"The Bush father, son, no good," one of the soldiers, Cpl. Jonathan "Paco" Reese, 22, of Millville, Pa., quotes Saddam as saying. But his fellow GI, Specialist Sean O'Shea, then 19, says Saddam later softened that view.
"Towards the end he was saying that he doesn't hold any hard feelings and he just wanted to talk to Bush, to make friends with him," O'Shea, of Minooka, Pa., told the magazine.
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O'Shea said when he told him he was not married, Saddam "started telling me what to do." "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 O'Shea interpreted as a "spanking" gesture, laughed and went back to washing his clothes in the sink.
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For a time his favorite food was Cheetos, and when those ran out, Saddam would "get grumpy," the story says. One day the guards substituted Doritos corn chips, and Saddam forgot about Cheetos. "He'd eat a family size bag of Doritos in 10 minutes," Dawson says.
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According to the author, 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 the U.S. planes attacked the palace to which he intended to escape rather than the one he was in, injuring some of his bodyguards.
"But then he started laughing," recalls Reese. "He goes, `America, they dumb. They bomb wrong palace.'"
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Saddam told the guards his capture in an underground hideout on Dec. 18, 2003, resulted from a betrayal by the only man who knew where he was, and had been paid to keep the secret.
"He was really mad about that," says Dawson. "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."
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He insisted that everything he did, including the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, was for the good of his people, and invited his guards to return to Iraq and stay at his palace after he was restored to power.
"He'd always tell us he was still the president. That's what he thinks, One hundred percent," says Dawson.
