NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS-HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY. ....................................................... ................. PANORAMA SADDAM A Warning From History RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 3:11:02 ....................................................... ................. “Conflict: Desert Storm” SIMPSON: A brand new game has hit America’s computer screens as Saddam Hussein lurks in his bunker the forces of freedom and democracy close in for the kill. It treats Saddam as just another cartoon villain. In Iraq he seems equally two dimensional. Every single night state television broadcasts a different music video starring him. But which of Saddam’s many faces is the real one? And as the final showdown comes, what lessons can we draw from the past about what he will do now? SIMPSON: For years Saddam Hussein has been fooling everyone. A German forensic scientist Dieter Buhmann, armed with the latest computer technology, has analysed thousands of hours of video footage and made an extraordinary discovery. BUHMANN: On the left side is the real Mr Saddam Hussein, on the right side is Mr Hussein in the year 94. SIMPSON: He takes careful measurements of the images of the genuine Saddam. He knows there is one double but he is surprised at what he finds. BUHMANN: I found the left one is the real Saddam Hussein in the year 1990, the second is a double and that is the other doubles. SIMPSON: Are you absolutely certain that those are four different men that we are looking at there? BUHMANN: I am absolutely sure. SIMPSON: It’s part survival technique, part a useful convenience. Saddam can’t be bothered to meet the less important foreign visitors. The Austrian far right leader Joerg Heider for instance. He thought he was meeting the real Saddam. Dieter Buhmann shows he merely met a fake. BUHMANN: This is a picture of the double, you see a lot of differences in the anatomical areas. The corner of the left eyelid is in the wrong place. The top of the nose has another form and the ear is different and altogether you can be sure that they are two different persons. SIMPSON: It’s Saddam’s birthday and the people of Baghdad are celebrating compulsorily. Privately almost everyone would be glad to get him off their backs but it is suicidal to say so. The images are everywhere but the man himself is nowhere to be seen. His elusiveness has helped to keep him in power for 23 years. But now, as the American pressure on him builds up, those who have watched him are certain that he will come out and fight. Sir STEPHEN EGERTON British Ambassador to Iraq, 1980-82 I don’t think bullies die in bunkers. He will always try and get out somehow. General BRENT SCOWCROFT US National Security Advisor, 1989-93 I think he is an absolutely dangerous man. Because he is relentless. He simply doesn’t quit. Dr HUSSAIN AL-SHAHRISTANI Former Chief Scientist Iraq’s civil nuclear programme He was on record on Iraqi television, when he first came to power, saying that we have come to stay. If we have to go, everybody else will be going with us. SIMPSON: Saddam’s violent, proud, defiant character was formed by a dreadful childhood, deprived and brutalised 12 miles from the town of Tikrit. He was born here 65 years ago. This is the first time his closest childhood friend has spoken publicly about him. IBRAHIM ZOBEDI Childhood friend of Saddam He feels that he is lonely, nobody likes him, especially his uncle always, you know, laugh at him and treated him as a dummy. He doesn’t like to go to school, he is always alone, walked alone, stay alone, and he has very, very few friends. SIMPSON: He was routinely beaten by his step-father. HASSAN AL-ALAWI Former friend of Saddam He used to carry an iron bar to protect himself from stray dogs or other people. Society neglected Saddam when he was a child. Saddam grew up believing that the only thing he could trust was that iron bar. SIMPSON: The child with the iron bar turned into a violent youth but he was soon to find an outlet for all this violence. In 1950’s Baghdad the young Saddam was drawn into nationalist politics. Iraq has had a long tradition of political murder. At 22 the opposition Ba’ath party recruited him to assassinate the Iraqi president in his car. Saddam loved the whole business. He wasn’t ashamed of what he had done, on the contrary, he would one day hire a Hollywood director to make a film about it. “The Long Days” SIMPSON: You have to watch quite carefully to realise that the attack actually failed. No matter, it was the making of him. SAID ABURISH Saddam’s Biographer That was the first time anybody heard about somebody called Saddam Hussein and that is the way he rose to power. It wasn’t through any of the institutions or organisations of the State, it was through being a tough thug - really - for the party. SIMPSON: Even by Iraq’s bloody standards, Saddam’s Ba’athists were ferocious, yet when they seized power in 1968 they had the backing of the CIA which thought their nationalism was better than the old government’s communism. Saddam was the new