[CLUE-Talk] Charlie Daniels comments, article about Saddam's sons.

[Michael B Deshotel]

I don't know how I got this but I did.

To:   undisclosed-recipients:;
cc:   (bcc: Michael B Deshotel/mdeshot/LSU)

Subject:    [CLUE-Talk] Charlie Daniels comments, article about Saddam's
sons.



As we begin to see the Iraq conflict begin, I found this and thought I'd
pass it on to you.

http://www.charliedaniels.com/soapbox/03/242.html

You know, the liberals may be right, we may be protecting the oil in the
Middle East.  But let me ask one question: if Saddam had not been
stopped by the first Gulf War and had gained control over 40% of the
worlds oil (Kuwait and Sadia Arabia), what do you think he would have
done controlling this amount of the world's oil supply?  Given it away
to poor countries?  Sold it to help the Iragie people?

I think not!!  He would have sold it to gain more weapons to control
even more of the world's oil.

Read this article about Saddam's sons in the magazine Maxim:

---------------------------------------

Blood Brothers

Torture, rape, and mass murder are the family businesses. Saddam Hussein
taught his sons well. Now the boys are eager to prove to the world that
Dad was just a lightweight.

Maxim, September 2001

By Gil Reavil

Dave Cogan

A coming-of-age party is a touching occasion observed in almost every
world culture. Some kids get a Camaro for their sweet 16, while others
get a gold watch or a fat envelope of cash.

The sons of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, got Beretta pistols,
full clips, and a sitting duck.

The execution chamber deep in the bowels of al-Nihayyah (Palace of the
End) was an ancient room that stank of blood, shit, and fear. Inside, a
middle-aged man stood swaying and trembling. In 1979, Saddam Hussein
arrested dozens of Iraqi politicians during his bid for absolute power.
The public servant in the basement had been tortured for days, his
fingernails plucked out with pliers.

The heavy iron door clanked open, and in walked a squad of Mukhabarat,
Saddam's secret police. With them were two skinny teenagers trying to
look tough as nails. Anyone moved to chuckle, however, would have been
well advised to consider the two guns the boys were holding in front of
them.

"Ustav, ustav!" exclaimed the guards, shouting "master" to the two
adolescents. Suddenly, the prisoner knew the boys' identities. His
stomach churned with dread. These were the sons of Saddam Hussein: Uday,
15, tall for his age, with bulged-out eyes and protruding teeth; and
Qusay, 13, smaller, but the image of his father at the same age.

As an official read a list of crimes, the boys raised their guns and
took aim. Before the politician could utter a word, their first shots
slammed into his torso, throwing him against the wall. The police escort
then drew their own weapons and fired. As dozens of bullets riddled the
body, it jerked spastically. The boys kept firing until the body was
nothing more than a bloody lump and some tatters of cloth.

Uday, glassy-eyed and giggling moronically, was transfixed by the
mangled corpse and continued pulling the trigger on his empty gun.
Qusay, eerily calm as if his pulse had not risen above a resting rate,
turned to the guard next to him. He asked in a whisper, "Do you have any
more bullets?"

The Lion and His Cubs
Saddam Hussein is our generation's Adolf Hitler. In the 22 years since
he took total control of this ancient land of 22 million people, he's
conducted a war with Iran, invaded Kuwait, and waged a genocidal
campaign against his own people. Saddam's reign of terror, however, may
be coming to a close.

Last year Asharq al-Awsata, an Arab newspaper, reported that the Iraqi
leader is terminally ill with lymph cancer. Like Hitler, Saddam has
killed every real or imagined rival. Who could possibly succeed one of
the most feared men on earth?

The two men maneuvering to rule Iraq are virtually unknown outside the
Middle East. They are the two brothers who underwent their bloody rite
of passage more than 20 years ago. Uday ("you-die"), 37, and Qusay
("coo-sigh") 34, are scions of a criminal enterprise masquerading as
government. In Iraq it's called the Issaba. In Sicily it's called the
Mafia. Uday and Qusay are the sons of its don of dons.

