Part One: The Worst Team Owner in FIFA History: Uday Hussein

In honor of the World Cup, Robert tells our guest, Molly Conger the wild story of the worst team owner in FIFA History, who also happened to be Saddam Hussein's oldest son.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media. Oh I didn't see you there. Welcome to
Behind the Bastards. You've stepped into our living room podcast house.
I don't know. I'm the podcast about bad people. I
struggle through the introduction every week, but then we get
to the terrible person, one of the worst people in

(00:22):
all of history that we're talking about, and everybody has
a good time learning about things that make them feel
bad because we're all damaged people speaking of shit. That's
a bad way to speaking of this volunti podcast host.
Thank you my guest this week, Molly Conger. Molly, welcome
to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
You've got a podcast, thrilled to be here. Yeah, I
also have a podcast about guys who suck minor weirder
and littler. It's weird little guys.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yes, yes, there's a strict height requirement, much like the
Prussian heavy infantry in order to be on your podcast,
but in the reverse way anyway. Uh, Molly, how do
you feel about soccer football as it's called by most
of the people who like it?

Speaker 2 (01:12):
So I don't know anything about it, but I've been
watching the World Cup with my husband and I love
hollering at the tv.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Oh yeah, good, that's all, I feel like this is
kind of this happens periodically where like you know, the
World Cups in the United States, so a lot of
Americans who normally aren't so much in to what the
West to football, we'll call it football, suddenly find themselves
intrigued by it for like the first time or the
first time in a while. And right now the whole

(01:39):
freedom loving world is captured by a new and often
performative love of the sport. And as I think most
people are aware, the organization that governs how football or
soccer works is FIFA, and they are more corrupt than
a barrel full of Iraqi generals marinated in oil. It's
marinated in the oil, Like huh.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Is it Giannino? Are we doing?

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Are much worse, much worse, much worse, much worse. Because
if you're not aware, if you.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Were that excited about that, because we.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Will, we will. We will have to cover him at
some point. But like, FIFA is so corrupt that if
you google FIFA corruption scandals, you have to specify the
year in order to get any kind of useful result
because there's just way too many otherwise, like you're just
gonna get like chronological news stories from the latest one,
and any infamously corrupt and abusive institution is only as

(02:35):
good as its most corrupt and statistically violent team managers,
or and in the case of professional soccer, the most
abusive manager slash team owner in the history of the sport.
Do you do you want to have a guess to
to to who's the most abusive team owner in the
history of football?

Speaker 2 (02:54):
I couldn't even begin to guess. But as I've been
watching the World Cup, I have noticed that whenever they
cut the sidelines, it's the most sinister looking man you've
ever seen in your fucking life.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
And that's how it is. Now. Now I'll give you.
I'll give you one hint, Molly, one hint. The character
we're talking about today is the son of a whitely
beloved romance novelist, although someone who's better known for their
other work.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Is it one of the Hussein sons.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
It's Oudei Hussein, that's right, that's right. He owned a
soccer team. He was like the manager of a FIFA tee.
He was a big deal in the world of soccer
for a while, and for a long time actually.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
And I imagine he treated the players fairly and with respect.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
That's right. This is a story about a man who
treated his players respectfully and didn't, for example, keep a
torture dungeon underneath the team workout area. Four members of the.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Team, highly motivational, controversial time.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
That's right, that's right. I've told Sophie Won't to try
something like that for the network, but she says, apparently
it's hard to expense torture dungeons anymore unless you're Amazon. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
I think I think I could bring in twice as
many downloads if I was recording above a torture dungeon.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
If there was a torture dungeon. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah,
So yeah, you're ready to talk about Uday Hussein soccer
star kind of.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
I mean, I think if you ask me, like the
traits of Uday Hussein, like what was what was he
best known for? How would you describe Hussein? Football manager,
top top of the list?

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Football manager? Yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of yeah, manager sort
of it team owner. It's a little it's hard to
translate his job directly, but he basically he owns like
the most prestigious team in Iraq, and he's also the
head of like their their their football like the national
like football committee and the head of their like Olympic
football team, right because of his he's running because of

(04:54):
his great skill in football. Of course, Ude Hussein wouldn't
get the job for any other reason at the age
of twenty. Anyway, we're gonna I will give it to
a bit of a biography. This is These are not
technically our Uday episodes. I think I still might do
dedicated There's a lot this guy got up to in
his life, and it's all pretty awful but pretty entertaining.
But we're gonna stick mostly to football in this one

(05:15):
because there's that much like his football career was that significant?
Born in kark Baghdad on either June eighteenth or March
ninth of nineteen sixty four, and you again, one of
the best ways to tell if this is going to
be a great episode of Behind the Bastards, are there
multiple equally likely birthdays for the bastard or like, do

(05:36):
we have any idea when they were really born?

