This is a

CBS I on the world. I'm John Batuith, the author Raythe Abdullah,

he's also the journalist Raythe al-Abduhad.

His new book is a stranger in your own city, travels in the Middle East long war.

Raeth, I learned from you that you saw Saddam Hussein, leader of necessity twice, once as a youth and again

end the trial. What is what struck you as the change that you observed in him when he entered the courtroom?

So John, as I said, you know, I grew up in the shadow of Saddam and for me when I was a child,

he was something like, you know, bigger than God in our lives.

And I remember when I was a child seeing him

on top of the Mercedes car waving to the crowd.

The second time when I saw him was this,

Srail, old man, white beard, entering the courtroom. And that court, that trial of Saddam, it could have been another point in which the Iraqis would have learned something about their

history. It could have been a moment of reckoning with our history turned into a

sham into a victor's justice, it was a parody of justice. It actually what the trial did

turned Saddam from that defeated criminal into a dignified old man and gave him the opportunity because the people who were opposed to him was so bad

gave the opportunity to redefine himself

and we enter the, not only the Arab people,

the Arab psyche, Arabs were standing against their American, standing up against their way.

Saddam is executed December 2006.

That alone was a significant report here.

What I didn't know until I read your book is that after his death,

his body was taken to the Prime Minister's House, Maliki, who was breaking from a wedding of one of his children

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