Using exclusive interviews with former cohorts, Maxim has pieced
together an inside portrait of the two men who are competing to rule
Iraq. Their deadly, escalating battle for power may have catastrophic
consequences?not just for the Iraqis but for every person on the planet.
World leaders are just beginning to glean the truth. The sons of Saddam,
they fear, may turn out to be far more dangerous than their notorious
father.

The Boys From Tikrit
The roughly shorn sheep, its feet tied with cord, sensed what was
coming. Its bleating turned into a continuous wail. Eight-year-old Uday
glanced around the arid countryside, hoping the screams wouldn't alert
the shepherd. Uday motioned to his playmate to grab hold of the sheep's
head and twist to strangle the animal's cries.

First Uday made deep cuts in the tendons of the legs and along the back.
He took his time with the genitals before disemboweling the sheep,
slowly pulling out its intestines, watching the terror and pain in the
animal's eyes. His technique had been improving. He could sometimes make
the session last an hour before putting out the eyes and finally
slashing the throat. Later he told friends that "the blood really
interested me."

Tikrit, where Uday and Qusay were born, is 100 miles northwest of
Baghdad, not far from Al Awja, the tiny village where Saddam was born in
1937. It is a former Roman outpost and reportedly the birthplace of the
legendary Muslim warrior Saladin. It is a region renowned for violence.
A favorite saying in Tikrit, particularly by Saddam's clan, the Albu
Nasir, is "Kill him and end his news."

As a boy Saddam Hussein roamed these filthy streets with an iron pipe he
used to fend off his enemies. An accomplished and charismatic street
thug, his gifts were encouraged by Albu Nasir elders. It was decided to
groom him for future power.

Saddam rose through the ranks of the Pan-Arab Ba'ath party and in 1968
engineered a coup that made him number two behind President al-Bakr. He
then built up a police state that forced al-Bakr into retirement in
1979. Hussein "accepted" the presidency and announced the discovery of a
plot. Not surprisingly, the plotters turned out to be Saddam's enemies
and competitors. All were quickly eliminated.

Although he fawned over his three daughters, Saddam was determined that
his sons be the inheritors of his rule. From an early age, the brothers
underwent training. Sitting enthralled in front of the TV like normal
kids watching cartoons, the brothers watched torture videos of the Iraqi
police "disciplining" dissidents: forcing a victim's jaw open until it
broke, injecting water under the skin until it ripped. On special
occasions, the boys were even allowed to watch the rape videos, used for
official blackmail.

It was a bright Baghdad day in the late '70s when a black Porsche 928
roared into the courtyard of the exclusive, all-boys Baghdad School.
Behind the wheel was 14-year-old Uday, one foot on the dash, a Cuban
cigar in his mouth, and a trashy, peroxide blonde draped across his lap.
When he stepped out of the car, his outfit of jeans and a T-shirt
contrasted sharply with the jacket-and-tie uniforms worn by the other
boys. Though Qusay was delivered by Mercedes limousine every morning, he
copied his brother's attire, though he often topped his outfit off with
a crown of laurel leaves.

Uday dragged his girlfriend into his math class. The professor was
outraged at this lack of decorum but could say nothing. He'd heard about
the elderly professor who gave Uday a low mark and the next day was
dragged out of class by the teenager's bodyguards and beaten with
cricket bats.

The professor started the class. Within a minute, Uday was up, walking
his girlfriend to the door. "For the offense of boring me," Uday warned
the teacher as he reached the door, "when I become the ruler of Iraq,
I'm going to have you shot."

The Party Animal
By 1984 disturbing stories of the 20-year-old Uday's violent behavior
were leaking out from his inner circle. There was the time Uday made a
group of gypsy singers stand in a line, drop their pants, and sing while
he fired a machine gun over their heads until they urinated from fear.
Others whispered of the time Uday and his cronies had ridden to the
resort town of Habanniya on their BMW 1000 motorcycles, abducted a
newlywed off the street, and raped her. Afterward the disgraced girl
threw herself from the seventh-floor balcony of Uday's hotel room and
died at her husband's feet. When he cursed Uday, he was arrested for
treason and executed.

