US guards recall ‘oddly endearing’ Saddam’s company
WASHINGTON, June 21: Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein munches corn chips, washes his own clothes and tends his garden during captivity, according to US troops who guarded him at an undisclosed location for 10 months last year.
For Sean O’Shea, one of five Pennsylvania National Guard soldiers assigned to watch Saddam around the clock, he was the ‘oddly endearing crazy man’ who liked to crack jokes in fractured English and share gift packages from his daughters.
In an account of their guard duty in the July issue of GQ magazine, the soldiers said Saddam Hussein still believes himself to be the legitimate president of Iraq, and imperiously dismissed ministers who came to read criminal charges against him.
When he got back to his cell after that meeting, O’Shea said Saddam ‘kept pacing back and forth. And he said, “Ministers? Ministers of what? It’s my country. I’m still the president of this country”.’
The troops said Saddam Hussein was firmly convinced that the Iraqi people still love him and that everything he did was for their benefit, including invading Kuwait.
He even invited the guards, whom he called ‘his sons, his brothers, his friends’, to come back and visit him when he was re-installed in one of his palaces.
But for the time being, Saddam’s life is one of confined, sparsely furnished spaces and small pleasures.
O’Shea, who was only 19 when he was assigned to the Saddam watch, said the prisoner loved Raisin Bran Crunch for breakfast. When the guards ran out of that and brought him Froot Loops instead ‘it was one of the few times Sean ever saw him defeated’, the magazine said.
He could ask for any food he liked within reason — and he seemed to like chicken, fish and salad — but only with Italian dressing. His favourite food, the soldiers said, used to be Cheetos, a cheese-flavoured crisp.
That was until the supply ran out and the guards gave him a bag of Doritos, a similar snack, instead.
“He kept asking for doris,” said Specialist Jesse Dawson. “He’d eat a family-size bag of Doritos in 10 minutes.”
The five guardsmen took over the responsibility for Saddam shortly after he was captured while hiding in an underground cave near Tikrit in Dec 2003.
They first were introduced to him in a cell at the end of a long filthy hallway past empty rooms, the magazine said. Later, he was moved to cleaner, rat-free room furnished only with a bed, a toilet, a red plastic chair, a prayer mat and a few books, including a the Holy Quran.
Under US military rules, the soldiers said they were unable to say exactly where Saddam is imprisoned.
Saddam was neatly barbered, washed his own clothes, and was a ‘germophobic’, the soldiers said. He would wash up every time he shook hands with anyone, and clean his plates and cutlery with baby wipes before eating.
His happiest moments were in a small outside garden where he fed the birds with bread and cereal he had saved — but even then Saddam spared Froot Loops.
The soldiers said Saddam described President George Bush and his father as ‘no good’, but said his favourite was the late president Ronald Reagan.
“He talked about how Reagan sold him planes and helicopters and stuff,” Dawson said.
Told to treat Saddam with respect, the soldiers found him ‘quirky, friendly and often funny. They had problems remembering he was a mass murderer’, the magazine said. —AFP