president’s deputy and the party’s enforcer. JERROLD POST Former senior political psychologist for CIA Analysed Saddam for US Government This is not a mad man but he does have the most dangerous personality that we know - what I call malignant narcissism. SIMPSON: Jerrold Post, for years a psychological profiler for the CIA. POST: On the one hand he is so caught up with his own vanity - his own messianic dreams that there is no room for the pain or suffering of others, that doesn’t count at all. He has got conscience whatsoever and making it all the worse, will use whatever violence is necessary to carry out his ambitions and violence has been the hallmark of his very success. SIMPSON: Soviet Communism never attracted Saddam and yet he became fixated on Joseph Stalin, his hero. ABURISH: People who knew him when he was a young man told me stories about him wondering around saying “Wait until I take over, I’m going to run this country the way Stalin ran Russia”. And of course they laughed him off. Little did they know. I mean he has studied and read every single book about Stalin and he most definitely models himself after him. AL-ALAWI: He was different from other tyrants like Hitler or Stalin; they were rulers who became criminals, he was a criminal who became a ruler. SIMPSON: In 1979 he made another film but this time the violence was genuine. Ba’ath Party video July 1979 SIMPSON: Having taken over as leader he put his Stalinism to work. He called a meeting of the party leadership which was carefully filmed. Exactly as in Stalin’s show trials, a senior figure was persuaded through torture, to reveal details of a supposed conspiracy. “The conspirators had many dreams”, he says, stubbing out his cigar. “But be assured that I will pick up my gun and fight to the end.” People who have been named in the audience try to protest, it doesn’t do any good. One by one, dozens of Saddam’s former supporters are led out to be shot. Saddam ordered a copy of the video to be sent to every party member. HASSAN AL-ALAWI Saddam’s former spin doctor It was unbelievable. Saddam didn’t make the video in order to show that there was a conspiracy against him, he wanted to send out the message that these people were innocent but I still executed them. The aim was to terrorise people. SIMPSON: Two years later Panorama asked him if it was right to treat political opponents like this. He was engagingly frank. Panorama 1981 SADDAM: Yes, it calls for it to be subject to execution and to torture in accordance with the law we say he who collaborates with a foreign party is sentenced to death. SIMPSON: When the British ambassador in Baghdad, Sir Stephen Egerton, met Saddam for the first time, he realised this was an extraordinary personality. Sir STEPHEN EGERTON British Ambassador to Iraq, 1980-82 We went through a series of rooms, huge rooms, each colder than the last and the one he was in was the coldest of all, which was of course matched by his demeanour. He was very cold towards me and it sticks in my memory because all the people around him were sweating and I realised afterwards they were afraid. SIMPSON: The fiercest punishment awaited anyone who failed to conform. Dissent was treasonable. You and your whole family could be wiped out for it. Even members of his inner circle like the head of military intelligence had to be careful with him. Gen WAFIC SAMARAI Former head of Iraqi Military Intelligence We didn’t have to look at the ground while we talked to him, however, no one would dare to raise his voice in the presence of Saddam Hussein. And if someone banged their fist on the table they would certainly be executed. JERROLD POST Former CIA political psychologist This is a deeply brutal man indeed who, however, rationalises his brutality as necessary for the cause in which he believes, the advancement of Iraq and in his mind there is no separation between Saddam and Iraq and what is good for Saddam is good for Iraq and that means staying in power. SIMPSON: Saddam’s power base has always been his family, his clan. The men from Tikrit and its surrounding villages. They were the only people he could entirely trust. As a young man he married his cousin and by all accounts was a loving father. His son, Uday, would later become one of the most powerful men in Iraq, violent, uncontrollable and a serial rapist. No wonder he needed a double too. Latif Yahia was an old school friend of Uday. He was imprisoned and forced to have plastic surgery. LATIF YAHIA Uday Hussein’s double, 1987-91 He has stolen my personality. It has taken me a long, long time to get over it. They train me, show me videos of how he walked, how he talked, how he do conferences, how he drives, how he smoked, how he drinks, and every movement of Uday. And after that they started to make me stronger they started showing me how they torture people, how they kill people, how they hung people, how they kept the fingers, the nails and ears and nose and... SIMPSON: Uday has so many enemies the life of his double is an unenviable one. YAHIA: Eleven times some people tried to kill me and I have got 9 bullets in my body. SIMPSON: Eleven attempts to kill you? YAHIA: Yes, and twice just they missed me. Nine times I got shot, the bullets are in my body. SIMPSON: The presidential family was quite extraordinary. On Saddam’s orders Uday, standing in the middle at the back here, later took part in the killing of his two brothers in law standing on the left of this family photo. Their wives have never been seen in public since. YAHIA: The word was ‘mafia’. There is a mafia. Because every son, every grandson, every doctor, every bodyguard, he has his own business. If you do something with this government you must pay the price. Just don’t try to play a game with him and send him money. If you don’t send it your head will be cut off. SIMPSON: Literally? MALE: Yes, you and your family. SIMPSON: Like Stalin Saddam made himself the embodiment of the country, the central figure of its history and culture. Nebuchadnezzar, Saladin who was also from Tikrit, and now the greatest Iraqi of them all. He rebuilt ancient Babylon with little regard for archaeological correctness, stamping his name on the bricks for later generations to admire. It all hinted strongly at his future ambitions. Dr HUSSAIN AL-SHAHRISTANI Former Chief Scientist Iraq’s civil nuclear programme The regime started to invest a lot of money in infrastructure but mostly to enhance the military might of the country. Saddam has always been very clear saying that he is there to unite the Arab world under his leadership. SIMPSON: But in fact he made the Arab world nervous. Thanks to his ferocity, his immense oil revenues and the weapons he was buying. Still, the Americans decided he was the man to sort out his turbulent neighbour. Iran was undergoing its violent and bloody Islamic revolution. Iraqi propaganda video From the start of it Iraq had been broadcasting hostile propaganda, now the American’s encouraged him to invade Iran, and Saddam, sensing its weakness, decided to do it. The invasion came within 18 months of his becoming president. Once again life was cheap for him The war was to last 8 years and cost a million lives. Like many of the big moves he has made it was a serious mistake. Soon he assumed direct control of the war himself but he made a poor general. In 1986 I saw for myself how his enemy, Iran, scored a stunning victory invading Iraqi territory at the far peninsular. JOHN SIMPSON BBC News 1986 There is no questioning the extent of the Iranian victory in recapturing all this land and they seem to be repelling the Iraqi counter-attacks pretty well. What is in question is what use the Iranian’s can put their victory too. SIMPSON: The American’s were now seriously worried. If Saddam lost Iran’s fiery Islamic fundamentalism might sweep through the entire region. The American’s might not like Saddam but they were prepared to help him in his hour of need. JAMES WOOLSEY CIA Director, 1993-95 We gave him, for example, satellite photos which indicated movements of Iranian forces. That would have been extremely useful to him even though it was relatively easy for us to do. So to know where your enemy is deployed and where his reserves are and that sort of thing could have been extremely important to him. SIMPSON: It could have saved him. WOOLSEY: Possibly. SIMPSON: Yet the American’s were double crossing Saddam by channelling arms to the Iranians at the same time as part of a deal to get American hostages released. Saddam never forgave them. General WAFIC SAMARAI Former Head of Iraqi Military Intelligence Each piece of information we received from the Americans and all the meetings we had with them were referred to Saddam personally. He studied every detail, he used to tell us to be cautious and he said this very clearly “The American’s are conspirators”. SIMPSON: The war had reached stalemate. Iraq was haemorrhaging men and money. Now he was backed into a corner Saddam showed how far he would go to save his regime. Again using western technology, Saddam deployed a weapon scarcely seen since the first world war - poison gas. It was horribly effective against the closely packed Iranian forces. Dr HUSSAIN AL-SHAHRISTANI Iraq’s former chief atomic scientist Even in the military communiqués that were read on the Iraqi television they said “We have killed Iranian soldiers like flies being sprayed”. And that is what he considered his nerve gasses to be - killing soldiers like flies. SIMPSON: Halabja provided another warning. A small Kurdish town in Northern Iraq which had gone over to the enemy. When I went there a few days afterwards I found that Saddam’s chemical weapons had killed 5,000 people as a punishment. BBC News March 1988 The bodies which litter this town were those of people who ran out of their houses to try to escape the gas and then were killed out in the open either by more gas or by high explosive. SIMPSON: Now Saddam knew how easy it was, what he had done once he could do again. Sir STEPHEN EGERTON British Ambassador to Iraq, 1980-82 He has actually used them, he has used them against his own people and that is quite frightening but I don’t think that they would be for wider use - not unless his back was