Uday was spinning out of control. There was no mistaking him in the
clubs and hotels of the city. The muscular six-foot psychopath with the
Miami Vice stubble favored gold-rimmed, mirrored Ray-Bans, seven-inch
Cuban Montecristos, and jewel-encrusted Rolex watches.

It was the look he was sporting on a crisp, dry winter day in 1987 when
he drove around the campus of the University of Baghdad looking for
action. He caught sight of Nahle Sabet, a pretty architecture student
from a respected middle-class Christian family he'd noticed when he
occasionally attended classes. He cruised past her slowly now, honking,
trying to get her attention. She refused to even look in his direction.

Two days later Sabet was a few blocks from her family's home in a
Baghdad suburb when a Mercedes sedan screeched to a halt on the sidewalk
in front of her. Two men in dark suits got out and identified themselves
as secret police. They told her she was wanted at headquarters for
questioning and led her into the car.

Headquarters turned out to be a farm Uday owned several miles from
Baghdad. The frightened girl was hustled into a drawing room, where Uday
sat at an antique desk. "You're very lucky," he said. "I've chosen you
as my new girlfriend."

"You're insane," Sabet stammered. "I want to go home!"

"Strip her," Uday ordered his guards. The burly men pounced on her and
ripped at her clothes until she was cowering naked on the floor. Uday
towered over her, unrolling his favorite wire cable. "First I will beat
you. Then, if you're good, I'll allow you to please myself and my men."

It took Uday and his men almost three months to break Sabet's spirit.
Then Uday tired of her. Her face was ruined; her body was a mass of
bruises. He had the guards take her out to the kennels where he kept his
attack dogs?Rottweilers, Dobermans, and great danes. He'd told the
keepers several days before to stop feeding them.

Nahle Sabet was then smeared with honey and tossed into the kennels,
where all evidence of the crime disappeared.

Qusay the Snake
Fittingly, The Godfather is the Hussein family's favorite movie. In real
life Qusay seemed content to play Michael to Uday's Sonny. The more
outrageous Uday became, the more Qusay kept to the shadows. "In Iraq we
call him the Snake," says Entifadh Qanbar, who once partied with the
same crowd as the brothers. "He never comes out of his hole." But
Saddam, impatient with his older son, began slowly giving Qusay various
security assignments, expanding his role as he demonstrated his
competence and ruthlessness.

Through it all Saddam took great care to keep his sons out of harm's way
during Iraq's bloody war with Iran from 1980 to 1988. Uday and Qusay
were considered far too valuable to be risked in the brutal conflict
that cost Iraq 600,000 casualties. The closest either of them ever got
to the fighting was a staged event in 1982 in which Uday and Saddam
toured the front. Saddam asked for volunteers to lead an attack. Uday
immediately volunteered, jumped into a waiting helicopter, and took off,
rockets firing. Unfortunately, he mistakenly fired on and injured a
number of his own troops.

Qusay, on the other hand, always seemed too careful to make mistakes.
Uday watched jealously as his younger brother climbed the ranks of the
Iraqi hierarchy. Uday kept himself busy running Iraq's Olympic committee
and its national soccer team, where he penalized poor play by publicly
shaving the players' heads. He also used the 10-story Olympic
headquarters as a personal clubhouse to front his lucrative black-market
business in cigarettes, whiskey, and currency.

In the fall of 1985, Adnan Khairallah, Saddam's cousin and one of the
army's most popular generals, called up Qusay and asked if he'd like to
go duck hunting at his private camp near the Tigris River. With Qusay's
star rising, the general was eager to cultivate the younger man's favor.

The caravan of Mercedes and army trucks arrived at the general's camp
before dawn. Leaving their vehicles parked among the small town of silk
tents with their priceless Persian carpets, Adnan, Qusay, and their
retinue trekked out into the marshes to wait for the ducks.

When the hunting party was several hundred yards away from the camp,
they heard a great roar. Flying toward them was not a flock of fowl but
a helicopter, its runners customized to hold rocket launchers. At the
helm was Uday.

Uday banked his helicopter and, with the rising sun at his back, dived
on the island and fired his missiles at the general's tents. Two
fireballs mushroomed from the camp. "He was laughing and was happy,"
Abbas Jenabi, a former Uday aide, recalls. "He even destroyed some of
their cars."

