(but I hope it's true).
Leni
This sounds totally in character. Saddam got his start on the greasy pole of Iraqi politics working as a torturer for the secret police. His mentor was known for a gimmick where he'd stub a cigarette out in his victim's eyes.
Ever seen the Baath party purge video? Sitting before a party assembly, Saddam reads names of suspected traitors from a list while casually puffing on a stogie. The camera pans arounds to show party members jumping from their seats, hysterically proclaiming their innocence and pointing accusing fingers at their neighbours. In the background, you can hear the sound of "traitors" being summarily shot.
Saddam met bin Laden: 'mistress'
A WOMAN claiming to have been Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's mistress for more than 30 years says she witnessed at least one meeting between Saddam and alleged terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.
In an interview with America's ABC News, Parisoula Lampsos, 54, said that during the mid-1980s bin Laden visited one of Saddam's palaces in Iraq. Bin Laden is blamed for the terror attacks on September 11 that killed more than 3000 people in America.
Lampsos alleged the Iraqi leader's eldest son, Oday, told her that bin Laden and Saddam met again about a decade later, an exchange that saw Saddam giving money to the Saudi-born millionaire exile.
"He give to Osama bin Laden, he give to Palestine," she is quoted as saying in halting English.
The interview will be broadcast in the US later this week.
Lampsos also claimed Saddam expressed reservations about the election in 2000 of George W. Bush, but was confident that he would be beyond the US President's reach and would one day retake Kuwait, which he lost after Bush's father, George Bush, committed US troops to the Gulf War.
Now living in Lebanon, she also offered details about Saddam's personal life.
She said he liked to drink alcohol and smoke cigars while watching videos of his enemies being tortured.
Lampsos told the network that Saddam sometimes wore cowboy hats and took Viagra.