GROUND ZER0, New York, N.Y.--Dec. 17, 2003 --  I am hunching my six-foot-four-inch body next to Saddam Hussein  in a cramped dirty hot spider hole.  I'm trying not to hold my nose.  A gagging stench of pig waste, dog urine and methane mixes with the former President of Iraq’s foul body odor.   
     Saddam, often called The Butcher of Baghdad, rabidly scratches at his scraggly beard.   His eyes flick wildly left and right, up and down, left and left, right and right, ferret like in the dim light leaking in through cracks and fissures where the trap door top of the dirt hole we are in didn't seal.

      “Shhhhh,” he hisses, shoving a dirty index finger to cracked lips.   “The Americans are above, looking for my hole.  They want to kill me.”
       I squeeze myself against the crumbling dirt wall, trying to not gag as the odious odor of human feces stings my nostrils.   I swallow hard, fighting my body’s internal revulsion to my presence in the squalid hole in which the former ruler of 25 million people now resides.   Saddam has transformed from Palace Tyrant to Rat Hole Survivor.   His mission today is to swim with the maggots of the earth, hoping that the Special Forces scuffing the earth above will not find his “spider hole” and take him into custody where he will be put on trial for his 21^st Century “crimes against humanity.”
       Who am I?   I am a TerrorHunter.  A TerrorHunter reporter to be exact.  The Sentinels of Vigilance led me to Saddam’s dirt hole near Tikrit.   My assignment is  to interview the Beast of Terror before his capture; to find out what, if any, justification Saddam offers the world for living the life of the Beast of Terror and delivering tyranny and oppression to tens of thousands.

      Saddam grunts and adjusts the Styrofoam cover sealing the hole.  Above, someone walking over it would not notice it was a lid for a hole.   They would be hard-pressed to think that Saddam Hussein, who built palaces like some people collect credit cards,  was now bed partners with grub worms, fleas and lice.
       I'd been here before, however.  In Vietnam, about three decades ago when Saddam was killing his way to the top of the leadership ladder in Iraq, I was crawling through V.C. tunnels hunting the enemy.   The tunnels were claustrophobic and carried the stench of dead things as this one does.   The earth, you know,  is a mother sponge.  It absorbs us all eventually.   Ultimately, all that exists is ultimately consumed into Mother Earth's womb.   Our blood, our sweat, the flakes of our skin, our human waste, our tears eventually find their way to the earth, fertilizing it in graves of time.    When we die, we decompose into it--ashes to ashes, dust to dust.   Then it all recycles.
       Caves and graves carry the scent of all life’s decay.   The earth is the vault of all that was, human and inhuman.  Here, amidst the blood of his torture and rape victims, in the tomb of his former crimes where tens of thousands of his enemies' blood drained, The Beast of Baghdad is reduced to a Maggot of The Earth.  I watch him feed on Fear, Intimidation and Complacency--the Triads of Terrorism he used to rule Iraq with for more than 24 years.   He is the dog he once kicked.   He is the hunted rabbit cowering in the darkness, waiting to die with no place left to hide.

      I pull my pencil from the wire spirals where I keep it holstered in my notepad.   I think momentarily about stabbing Saddam in the eye.  It would be easy to drive the  carbon-tipped 2-H yellow spear into his brain and end his life as brutally as he killed, or had killed, or allowed to be killed, thousands of men, women and children over the past two decades.
      But I'm not a warrior anymore.   As a former U.S. Marine, with a hundred combat operations under my belt, killing still seems as easy a solution as blinking one’s eye.   Warriors don’t think about it when they’re doing it.   It's part of the job.
           I think warriors only ponder death afterwards, when they realize the ease of delivering it to the living.   Standing over a dead body, sprawled lifelessly with its eyes glaring into nothingness, its arms splayed out like the appendages of a cross, flies sucking up the drying blood oozing from the corners of the body’s mouth--in that repose there is no glory in battle.  Well, at least for me there wasn't.
          There is only the dulling of the warrior's soul, the feeling that any drops of  innocence that may be left inside the human soul is leaking out, leaving the soul to be tearless, unable to feel compassion for others because the fuel, the innocence of the soul, has evaporated.
          Killing Saddam would not repair his damage.  No matter how ugly the victim of death may have been, no matter how cruel and vile his atrocities, staring at the dead body of the Beast is not healing.  Dead bodies are dead bodies.   They offer nothing to life except to remind the living of its finality, its eventuality.

