The Prisoner in His Palace

by Will Bardenwerper

  An image came to Hutch of his grandpa sitting in front of the television set, watching one of the John Wayne westerns he enjoyed, connected to his oxygen tank. One of the Afghan throws Hutch’s grandma would knit would be draped carefully over the back of the chair. Once grandfather and grandson were left alone and all of the house’s other occupants were out on errands, the old man would ask in a conspiratorial tone, “So, you got ’em?”

  Sure, Hutch would say, pulling a contraband cigarette from his pocket and handing it to his grandpa. But I feel bad giving these to you.

  Oh hell, the old man replied, I should have been dead a long time ago.

  As the disease slowly ravaged his body, Hutch’s grandpa was confined to his modest home, but, like Saddam in his cell, his mind still roamed the vast expanses of his past.

  You know what, Hutch’s grandfather liked to say with the oxygen tank hissing in the background, the only thing you have at my age are your memories. So make sure your memories are good ones.

  One of his more cryptic observations sometimes crept into Hutch’s mind as he sat observing Saddam. Westerns always have good guys, who wear a white hat, and bad guys, who wear black hats, his grandpa said. It’s the sneaky guys in the gray hats, whose allegiances are always shifting, that you have to watch out for. If you’re going to make a choice, the old man continued, go all the way.

  The unspoken implication was that those who inhabited the wishy-washy world of gray were the least honorable of all.

  • • •

  Hutch felt a hand grasp his shoulder, and a surge of adrenaline shot through him. Holy shit, he realized, I was sound asleep. He’d been exhausted as he began his shift at the small desk located just outside the door to Saddam’s cell. The Super Twelve had been up much of the night preparing to move Saddam back from the IHT to the Rock, before finally making the trip in the early-morning hours. The last thing Hutch remembered had been leafing through the People magazine.

  Now Saddam was standing over him, large hand clasped on his shoulder. Excuse me, my friend, he said, peering down at Hutch, who was still trying to shake off the mental cobwebs.

  What can I do for you, sir? sputtered Hutch. He was trying as best he could to feign alertness, as if sudden hypervigilance would somehow disguise the fact that he’d been caught sound asleep on duty by the very man he’d been charged with guarding.

  Time to go outside for a smoke, my friend, Saddam said. His tone was patient and relaxed, as if he was allowing Hutch a moment to clear his head and wake up.

  Okay, sir, no problem, replied Hutch.

  I am ready when you are ready, continued Saddam.

  Hutch let out a faint curse as he got up, wincing. The cumulative effect of his four deployments had been more creakiness in his back than he should have had at his age.

  “You get up like an old man,” Saddam teased.

  Hutch smiled and gathered his clipboard, radio, a bottle of water, and the magazine he’d been flipping through.

  Once he’d collected everything he needed, Saddam stood back and allowed Hutch to lead the way through the short hallway and out into the rec area. The former president always insisted on the guards walking first, the opposite of the standard protocol. It was familiar to him, mirroring how he was escorted years before when he was in power. Hutch didn’t object to the deviation from the norm. Indeed, it could be useful, since on a few occasions he’d feel Saddam’s outstretched hand suddenly grasp the back of his arm for support as they navigated steps or bumps in the path.

  Though the former president fought never to exhibit any signs of weakness when in the courtroom or in the public eye—he “moved like a twenty-five-year-old in public,” Hutch would marvel—in the privacy of the Rock, Saddam would sometimes show signs of the sore hip, bad back, and swelling feet that bothered him.

  Once they made it outside, Saddam positioned the plastic patio chair carefully so that he wouldn’t be directly facing the blinding Baghdad sun, and then he slowly lowered himself into it. He groaned as he sank down. Then he lit one of his cigars.

  I used to enjoy American movies, Saddam volunteered, looking up from his cigar. And you know which ones were my favorite?

  No, responded Hutch, which ones did you like, sir?

  Cowboy movies, Saddam replied.

  Really? I like them, too, said Hutch, smiling.

  John Wayne, cowboys and Indians, Saddam added, suggesting that these were his favorites.

