Saddam Hussein: gardening, reading and eating muffins

He's being treated better than me! How do I check into this hotel?

Handsome 43 year old rocket scientist, champion tennis player, pulitzer winning writer, Tony winning playwright, Nobel winning scientist, expert in all subjects. Did I mention I dance with the Bolshoi? I also like hiking and swimming.

Sun, Sep. 19
FORMER DICTATOR INSISTS HE IS IRAQ'S RULER
Nine months after American troops pulled him disheveled and disoriented from an underground bunker near his hometown, Tikrit, Saddam Hussein is living in an air-conditioned 10-by-13-foot cell on the grounds of one of his former palaces outside Baghdad, tending plants, proclaiming himself Iraq's lawful ruler, and reading the Koran and books about past Arab glory.

American and Iraqi officials who have visited the former Iraqi leader say he wears plastic sandals and an Arab dishdasha robe, eats U.S. soldiers' ready-to-eat meals for breakfast, and is permitted three hours' daily exercise in a courtyard outside his cell. He has been flown by Black Hawk helicopter to an American military hospital in Baghdad.

He has undergone hours of interrogation by investigators preparing evidence for his trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

But he has refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing or to show remorse for the hundreds of thousands of people killed during his 24-year dictatorship, officials say. He has insisted that his position as Iraq's president gave him legal authority for all he did and that his victims were "traitors." At every encounter, the officials say, he insists that he is still the constitutionally elected president.

More than 80 other "high-value detainees" at the same prison -- including more than 40 who were in the Pentagon's "pack of cards" of Iraq's most-wanted fugitives -- are kept away from Hussein, said Bakhtiar Amin, Iraq's human rights minister. Hussein has been in solitary confinement since his capture on Dec. 13, officials said, because of a fear that he would try to rig evidence or intimidate old associates in the prison.

When Hussein appeared in court to be advised of his legal rights and of the charges under investigation, officials said it could be two years or more before he was brought to trial.

But the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has decided to fast-forward the legal processes. It hopes to begin the first high-profile trial, probably against Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of Hussein's known as Chemical Ali, by November. Hussein's trial will follow, possibly next year.

In his cell, Hussein has a fold-up bed, a small desk and a plastic chair, as well as a supply of bottled water and ice, a prayer mat and a choice of more than 170 books from a library supplied by the International Committee of the Red Cross. He reads Arabic-language books, including tomes of ancient poetry and tales from nearly 1,000 years ago, when Baghdad was a famous center of learning and the capital of the Islamic world.

On visits to the Army's hospital in the Green Zone, Hussein has staked out his independence in other ways. In the hospital, he has been treated by American military doctors and Iraqi physicians who were on his presidential medical team. Near wards filled with wounded American soldiers, he has undergone blood tests and scans that have confirmed that he has an enlarged prostate gland, medical officials said, as well as a hernia problem and trouble with one of his eyes.

But he has refused a surgical biopsy that might determine whether the prostate condition is cancerous. The condition could take years to become life-threatening. "He has time," one official said. "There is no health issue that would prevent him standing trial."

Another official said Hussein helped an American Navy surgeon take blood by gripping a tourniquet on his arm, and remarked, in English, "Perhaps I should have been a doctor, not a politician."

Amin said Hussein had been denied newspapers, radio and television, and thus knew little about the political events in Iraq since his capture. He said Hussein was upset when told that a prominent Sunni tribal leader, Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar, had been named by the United States to replace him as president.

"He was shaken and he was very upset," Amin said. "He couldn't accept that." He added: "He's a megalomaniac and a psychotic. He has never expressed any remorse for any of his victims. He is a man without a conscience. He is a beast."