absolutely up to the wall, against the wall, and he was being invaded. SIMPSON: In 1988 the war with Iran was at last over. Saddam claimed it as a victory, even though it wasn’t. He celebrated by putting up vast monuments. But he couldn’t rest, an even bigger crisis was brewing. Saddam was broke and so he met the immensely rich Emir of Kuwait to demand his help. “After all” he said “I saved the rest of the Arab world from Iran”. The Emir refused and Saddam was deeply insulted. From that moment the invasion of Kuwait was inevitable. HASSAN AL-ALAWI Former friend of Saddam We must remember his words “This is my price”. He meant Kuwait was his price for fighting Iran. He was saying “I fought Iran on your behalf and I lost thousands of soldiers but you haven’t given me my reward and my reward is Kuwait”. SIMPSON: There was world-wide shock and revulsion. But the invasion was another colossal miscalculation. By now it had become habitual for Saddam to shift the blame for almost everything onto the west. SADDAM HUSSEIN: Any aggressive act is not characteristic of us. But it is characteristic to repel aggression. JERROLD POST Former CIA political psychologist This is a man who has unbounded ambition. For years he suffered believing that he had gotten no recognition as being one of the world’s great socialist leaders, that he was destined to be ranked with Tito, Mao Tse Tung, Castro, but the world had not seen him as being in this league. After the invasion of Kuwait, finally he had the world by its throat and he was now recognised as an important world leader. SIMPSON: But while President Bush was assembling a force to evict him from Kuwait, Saddam made yet another serious blunder. Mr Bush and his advisors knew that if Saddam staged a partial withdrawal their plans would collapse. Saddam might even be able to keep Kuwait’s oil fields. General BRENT SCOWCROFT US National Security Advisor, 1989-93 We had half a million troops there, we couldn’t keep them there, we couldn’t sustain them there over a long period of time. But he never took advantage of that and that was my greatest fear that he would be skilful and do something which would make it difficult, if not impossible for us to attack. SIMPSON: Saddam’s greatest problem is his isolation. It is the price he pays for terrorising the people around him. SCOWCROFT: I am convinced that nobody tells him the truth about what is going on. People are afraid to tell him to give him bad news because it may cost them their lives. So he lives in this cocoon, in a way, of people telling him things that they think wont get them in trouble and that has to affect his view of the world. BBC News 15 January 1991 SIMPSON: All the firing that’s going on, and there is a great deal of it, is just pretty wildly up in the air and it doesn’t seem to be aimed at anything. It looks as though they’re just getting ready for the big attack. The big attack didn’t bring the terrible loss of life that Saddam had expected, but it did convince the generals they must pull out of Kuwait, but they didn’t dare say so. General WAFIC SAMARAI Head of Iraqi Military Intelligence, Gulf War Saddam Hussein might think that we were conspiring and had no intention of keeping Kuwait, secondly he’d probably think that we were accusing the leadership of failing to take the right decisions. SIMPSON: Although we were shown occasional pictures of Saddam in his bunker, he actually spent much of his time outside Baghdad, driving round in a red Volkswagen Passat with only a single bodyguard, that way he was almost impossible to target. The Islamic world had always distrusted Saddam. He was seen as anti-Muslim and headed an aggressively secular state. But in the Gulf War he showed how clever he was at manipulating opinion. A few days before the war began he suddenly became publicly devout. It may seem a trifle obvious but it worked. SAID ABURISH Saddam’s Biographer ‘I have become a Muslim’. He takes a great deal of responsibility on the average Muslim in the Middle East. What are you going to do now? ‘I am fighting those people as a Muslim, not as an Iraqi, not as an Arab, but in a much larger context. If you are part of the Islamic nation then you must support it’. SIMPSON: Arab Government didn’t but ordinary people did. It revealed the path which Saddam has been able to follow ever since. Even more important for Arab opinion, he decided to target Israel. Israelis expected an attack with chemical weapons, and there was near panic and some absurdity. BENJAMIN NETANYAHU Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, 1991 I must say that this is darnedest way to conduct an interview. Of course what it does demonstrate I think in a fairly dramatic way is the kind of threat which we’re facing. SIMPSON: As Saddam launched his scud missiles at Israel pro-Iraqi demonstrations erupted right across the Middle East. Saddam was hugely popular. It made him realise that he can play to public opinion, encouraging him to hang on, hoping his enemies will crumble. Dr HUSSAIN AL-SHAHRISTANI The Arab masses felt at least there is somebody now with the capability to