  The way Saddam would just start telling a random story, out of the blue, reminded Hutch of his grandfather. Like his grandfather, Hutch realized “that was what Saddam was left with—his memories—and I was letting him talk.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Baghdad, Iraq—December 2006

  The cold December air blew in over the man-made lake, gusting up against the walls of Saddam’s former palace, now his prison. Overnight temperatures dropping into the high thirties ushered in a new season, providing a bracing reminder that Saddam’s likely execution was fast approaching, barring a successful appeal of his death sentence, which no one expected.

  As Adam Rogerson sat outside with Saddam in the Rock’s rec area, the former president looked over at him and asked, You want to sit by the fire with me? He gestured to a plastic chair near the space heater he liked to call his “fire.”

  Rogerson had grown up inured to harsh Cleveland winters. Nonetheless, the air had a bite to it, and so he took Saddam up on the offer.

  The former president fired up one of his large Cohibas, the smoke from each exhalation wafting gently into the night sky. Rogerson would have liked a cigarette, but he and his fellow guards weren’t allowed to smoke while on duty, a policy that impacted a number of the Super Twelve, many of whom smoked. In addition to Rogerson, so did Hutch, Tasker, Perkins, Dawson, and Flanagan. Some, like Tasker, even supplemented their cigarette-supplied nicotine with chewing tobacco.

  Rogerson had brought a small package his wife had sent—care of his deployed Army Post Office (APO) address—outside with him into the rec area that night. In it were some candles she’d purchased at Walmart back home in Ohio. Mail delivery had an odd way of connecting his wife’s peaceful existence back home to his life in Iraq. Seeing a postal stamp from his hometown could be a source of both comfort and melancholy.

  Rogerson noticed that Saddam was studying him carefully as he opened the package, and appeared intrigued by its contents. My wife has been sending me these candles recently, Rogerson volunteered.

  I see that, Saddam said. What do you do with them?

  Actually, I don’t really need them, Rogerson said, laughing, but I suppose I can use them to make our living area smell better. You know how it is when a lot of guys spend so much time together—it can smell pretty nasty.

  Both men chuckled.

  Rogerson would end up using the candles to help illuminate, and freshen the smell, of the smoke pit where the Super Twelve would huddle to enjoy their cigarettes. The smoke pit was a tumbledown plywood enclosed area alongside the palace where they guarded Saddam on the Rock. It stood beside an abandoned pool; what had once been a shimmery surface of cool blue water was now an empty concrete hole in the ground.

  The scented candles were a funny sight in the hands of the burly, tattooed military policeman. He handed one to Saddam so he could take a closer look.

  Do you think maybe I could have one? Saddam asked.

  Sure, Rogerson replied.

  Thank you, my friend, said Saddam with a smile. He produced a pen and began to inscribe Arabic words in the candle, his hand moving across it with as much precision as he could muster. I’ve written a poem for my daughter, he said, before asking Rogerson to please give it to the Red Cross for delivery to her.

  Years later, moments like these would lead Rogerson to reflect that “Saddam had the best life you could possibly have in prison, and he liked us. I’m a true believer that if one of our helicopters went down and the insurgents came to get him, he wouldn’t have hurt us. We had a good relati
onship. I don’t think he would have hurt me. I know he wouldn’t have hurt Dawson. I know for sure he wouldn’t have hurt him.”

  A few weeks later it was Christmas Day, 2006, and Saddam remained at the Rock, awaiting a decision on his appeal. It was still freezing by Baghdad standards—temperatures would drop to thirty-five degrees overnight. There were few decorations to mark the holiday season, aside from a small Christmas tree that someone had bought at the Post Exchange (PX) and set up in the room where the Super Twelve’s three computer terminals were located. Little else distinguished Christmas from a normal day, save for a few more care packages arriving in the mail. Rogerson had been thrilled to open an especially large package that contained enough Cap’n Crunch Christmas cereal, along with other snacks and toiletries, for the entire squad.

