Posted on 12/31/2006 7:08:11 PM PST by pitinkie
ST. LOUIS (AP) - A military nurse who cared for Saddam Hussein in jail said the deposed dictator saved bread crusts to feed birds and seldom complained to his captors, except when he had legitimate gripes.
Ellis, 56, an operating room nurse in the St. Louis suburb of St. Charles, said he was ordered to do whatever was needed to keep Saddam alive.
"That was my job: to keep him alive and healthy, so they could kill him at a later date," he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for a story published Sunday. Saddam was executed Saturday.
When Ellis told Saddam he had to leave for America because his brother was dying, Saddam hugged him and said he would be Ellis' brother.
"I was there to help him, and he respected that," Ellis said.
Saddam never discussed dying and expressed no regrets about his rule.
"He said everything he did was for Iraq," Ellis said. "One day when I went to see him, he asked why we invaded. Well, he made gestures like shooting a machine gun and asked why soldiers came and shot up the place. He said the laws in Iraq were fair and the weapons inspectors didn't find anything.
"I said, 'That's politics. We soldiers don't get caught up in that sort of thing.'"
(Excerpt) Read more at home.bellsouth.net ...
A new low for ap.
From Dan Rather's interview with Saddam Hussein on February 26, 2003 :
Rather: Mr. President, I hope you will take this question in the spirit in which it's asked. First of all, I regret that I do not speak Arabic. Do you speak any-- any English at all?Saddam Hussein: (In Arabic…) Have some coffee
Translator for Saddam Hussein: Americans like coffee….
Rather: That's true and this American likes coffee.
Saddam Hussein: I am sorry, I do not speak English - fluently. But I can understand to some extent.
Rather: Well, would you speak some English for me? Anything you choose?
Saddam Hussein: Our language is Arabic.
Informative, thanks for that reference.
My impression was that Sadaam could not speak English. No doubt he could, as he says there, understand some of it (probably might know what the topic of a news broadcast was). But that does not add up to fluent banter.
This must be comforting to those who's tongues he had cut out, acid thrown on their faces, fed alive through plastic shredders and the hundreds of thousands he had sent to mass graves.
He fed crusts to birds.
Incredible.
The article says that MSGT Ellis was a nurse. During my days in the Air Force all "nurses" were commissioned officers, not non-coms.
"...During my days in the Air Force all "nurses" were commissioned officers, not non-coms..."
Same here, in the navy. The only non-coms were corpsmen, or if army, or air force, medics. It's possible to be a nurse, and be an NCO, if you're an LPN, rather than an RN, of course, but as far as I know, all RN's are commissioned officers. The military, though, doesn't recognize the status of LPN's, and doesn't grant them any more status than a corpsman/medic.
"Stockholm syndrome in reverse. Boo frikkin' hoo."
You should read how he is being eulogized by the forum members at thelocal.se (Sweden)
I thought that also..hubby said maybe he is an LPN.
Whatttt??? A reporter making a story up???? I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you!
Thanks, but I'll pass on that!! :-D
"'e was like a brother to me."
Our local liberal Gannett (redundant) rag here in SW MO picked up this "story". Barf is right.
gross
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