Saddam asked to bathe, and he began to purify himself according to Muslim tradition at the sink in his cell. There’s a vulnerability that comes with stripping naked in front of a bunch of strangers. The former dictator who’d caused so much pain and suffering during his lifetime looked like any other old man as he washed himself for the final time. As individual Super Twelve members occasionally looked Saddam’s way, the knowledge that they’d soon play a role in the execution of this living, breathing human being—one who’d always been good to them—began to gnaw at their psyches. Saddam had spent a lifetime numbed—either by his brutal upbringing or by the violence that had punctuated his rule—to just this sort of empathy.
The former president continued to deliberately prepare for his final appearance on the world stage. He had trouble finding the right pair of socks, and so a few soldiers helped him rummage through some bags before finding them. Though a bit more harried than usual as he scrambled to prepare for his movement to the execution site, Saddam seemed, even now, to be genuinely concerned with the well-being of the Super Twelve, even asking whether they’d gotten enough sleep prior to the early-morning mission.
Saddam spent some time taking a mental inventory of his small collection of belongings, “just sitting there and looking at his stuff,” Hutch recalls. The soldier from Georgia was struck by how, “out of everything Saddam had ever owned and controlled,” he was now reduced to this almost pathetic collection of old books, papers, and a few suits. The former president took a few moments to leaf through some of the materials he’d written, appearing to be checking them one last time to make sure they accurately communicated his thoughts.
After spending a few more minutes going through his things, Saddam looked up and called out, “My friend,” as he usually would when trying to get a guard’s attention, beckoning for Hutch to come over.
Hutch first thought, All right, what does he want now? Then he noticed that Saddam was holding a blue box. He handed the box to Hutch through the bars. Next he extended his arm through the bars, took off the expensive Raymond Weil watch he was wearing, and also handed it to Hutch.
It took a moment for it to register: Saddam was actually offering him his watch. Hutch didn’t quite know how to respond. He fumbled for words, then said, “No, I can’t take this.”
Saddam responded, “I want you to have this—you are a good friend.”
Hutch knew that this was the fancy watch that Saddam preferred to wear when he made his courtroom appearances. He was partial to a simple Timex when alone in his cell. Hutch was concerned that he might not even be allowed to accept a gift like this, since he knew that the Army had rules and regulations governing every aspect of their existence.
He hesitated, telling Saddam, “I’m going to have to ask,” at which point the former president insisted, “You have it.” He smiled and said, “It will be for you and me to know. I’m not going to tell anyone.”
Saddam then clasped Hutch by the wrist with one hand and slid the watch on with his other. Hutch didn’t want to make a scene, and so he allowed the old man to put the watch on him. He rationalized that taking it would help ensure that this final night ran smoothly.
Saddam then carefully picked out one of his best suits to wear, as he always did before leaving the cell and appearing in public. He put on lots of cologne. One of the soldiers would later say, “You could smell him from a mile away.”
By now most of the Super Twelve had gathered near his cell to begin movement to the execution site. They were dressed in “full battle rattle,” complete with Kevlar vests and helmets mounted with night-vision goggles. They each carried a full combat load of hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Noticing the cluster of guards assembling nearby, Saddam took a break from making his final preparations and walked over to them. Standing tall, with his chest out, he told the twelve American military policemen that they’d become “more family to him” than any Iraqis had been. He said he was going to die like a soldier, and thanked them for having treated him so well. He then shook their hands in gratitude.
There was no longer, after all, any reason for the condemned man to fear germs.
A few of the soldiers noticed tears sliding down his face.
CHAPTER 35
Baghdad, Iraq—December 30, 2006
It was one of the coldest mornings the Super Twelve would spend in Iraq, with temperatures dropping to thirty-two in the chilly predawn hours. After a short helicopter ride over a sleeping Baghdad, followed by a quick drive squeezed into the armored Rhino, the heavily armed soldiers—whose mission had always been to ensure the safety and well-being of the dictator—delivered Saddam Hussein to his final destination.