  Private James Martin huddled with Saddam outside near his “fire.” Saddam was wearing his dishdasha with his favorite dark peacoat over it. The soldiers had noticed very little change in Saddam’s demeanor in the days following his sentence. He was sitting under the solitary outdoor light, intently focused on another of the candles Rogerson had given him, which was cradled in his lap. He had a pen in his hand and was writing on the candle—about the size of a large glass—marking it carefully in Arabic script. After laboring at his task for a while, Saddam looked up at Martin, who was trying to stay warm on the other side of the rec area.

  This is for my wife, the former president said.

  Really? Martin asked, somewhat surprised, as Saddam had never spent much time discussing his wife. When the subject of family came up, he generally steered the conversation to his children.

  Yes, we have a tradition, Saddam replied. Every year on the Christmas holiday we light a candle. I’m writing a poem for her on this one.

  Martin thought he detected in the old man a certain melancholy. Despite Saddam’s randy musings weeks before about finding a younger woman, on this particular night he seemed to miss his wife. Perhaps, too, he sensed that the end was near. For years now, gunfire and explosions could occasionally be heard in the distance, but, however much he talked up the possibility, no one had come to rescue him. Though in the courtroom playing to the cameras he’d projected great strength, in moments like this he appeared more vulnerable, his proudly erect bearing collapsing into a slump.

  Saddam’s odd observance of a Christian holiday tradition wasn’t the first time he’d displayed a surprising affinity for something Christianity-related. He’d recently surprised Private Jeff Price when he asked to watch The Passion of the Christ. He’d never before taken advantage of the opportunity to use the DVD player he’d been provided, preferring instead to busy himself writing poems. To watch this particular film, with its potentially incendiary religious content, he had to sign a waiver. He’d signed obligingly and after the film was finished expressed anger at the way the Jewish characters in the movie had treated Jesus. Saddam maintained that “Iraqis would have treated him better.” He went on to volunteer that it had been the best movie he’d ever seen, a response that Price thought was “pretty nice.”

  The next day, December 26, 2006, Saddam’s appeal was denied by the Iraqi judges in an eighteen-page decision that had been issued with remarkable speed. He would now most assuredly face death by hanging, required by law to take place within thirty days. The decision’s haste had caught American leadership by surprise. The U.S. ambassador and many other senior American officials stationed in Baghdad were taking holiday leave back in the States. Likely they’d underestimated the extent to which festering hatreds had accelerated the review process.

  The appeal’s rejection didn’t surprise the Super Twelve. Most had little doubt that Saddam was guilty of the violence for which he’d been charged, and they hadn’t expected him to get off. While spending time at the IHT, they’d heard some of the horrific testimony surrounding his chemical gas attacks on the Kurds. Still, they struggled to connect the brutality of Saddam’s past with the pleasant man they dealt with on a day-to-day basis.

  “When I’d see the trial going on, and what he’d done to his people,” Rogerson later recalled, “I’d be like ‘Holy shit,’ there’s a shitload of dead people, he just killed an entire city. I’d think, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ but then I’d see him, and I never looked at him like ‘You’re a psychopath,’ because [that person] wasn’t with me. . . . He was more like a grandpa.”

  In fact, Saddam would write an additional poem on one of Rogerson’s candles that Christmas. It was for the Super Twelve. Translating, he told them that it said he wished they could be back home in America with their families to celebrate Christmas, instead of guarding him in Iraq.

  CHAPTER 34

  Baghdad, Iraq—December 30, 2006

  Saddam was sleeping comfortably in his cell inside the Rock. The Super Twelve had been on standby for a few days, aware that orders to carry out the execution could come at any time. As the soldiers went about their daily tasks, they had an abstract understanding that their time with Saddam would shortly be over, but, having never participated in an execution before, the gravity of the situation hadn’t really sunk in. It somehow didn’t seem real that this charismatic older man, with whom they’d spent so much time, would soon be dead. Other than a bad back and some creaky bones, he seemed fine.