challenge Israel, so the effect in general was positive, at least he had succeeded to convince the Arab masses that he is their hero, their champion who can really stand up for their rights. SIMPSON: But in the next war Saddam probably wont be able to attack Israel like this. He’s only got around 18 long range missiles now. His former chief nuclear scientist: AL-SHAHRISTANI: If he does have a few missiles left and he manages to use them against Israel, I don’t think it will be different from what we saw in 1991. They will be just empty, hardly causing any damage. The object of the exercise is basically to stir up the Arab masses to come on the street and demand stop of the war against Saddam, and that’s what he wants. SIMPSON: As it turned out, Saddam’s army put up scarcely any fight at all. It was all just hype about being the world’s fourth biggest army, willing to fight to the death. Soldiers, like the Iraqi civilians, weren’t interested in laying down their lives for Saddam. But in retreat he showed what he was capable of when his back is against the wall. Blowing up oil wells is something he could do again, next time, unless they’re properly defended against him that is. The coalition forces advanced and then stopped at the Iraqi border. The Americans had privately promised the Egyptians and the Saudis they wouldn't invade Iraq. They didn’t. General BRENT SCOWCROFT US National Security Advisor, 1989-93 The mission was to drive his forces out of Kuwait. And while almost everyone thought that he would be topped as a result of being defeated, but there was no talk before the war that the mission had to be getting rid of Saddam Hussein. SIMPSON: At the surrender ceremony the Americans failed to insist that Saddam should be there in person. If he had been shown up to be that weak, his generals would probably have overthrown him. Instead President Bush appealed to everyone else to get rid of him. Victory Speech March 1991 BUSH: Iraqi people should put him aside and that would facilitate the resolution of all these problems that exist, and certainly would facilitate the acceptance of Iraq back into the family of peace loving nations. SIMPSON: The Shiites in the South and the Kurds in the North took the appeal seriously. They believed the Americans really wanted Saddam overthrown and would help them. Saddam’s authority began to crumble. But President Bush left the rebels to their fate. Dr HUSSAIN AL-SHAHRISTANI Rebel leader, 1991 uprising I felt betrayed by the Americans. The Americans were hoping that there could be a palace coup where another general can take over and be friendly or controllable by them, and they decided basically to allow Saddam and indirectly to help him to crush the uprising and that has caused the Iraqi people 300,000 lives. SIMPSON: Once again Saddam wanted people to see it for themselves. Iraqi television showed pictures of Saddam’s cabinet members beating up and killing prisoners after the uprising. It was the old method of conspicuous punishment. Slowly he was regaining his dominance. The rebellion was crushed. JAMES WOOLSEY CIA Director, 1993-95 I think the decision not to support that was one of the worst American decisions of the 20th century frankly. I think they had a bit of a blind spot on not wanting bad states to break up because they didn’t know exactly what was going to follow. SIMPSON: Thousands more died after a second uprising four years later. [Film footage of brutalities] OFFICER: Slit their throats and divide their hearts in two. General WAFIC SAMARAI Head of Iraqi Military Intelligence, 1995 He cured Iraqis of trying to overthrow Saddam for themselves. As for his army, the one institution that might challenge him, he purged its senior officers regularly and thoroughly. He executed the Head of the General Security, he executed the Head of Intelligence. He poisoned and killed another head of intelligence. He poisoned and killed another Head of General Security. I was convinced that if I hadn’t left Iraq I wouldn't have been alive by now. SIMPSON: So in spite of all his disastrous mistakes, Saddam was firmly back in charge. Now he planned to turn Iraq into a regional superpower again by developing more weapons of mass destruction. JERROLD POST Former CIA political psychologist How can they be at the very peak of world leadership without having these weapons that are associated with significant world leaders. This is very important to him, not only to be a weapon of leverage and threat, but also in terms of his own personal view of his own stature. SIMPSON: After the Gulf War, United Nations weapons inspectors had tried to destroy Iraq’s massive programme for making nuclear chemical and biological weapons, but it was an immensely difficult job. The inspectors were frustrated at every turn, partly by the Iraqi’s skill at hiding their weapons but also because of the fear Saddam created in his own people. CHARLES DUELFER Dep chief UN weapons inspector, 1993-2000 It was not a pleasant experience because we would identify a low level person and ask him to describe what he was doing, and he would do this under the eye of