       I shook off the thought of cramming my pencil into Saddam’s brain.   That wasn’t my job, however inviting the thought was.   Instead, I breathe through my mouth so I won't gag and poise the pencil over the paper in the near darkness.   Over years of reporting I learned how to write in the dark.  I can also read upside down what a memo says sitting on an executive’s desk I am interviewing.
         “Mr. Hussein,” I whisper, “Why did you kill, torture and maim so many of your own people.”
          Saddam pulls at his beard.   It is spun in gnarled wires of gray and black, dotted with tiny clumps of dirt clinging to the threads like flies hover over rotting flesh.    He whispers his answer, stabbing his finger up to remind me he is no longer the hunter but now the hunted.
         “I am the Father of the children of Iraq.  I have the right to teach them lessons as I see fit.   The lives of the few to control the lives of the many are given so that order may be maintained.”
          He opens a candy bar wrapper and bites down.   I hear his lips smack.  
          “You justify tyranny and oppression as a parent?”
         “All parents have that right over their children,” he hisses.  “If your children do not mind you, you punish them.   You have that right.   I was only punishing bad children to make the other children obey.    That is the right of the parent.  It always has been.  It always will be.”
           Saddam inches back against the dirt wall.   His Voice trembles as he spews out the word.  There is a hint he may not believe them as he might have once when surrounded by the gold and glitter of the palaces he once strolled about in regality, giving candy to his grandchildren and boasting of his manifest destiny to stand up to all who defy his power.

       “You mean a parent has a right to torture, rape and kill a child who doesn’t obey?”
           Saddam takes another bite at the candy, wipes his mouth with his sleeve.  I feel his eyes radar at me.
      “You are talking about the Kurds.   They were deformed children.   You abort children every day in America.   You kill more than a million a year.   The Kurds were deformed.   They were rebellious children, unwanted.   As your children are you kill before they are born.  I am no more a criminal than your country is about obedience.    I let them live some life before they were killed.   That is more than you do.”
            “Mr. Hussein, you believe you have a right to take any life you wish, in any way you wish it?”
            “I am the President of Iraq.  I am the leader.  I am the Father of the Nation.   Every leader of every nation makes decisions each day to take lives.   Above this hole, one hundred and fifty thousand Americans are standing at the doorstep of death.  They have all been sent to die if necessary.    If this war goes on, and you draft the children of your land, you will willingly send them to die too.    How someone dies doesn’t really matter.  Death matters.   Justifying how someone dies is irrelevant.   Torture, rape, murder—what difference does it make if death results?   A certain number of people must die for others to live.   It is the way of things.   If I chose who is to die and how they are to die, that is my business.   I am the Father of the Nation.  The people rely on my ultimate wisdom.   You forget, leaders are nothing more than executioners.   They make decisions to kill others so many may live."   He pauses, listening for the sounds of soldiers' feet.   Satisfied there are none, he goes on.

       “My friend, Kim Jong Il, is accused of starving his people so he can spend much in building military defenses.   Perhaps many have to die so that North Korea can be strong.   One day, when North Korea has nuclear weapons, the world will shudder.   The people who starved so that the missiles would keep the West at bay will turn to golden eggs.   People will pay tribute to North Korea and the children will grow strong because the country defied the West.   Many more will live in the future.  Those who die in the present are servants to the future.”
          I take another breath through my mouth, nervous I might hurl my guts out if I were to inhale through my nose.   The Beast of Terror before me  speaks as though he believes every word. I clench my teeth, forcing my questions to not reveal my own true feelings.
          “Then you have no remorse?   You feel justified in everything you have done to others?
           Saddam flicks a crawly creature off his shoulder and his eyes bounce about as a sound thumps above.   It echoes through the earth, a tintinnabulation of one of Poe's final heartbeats of a man buried alive.   Saddam sucks in a breath of hot, rancid air.    His words whisper at me.

       “Remorse is for those who have abdicated their rights of parenthood.   I am the Father of Iraq.   I have the ultimate rights of leadership over all my children.   You know I killed my daughters’ husbands.  I dragged their bodies through Baghdad behind a truck.   I killed my grandchildren’s fathers because they disobeyed me.  They took important papers on our Weapons of Mass Destruction to the United Nations.   Those were family secrets.   They robbed their country of the right to defend its self.   They were traitors to their children, to their wives, to their country.   Defiance is treasonable.   A child who defies his or her parents faces the worst of consequences.    You call it child abuse in your country.  I call it discipline.    You must make examples of defiance or you cannot lead.   Husbands who punish wives for disobeying them are acting in accordance to the law of discipline.   Torturing, raping, executing others were nothing more than forms of maintaining respect for authority.    The more severe the price for dissent, the greater the discipline.    If someone threatens your country’s national security, they are considered traitors.   They will be executed.     Or, they should be.    Iraq’s national security is managed person-by-person.  A single act of defiance by one citizen is as dangerous as one of you Americans selling national defense secrets to your worst enemy.    I have no remorse for maintaining the security of Iraq.   Before you invaded our country we had a great army, a great country destined to rule the Middle East.    Now, you have stolen from us the right to keep discipline as the foundation of humanity.   You have raped, pillaged and plundered my right of authority.   You are the true Beasts of Terror.   You should be the ones to sing the songs of remorse for the crimes you have committed.  Look at the anarchy that exists today in Iraq.   You have unleashed Terrorism.  I controlled it with a few deaths here and there.   Millions didn’t die.   You forget that.  Remorse.  I have none.”
        Saddam doesn't look at me as he sibilates.   He is busy plucking at the fleas and tics that he has vaingloriously tried to evict.   My skin prickles, not because spiders are crawling over me, but at the emptiness of Saddam’s words, at his lack of any compassion for others, at his insatiable appetite to sweep his reasoning into the corner of parental self-righteousness.
        “When the Special Forces find you, what will you do?  Will you kill yourself?  Will you fight to the death like your sons did?   Will you show the world that you are willing to die for your beliefs?”