  Chris Tasker remembers that a few of them had even been annoyed that the impending execution meant they’d have to miss a performance by Kid Rock, who’d flown in for a Christmas visit to the troops. The visit wasn’t a complete bust, though. Tasker managed to spot the famous rocker as the soldier went for a smoke outside the chow hall after dinner one night.

  It wasn’t until the day before the execution, Friday, December 29, that they learned the mission was a go. Saddam had just enjoyed what would turn out to be his last meal, eagerly devouring the lobster tails that the soldiers had delivered to him from the Coalition Café dining facility on Camp Victory. Saddam had gained weight while in custody, and at one point jokingly lamented that he’d gotten “fat like an American.”

  A few hours later, Saddam said good night to Specialists Adam Rogerson and Art Perkins, who’d been quietly observing him from the small desk outside his cell. The guards turned out Saddam’s light after he’d lain down on his cot, taking care to speak in hushed tones so as not to disturb him. Hours before, Sergeant Battaglia had secretly broken Saddam’s small transistor radio to ensure he wasn’t inadvertently alerted to the timing of his execution, since news programs had already begun to report that he’d soon be put to death.

  Specialists Rogerson and Perkins sat vigil outside Saddam’s cell, quietly flipping through magazines as the old man slept his typical deep sleep, untroubled by what fate might have in store. The guards’ mood was somber, “Old Man” Perkins volunteering none of the random trivia that would alternately annoy and entertain his partners on long overnight shifts.

  At around 3:00 a.m., Lieutenant Jackson and the burly Lebanese-American interpreter, Joseph, arrived at Saddam’s cell. Nothing Jackson had learned in the course of his ROTC training, or his subsequent training to be a military police officer, had really prepared him for this moment. They turned on the light and went in.

  Tonight’s the night, they said, telling the former president that he needed to get up and begin making final preparations for his execution, which they explained would take place in a few hours. They knew that he didn’t like to be rushed, and so they were providing him plenty of time to get ready.

  Saddam took the news calmly, almost appearing to have anticipated it. He’d been sentenced to death before, he said, and it didn’t bother him.

  Joseph, who’d grown close to Saddam over the fifteen months they’d spent together, would later say that delivering this news was the most difficult moment of his life, since he now saw their relationship as “more of a friendship than that of criminal and translator.”

  It was early Friday night back in the States, and most Americans were going about their business, perhaps beginning the lon
g New Year’s holiday weekend with a dinner out, or maybe just relaxing on the couch and watching college football bowl games. Hutch wished he could be watching his beloved Longhorns take on Iowa in the Alamo Bowl. Those watching the holiday football games back home had no idea what was taking place half a world away. Most Americans’ minds had already drifted from the violence that was plaguing Iraq, content to return to the pleasant rhythms of life in an America where little had really changed since the attacks of 9/11, despite the breathless pronouncements that things would never be the same.

  Stephen Hadley, President Bush’s national security advisor, informed the president of the impending execution before he retired for the evening.

  The fact that the Iraqi authorities chose to execute Saddam early the following morning, at the beginning of the joyous Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan for Sunni Muslims (Shiites wouldn’t observe the holiday until one day later), was an ominous sign to those with an understanding of Islam. It looked like a gratuitous display of disrespect from the Shiite government that would inflame sectarian animosities even more.

  When they got the orders, Rogerson was unsure of what to expect. Tasker was worried that things could get wild, that there might be the Baghdad equivalent of a “last stand at the Alamo.” Suddenly, Saddam’s fanciful ruminations about being sprung from prison seemed a little less outlandish. Trying to quiet his anxiety, Tasker focused on doing what he’d been trained to do. He cleaned his weapon, checked his ammo magazines, and made sure he was as prepared as possible should things get hairy. Despite the unique nature of their assignment, the Super Twelve had experienced little real combat thus far in their deployment. In fact, they’d been so out of the fray that one would later describe them as little more than “babysitters” up to that point.

  As the rest of the Super Twelve began preparing for what would be their final mission escorting Saddam, two of them chuckled at an inside joke. Saddam heard them and, irritated, asked if they were happy at what was taking place. This frustration would prove to be one of the few lapses from his otherwise stoic demeanor.