I'm not doubting that it is possible, but it is the first I've heard of it. How terrible.
Where have you been? This particular aspect of Saddam's cruelty has been known ever since we first invaded Iraq.
Yes, the Saddam human shredder machines, and legs first so they can feel the terrible pain.
A book called Republic of Fear is a chilling documentary of the the Iraq written well before the invasion of Kuwait. It is worth a look, most people these days have no idea what sort of madman this guy was.
This is one of the failures of the Bush administration--they should have been publicizing just what a monster Saddam was from the first. Tonight on the Brit Hume show, the panel discussed just this.
(And my other complaint is that they let the media get away with claiming there were no WMD. They were there, and some taken to Syria and Iran and even Russia from what I understand--and more still are buried in the desert. Not that anyone in the Bush admin OR the Republican party would ever bother to mention it...)