Maybe he'll get a book tour with others who share his beliefs...
Posted on 11/05/2006 5:02:39 PM PST by wagglebee
Saddam Hussein tells the only woman in his life that he is ready to meet his hangman – provided he is allowed to finish writing his novel.
"I will go to the gallows with dignity knowing I will die a martyr," he told his lawyer, Bushra Khalil, the only woman on his defense team. "The legacy I will leave the world is my new epic work that will assure my place in literature."
In an exclusive interview at the closing stages of Hussein's trial, Khalil, 44, revealed how she built up a unique relationship with the former dictator. She described how she listened for hours in his cell as he spoke about foreign leaders – including Bush and Blair whom he disparaged – and his ambition to be a best-selling author.
Today, as he was sentenced to death, she sat near him in court, watching as he sat, arms folded, eyes half closed, looking like a man impatient to get back to his writing.
Khalil is a Shi'ite Muslim who took on the task of trying to defend the hated Sunni dictator.
She is the only member of the defense team Hussein has allowed to visit him in his high-security prison near Baghdad International Airport. He has refused to see his own family.
For hours at a time, Khalil, dressed in chic Western clothes – usually a customized trouser suit or calf-length skirt and high-buttoning blouse – has listened to Hussein discuss not his defense, but international issues and reading the latest passages from his "epic."
"I am taken to the prison by the Americans in a van with blacked-out windows," she said. "I have been told it is for my own protection."
Since Hussein's trial started, two defense lawyers were murdered – and a third fled the country to escape assassination.
While Khalil, as his lawyer, was given the normal client-prisoner relationship, she believes her talks with Hussein were closely monitored.
He is treated with the same vise-like grip that exists on Death Row in an American prison. His iron bed is bolted to the floor. The bedding is standard U.S. military prison issue. His toiletries consist of a weekly bar of soap, a sponge and a tube of toothpaste. But he has reverted to the days of his childhood and brushes his teeth in the Arab fashion with a stick of miswak, a hardwood.
His bathroom has a shower and European-style toilet. A metal washbasin and two towels complete the facilities. Toilet paper is of the kind sold in any Baghdad marketplace.
His breakfast consists of yogurt, toast and tea, eaten with airline-style plastic cutlery. His guards are unarmed. Hussein has told Khalil his relationship with them is "friendly."
When not in court his daily routine never varies. All his meals are cooked by a specially recruited Iraqi. Drinking water comes from sealed bottles – part of consignments flown in from the United States for its troops.
Every day Hussein was taken out to a small courtyard for a period of exercise. In a corner of the yard was a water tap. The first thing Saddam did was to turn it on. The sound of flowing water has always been a reminder for him that, in a land parched by nature, he could always command water. In his palaces there were magnificent tumbling waterfalls and the sound of water was pumped into his office. But often the tap produced only a mere trickle.
His usual dinner would be fruit – dates and olives are a staple of the diet – along with soup, possibly chicken and rice. The diet has led to Hussein shedding his potbelly. His shaggy salt-and-pepper beard is trimmed once a week, enhancing his sharp, penetrating eyes.
An MI6 source said Hussein's "epic work" is filled with paranoid invective against the United States and Israel. However, according to Khalil, he sees the book as "a cross between 'Gone with the Wind' and Russia’s epic defense of Stalingrad in World War II."
Aviv Rubin, a former Mossad analyst, said: "Letting Saddam play out his fantasies on paper could offer important clues to his past relationship with countries like Syria, Egypt and even Iran. His characters are thinly disguised but based on living Arab leaders."
The one certainty is that Hussein's "epic work" will be a strictly limited edition.
"It will never be published," said Rubin. "That would make it a collector's item for fanatics – rather like having a first edition of Hitler's "Mein Kampf."
/hurl.
Burn the manuscript right in front of his face before you put the hood over his head and toss him off.
You got 30 days.
If ever there were a reason to burn books, this is it.
So some of his most closely guarded secrets are now being safeguarded by uh, Bushra's Vault?
FReeper jveritas has been translating his "literary legacy" and it is full of frightening details being ignored by the Drive-By-Media!!
More likely he has around 365.
Maybe he'll get a book tour with others who share his beliefs...
somehow I seriously doubt Saddam is resigned to death.
That would be a complete reversal in personality.
And just think!
He'll benefit from that popularity bump that all posthumous authors enjoy.
I'll bet he's dying to get it finished.
never published my arse....we will read excerpts right here on FR. The mall bookstores will have a life sized cutout of Saddam with the caption..Saddam writes from the dead
Great. Take his manuscript and feed it to the wood chipper, before his eyes. Let his heart be filled with even more anger, pain and grief for his remaining time.
Just.
Very just.
LOL! Saddam's worst nightmare.
BUMP!
By Hassan M. Fattah
The cover of a 2003 novel by Saddam Hussein, "Get Out, You Damned One." It depicts Satan's hold over Babylon, and an Arab liberator.
AMMAN, Jordan, June 29, 2005 — The unpublished novel "Get Out, You Damned One" will not win any literary awards. A forgettable piece of pulp, it features a scheming traitor, an invading army of Zionist-Christian infidels and an Arab liberator. The only thing that sets the novel apart from numerous others like it in Arab bookstores is its author: Saddam Hussein.
http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=2108
---And they all lived hap- AAARRRRgggghhh gurgle gurgle gurgle---- The End.
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