He admires former United States president Ronald Reagan, respects Bill Clinton and bears no grudge against George Bush senior or junior. But he cannot abide Froot Loops.
Saddam Hussein can forgive his enemies but not, say some of his US guards, sweet cereal.
A mellow portrait of the former Iraqi president and his jail cell musings in broken English emerged on Monday, depicting an avuncular figure who bantered with his captors.
”Towards the end he was saying that he doesn’t hold any hard feelings and he just wanted to talk to Bush, to make friends,” said Specialist Sean O’Shea, a member of the Pennsylvania national guard unit that watched over Saddam.
He and four other members of the unit were interviewed in the July issue of GQ, an advance copy of which was obtained by the Associated Press. The unit is believed to have been at Camp Cropper, a US base near Baghdad airport, from 2003 to mid-2004.
The guards said Saddam admired Reagan, whose administration fed Iraq intelligence and weapons in its war with Iran in the 1980s, and had said President Clinton was ”OK”.
”The Bush father, son, no good,” one of the guards quoted Saddam as saying. That later softened into a desire to meet the president, despite implicitly branding Bush a liar for citing weapons of mass destruction as the reason to invade Iraq. ”He knows I have nothing, no mass weapons,” he was reported to have said.
The soldiers said Saddam favoured Raisin Bran Crunch for breakfast, not Froot Loops under any circumstances, and chicken or fish for supper.
He was fastidious about doing his laundry and washing his hands. He prayed five times a day and cited Christ’s betrayal by Judas when railing against the trusted man who allegedly revealed his hideout near his home town of Tikrit in December 2003. ”He was really mad about that,” they said. – Guardian Unlimited Â