Copyright © 2011 Jaideep Ranade

Tyrants have common traits: rise to power by ousting existing governments with their own parties formed of personal religion, some form of facial hair, a penchant for killing a lot of innocents (although some would argue as to the innocence of those involved), grandiose plans of conquest and domination, wearing uniforms night and day (because it’s easier to get women that way), completely and utterly failing in their ultimate goals, and dying at the hands of others. Saddam was no different… with his Ba’ath party focusing on personal hygiene, a mustache that would have shamed Hitler into becoming an effeminate transvestite had he been around…. being executed by ‘those meddlesome Americans’. And just as Germans killed the Jews, and the Italians killed the Jews, and the Russians killed the Jews, and the Arabs killed the Jews, and the Yugoslavians killed the Jews, and the Poles killed the Jews, and Slovakians killed the Jews… Saddam killed… Kurds. He wanted to be unique. One could argue his dislike of Kurds was quite logical: he was lactose intolerant, and misinformed about what he could and could not tolerate.

After a failed attempt at conquering his oil-rich neighbour, and a series of ferocious golf matches with Kuwaiti president Jaber Al-Sabah that ended in both their mistresses mud-wrestling, which the media typo-ed as the Gulf War, Saddam was eventually captured by the Americans while he was doing laundry, handed over to his own people, tried and convicted and executed. His last words before his execution, captured on videotape which was later destroyed, clearly aimed at the Americans, were, “I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids!”