Real Dictators - Saddam Hussein Part 4: The First Gulf War

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

After Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, US forces are deployed to the region. For some Iraqis, it seems like the perfect time to rise up against their dictator. As economic sanctions bite, Saddam treats himself to a bit of retail therapy. All the while, his sons are becoming terrifying figures in their own right. A family crisis is about to snowball into a murderous feud… A Noiser production, written by Duncan Barrett. Get every episode of Real Dictators a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. It's the 15th of January, 1991. We're in Washington, D.C. at the White House. President George H.W. Bush has called a meeting of his top military advisers. General Colin Powell, Defense Minister Dick Cheney, CIA Director Robert Gates. In all, eight men have gathered in the Oval Office, wedging themselves awkwardly onto the President's white floral sofas. There's a jar of M&Ms on the coffee table, but no one is in the mood for snacking.

There was only one thing on their minds. Kuwait. Since Saddam Hussein's forces invaded six months earlier, the tiny, oil-rich country has been at the top of the international agenda. The United Nations has passed multiple resolutions condemning Saddam's war, if that's even the right word for such a one-sided conflict. Bush himself has described Saddam as Hitler revisited. Now a coalition of more than 40 countries has come together to oppose him.

Everyone from Australia to the United Arab Emirates. But the Americans will be leading the charge. Six weeks earlier, the UN gave Saddam an ultimatum. Leave Kuwait by the 15th of January or face military intervention. The clock has just run out. Bush has authorization from Congress to commit US forces in the Gulf. It only remains for him to sign the National Security Directive ordering his troops to attack. I have resolved all moral questions in my mind, the president tells his war cabinet.

This is black and white, good and evil. Bush signs his name on the piece of paper. And the very next day, the airstrikes begin. From Noisa, this is part four of the Saddam Hussein story. And this is Real Dictators. Saddam Hussein is not a man who likes to lose, even, it seems, when it comes to something as laid back as a fishing expedition with his old friends. Author Will Barden-Vepper The Jordanians were frequent visitors to Baghdad when the king enjoyed a reasonably comfortable relationship with Saddam. Saddam, there's a story where they were fishing and it seemed just uncanny that with remarkable frequency, you know, Saddam's would pull out these enormous fish. It really did seem like,

you know, there was someone in the water that was like somehow helping him to catch these enormous fish. If the king were to catch one, he would insist that they measure them. And then of course, you know, his would always be determined to be two inches bigger, whatever the case may be. So yeah, it was a point of pride for him. And it seemed like he was one of those people that did not like to be defeated, whatever was at stake. Saddam might be able to win a fish measuring contest against the King of Jordan. But with President Bush, he doesn't stand much of a chance. In manpower alone, the coalition forces dwarf his own by two to one. And the Americans have state-of-the-art technology on their side.

Dr. Ali Ali. They have satellites, they have real-time monitoring of their units and your units. And they have an unrivaled air force. They have these very mobile, new kind of armoured units and tanks. And before they're going to even risk single tank, soldier, helicopter, they're going to completely destroy your air defences. To some observers, the conflict, like Saddam's invasion of Kuwait before it, is so one-sided it barely qualifies as a war at all. Alex von Tunzelmann

In 1991, the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote three essays called The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Very controversial at the time because some people took the title quite literally. What he was really arguing in these essays was that the events of the first Gulf War were not a war in the sense that war itself as a concept was understood, but they were a simulation of the war. And there were two reasons that he put forward for that. First of all, that the first Gulf War was very carefully choreographed through the media, that the coalition very much controlled what images could be shown, what journalists could report and so forth. And the second point that Baudrillard made

was that the outcome of the war was never in doubt, that it wasn't a real conquest. It was won in advance because the coalition was always going to win because it was so much higher powered. So really, we were just going through the motions to reach an obvious place that would have got to anyway. The air assault on Iraq lasts just over a month. More than 100,000 missions are flown. 85,000 tons of explosives are dropped on Iraqi targets. It's the heaviest continuous bombing campaign since World War II. There's this myth of precision warfare and precision bombing. So many homes were destroyed, civilians were killed and Americans crudely called it collateral damage. There was a bunker

destroyed and an air raid shelter and hundreds of people were killed in that incident alone. The whole national infrastructure is bombed, bombed to smithereens. You know, Norman Schwarzkopf and Bush are talking about bombing Iraq into the Stone Age. It's bridges in Baghdad, power stations, infrastructure. And that's just phase one. Next comes the ground offensive. Operation Desert Storm gives way to Operation Desert Sabre It takes just a hundred hours before victory is declared A coordinated attack on the Iraqi flanks sees Saddam's men surrendering in their thousands

