The Bird-Man of Camp Cropper
By Apropos of nothing, there’s this from The Guardian:
Saddam Hussein was mostly an uncomplaining prisoner who saved crumbs to feed the birds, watered weeds in the jail compound and believed that cigars were good for his health, according to a military nurse who cared for him in US custody.
Master Sergeant Robert Ellis told an American newspaper he had checked Saddam’s health twice a day, with orders to do whatever was needed to keep him alive. “That was my job: to keep him alive and healthy, so they could kill him at a later date,” he said in an interview with the St Louis Post-Dispatch published on Sunday. . . .
He did not complain much, Mr Ellis said — “he had very good coping skills” — and if he did complain it was usually a reasonable grievance. At one point he went on hunger strike because the guards were sliding food to him though a slot in the door but he started eating again when they delivered it to him in person. “He refused to be fed like a lion,” Sgt Ellis said.
When he was allowed short visits outdoors, Saddam would feed birds with bread saved from his meals and water a patch of weeds. “He said he was a farmer when he was young and he never forgot where he came from,” Sgt Ellis said.
… which I suppose explains why he chose to fertilize the Iraqi soil with so many nutrient-rich corpses.