable—when his outlandish declarations weren’t accompanied by the emotions one would expect.

  I lit all his cars on fire. It became a huge fire, Saddam went on. As the memory crystallized in his imagination his laughter grew fiercer.

  The event that had triggered Saddam’s frenzied immolation was vintage Uday—a night of debauchery that predictably led to a violent outburst, only this time the victim would be Saddam’s half brother Watban Ibrahim al-Tikriti. A fight between Watban and Luai Khairallah, the brother of Saddam’s wife Sajida, over the most sought-after prostitute at a party had led them to seek the intercession of Uday, which proved—unsurprisingly—to be a terrible idea.

  Uday had arrived at the party around 3:00 a.m. armed with a new pump-action gun that, according to some observers, resembled one of the exotic weapons seen in a Stallone or Schwarzenegger movie. Wildly drunk by then, and irate to hear that Watban may have been making fun of a minor speech defect he had, Uday began spraying the crowd with bullets, killing three and wounding many more. Intoxicated by the gun’s power, as well as the alcohol coursing through his veins, he turned his weapon on Saddam’s half brother and shot him in both legs. Six young women, gypsy dancers and singers who’d been part of the evening’s entertainment, were reportedly also killed by the indiscriminate fusillade. Watban’s bodyguards stood by passively, aware that the shooter was the president’s son.

  Saddam seemed to enjoy recounting to Rogerson how, as punishment, he’d torched Uday’s prized collection of Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, BMWs, Porsches, and Ferraris, which had been stored under guard in a garage in the Republican Palace.

  Laughing wildly, the former dictator recalled how he gleefully watched the inferno, smoking one of his favorite Cohibas as the flames engulfed his son’s treasured possessions. Saddam’s almost maniacal laughter was contagious. Rogerson was unable to resist joining in, succumbing to belly laughs of his own. The mental image of the dictator dousing hundreds of his son’s luxury cars with gasoline and setting them ablaze reminded Rogerson of “a Jerry Springer episode on steroids.”

  What had it been like, growing up with a father like that?

  CHAPTER 22

  Baghdad, Iraq—early 1980s

  “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Hala, happy birthday to you.”

  The singing was in Arabic, but the tune was unmistakable. Hala, Saddam Hussein’s youngest daughter, appeared to be about ten, and was standing next to an enormous birthday cake—big enough to cover an entire park bench—adorned with candles. She stood among about a dozen children, her mother, Sajida, on one side and Saddam on the other. Sajida was wearing a flowing white dress while Saddam was wearing an olive military uniform. He surveyed the singing children approvingly, an enormous smile on his face. The party was broadcast on Iraqi national television, and the message was obvious: Saddam, Iraq’s wise and benevolent ruler, is an iconic family man, as doting to his own children as he is to his people.

  As the song came to an end, Hala enthusiastically blew out the candles to the applause of those assembled. She was wearing a formal dress, and the contrast between her grown-up dress and her youthful innocence made her shy smile even more endearing. Sajida leaned over to kiss Hala, who then bounded over to Saddam. He pulled her into a hug, her little body enveloped in his warm embrace. She clasped his waist in turn as he looked down at her and kissed her head gently.

  Raghad, the oldest of Saddam’s daughters and four years Hala’s senior, would later say that she could recognize this expression “from a line of one million men.” It was a gaze that could trigger panic in everyone from ordinary Iraqis to trusted aides, but to Saddam’s girls, it was merely familiar, approving—a dad’s delight.

  Baghdad, Iraq—2006

  One afternoon Saddam beckoned for Hutch to come over. Saddam was sitting outside in his favorite plastic patio chair, the one whose arms the Super Twelve had outfitted with rubber padding to make it more comfortable for the sixty-nine-year-old.

  Look, Saddam said, peering at Hutch. A letter from Raghad. His eyes glimmered with pride. She writes backward, he explained. She writes from the left to the right, like Americans, he said, laughing. She asks me how I’m doing, and I tell her that my guys are treating me well.

  Whereas at first Saddam’s contact with the Super Twelve would usually take the form of a request of some kind—like he was “flagging down a waiter,” according to Paul Sphar—he’d now begun to motion them over when it seemed that he just wanted someone to talk to. Usually, the soldiers welcomed the distraction.