41 divisions more or less wiped out 3,000 tanks destroyed. The American-led coalition has achieved a resounding victory. But the situation on the ground is unspeakably grim. In the words of BBC correspondent John Simpson, it was as noble and glorious as the morning shift in an abattoir. For Saddam, the defeat couldn't be more humiliating. The Iraqi forces are kicked out of Kuwait.

They're ejected, expelled, defeated, and the retreating columns coming from Kuwait, retreating through the southern provinces, you know, people see them. People see them being bombed, bombed by the US Air Force, with napalm in some cases. So, you know, this idea of the invincibility of the Ba'ath and the Iraqi army is crushed. Saddam's Kuwaiti gambit has proved a monumental failure.

150,000 casualties. 50,000 men taken prisoner. For some disaffected Iraqis, it seems like the perfect time to rise up against their dictator. The angry mobs are perhaps inspired, at least in part part by President Bush. Bush, senior, calls on people to rise up, overthrow this very violent regime. People started attacking bath offices, they started attacking pictures of Saddam. And so it's expected that support will come.

No help comes from the Americans or the Brits or the French. By the time the Iraqi rebellion gets going, the international agenda has shifted. Saddam is ready to negotiate, which suits the coalition down to a T. What the Americans are looking for is containment. So they've neutralized the threat that Saddam posed to the regional order, to the oil monarchies,

and they've shown the world what their weapons can do. They don't want a geopolitical power vacuum. As part of a new ceasefire agreement, US General Norman Schwarzkopf gives permission for Iraqi helicopters to fly through American-controlled airspace. gives permission for Iraqi helicopters to fly through American-controlled airspace. Saddam seizes the opportunity to action a series of brutal reprisals against the rebels. 20,000 Kurds in the north of the country and up to 60,000 Shias in the south are murdered, many by his helicopter gunships.

Army helicopters flying into rebellious areas, bombing them. It's a really brutal crackdown. Executions, people being taken out of their homes, collected punishments. Millions of Kurds flee to the mountains. They live in these absolute destitute conditions. The war may have weakened Saddam and crippled his country, but his opponents within Iraq have been decimated too.

At one point, Iraqi helicopters dropped large quantities of white powder on the Kurdish communities. With memories of the Halabja chemical attack fresh in their minds, the Kurds assume it must be a biological weapon. In fact, this time, the substance is nothing more sinister than flour. The real weapon is fear. But while Saddam may have negotiated himself out of a corner, he's growing increasingly paranoid. And the more the myth of his infallibility is chipped away at,

the more he attempts to reinforce it. You know, repeatedly in history, when dictators start struggling a bit, they dig further and further into this cult of personality, representing themselves as essential, identified with the country, the only forces standing against these, you know, barbarous outsiders and so forth. against these, you know, barbarous outsiders and so forth. By now, though, ordinary Iraqis are reeling from a new threat, economic sanctions.

Sanctions, particularly the first few years of sanctions, are extremely tough. Imagine this economy where I think, you know, over 90% of revenue comes from oil sales. And that is just switched off and there's no relief. Even before the Gulf War, Saddam had pretty much bankrupted Iraq thanks to his costly eight-year conflict with Iran. Now, though, the economy really nosedives. When sanctions hit, the dinar collapses, the currency collapses,

crime goes up. You know, my uncles who lived through the sanctions era tell me that if you left your car parked on the street, the hubs would go.

If they didn't take the car, they would take bits of it. Even those living thousands of miles away are affected by the changes. We were in the UK during the 80s and the 90s. All Iraqi assets were frozen.