The execution was to take place at the old Istikhbarat military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad’s Kadhimiya district, which ironically was rumored to have housed torture chambers where supposed “enemies of the state” had suffered during Saddam’s rule. The compound, by then known as Camp Justice, was nestled alongside the Tigris River, a few hundred kilometers downstream from the rough village into which Saddam had been born sixty-nine years earlier. Security was tight, with an American brigade providing external perimeter security and a sea of Iraqi security forces controlling the immediate area surrounding the gallows. The Americans were under strict orders not to enter the site, as it was considered imperative that there be no doubt this was an Iraqi operation.
As Saddam exited the hulking armored vehicle, his resolve appeared to stiffen with each descending step. It was almost as if he was consciously willing himself to a stoic acceptance of his fate, fortified by a defiant pride that he was dying for his country.
Specialist Rogerson would later say, “You can watch a million movies and be like ‘That guy’s about to be executed,’ but to actually physically see someone who is not about to die by natural causes, but, rather, have someone wrap a rope around their neck and kill them—just knowing that is so deflating. And to have him thank us, it was like ‘Oh my fucking God.’ ”
The Super Twelve waited just outside the building that housed the gallows. The building in which Saddam was scheduled to be hanged was constructed out of cinder block and a flimsy tin-like material and partially open to the outside, almost like a barn. While from their vantage point outside the soldiers couldn’t see the gallows directly, they could see spectral shadows of the elevated stage with the rope hanging from it.
As they waited, Hutch found himself bothered by the fact that he knew Saddam hated the idea of being hanged—almost more so than being sentenced to death in the first place.
The Iraqi to whom Saddam was turned over, and who was responsible for managing the execution, was Mowaffaq al-Rubbaie. Rubbaie was serving as Iraq’s national security advisor. He had once been a member of Iraq’s Shiite Dawa Party—the same party responsible for the assassination attempt on Saddam in Dujail that had triggered the draconian response for which Saddam had been tried and was now to be executed. Rubbaie himself had reportedly been tortured repeatedly by Saddam’s security forces prior to fleeing to London in 1979, where he would remain in exile until 2003.
Rubbaie received the handcuffed Saddam from the Americans and led him into a room where a judge read the list of indictments out loud to him. Saddam was carrying his Koran and appeared to Rubbaie to be “normal and relaxed.” He showed no regret as the charges were read.
Rubbaie then led Saddam to the gallows.
At that point, a curious incident took place. As they mounted the first steps, Saddam stopped, looked at the gallows, then looked Rubbaie up and down, and said, “Doctor, this is for men.” Saddam seems to have been trying to exude an almost theatrical fearlessness.
The former president was then escorted by masked executioners up a flight of stairs and toward a large noose and waiting trapdoor. None of the executioners were in uniform. One wore a leather jacket and the other a tan coat. Saddam, by contrast, appeared almost statesmanlike, clad in a dark overcoat with a white shirt visible und
erneath, a few inches taller than his killers. His unflinching bearing was striking, as he maintained his erect posture and businesslike expression throughout. He seemed to be channeling whatever reserves remained of the flinty and emotionless resolve of his younger days, when he would coolly send Iraqis to their deaths, casually puffing on his cigar as their lives were extinguished. He succeeded in denying the crowd the satisfaction of seeing him tremble. Rather, he followed the executioners’ instructions obediently, with no visible fear.
He refused to wear a hood.
Saddam had often, somewhat cryptically, instructed his subordinates to “preserve the last scene,” recalls his former general Ra’ad al-Hamdani. It was a Bedouin idea: that life has many scenes, but the one that will be etched in history is the last one. Hamdani recalls how, on a visit to the front lines during the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam had rallied a motley collection of exhausted troops, still licking their wounds from a recent defeat, telling them that no matter the result, they’d be remembered forever if they died fighting bravely.
Saddam knew this would be his last scene, an opportunity to rehabilitate his image and erase the shameful memory of being dragged out of that spider hole in abject surrender three years before. His unflinching attitude in the moments before his hanging was “typical Saddam,” according to Hutchinson.
