[jess35]

It's probably due to the fact that Saddam wasn't particularly religious until he was pulled out of his hole. Now he carries a Quran with him everywhere he goes and praises Allah. It's something of a joke.

[kcvl]

Well, Saddam has a sympathizer on PMS! She is doing nothing but wondering how this happened so close to the election in the US.

She obviously believes Saddam was 'tortured'! Saddam didn't get to speak. Boo freakin whoo!

[FreedomCalls]

It's probably due to the fact that Saddam wasn't particularly religious until he was pulled out of his hole. Now he carries a Quran with him everywhere he goes and praises Allah. It's something of a joke.

Yes, but "born-again" is a phrase specific to the Christian religion. There's no similar redemption analogue in Islam.

[ArmstedFragg]

Prison conversions are a universal phenomena.

[piasa]

Saddam took to religion long before he was pulled from his hole. He was constructing the mother of all mosques- whose minarets looked like scud missiles. In it he put a Koran written using his own blood as ink, so the story goes.

I had been reading his speeches before 9/11 and they were long rambling screeds full of religious imagery- he had determined after the Gulf War that he needed a group more reliable than his fellow Iraqis so he began cultivating islamists rather than fighting them so much. The chenge in his rhetoric after he made the deal with al Qaeda was notable.