All of the embassies kind of operating as skeleton staff. The schools closed down. Government funding for any kind of cultural or educational projects abroad is seized. So it really, really has an effect on the diaspora. is seized. So it really has an effect on the diaspora. Within Iraq, meanwhile, Saddam is still

unassailable, at least if you go by the election results. In 1995, voters are asked if they're happy with the job that the president is doing. The turnout, supposedly, is an eye-watering 99.5%. And of those 8.5 million people,

99.96% vote yes. With approval ratings like these, it's no wonder Saddam decides to treat himself. In 1997, Forbes magazine estimates his personal wealth at $5 billion. In the wake of the Gulf War disaster, he can afford a bit of retail therapy. So while you had these people struggling, the people of Iraq, under sanctions, living in very difficult conditions, Saddam was building these vast palaces full of statues and monuments to himself. From 1991, first Gulf War, through to 1999, he built an estimated 48 new palaces,

and he'd already had 20 before the Gulf War. The cost of this would maybe be about $2.2 billion at the time. Journalist James Hyder visited some of Saddam's palaces after the American invasion in 2003. They were very sort of garish, kitschy places. There was a lot of marble chandeliers, a lot of like gilded toilets and things. Classic sort of dictator chic. Lots of kind of very, very strange frescoes and wall paintings that kind of look like illustrations out of this slightly dodgy 80s fantasy comics

with sort of lots of half naked men and women wrapped in serpents, lots of rather suggestive pictures of women being kind of tied to rocks or eaten by dragons or various things. Really quite kinky, kinky stuff. And then also of course, many statues of himself and himself kind of being included in these extraordinary scenes.

Decor aside, Saddam's palaces are typically well-appointed, with underground bunkers offering protection from bombing. In the years to come, he's going to need them. he's going to need them. Saddam has turned a prosperous, oil-rich success story into a pariah state. His wars have bankrupted his country, destroying Iraq's standing around the world. What do ordinary citizens really make of him?

Did they blame Saddam? Did they blame the US? I think they blame both. They're not mutually exclusive. There is this understanding Saddam is corrupt, he's failed us, particularly that generation who experienced firsthand the repression of the 1991 uprisings. So Saddam certainly wasn't popular in that period, but he wasn't exclusively blamed for the failures. In an attempt to boost his popularity, the avowedly secular dictator turns in a surprising new direction.

For years, he's warned his colleagues of the dangers that Islamism presents to their Ba'athist ideology. But now it seems it's a case of if you can't beat them, join them. He was a secularist, but he encouraged a sort of a rebirth of Islamic faith just to try and keep people together in those very tough days. Professor Juman Kuba. They did use religion when it was convenient for them, like they did in the 1990s.

It's called al-hamla al-imaniyah. Saddam enforced religion, actually, on people, enforced the prayer, the head cover and everything. Professor Joseph Sassoon. He flips and he goes back to tribalism and the woman's place is in the house to produce children. It was very cynical, pretending he's very religious. No, he was very secular. In 1993, Saddam announces a national faith campaign. Bars and nightclubs are shuttered.

Alleged prostitutes are executed by beheading. As well as palaces, the regime starts building mosques. He embarks on the building of the largest mosque in the world. The National Faith Campaign brings in more religious education in schools. The phrase Allahu Akbar is added to the Iraqi flag, written in Saddam's own handwriting. And it's not just the flag that Saddam wants to get his hands on. In 1997, the dictator turns 60. Saddam commissions a spectacular birthday present for himself.

A brand new edition of the Quran, written in his blood. A good 50 pints are required to complete the 600-page holy book. The bloodletting takes place gradually over two years. On the whole, Western commentators see the blood Quran as a rather gruesome publicity stunt. For Saddam himself, though, it perhaps has more significance. There's, of course, an ancient tradition of relics, which is religious. For instance, if you go to a lot of Catholic churches,

you will see relics of various saints and so forth, parts of their bodies or whatever that have been preserved in some way. And it's interesting to see that some dictators in the 20th century have kind of bought into this tradition. With Saddam, giving his own blood so that a copy of the Quran could be made, written in his own blood, is absolutely an example of this, to kind of create a thing that is a sort of bizarre bodily relic alongside being some sort of devotional object. It's hard to say how many Iraqis see things the same way as their leader.

