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| Iraq |
| Saddamâs vanishing act âhelped by magic powersâ |
| 2003-08-09 |
| Reg Reqâd... This is a little late, but I just got the text of it via email today from a friend with a Times subscription. Iâve posted the entire text. THE TIMES (U.K.), July 29, 2003 James Hider Iraqis believe the fugitive is protected by the occult and a mystic stone, writes our correspondent from Baghdad. No wonder! He has a Despite the deaths of his sons, the $25 million (£15 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. Itâs all the rage in Islam, yâknow... they specialize in pseudoscience - much like the CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) loonies. "If itâs good, itâs gotta be bad! Get away from that fetuccini Alfredo! Instant death!" âSaddam never takes any step unless he consults with his magician advisers â Iâm sure he has two or three with him now,â Qassem Ali, 33, a Baghdad electrician, said. Oh yes, at least 2 or 3... Even I have one I consult from time to time to make the little electricities come out. Sometimes I offend them and they sulk, you know. Very sensitive - and very small too. Most people canât see them. But I can - thatâs why I am electrician! âHe brought them from China and Japan because he wanted specialists,â said Ali Mahdi, his colleague and one of a crowd of people who gathered in the street to discuss their former leaderâs supernatural abilities. âSaddam is indestructible because of these powers.â Being indestructable does, indeed. It is a known fact that it requires specialists - at least 2 or 3, anyway... 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. I would bet this doesnât find any more stolen cars than logical deduction would - and adds that special something to the client with mental illness. Most agree that Saddam wore a âmagicâ stone around his neck, protecting him from assassinsâ bullets, and many recalled an appeal on Uday Husseinâs television network for anyone with extraordinary powers to come forward and work for the ruling family. Shredder fodder... "So, what special powers do you have?" "I can predict the winners of the World Cup, the World Series, the Kentucky Derby, and..." "Infidel lover! Take him to the shredder, Omar! I need to turn water into Some of the stories are absurd, but are delivered deadpan by Iraqis whose belief in the supernatural has grown during decades of brutal repression and isolation from the outside world. Peasants! How absurd. I am a sophisticated Subject of The Queen and famous Intâl Correspondent of The Times! You expect me to believe your silly superstitions? Pshaw! Uh oh, itâs Friday the 13th - Iâd better cancel my appointments! âItâs all true about the magic stone,â Mokhaled Muhammad, a car dealer and Saddam supporter, said. âFirst 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. Of course it is! The chicken and cow lived! Proof! Then we drank another case each and went hunting snipes. âWhen they pulled down Saddamâs statue, lots of men were jumping on it like monkeys. Then a child came up and kissed the head. Why? I think the child was an angel.â An angel! Even more proof! What a silly man you are, English! Everybody knows this. In an inconspicuous house in the Shorta Rabba neighbourhood 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, Saddamâs eldest son, who was killed with his brother, Qusay, in a battle with American forces last week. Youâd have an elfish grin too, if youâd come that close to The Shredder! [Note that Islam tries to, uh, keep the genie in the bottle, so to speak, and this little gem isnât widely advertised in their translated articles--Ed] âUday and his guards had an all-night party and fell asleep at dawn, dead drunk,â he said. âWhen 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 donât know exactly what happened to him.â The Shredder! And if I hadnât had someone I could toss to Uday, well, it wouldâve been His method involves placing a child in front of a mirror and asking the genie â which appears as a man dressed in white â to point to stolen property. He also claims to have lifted a curse on a female relative of Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Tikriti, Saddamâs cousin and close aide. Everybody know this. The curse was especially easy, all the female had to do was stand in front of the mirror and close her eyes. Suddenly the the dude in the ice cream suit appeared and, very slowly, he began taking off... She was greatly excited and swore that the curse had been lifted. She did ask if she could come back