  Saddam’s reading glasses were perched on his nose, and he’d been absorbed in the paperwork that occupied much of his time these days. Before Saddam had beckoned him, Hutch had been working his way through a Harry Potter book, which he enjoyed reading since it gave him something fun to discuss on the phone with his young daughters back home in Clarksville.

  Hutch appreciated Saddam’s comment about his guys “treating him well.” While he was surprised to find himself enjoying his time with the old man, part of him was still frustrated, though, that he wasn’t able to get out on patrol more often, roam outside the wire and mix it up with insurgents—the sort of activity he thought he’d be doing on this deployment. The number of hours he and his fellow MPs spent cooped up in the relatively safe confines of Camp Victory observing a famous prisoner made them envious of soldiers whose assignments gave them more mobility.

  Since Saddam had brought up Raghad, Hutch volunteered to the former president: You know, I have daughters myself, ages six and four. I just talked to them on the phone the other day.

  Really, how are they doing? asked Saddam. They must miss their father.

  They’ve been dressing up as princesses, Hutch said. They’re crazy, I love it.

  He was a tough but loving dad—his kids sometimes calling him the “Drill Sergeant” in response to the discipline he tried to instill in them. He’d sometimes even have them “toe the line” in the kitchen before they headed off to school in the morning, a last-minute inspection borrowed from the basic training ritual of the same name to make sure they were ready to go and not forgetting anything.

  Saddam quietly listened as Hutch talked about his daughters. Likely sensing the young soldier’s nostalgia, the older man said, “Every daughter is a princess.”

  Saddam, too, could be a doting father. Ramsey Clark, the former U.S. attorney general who served on Saddam’s legal team, spent considerable time in Amman, Jordan, with Saddam’s daughter Raghad as she helped manage his legal defense. “I’ve never seen a more loving commitment to a father from a daughter,” Clark says, pointing out that she was “the kingpin behind the defense operation.”

  Clark remembers sitting at Raghad’s comfortable villa one evening when she got up too quickly and became dizzy, briefly passing out. He suspects that the combination of stress over her father’s situation and physical exhaustion resulting from having difficulty sleeping contributed to her collapse. She was delivered to an emergency room in Amman and soon released. The episode would have been forgettable were it not for one detail. Raghad had grown surprisingly upset at having broken a necklace during her fall. Clark was surprised by this reaction, since Raghad was widely assumed to possess a small fortune—one that had been plundered from the Iraqi treasury. Why get so stirred up over a single broken necklace?

  As they sat together in Raghad’s well-appointed living room, she explained to him
why the necklace was so meaningful to her. She told him how, as a young girl, she’d been perched atop her father’s shoulders one Friday afternoon as he traversed busy streets “campaigning for office.” Suddenly, Saddam lost his footing, perhaps bumped by the surging crowds, and Raghad fell to the ground. As she started to get up, she noticed blood on her scraped knee and broke down in tears.

  Saddam bent down to dust her off and console her. After he’d settled her down, and they’d begun to walk again, he took her to a nearby jewelry stand. He pointed to the necklaces. Which one is the most beautiful, he asked, as a treat for being such a brave little girl?

  That one! Raghad exclaimed.

  Very well! For a beautiful girl!

  Saddam purchased the cheap necklace and gently placed it around his daughter’s neck.

  Clark made a point of relaying Raghad’s recollection to Saddam the next time they huddled in the austere meeting room underneath the courthouse preparing for trial. Clark says Saddam remembered it like it was yesterday, even though it had been more than three decades since Raghad had tumbled from his shoulders.

  CHAPTER 23

  Baghdad, Iraq—2006

  Raghad had grown up to marry a murderous incompetent named Hussein Kamel, who, by virtue of little more than marrying into the family and dutifully playing the role of loyal stooge, had risen to prominence as the head of Saddam’s weapons development program. Kamel’s brother, Saddam Kamel, had married Rana, another of Saddam’s daughters. Following a rumored fallout with Saddam’s son Uday, the four had fled to the safety of neighboring Jordan. Their defection had been devastating to Saddam, for whom loyalty was sacrosanct, and, eleven years later, the betrayal was apparently weighing on him as he sat outside in the Rock’s rec area, legs crossed, reading the paper.