Iraqis observing this, and he would know perhaps even his life was at risk, depending upon how he behaved in this interview. But when you see these individuals, they’d be quivering sometimes because they were afraid that they would say something or reveal something that was not part of the party line. SIMPSON: In 1998 the inspectors had to leave. But it was pretty clear that Iraq had kept part of its arsenal in tact. The inspectors may go back soon but the problem is Iraq has now had 4 years in which to hide its weapons well. SAMARAI: Iraq has built its policy on weapons of mass destruction in accordance with the strategic balance in the region. I don’t believe that Saddam will ever give up his policy in the future. SIMPSON: By the end of the 90s Saddam, or it may be his double of course, seemed indestructible. LATIF YAHIA Uday Hussein’s double, 1987-91 Where is John Major? Where is George Bush? Where is Mitterand? Where is.. you know.. Gorbachev? Everything is gone. Who stay? Still Saddam in the power. Everyone is gone but he stay. SIMPSON: Saddam has outlasted and outwitted all his enemies and there seemed no sign that he was ready to capitulate. The Americans seemed prepared to tolerate him, merely keeping him in his place by the imposition of UN sanctions. They were indeed a savage punishment but they chiefly hurt the ordinary people of the country. Saddam made sure they suffered even more than they had to. The situation could have gone on indefinitely and then everything changed. The hawks in the Pentagon insisted that Al-Qaeda was linked with Saddam Hussein even though the CIA were certain it wasn’t. No matter, Saddam was public enemy number one again. Now Afghanistan had been dealt with, Iraq was next. September 2002 BUSH: We can’t let the world’s worst leaders blackmail, threaten, hold freedom loving nations hostage with the world’s worst weapons. SIMPSON: In the recent referendum Saddam says he got 100% of the vote. Well, perhaps. There was no one else to vote for. But the turnout wasn’t very high. A kind of lethargy has come over Iraq, as it did before the war 12 years ago. They’re going through the motions. Not Saddam though. SADDAM: [Speech] The evil of the evil doers will never end until they are defeated. And their defeat is coming in the near future, God willing. [applause] SIMPSON: Whether the British will send troops to join the Americans may depend on whether President Bush gets UN support or not. It will be a hard decision for Tony Blair. It now looks as though an attack will come in February, even March. As for Saddam, we can be sure he wont go quietly. Sir STEPHEN EGERTON British Ambassador to Iraq, 1980-82 In the normal course of events, when things are going quite well, he’s pretty predictable. But with the back to the wall, you know.. any person, any human being with so much at stake, becomes unpredictable. SAID ABURISH Saddam’s Biographer If Saddam believed that he is going to go, that the campaign against him.. any campaign against him was succeeding, and that they’re after him personally, I think he’d use the weapons of mass destruction. What has he got to lose? IBRAHIM ZOBEDI Childhood friend of Saddam He is in the corner. He will not give up. He will not leave the country. He will not resign. He will not go to another country at all. He will stay to the last minute. SIMPSON: But when the moment comes, will Saddam bring everything crashing down about him? He’ll certainly try but it won’t necessarily be easy. His weaponry is limited. His soldiers don’t want to fight and his generals must be looking for a way out. Still we cannot write him off, especially now he’s cornered. Dr HUSSAIN AL-SHAHRISTANI Former Chief Scientist Iraq’s civil nuclear programme I think he’ll fight to the last man. He will go down as the world’s biggest suicide bomber, making sure that he takes as many lives with him when he goes. SIMPSON: Still, forget the gung-ho simplicities of the computer games, it’s likely to be the Americans who hunt him down than the Iraqi army. As so many dictators have discovered, it’s the people he’s underestimated will get the real Saddam in the end. _________ Panorama returns in two weeks with a special investigation which examines how safe is your pension, and if you'd like regular updates about Panorama, sign up to the Panorama newsletter by visiting www.bbc.co.uk/panorama CREDITS Reporter John Simpson Film Camera Neil Higginson Ken Webb Sound Recordist George Kidson VT Editor Boyd Nagle Dubbing Mixer Damian Reynolds Production Co-ordinator Rosa Rudnicka Webb Producer Adam Flinter Film Research Michael Matwiejczyk Kate Redman Research Kathlyn Posner Production Manager Helen Cooper Graphic Design Researcher Kathlyn Posner Graphic Design Key Yip Lam Julie Tritton Unit Manager Emanuele Pasquale Film Editor Roderick Longhurst Assistant Producers James Giles Shabnam Grewal Producer Martin Small Deputy Editors Andrew Bell Sam Collyns Editor Mark Robinson 14 _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________ Transcribed by 1-Stop Express Services, London W2 1JG Tel: 020 7724 7953 E-mail onestopexpress@hotmail.com