It's hard to say how many Iraqis see things the same way as their leader. But by this point, the population has spent almost two decades in the grip of Saddam's personality cult. Saddam's humble background, as it turns out, lends credibility to some of the stranger stories about him. He came from a small village outside of Tikrit, and there were stories that his mother had been a witch. There was this myth that we came across that Saddam had this magic stone and that he wore it, and this made him invulnerable, that you couldn't shoot him. And somebody said he'd tested this on a chicken.

He hung the stone around the chicken's neck and then tried to shoot the chicken, and the bullet had gone around the chicken. So, you know, you have this myth-making machine that was Saddam's regime, combined with people who have no independent information and who are terrified. So there was this sense of credulity. Certainly when it comes to Saddam's personal security, superstition and myth have a role to play. And never more so than when it comes to the question of his body doubles.

Rumors went around that he had all these body doubles, and it was sort of unclear exactly how we separated the truth from the rumor here. In 2002, there was a German TV show that concluded that he had at least three body doubles,

and one Iraqi doctor even claimed at that point that the real Saddam died in 1999 and was only played by dollars that he'd already got lurid tales abound of plastic surgeries turning ordinary iraqis into eerie doppelgangers according to some sources the stand-ins are so convincing that saddam can send them to meetings he doesn't feel like attending. But it's hard to be sure how much truth there is in any of these accounts. Whether it's true or not, what it does is it has a function of creating this idea

that even if you kill that guy that you think is Saddam, you might have just killed a body double. So it adds this extra layer of complication to assassination attempts and to coup attempts. Have you got the real guy or is it just one of his body doubles? I think in real life, it's much harder to create such perfect doubles than people perhaps fantasize that it is. But unquestionably, this did have an impact. I mean, for instance, when the real Saddam was captured, the Americans DNA tested him to make sure that he was real and not just one of these doubles. But that's all to come. For now, Saddam remains the ultimate survivor. He's endured multiple assassination attempts, as well as ordering a few himself.

In 1993, he sends a hit squad to Kuwait in an attempt to kill the recently retired President Bush. Bush's successor in the Oval Office, Bill Clinton, responds with airstrikes on Baghdad, followed by a scheme of his own. In 1996, the CIA plant a bomb in one of Saddam's palaces.

But the dictator leaves just before it explodes. Iraqi intelligence agents make short work of the plotters, executing dozens of American assets. Saddam's grudge against the United States has become personal. But nowadays, he's most worried about threats from within his own family. Thoughts are beginning to turn to the question of succession. Eldest son, Uday, might seem like an obvious candidate.

He's as ruthless as his father, and already heads up the Fedayeen Saddam, a paramilitary outfit known for their Darth Vader-style black helmets. But Uday is also deeply unstable. He was a sadistic rapist with no self-control. By all accounts, that son was dramatically worse than Saddam. So, you know, all of the worst stories that we hear about Saddam, you know, you can multiply them by a thousand to really capture how evil and demented

uday was one of his favorite activities is gate crashing weddings and kidnapping the bride most are returned after satisfying his sexual appetite but for at least one young woman the ordeal is just too much as soon as he leaves she throws herself off a balcony to her death. Then there are the random acts of violence. The servant Uday has murdered for introducing his father to a new mistress. The party shot up with a submachine gun, leaving six young dancers dead. Uday's palace has even put his father's to shame. When the Americans arrive in 2003, they'll find a dizzying array of treasures.

Over a thousand sports cars, vast quantities of wine, spirits and pornography, Armani suits, a private zoo featuring lions and cheetahs. He even owns a notorious medieval torture device, the Iron Maiden, and forensic evidence suggests it's not just decorative. One thing Uday is not is a plausible future leader. More promising in that respect is his younger brother, Kuse. He's already been put in charge of the special security organization, the spy outfit charged with keeping an eye on the rest of Iraq's security services. But Saddam is wary of giving either of his sons too much power.

