Saddam 'can't get enough Doritos'

Saddam Hussein loves Doritos, hates Froot Loops, admires President Ronald Reagan, thinks Bill Clinton was “okay” and considers both presidents George Bush “no good”. He talks a lot, worries about germs and insists he is still president of Iraq.

Those and other details of the deposed Iraqi leader’s life in US military custody appear in the July issue of GQ magazine, based on interviews with five Pennsylvania National Guardsmen who went to Iraq in 2003 and were assigned to Saddam’s guard detail for nearly 10 months.

The story said that once, when Saddam fell during his twice-a-week shower, “panic ensued. No one wanted him to be hurt while being guarded by Americans.” One GI had to help Saddam back to his cell, while another carried his underwear.

Saddam was friendly toward his young guards and sometimes offered fatherly advice. When one soldier told him he was not married, Saddam “started telling me what to do”, recalled the soldier. “

He was like: ‘You gotta find a good woman. Not too smart, not too dumb. Not too old, not too young. One that can cook and clean.'"

Then he smiled, made what was interpreted as a ”spanking” gesture, laughed and went back to doing his laundry in the sink.

The magazine said Saddam told his guards that when the Americans invaded Iraq in March 2003, he “tried to flee in a taxicab as the tanks were rolling in” and US planes struck the palace he was trying to reach instead of the one he was in.

“Then he started laughing,” recalled one soldier. “He goes: ‘America, they dumb. They bomb wrong palace.'"

Saddam also said his capture in an underground hideout on December 13, 2003, resulted from betrayal by the only man who knew where he was, and had been paid to keep the secret.

“He was really mad about that,” the soldier said. “He compared himself to Jesus, how Judas told on Jesus. He was like: ‘That’s how it was for me.’ If his Judas never said anything, nobody ever would have found him, he said.”

The magazine said Saddam prayed five times a day and kept a Quran that he claimed to have found in rubble near his hideout. “He proudly showed (it) to the boys because it was burned around the edges and had a bullet hole in it,” GQ said.