That he was the only person visible on the gallows without a mask lent him a certain dignity in what otherwise was a sloppy, unprofessional affair. The entire scene was a grim reminder that despite the civilized trappings of modern courts like the Iraqi High Tribunal, hanging remains a most primitive physical operation. Using unsophisticated implements like ropes and scaffolding, execution by hanging inflicts catastrophic trauma on the human organism, often fracturing vertebrae, tearing muscles and blood vessels, and leading to the discharge of feces and urine. There was something especially haunting about the way in which one of the hooded executioners carefully, almost gently, put a scarf around Saddam’s neck, as if to avoid causing undue discomfort mere moments before the neck would be snapped.
Pro-Shiite shouts of “Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada” pierced the morbid stillness. Camera flashes went off, adding to the tawdry and spectral aura. Saddam chuckled, and mockingly responded to the sectarian taunts, “Do you consider this bravery?”
A voice shouted, “Go to hell.”
Saddam replied, “The hell that is Iraq?”
The taunts were almost as revealing in how they were uttered as in what was being said. The former CIA officer John Maguire says, “If you listen to the video with Iraqis, everyone says that the people in the room are scared—there is fear in the room. Those aren’t voices of triumph—‘we are going to kill this motherfucker’—but rather, ‘we need to kill him now, before something bad happens.’ ”
“They were scared shitless,” he says, “because Saddam wasn’t scared.”
CHAPTER 36
Baghdad, Iraq—December 30, 2006
The Super Twelve were quiet as they sat outside the gallows. The hasty preparation that had preceded their departure from the Rock, and the anxiety of delivering their prisoner without a hitch, had dwindled to uncomfortable silence as they waited for the trapdoor to open under Saddam and end his life. Some of the soldiers had already begun feeling a strange unease. They didn’t fully recognize it at the time, but it was dawning on them that playing a role in the death of a person one has grown to know is radically different from shooting an anonymous insurgent two hundred meters away.
Finally, after about an hour, their morbid thoughts were interrupted by a thunderous crash. It echoed through their bodies. Hutch recalls that it sounded like a bomb going off, and it took his breath away.
Saddam had been midway through reciting the Shahada, the Islamic profession of faith, when the floor dropped from under him, an audible crack echoing inside the execution room as his neck was broken. His body remained suspended for a few minutes before a doctor listened for a heartbeat with a stethoscope and, hearing none, pronounced him dead shortly after 6:00 a.m. A cacophony of gunfire followed, momentarily spooking the Americans into thinking there was a last-minute rescue attempt. Rather, it was just a show of jubilance from Saddam’s enemies now that the moment they’d long hungered for had become a reality.
Saddam had stood out as the most dignified person in the sordid affair, an especially self-willed victory for a man whose lifelong barbaric crimes had hardly earned him nobility in death. Even Mowaffaq al-Rubbaie, who’d suffered grievously at the hands of Saddam’s regime, was struck by Saddam’s equanimity as he approached the end.
“A criminal? True. A killer? True. A butcher? True. But he was strong until the end.”
The Super Twelve stood by silently as Saddam’s body, wrapped in a white shroud, was carried from the gallows to be placed in the back of a waiting Humvee. Before the corpse could be loaded, though, a crowd of frenzied Iraqis formed a conga line around it, dancing wildly, chanting with unrestrained joy, and spitting on and kicking the wrapped flesh of the leader they’d loathed. Specialist Rogerson couldn’t believe they had to stand by idly as the Iraqis were “shooting into the sky, screaming, carrying him, kicking the shit out of his dead body . . . it made me so upset. Why were they doing this? I’m watching this, and I’m like ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ ”
Hutch, too, was appalled at what he was seeing, and that they’d been ordered not to interfere. “I was raised tough—I don’t cry at funerals, and none of the men in my family do,” he said later, “but I was emotional when I saw what happened at that execution. It was a betrayal. We’d tried so hard to make it honorable, and in a short period of time they destroyed everything.”