each week - just for insurance, you understand. I was happy to oblige. Saddam also feared the powers of his voodoo advisers. According to one story, he shot dead a fortune-teller who informed him before the war that he would be an outcast within months and prophesied that Iraqâs monarchy would be restored. We told Ahmed to keep that vision to himself, but he was very hard-headed, like a goat. He was our Unionâs Darwin Award Nominee for 1995. Mr Ali recalled how, one day, Saddamâs 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 neighbour who had informed on him to the police. She was paralysed after a blood vessel burst in her brain, he boasted. Bitch! But I kept my cool after Saddamâs men left. I went to see her and told her I could make her young and beautiful, again. I gave her a massive dose of Tamoxifen - the cow had a stroke within an hour. Alharith Hassan, a psychologist at the Baghdad University Department of Parapsychology, has spent years trying to debunk such superstitions scientifically. His work cost his department dear in slashed funding under Saddamâs occultist regime. Everyone knew Hassan had a serious serotonin deficiency. 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. His peasant mother used to read the future with seashells. Didnât yours? Chicken bones, goat entrails, I Ching, - everyone knows these are inferior to seashells. 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. A "boom" market, no doubt. Imagine the anticipation of the American Psychiatric Association and the British Psychoanalytic Society - the skyâs the limit in Iraq, adn theyâll get first pick! âItâs all a lot of gibberish,â said Dr Hassan, who was careful, nonetheless, not to dismiss the genie, a mythical creature mentioned in the Koran. All gibberish - except for the genie, of course! Yeah, the genieâs real, you bet. Says so in the Quâuran. Go genie go! (Are they gone yet?) Indeed, Saddamâs legendary luck is also questioned by some occult practitioners. He never came to see me! While putting a man seeking his stolen car into a trance, Mr Ali asked his genie if Saddam would be arrested. The manâs hand slowly twisted palm outward. And the answer is... âSaddam will be caught,â he said. âI know he has a stone against bullets, but they will capture him.â Ta Da! You heard it here first, folks! |
| Posted by:·com |
| #19 OP - I'm one of the lucky ones - I have a full head of hair and always will. The ears bit is a rude surprise! Some people are just plain savvy and can size up another in a heartbeat. Many become successful con-men, I guess, and others do well at poker, eh? Some can see the writing on the wall - some hereabouts have shown that talent! In combination, which is what Yadae sounds like, I guess it takes on a spooky quality. I just wanted to be sure you hadn't "tipped" on me / us! Now as for that curse, fire away! It's dirt cheap to get a haircut here - but even cheaper if I don't need one at all! Focus on the ears, m'kay? Grins, bro - it was a fun read! |
| Posted by: ·com 2003-8-10 12:06:08 AM |
| #18 PD - Yadae was something else, I tell you! She was funny at times! She told me one time (I remember, because it was a really unusual day - snow!), that most of what she did was encourage people to think what she wanted them to think, and let it go from there. Today, we call it psychological warfare, but at 16, I wasn't terribly aware of that phrase. She was, in effect, admitting to me she was at least partly a phoney, but because the people she did things for didn't know that, they treated every word from her as gospel! She did have an uncanny knowledge of herbal cures, and as far as I know, no one she ever treated got worse, and most got better. I have no explanation for some of the things I learned from her, and may never fully understand it, but be careful - I DO know how to put a curse on you that will make ALL your hair fall out, and I mean ALL - even the hair in your ears! 8^) |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2003-8-9 11:42:53 PM |
| #17 Sounds like when Reagan was in the neverlands and Nancy and the astrologer were runnng the country and we ended up with Bush I after Reagan went to the Multimillion Dollar Rest Home paid for by rich people with an agenda |
| Posted by: Not Mike Moore 2003-8-9 11:26:56 PM |
| #16 OP - Okay, man, tell me you're not into Santeria, Rastafarianism, or Voodoo/Vudun - puhleeze! If you don't see a reasonable explanation, sans the ooga-booga stuff, I'm gonna be very disillusioned with you! ;-> |
| Posted by: ·com 2003-8-9 8:54:27 PM |
