This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchewith, the author, Reith Abdullahad.

He's also the journalist, Reith Abdullahad.

His new book is A Stranger in Your Own City, Travels in the Middle East Long War.

Rath, I learned from you that you saw Saddam Hussein, the leader of necessity, twice, once

as a youth and again end the trial.

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 a Mercedes car waving to the crowd. The second time when I saw him was this

frail, 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.

It turned into Ashan, 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 him the opportunity to redefine himself and we enter

not only the Arab people, the Arab psyche, this man standing against the American,

standing up against the right.

Saddam is executed December 2006.

That alone was a significant report here.

What I didn't know until I read your book

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