Having spent their entire deployment working to ensure that Saddam was safe, healthy, and treated with respect, it was painful for the Americans to be forced to stand by impotently as the Iraqis made a perverse mockery of what was their first critical “post-Saddam” mission.
Joseph, the interpreter who’d grown very close to Saddam, was the most upset. Enraged, he lunged toward the fracas, hoping to give the old man he’d come to know—and against all expectation, like—some last shred of dignity. Hutch was worried about what might happen to Joseph if he got overpowered by the mob, and so he grabbed the big man from behind by his body armor, keeping him a safe distance from the wild scrum.
The Bush administration had long promoted the idea that Saddam’s execution would usher in a new era of Iraqi reconciliation. This new era did not last five minutes.
The sectarian violence outside the gallows was also exploding elsewhere across the country. Saddam Hussein would have plenty of company in violent death that day, much of it the result of incensed Sunni militants targeting Shiites. Within hours of the execution, five Iraqis were killed by a suicide bomber in Tal Afar; four were tortured and shot to death in Mahmudiya; thirty-six were killed and fifty-eight wounded when a car bomb ripped apart a market filled with holiday shoppers in the Shiite holy city of Najaf; thirty-six were killed and seventy-seven wounded when three car bombs tore through a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad; and twelve tortured bodies were discovered strewn elsewhere across the capital.
The sun was beginning to come up as the Super Twelve drove back to the Rock from the execution site. Some of the soldiers had been up for nearly twenty-four long hours, and were barely able to keep their eyes open as they navigated their way back through Baghdad to the place they now considered home. When they finally got to the Rock, they found Saddam’s cell eerily untouched, just as they’d left it. His clothes, papers, water bottles, and cigars were still there—all that remained of the man who’d once constructed forty-eight palaces at a reported cost of $2.2 billion.
The Super Twelve organized Saddam’s remaining possessions so that they could be collected and returned to his family by his lawyers.
Meanwhile, a helicopter transported Saddam’s dead body from the execution site to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s residence in the Green Zone, almost as if it were a troph
y kill from a hunting expedition. The body had to be put on the floor of the helicopter, which then flew with the doors open, as it was crowded, and the body was too long to fit otherwise. Mowaffaq al-Rubbaie accompanied the corpse as they passed over the city Saddam had not long before ruled with absolute power. Upon arrival, Rubbaie displayed the body to Maliki, who replied, “God bless you.”
Rubbaie couldn’t have been too troubled by the ghoulish spectacle over which he’d presided, since he later asked for, and kept, the noose in which Saddam’s neck had snapped.
Saddam’s body was then flown up to Tikrit, his ancestral homeland, and returned to Sheikh Ali al-Nida, the head of his Albu Nasir tribe (who would himself be assassinated two years later). Iraq’s former president was buried in the dead of night, near his two sons, Uday and Qusay, who’d been killed in a shoot-out with U.S. troops a few years earlier. Saddam the poet might have appreciated the dramatic symmetry. The once all-powerful dictator had come full circle. Born near Tikrit with nothing, and armed with little more than ferocious ambition, ruthlessness, and guile, he’d amassed unrivaled power. Decades later, stripped of it all, he would return a fugitive, hunted by the world’s most powerful military, seeking refuge in a dirty barn before finally being discovered in a small underground hole. And now, he’d come home one final time, leaving behind a decades-long trail of blood and sorrow, the collateral damage of his unquenchable thirst for power.
In Washington politicians and diplomats hoped that Saddam’s execution would mark a new, more peaceful phase in Iraqi history. While President Bush acknowledged that the execution wouldn’t end the violence in Iraq, he said that it would mark “an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror.” White House spokesman David Almacy reported that on the morning of the execution, “President Bush arose shortly before five a.m. Central Time and had a ten-minute phone call an hour later with National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley to discuss world reaction to the execution.”
The Prisoner in His Palace Page 18