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‘‘I shook his hand in 1980,’’ he says. ‘‘Now, he is the devil.’’

NOW Saddam is the devil? he wasn't then?

apparently this guy didn't take a look at the 1979 video, widely distributed by Saddam Hussein himself to generate fear, of Saddam calmly reading out the names of his friends he no longer trusted, to be taken out and shot immediately or never heard from again ... in any case, they were never seen alive again ... Saddam sheds crocodile tears, lights up a cigar and continues to read more names ... taking it all in the Tariq Aziz ... and this was a year before he "shook Saddam's hand" ... the show the videotape on PBS ...

Maybe he didn't see the video because he was in the U.S. The article states that the pastor flew from the U.S. to Iraq to meet with Saddam. In this country, he was seen as the standard Middle Eastern strongman in 1978.

I never saw the video, did you ?