There is no trust. And so the whole idea, no one has enough power. And that he and only he, as long as he is alive, should know everything. Instead, Saddam favors his son-in-law, Hussein Kamel. He is married to Saddam's eldest daughter, Ragad. His brother, meanwhile, is married to Ragad's younger sister, Rana. Both men are popular with their father-in-law. The younger brother, also called Saddam, even played his namesake in a six-hour movie biopic.

But it's the elder Kamel from whom Saddam expects great things. from whom Saddam expects great things. He groomed the son-in-law, Hussein Kamal. And in fact, there is a rumor. I never saw it in writing, but many people have said that. He used to say, if I ever have a heart attack, here is my successor. And Hussein Kamal supposedly is not the smartest guy in town. However, he really was the utmost psychothant who always knew how to say the right thing at the right time. It's a gift in a way.

And what has started to happen, a huge competition between his two sons and the son's in-law. With the succession up for grabs, it doesn't take too much to stoke resentment, especially where Uday is concerned. All you need is one person to start telling the rumor that Saddam said if he died, his son-in-law and not his sons to take over to push the juices of jealousy and anxiety. And the oldest son, Uday, who is not exactly the most stable person, controlled a very, very popular newspaper and started writing about him. Hussein came a time and again went to Saddam and said, this is unacceptable. Look what your son is writing about me,

making me look inefficient. And Saddam would always kind of say, oh, don't worry about him, just ignore him. But it continues. Eventually, things come to a head. oh, don't worry about him, just ignore him. But it continues. Eventually things come to a head. These two brothers, each one married to one daughter, I guess they confirmed and thought, you know what?

Sooner or later these two guys are going to kill us. They don't care that we're married to their sisters. Let's escape. While Uday spends the evening shooting up another party, the Kamel brothers and their wives flee across the border to Jordan. King Hussein, whose relationship with Saddam has soured over the years, agrees to grant them asylum. He tells an Israeli journalist that the Iraqis are in the midst of a family crisis.

But Hussein Kamel isn't planning to stay in Jordan for long. He intends to leverage his inside knowledge of the Iraqi regime to win the favor of foreign intelligence services. Perhaps, with a little help from the CIA, he might end up as Saddam's successor after all. He thought he's going to go to Jordan. Everyone in the world, the American, the British, are going to crown him, and he's going to go back to Baghdad as, you know, General de Gaulle. Unfortunately for the Kamel brothers, Saddam's disgruntled in-laws aren't quite what the foreign powers are looking for.

Supposedly 16 different countries went and interviewed him, and then no one wanted to talk to him anymore. And that's how Saddam got him to come back. Hussein Kamel might not be the sharpest tool in the box, but still, returning to Iraq is an extremely questionable move. There was nothing worse in Saddam's mind than betrayal. I mean, that was the number one sin that you could commit and that he would not forgive. And somehow he did, in fact, though, speak to his daughters. fact, though, speak to his daughters. He started calling his daughters and saying, I'm not going to do anything. How could I kill the fathers of my grandchildren?

He managed to convince them to return to Baghdad. And I spoke to some of the Jordanians who were responsible for interrogating him, and they all tried to convince the sons-in-law, listen, if you go back there, you're dead. We would bet anything on this. But this is illustrative of his charm. I mean, these sons-in-law knew better than anyone in the world what Saddam was capable of. And they still were convinced to come back to their death. After six months in Jordan,

the Kamel brothers are finally ready to return home. King Hussein provides a fleet of black limousines for the journey. The Jordanians brought him to the border. They handed him over to the Iraqis who had helicopters at the border waiting for them. As soon as the sons-in-law and the daughters boarded the helicopters to fly back to Baghdad, the Jordanians who had dropped them off were taking bets on how long it would be before they were dead. And, you know, I think it was within a few days that they were killed. Strictly speaking, Saddam doesn't break his word. He doesn't kill the fathers of his grandchildren.

