| His stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassan, treated Saddam harshly after his return | After on 13 December 2003, the took place under the |
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| After secondary school, Saddam studied at an Iraqi law school for three years, dropping out in 1957 at the age of 20 to join the revolutionary pan-Arab , of which his uncle was a supporter | The choice of Saddam was, according to journalist , "hardly surprising |
| His biography—and Iraqi television, which stages the story ad nauseam—tells of his familiarity with guns from the age of ten; his fearlessness and loyalty to the party during the 1959 operation; his bravery in saving his comrades by commandeering a car at gunpoint; the bullet that was gouged out of his flesh under his direction in hiding; the iron discipline that led him to draw a gun on weaker comrades who would have dropped off a seriously wounded member of the hit team at a hospital; the calculating shrewdness that helped him save himself minutes before the police broke in leaving his wounded comrades behind; and finally the long trek of a wounded man from house to house, city to town, across the desert to refuge in | The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein |
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| Saddam Hussein might be wrong, but it is not America who should correct him | [ ] As a sign of his consolidation of power, Saddam's pervaded Iraqi society |
Saddam Hussein and of Syria at an in Baghdad in November 1978 Saddam developed a reputation for liking expensive goods, such as his diamond-coated wristwatch, and sent copies of them to his friends around the world.