Despite such provocations, the brothers maintained an unwavering public
image: confident Uday and his adoring younger brother. Privately, the
relationship was developing into something else: a bitter rivalry. One
that turned more dangerous with each new day.

Disrespecting the Pig Roast
There is an idyllic garden island in the middle of the Tigris River
called the Mother of Pigs. After taking power, Saddam reserved its use
for members of his inner circle. Saddam's food taster and head procurer,
Kamel Hannah Jajo, had one of the most elegant villas. Unfortunately for
him, his next door neighbor was Uday Hussein.

In November 1988, Jajo threw a party on the island and invited the cream
of Baghdad society. The guest of honor was the wife of Egyptian
president Hosni Mubarak.

Qusay was invited. Uday, pointedly, was not.

All night Uday brooded, listening to the party only yards away. He
downed tumbler after tumbler of Cognac and whiskey while fiddling with a
battery-powered knife called a Magic Wand. When Jajo shot his AK-47 into
the air?a form of celebration commonly known as "Arab fireworks"?Uday
had had enough.

"Tell that son of a whore to stop!" he ordered his guards.

They returned with Jajo's reply. "He says he takes orders only from the
president."

Enraged, Uday charged into the party next door, waving the Magic Wand.
Jajo stood on a table, gun in hand.

"Get down!" Uday screamed.

"I obey only the president," the old man repeated.

Uday went berserk, slashing the man's throat with the electric blade.
Jajo crumpled. Uday took out his pistol and shot his father's aide in
the chest, killing him instantly.

Uday immediately realized he had crossed the line. He ran back to his
house and locked himself in the bathroom. His bodyguards ran after him
and pounded on the door, begging him to come out. Terrified, Uday
swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. When the guards broke through the
doors, Uday threw up the pills all over their shoes.

Saddam hurried to the scene from the palace in slippers. The dictator
confronted the woozy, cowering Uday in his upstairs bedroom. "If you're
found guilty of murder," Saddam promised, "you will die like any other
criminal."

Investigators, sensing Saddam's anger subsiding, found Uday innocent of
the charges. Saddam ordered Uday to Switzerland until the scandal died
down.

Saddam had had enough. He ordered Qusay to investigate Uday's shady
business dealings. It was exactly the break Qusay had been waiting for.
"Qusay is a very cruel person," says Amatzia Baram, an Iraq specialist
at the University of Haifa. "For years he's been gearing himself to
become number one."

Qusay peeled away the layers of Uday's corruption. Its true depths came
to light when Saddam toured Uday's garages in a multistory fortress. As
Saddam strolled the immaculate, polished concrete-floor rooms, he found
a fleet of 30 Mercedes, plus Ferraris, Lamborghini Countachs, silver
Maserati turbos, Jaguars, and dozens of Porsches. The centerpiece of the
fleet was a Mercedes 500 fitted with a huge Rolls-Royce engine.

Saddam turned to his retinue. "Torch them," he commanded. As Saddam
strolled to his waiting motorcade, his son Uday's priceless toys
exploded inside the garage.

In exile, Uday held his own. One night at a disco, he grabbed at a
woman,, causing her boyfriend to intervene. Uday pulled out his gun and
threatened to kill him. Cash smoothed Uday's indiscretions, but the
Swiss wanted the Iraqi gone. A plane was dispatched by Dad to bring the
errant son home.

Uday mistakenly assumed all had been forgiven.

Blood in the Sand
In January 1991, the largest invasion force since World War II assembled
in the Arabian desert to drive the Iraqi army from Kuwait. Saddam had
been systematically looting the gulf emirate since invading it the
previous August. Though the main prize was Kuwait's multibillion-dollar
oil industry, the Hussein family also divided up the country's other
material wealth. Uday sent his teams to steal every luxury car that
could be found and brought to his farm. He later made $125 million from
their resale.

The party didn't last long. When the U.S. and allied forces began
bombing Baghdad, the Husseins became scarce. Saddam and Qusay slept in a
different palace every night. Uday moved to his farm, far from the
danger of stray bombs.