Speaker 2 (05:38):
This many children? Oh yeh, at least five children.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
At least at least these are the details you know
that make things fun. Udai came into this world the
son of a father who was a man of modest means.
You know, Saddam Musin was not born wealthy. He came
from a scrappy backwater town, and he was a scrappy
backwater kid who fought every hour of his life to
become a powerful and influential man in the new Iraq

(06:02):
that he also helped to create. Saddam was a Bath
Party activist, and he'd fought to help the party seize
power three years before Ude's birth. So by the time
Ude comes into the world, the future of the Bath
Party in Iraq is uncertain. Right, they had just taken power,
they don't have things like super solidified. It's very possible
there's going to be a counterwave that like pushes them

(06:23):
out because they're not necessarily doing the best job. Right.
So it's at this point, by no means guaranteed that
Saddam's going to ever be more than like a mid
level kind of politico thug. You know this is he
could have just been just yet another pretty forgettable guy
in the history of Iraqi politics. And indeed, shortly after
Ude was born, Saddam miscalculated and put his support behind

(06:46):
a faction in the party that lost out in a
major power struggle, and Saddam was imprisoned for two years
but escaped and being Saddam Hussein, he goes on the
run and so like in some of UDA's earliest years,
his dad is like living outside of the law and
having like infrequent communication with his family. I think they're
moving sometimes to try to like meet up with him.
And by the time Uda is like three years old,

(07:08):
Saddam has kind of gotten himself out of the doghouse.
He scraped back enough power to make like a play
for a better position for himself, and he succeeds. There's
like a you know, another coup basically in Iraq, and
the new power structure that Saddam helps bring into being.
Sees Iraq run by a president named al Baker, who

(07:29):
is a kind of in the mold that happens in
these situations, a sick and elderly man that people sometimes
compared to bymar Germany's Paul Hindenberg. Like after this this
revel or this this coup, Saddam is the secondary guy
to this sick old dude that more people like, and
he's kind of running things from the background, you know,
Like that's what's happening when Ude is like four or five,

(07:51):
six years old, right in those years. So Saddam is
basically running a raq at that point in Uday's life,
but he's not a officially in charge. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (08:02):
I guess it's been so long since you're Saddam Hussein
those like early in this show, right, he did.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Early years ago, almost ten years ago. I know we're
kind of Yadi because this isn't Saddam episode y D.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Because I guess that's you know, most most of what
I know about that, I'm Hussein. Yeah, it just never
occurred to me that his children were young during his
rise to power, like when he was a young like aspiring.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah, yeah, just Ude. Really, I don't think Hussey's come
into the picture at this point, but yeah, he was
there for the come up, Yes, Ude is probably his
first memories are kind of when his dad is like
vice president and just sort of coming into power. Tribuna
writer George Woodward describes Uda being raised, quote from the

(08:47):
age of five, like a crown prince. So from about
his earliest memory, his dad is the guy who's running everything,
and he's expected to follow in his dad's footsteps, right,
So he doesn't really have much in the way of
life before that, although you have to imagine the kind
of chaotic and dangerous very earliest years of his life
probably had some impact on him. The fact that his

(09:08):
dad's on the run and stuff like that likely percolated
through to some extent, I expect.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
I don't know if by the time you're five, you're
a little prince.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Right right, maybe it doesn't do all that much. Now,
if you lived through the Goal War and then the
Iraq War years is I think all three of us
on the show did. You've encountered a lot of propaganda
about Saddam Hussein and his Iraq. Now, much of that
has been proven to be nonsense. As we'll discuss in
these episodes. There's a lot of bullshit about Saddam Hussein
just because it made a good story, and news, especially

(09:38):
like cheap periodicals like The New York Post, weren't checking anything.
If someone had like a lurid story about Saddam Hussein
in two thousand and two, you could get it printed
in a bunch of places. Nobody was checking on shit
as long as some guy who was an Iraqi defector
said that this is what happened. People were not doing
any kind of due diligence and the journalism world right especially,

(09:58):
those were but not a lot of the right. Yeah,
not in the early two thousands. Now, that doesn't change
the fact Saddam who's saying this, is not not doing
any revisionism. Saddam was an undeniably brutal dictator. He was
a horrible guy, and Ude is going to grow into
a horrific violent man who kills a lot of people.
But that doesn't mean every story about them is true.
And so part of what you have to do when

(10:19):
you're kind of researching an episode like this is trying
to pick apart how how possible is this crazy claim
that I may want to be true? But how likely
is that that had happened?