       “Of course not.  I am not stupid.   Stupid people take their lives.   I will surrender.  I will be given a bath and a shave.  I will get good food and clean clothes.   Then, I will tell my story to the world.    They will see me not as the Beast of Terror, but as the Father of Vigilance.  They will see my ironhanded rule of people as that of a god.   God does not stand by and let people defy him.  He sends floods and pestilence and war to strike them down.   God rules the world with Fear, Intimidation and Complacency—those things you think are the Triads of Terrorism.   People grovel before God.   They fear His wrath.   Still, they are His children.   Last century, He killed more than 100 million in wars alone.   Why?   Because He reminds His children that if they do not Fear Him, if they aren’t Intimidated by Him, if they aren’t Complacent in their attempts to defy Him, He will strike them down, cripple them, rape, pillage and plunder their lands.   I am Saddam Hussein, a god.   I am equal to God’s rule.   Judged by God’s rules, I will be acquitted.   My crimes are but a mere grain of sand on the beaches of time compared to God’s many crimes.    How could I be judged anything but a great leader, the greatest in modern history?"

        “I noted you carry a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf in your back pocket.    Hitler killed himself rather than be captured.   Wouldn’t you want your followers to know you were brave enough to die rather than become a prisoner as Hitler chose.”
         “Foolish man,” Saddam squats down and diggsat the dirt with the end of a twig he finds on the dirt floor.   “Hitler grew insane as the end.   Had he been smart, he would have sent doubles of himself all through the land, as I did.   He would have dug a hole in the dirt, hid himself where no one would think to look.  Who would, mind you, think that the great Saddam Hussein would hide out in a dirt hole?    My hiding place is genius itself.   Hitler wasn’t God.  God would never kill himself.    God would negotiate with his children, try and convince them he really was a good guy.   Why, think about it.  God did that.  He sent Jesus to the earth.   He negotiated with the people through His son.    I can do that myself.  Look at me.   I am not the same man I was.  I am like Jesus who went to the desert for forty days and forty nights and humbled himself.   I don’t look like a Terrorist, do I?   I look like any human being.   I look average.    I have the filth of the earth in my pores.   I am unworthy of being accused of crimes against humanity.   I am a changed man—a man who lives in a hole in the earth and eats candy bars and doesn’t bathe or shave.   Who could call me a Beast of Terror?   I am just a man.   A dirty, hungry, lonely man.   The world will take pity on me, as they took pity on Jesus.   And, as Jesus did, I will rise again.”
         “You believe you will be exonerated and returned to power.”
         “Absolutely.   Do you think Courage, Conviction and Right Actions for the Children’s Children’s Children has more power than Fear, Intimidation and Complacency within the realm of humanity?    Don’t kid yourself.   The barrel of a gun, or the torturer’s whip, has much more power to make humanity stand at attention than your Pledge of Vigilance, your Principles of Vigilance, your Plus One Percent Thought System."
       I feel the smart of Saddam's personal attack on me.   His words spear at me.  I think about the pencil--about shoving it into his eye.  Then I remember I am a TerrorHunter.   I must be stronger than the Terror facing me and not surrender to it.

         Saddam continues:  "The world is ruled by brute power.  It always has been.  It always will be.   The people who believe the average person will take on the duty of teaching their children to be Courageous, full of Conviction and take Right Actions for the future generations are blind to Terrorism’s true power.    Fear will strip Courage in a blink of an eye.    Intimidation will steal away all the Conviction in the world, especially if it comes in the form of a knife to one’s throat.   And Complacency—ah, yes—it will rule the world forever.  People will always turn their heads and say:  ‘Oh, that’s not my job.’   Or, ‘I don’t want to get involved.’   Or, ‘I’ll do that tomorrow.’   Right Action will not replace complacency for future generations because people are natural followers not natural leaders.  They will moo like cows behind this group or that group and do what they are told, believe in what they are told to believe."
        I note Saddam's Voice is growing louder.

       " I will win in the great courtroom of human experience.   They will see Saddam as the God of Discipline.   They will honor me as they honor Jesus.  I will rise again.”
         Just then a bright shaft of light rips into the dark hole.  Above stand American Special Forces with guns aimed at Saddam.    Saddam slowly raises his hands and says:  “I am Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq.   I am willing to negotiate.”

Dec. 16--Pills Of "Fat Terror" Disguised As Pills Of "Thin Vigilance"

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