By mid-March Saddam's million-man army had been crushed. It was
anticipated by the U.S. that defeat would topple Saddam and his rule.
Though revolts broke out throughout the country, Saddam and Qusay's
secret police crushed all dissension. Instead of weakening the regime,
Saddam was able to spin the defeat into a great anti-American crusade.

After the Gulf War ended, the U.N. dispatched inspectors to Iraq to
assess the extent of Iraq's advanced weapons development. Saddam
appointed Qusay chief of concealment.

But Uday couldn't help butting in. Early in 1996, he drove a
metallic-gold 928 Porsche past a barracks of the Special Republican
Guards. At that moment weapons inspector Scott Ritter, a former U.S.
Marine, was standing curbside, preparing to lead his team inside. Uday
roared past Ritter, screeched to a halt, and backed up until he was
beside him.

"I'm alpha dog. I don't put up with that stuff," Ritter recalls. "So I'm
standing there, staring this car down. Then the window rolls open, and
there's this idiot wearing these mirror sunglasses."

The two men glared silently at each other. Uday revved the engine.
Ritter refused to blink.

Uday laid down rubber.

The inspection team monitored all communications and later unscrambled
Uday shouting on the phone about a "crow," the name the Iraqis had for
the weapons inspectors. "This goddamn crow is humiliating Iraq!" he
screamed. "He embarrassed me in front of my soldiers! I want his ass. I
want him gone!"

That night Uday's security goons made their move to kidnap Ritter.
Luckily, they were not only inept but also drunk. As they stepped from
their SUV, one of them shot himself in the leg with his automatic
weapon. His partner attacked the wrong vehicle, drawing his gun on a
group of terrified Iraqi citizens.

Uday's attempt at foreign relations became a popular joke in the bazaars
and cafés of Baghdad. Worse than with all his previous transgressions,
he was now an embarrassment to his clan. This line no self-respecting
Iraqi could cross and survive.

You Die, Uday
The Tigris River makes a lazy S through downtown Baghdad. At the western
end of the S lies the Mansour district. On Thursday evening, December
12, 1996, three groups of idlers carrying sports bags waited at an
intersection. Just before 7:30, they saw the two white Mercedes led by
Uday's Porsche.

Uday had been on a roll. Months earlier Uday's brothers-in-law, Saddam
and Hussein Kamel, had defected with their families to Jordan. Pardoned
by Saddam and nagged relentlessly by their wives, the brothers finally
consented to return to Iraq if their safety would be guaranteed.
However, no sooner had they crossed the border than Uday separated his
sisters from the two traitors and had the two men confined at their
family home in Baghdad. Hours later Uday and a unit of Iraqi Special
Forces attacked the Kamel house, killing the two brothers, their father,
their sister, and her three children.

The convoy slowed at the T intersection with Baghdad International
Street. The "idlers" yanked AK-47s from inside their sports bags. The
intersection exploded with gunfire. The gunmen, from a shadowy Muslim
group named al-Nahdah?"the Awakening"?had tracked Uday's movements for
weeks. The gunmen sprayed bullets at all three cars.

One of the assailants saw Uday crouching underneath the dashboard and
let loose a barrage at the Porsche. Although the bulletproof sides of
the car deflected some of the fire, Uday was hit eight times. Another
gunman ran up to administer the coup de grâce, but his rifle jammed.

As the members of al-Nahdah melted from the streets, the most hated man
in Iraq lay bleeding. Rushed to the hospital and operated upon by
Cuban-trained doctors, Uday barely survived, temporarily paralyzed from
the waist down and impotent. While he was still unconscious, dark rumors
began to sweep the upper ranks of the military that Qusay, or even
Saddam, might have ordered the hit.

When Uday woke from surgery, he found his entire family waiting by his
bed. Saddam was furious. One by one, he pointed out the greed and
incompetence of family members threatening his regime. Finally, he
turned to Uday. "And what kind of man are you? Are you a politician, a
traitor, a people's leader, or a playboy?"

The only person that Saddam did not criticize was Qusay. The once
adoring brothers now stared at each other with undisguised hatred. One
of them would have to go.

