From: "Strong, Lee" <StrongL at MTMC.ARMY.MIL>
To: "WSFAList (E-mail)" <WSFAList at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Saddam's Vanishing Act 'Helped By Magic Powers'
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 12:09:05 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

	Iraqis believe the fugitive is protected by the occult and a mystic
stone, writes our correspondant from Baghdad.

	By James Hider, London Times, 29 July 2003

	DESPITE the deaths of his sons, the $25 million reward on his head
and a manhunt by American forces, many Iraqis doubt that Saddam Hussein will
ever be caught.  His secret, they believe, is a magic stone and years of
dabbling in the occult.
	"Saddam never takes any step unless he consults with his magician
advisers -- I'm sure he has two or three with him now."  Qassem Ali, 33, a
Baghdad electrician, said.
	"He brought them from China and Japan because he wanted
specialists," said Ali Mahdi, his colleague and one of a crowd of people who
gathered in the street to discuss their former leader's supernatural
abilities.  "Saddam is indestructible because of these powers."
	The former regime was obsessed with the dark arts, a preoccupation
of Hitler in his final years, but many Iraqis also believe in the
supernatural and regularly consult soothsayers to find stolen cars or tackle
mental illness.  Most agree that Saddam wore a "magic" stone around his
neck, protecting him from assassins' bullets, and many recalled an appeal on
Uday Hussein's television network for anyone with extraordinary powers to
come forward and work for the ruling family.  Some of the stories are
absurd, but are delivered deadpan by Iraqis whose belief in the supernatural
has grown during decades of brutal reppression and isolation from the
outside world.
	"It's all true about the magic stone," Mokhaled Muhammad, a car
dealer and Saddam supporter, said.  "First of all, he put it on a chicken
and tried to shoot it.  Then he put it on a cow, and the bullets went around
it."
	In an inconspircuous house in the Shorta Rabbie neighborhood of
Baghdad, Abu Ali, a tiny 45-year-old man with an elfish grin, earns his
living by summoning up a djinn, or genie, for believers seeking stolen
property or looking to lift curses.  His success was such that many former
leaders came to him, including Uday, Saddam's eldest son, who was killed
with his brother, Qusay, in a battle with American forces last week.  "Uday
and his guards had an all-night party and fell asleep at dawn, dead drunk,"
he said.  "When they woke up they found that somebody had stolen all the
money from their pockets.  Uday sent someone to me to find the money.  I
discovered the thief, and they said Uday punished him, though I don't know
exactly what happened to him."  His method involves placing a child in front
of a mirror and askig the genie -- which appears as a man dressed in white
-- to point to stolen property.
	Saddam also feared the powers of his voodoo advisers.  According to
one story, he shot dead a fortuneteller who informed him before the war that
he would be an outcast within months and prophesied that Iraq's monarchy
would be restored.  Mr. Alie recalled how, one day, Saddam's security agents
turned up on his doorstep and accused him of plotting to use his magic
against the dictator.  He says that he convinced them that he was doing no
such thing, then put a curse on the neighbor who had informed on him to the
police.  She was paralysed after a blood vessel burst in her brain, he
boasted.
	Alharith Hassan, a psychologist at the Baghdad University Department
of Parapsychology, has spent years trying to debunk such superstititions
scientifically.  His work cost his department dear in slashed funding under
Saddam's occultist regime.  He said that the Iraqi people had become very
susceptible to such myths in 35 years cut off from the outside world and
suffering brutal oppression.  The only outlet was provided by religion and
sects, which Saddam openly endorsed.  In a country where an estimated 20 per
cent of people suffer some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, about two
thirds of the patients coming to see Dr. Hassan had already visited shamans,
who try to exorcise genies with spells and often viciously beat their
mentally ill clients.  "It's all a lot of gibberish," said Dr. Hassan, who
was careful, nonetheless, not to dismiss the genie, a mythical creature
mentioned in the Koran.
	Indeed, Saddam's legendary luck is also questioned by some occult
practitioners.  While putting a man seeking his stolen car into a trance,
Mr. Ali asked his genie if Saddam would be arrested.  The man's hand slowly
twisted palm outward.  "Saddam will be caught," he said.  "I know he has a
stone against bullets, but they will capture him."