Instead, he summons the Kamel brothers to see him, orders them to sign divorce papers, rips the epaulets of their military uniforms, and then tells them to go home to Tikrit. Officially, the men have been pardoned for their crimes. What happens next will be a matter for their clan. But Saddam has some friendly advice for their uncle Ali, the same Ali, as it happens, who orchestrated the Halabja massacre against the Kurds almost a decade earlier. He said, in my family, in my tribe, there is something very important than anything else, honor. I know in how my family and how my tribe would deal with this lack of honor and dishonesty.

It's up to you. The guy was brutal. This is chemical Ali. He knew that if he doesn't take care of them, then Saddam would take care of him and would not hesitate. of them, then Saddam would take care of him and would not hesitate. Three days later, there's a surprise delivery at the safe house where the Kamel brothers are staying. Several crates of automatic weapons are unloaded. It was almost a filmic Hollywood scene. He provided the sons-in-law with weapons in a safe house that they were delivered to, basically in an effort to make it look like this was a fair fight.

The Kamel brothers may be armed, but against 50 of Saddam's best soldiers, they stand no chance. And they went and shot them down. There was a battle and they were overwhelmed and killed. them down. There was a battle and they were overwhelmed and killed. The siege lasts for 13 hours. Eventually both brothers are killed, along with several members of their household. Watching from a car parked up outside are two men, the president's sons, Uday and Kuse. When their father eventually comments on the murders He does so more in sorrow than in anger Had the families asked my opinion I would have forbidden them from killing, he declares

When I forgive, I forgive These words couldn't be further from the truth In the wake of the Kamel brothers' defection I forgive. These words couldn't be further from the truth. In the wake of the Kamel brothers' defection, Saddam is growing more distrustful and more ruthless than ever. The escape of his son's in-law and his daughter really increased his paranoia. Because if you can't trust your own family members, how are you going to trust anyone? Two decades after seizing power from his mentor, al-Bakir, being a dictator just doesn't seem as

fun anymore. Never one to doubt his abilities, though, Saddam starts looking for new outlets to express himself. As he had gotten older, he began to fancy himself as a writer and an artist, I guess. You know, according to a number of these senior Iraqi officials, he, you know, in his later years of ruling the country, he would disappear for days at a time and kind of lose himself in his writing. You know, he appeared more focused in some cases on this writing than he did on ruling. In the year 2000, he publishes his first novel, Zabiba and the King. Supposedly, the author wishes to remain anonymous.

But if so, his identity is the country's worst kept secret. It's published by the Ministry of Information. And everyone knew about it. And the next day, it became a bestseller in Iraq. And the worst part of it, it became a textbook for all party members in their cell meetings to be read and discussed. I mean, I always wished someone would do this for my books, that it will be, you know, mandatory reading for everyone. By this point, Saddam is no stranger to the written word.

He's authored numerous political tracts, titles such as On History, Heritage and Religion, Social and Foreign Affairs in Iraq, and Thus We Should Fight Persians. But communicating his political ideas through a work of fiction is quite the departure. Daniel Calder is the author of Dictator Literature, a history of bad books by terrible people.

So he wrote this book called Zabiba and the King, and it was a kind of like romance novel. It's a love story. It's set in the past, in the early years of Islam, and there's like a pagan king, and i think he goes out riding one day and he sees this beautiful woman zabiba one would imagine that saddam hussein's method of courting wasn't very elegant i mean who knows but like in in the book he just falls in love with this woman and then he starts having sort of long conversations about statecraft and religion with her. And she starts to kind of change his mind about things, you know. There's profound loneliness.

And I think the loneliness of this king who's like isolated, he's got nobody to talk to. And the only person he can really communicate with is this young woman. And night after night, he goes to talk to her. If you want to know what it's like to be a dictator with the power of life and death, but who's also terrified of being assassinated, and who's looking around and guarding his position at any moment,

I think Zabiba and the king gives you a reasonable sense of what was going through Saddam's mind when he felt besieged and alone. You did not need a detective to figure out he was talking about himself. He tells you there so many stories that you can really understand how he felt about himself, about his relationship with his mother, about his connection to the land.