Murder on a Grand Scale
Early on the morning of April 26, 1998, Iraq's largest prison went on
alert. Saddam's troops took up positions outside the towering walls of
Abu Ghraib, a lockup for 15,000 men. Qusay Hussein was en route for an
unscheduled inspection.

As the armored convoy wheeled through the prison gates, Captain Khaled
Aziz al-Jenabi, a 20-year veteran in the secret police agency, the
Mukhabarat, sat in his cramped office. "I was supposed to be on vacation
this week," he muttered to a colleague. He reluctantly went outside to
meet the VIPs.

The 33-year-old Qusay stepped from the armored limousine into the bright
sunlight dressed in starched military fatigues and dark aviator
sunglasses. He wasted no time. "We must do something about the political
ward. It is far beyond capacity," Qusay said to Colonel Hassan al-Amiri
as Captain al-Jenabi and others stood by. "I want the prisoners executed
by the end of the day tomorrow."

Knowing that questioning Qusay was grounds for arrest, torture, even
death, the warden tried to stall the prince. "We don't have the
facilities for such a job, or the manpower," he said, unable to believe
they were being forced to massacre more than 2,000 political prisoners.

Qusay was unmoved: "Start at 6 a.m. Work all day; you can get it done.
I'll leave a squad of my own men to assist you."

At daybreak the horror began. Faced with death, the prisoners screamed
and cried and shit themselves with dread. The guards selected 10 men at
a time and beat them down the stone steps into the execution room, a
long hall lined with sandbags. The condemned were tied to poles, and
cloth bags were pulled over their heads. Some said a final prayer to
Allah for their souls.

A guard stepped to the first man and shot him once in the skull. He
stepped down the line to the next and did the same. The bags over the
men's heads kept blood and brain matter from spraying everyone. In an
adjoining building, five gallows stood. As soon as the nooses were
looped around a man's neck, he'd be kicked off the platform. As the next
group was led in, some of the previous victims were still jerking and
kicking.

Qusay instructed his guards to make sure every guard and officer in the
prison got blood on his hands.

It was more than a mass murder?it was a mass initiation. "This is like a
criminal family," says Frank Anderson, a former CIA chief of the Near
East?South Asia desk. "The way one establishes bona fides is by
participating in a crime. Everybody in that country who has any
political power has been implicated in the crime."

The Dictator and the Beachball
Qusay is now the second most powerful man in Iraq. No longer in Uday's
shadow, he has gained authority and confidence. The battle between
brothers continues to escalate.

Uday struck back where he knew it would hurt Qusay the most. Just as he
had lusted for Porsche 928s, Uday knew Qusay had a passion for
thoroughbreds. "Uday went to Qusay's farm, had poison put in the food,
and threw it to the horses," says former Uday aide Abbas Jenabi. "He
killed two of the best racehorses in the world."

But the game has moved beyond sibling rivalry: Qusay has bigger battles
on his mind. Since the end of the Gulf War, Iraq has been hamstrung by a
U.S.-led embargo and occasional sorties by allied air forces enforcing
no-fly zones or bombing factories where it is suspected that teams of
Iraqi scientists are building weapons of mass destruction.

Despite a massive air raid in the opening days of the new Bush
administration, it is believed that Qusay has successfully concealed
Iraq's weapons development. Hidden in secret locations are anthrax,
chemicals for nerve gases, and the ballistic missiles to deliver them.

Then there is the "beachball," an Iraqi euphemism for the biggest prize:
a nuclear weapon. Naturally, Saddam and Qusay occupy two chairs on the
country's nuclear commission. In this role the probable future president
of Iraq occasionally summons Iraq's top nuclear scientists to his
office, where he has them stand at attention before his desk. "So,
gentlemen," Qusay asks politely but with deadly seriousness at the start
of every meeting. "When can you give us the beachball?"

-----------------------------------------

Warning: If you have kids, don't give them this link becasue of it's
content, but the article reveals some interesting info.  I apologize if
I offend others.

Source: http://www.maximonline.com/articles/article_4211.html

Glad to be an American defending the world from oppressive leaders,

Kevin
--
Kevin Cullis <kevincu at orci.com>
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