| #15 There was an old lady back in Louisiana, where I grew up in the late 1950's, early '60's, that was just a bit TOO spot-on! Weird woman! Learned a lot from her about voodoo and witchcraft. For some reason, she liked me, and talked to me a LOT! You have to remember - she told me she was over a hundred, and I believe she was. She talked about being a slave before the Civil War, and knew far too much for just show. Couldn't read or write, but could recite the entire Gospel of John from memory, and never missed a word. Lived off what she could forage, and a few fish and small game I brought her from time to time. Scared me sh$$less a couple of times. Seven of the eleven things she told me would happen have, so I'm not willing to say she didn't have some skill at fortelling the future. In Sadsack's case, it's probably a mixture of popycock, fantasy, and wishful thinking. Makes for good propaganda, though - "I know what you're thinking, and it's not good..." Personally, I believe it's only a matter of time before one of his "own" betrays him, just because they get tired of the tension of having him around. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2003-8-9 7:11:23 PM |
| #14 Yeah, but be careful who you buy your stones from. I bought some a couple years back and after telling a friend about them he asked to see them. I dropped me trousers and pulled the string. DOH! I guess I bought the wrong ones. Beads, stones same difference, right? |
| Posted by: Paul 2003-8-9 6:21:22 PM |
| #13 PD, Chiang Mai... Sigh. I think I'll go take a cold shower. |
| Posted by: Fred 2003-8-9 5:37:47 PM |
| #12 Fred - I had me a pair of them blue stones when I was in Saudi. Moved here to Chiang Mai and they turned real pinkish and healthy-looking in just a few days. Like phreakin' magic. I've heard stories 'bout those Old Folks Homes - pretty wild stories. Coulda been "sexed-up" reporting, though, I dunno. Sounded like mebbe they're up there with Club Med Martinique - a singular highlight in my personal, uh, um, experience. Yeah, that's the word. After the first week, I needed to go back to The World to recover. Charles - Too True - truncheons, zaps, brass knucks, "telephone calls" hooked up to his shrunken li'l stones, lions, The Shredderâ¢. Lotsa options available for the dedicated - oh, uh, that's his guys we're describing - so, uh, nevermind! Just say "Gitmoâ¢!" and all he knows will be yours. :-> SW - Prolly like, uh, raisin-sized, ya think? And yellow - good call, methinks, spot-on! |
| Posted by: ·com 2003-8-9 5:26:12 PM |
| #11 Makes you wonder if Uday, Qusay and a bunch o' others there had yellow stones. Small ones. Really small, and never got bigger no matter how often they were rubbed. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2003-8-9 4:49:43 PM |
| #10 A stone that protects you from bullets? The Secret Service is going to be interested in this. As for Sadaam, we can't shoot him, but we can still beat him with truncheons, right? |
| Posted by: Charles 2003-8-9 4:45:33 PM |
| #9 I think the blue ones have to do with Saturn and they protect the aged from... ummm... something. I'm gonna get one when I go into the old folks' home. Next year. |
| Posted by: Fred 2003-8-9 4:11:03 PM |
| #8 Fred - Green, huh? That must be a soothing, calming, peace stone, then, being green and all. Prolly from Venus. You could get a red one to go with it, kinda like a set. And it would prolly be from Mars and protect you in battle. I wonder what blue stones are all about? Maybe they don't have any special meaning, so they're frustrated or something. |
| Posted by: ·com 2003-8-9 1:28:48 PM |
| #7 Yeah - having stones always helps in time of stress. Is that why they call you Lucky? ;-) |
| Posted by: ·com 2003-8-9 1:23:14 PM |
| #6 Mine's green... |
| Posted by: Fred 2003-8-9 1:21:46 PM |
| #5 Makes sence. I was wondering how Sad Saddam could last so long. I use stones like that all the time. |
| Posted by: Lucky 2003-8-9 12:33:35 PM |
| #4 Yes. |
| Posted by: ·com 2003-8-9 10:58:43 AM |
| #3 Sometimes I get confused, do we have troops in the Middle East or the Middle Ages |
| Posted by: Someone who did NOT vote for William Proxmire 2003-8-9 10:45:50 AM |
| #2 Thanks 'com, that was worth the wait. Of course Saddam will be caught, Task force 20 now knows to look for Japanese and Chinese occultists and stop wasting time rounding up body guards. |
| Posted by: Gasse Katze 2003-8-9 5:20:53 AM |
| #1 Arrrggghhh. Forgot the article link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-760106,00.html |
| Posted by: ·com 2003-8-9 1:48:46 AM |