He used the material from his own life, but then he changed it as a writer does. And so, you know, in that sense, it's like a proper novel, maybe not a great novel, but he created the novel the same way all novelists do. It's not a good book, but it's a real book. With an instant bestseller on his hands, it's no surprise that Saddam is soon hard at work on book two, and then book three. Before long, he's bashing out novels at the rate of one a year. I guess he was sufficiently pleased with the results of that first one that he kept going.

Almost like Saddam had discovered his second career. At the turn of the millennium, Saddam may be enjoying being feted as a writer at home. But on the international stage, he's facing serious opposition. His ongoing feud with the Americans shows no sign of easing. There have been further bombing raids by the Clinton White House. UN weapons inspectors are exasperated by Saddam's games. Throughout the 90s, he's frustrated their attempts to establish whether or not Iraq has any weapons of mass destruction left over after the Gulf War. In the West, Saddam has simultaneously become a significant threat and something of a joke.

He just fit that classic sort of cartoonish dictator. The moustache, the beret, the gun and whatever. In fact, the dictator has quite literally become a cartoon. In fact, The Dictator has quite literally become a cartoon. In 1999, when animated comedy South Park takes to the big screen for a musical extravaganza, he is cast as the all-singing, all-dancing villain. This Saddam, having been gored to death by a pack of wild boars, has taken up residence in Hell as Satan's randy, emotionally abusive boyfriend. When the Devil tries to break up with him, Saddam launches into his big musical number,

I Can Change. By the time the credits roll, he's been narrowly thwarted from bringing about the Biblical apocalypse. Actually the real Saddam has perhaps been easing off a little of late. Dr. Ali Ali remembers returning to Iraq in the summer of 2001

for the first time in decades, following a spell in Syria. It's strange. It feels fairly relaxed. It doesn't feel as intrusive in Iraq at the time. And I think that's because they just simply aren't the resources that they once were to invest in that level of repression.

Back in Iraq, Ali sees firsthand the impact of a decade of sanctions. You know, it really felt like a shell hits form itself. They've reconstructed much of the infrastructure, but we still had power cuts, still had rolling power cuts, two hours on, two hours off. Because of sanctions, it was difficult to get new things, new white goods, new cars, new parts for cars. So people were still using the appliances that they bought in the 1980s. Most people are driving these really banged-out old cars. Everything looks a bit tired. And then, on September 11, 2001, everything changes.

Within days of 9-11, President George W. Bush and his advisers are talking about finishing what his father started in Iraq a decade earlier. Several of them are there for the first Gulf War. Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, not to mention Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, formerly President Reagan's special envoy to Baghdad. While there is no credible evidence linking Iraq directly to the 9-11 attacks, Saddam's

rhetoric doesn't exactly help the situation. While other world leaders offer their condolences and support, he takes the opportunity to make a political dig. In my opinion, had Saddam wrote an open letter through all the major newspapers saying, we feel for you, we're really sorry, these are terrorists, they fight us also, I think it would have changed things.

What did he do? What did he do? The exact opposite. You killed many people of us. Now you know what it tastes like. And that riled everyone and said, you see, need to knock that person out. Saddam may not have been personally involved in 9-11, but he makes no bones about where his sympathies lie. With the world still reeling from the terrorist attacks, he begins work on a new novel.

In it, an Arab alliance defeats a conspiracy of Christians and Jews by destroying the two giant towers which contain their vast riches. As with the rest of his oeuvre, the allegory isn't exactly subtle. President Bush, the younger Bush, meanwhile, has started speaking of Iraq as part of an international axis of evil. He and Saddam already have beef. After all, the Iraqi dictator did try to murder his father. After all, the Iraqi dictator did try to murder his father. In his State of the Union address given five months after the World Trade Center attacks,

Bush the Younger makes his intentions towards Saddam clear. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world. All nations should know, America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation's security. Evil is real, and it must be opposed. In the next episode, the final part of the Saddam Hussein story. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair send troops back into Iraq. In a highly symbolic moment, beamed around the world, a giant statue of Saddam comes crashing down. But as the Iraqi dictator performs his vanishing act, how soon can they track him down?

And in the aftermath of Saddam's toppling, how will ordinary Iraqis fare? That's next time.