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Did do that? Or was it doctor evil?

Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah? Right, because that sounds more doctor evil? Yeahs yeah, yeah,
I don't know if he had access to those I
think Iraq might have done better if he had lasers
on for the Sharks. So I found an article in
These Football Times by Justin Sherman that gives a pretty
representative summary of the common take on Udae's childhood. This

(10:53):
is how he's described in a lot of publications right
in very similar terms to this, because this is the
this is the definitely like most marketable version of his
life story. Almost from birth, ude Hussein had a curiosity
and borderline affinity for violence. As an infant, instead of
pushing toy cars, he played with disarmed grenades. By the

(11:13):
age of ten, he was already shadowing his father to
the torture chamber at Kassar al Nahaya, nicknamed the Palace
of the End. Many political enemies were killed here, including
the overthrown king Faisal the second to observe how Saddam
dealt with perceived dissidence by high school, he bragged how
he had murdered his teacher for disrespecting him in front
of his girlfriend. So that's the traditional take on Udai

(11:34):
from born to murder, right like from the time, he's
a little kid torturing with glee, just one of these
people who was inherently monstrous. And obviously we'll get how
evil Saddam is, how could he be anything but inherently monstrous.
We'll talk a little bit about how accurate I think
all of that is here. Woodward's own description attributes Uday's

(11:54):
propensity to violence to quote unusual ideas that Saddam had
about raising children, but notes that this claim that like
Uda is violent because his dad had these different beliefs
aout how you raise kids. That that claim is something
Saddam's political opponents circulated after they fled the country, right.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Because who's actually raising the child? Is this mother's nanny's.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
It's nanny's and mo like his mom is in the picture.
But he's also like a wealthy kid. So they all
from a pretty early age. He's being watched by a
lot of different people. Right. We don't have a ton
of context on that, but that's kind of what I've
pieced together.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
I like, what kind of parenting philosophies are we talking about?
Is that like early twentieth century German thing where it's
illegal to touch your children, you can't kiss them.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
It's more Saddam wanted him to like see guys being
beaten and tortured up close from a pretty young age.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
To get it weird.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Is what it takes to be in it's a Game
of thrones kind of shit almost, is like you need
to know what it takes to rule this kingdom? Right? Yeah, right,
now again, how crazy all this actually and how crazy
people talk about it? These are two different things, and
there are alternate less extreme explanations for and less crazy
standing descriptions of UDA's childhood that sounds very different from

(13:11):
the paragraph I just read you. For example, the think
about him playing with disarmed grenades. If you read deeper,
that's like one specific story of like him playing around
with like a disarmed grenade while they were waiting for
like the results of some raid like or some like
like who kind of related activity that his dad was
carrying out. So it was like a dangerous night for them,
and UDA's playing They've got like a disarmed grenade, and

(13:31):
like maybe that sounds crazy, it could be fun. One
of my Yeah, I remember one of my uncles had
when I was a kid. They had like a desk
toy that was like a disarmed or fat I think
it may have just been a training grenade or whatever.
But that may have been what Uda had as like
a training grenade that was never real, Like it's not
clear to me. I don't know. I don't think it's
that crazy, Like he's not playing with disarm grenades, a

(13:54):
toy gun, no exactly exactly, and it's not like those
were his only toys. Like one weird occasion, right, Right,
If instead.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
Of blocks he only had like military surplus equipment, that
would be weird.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
Yeah, that would be weird. But I don't think anyone's
really saying that. Yeah, and he definitely at a certain
point it sees like his dad's torture dungeons, right, and
it helps him down. He's gonna get me a big
fan of torture. It's unclear when that starts. Woodward says
it's from age like fifteen on that Saddam lets him
participate in torture. That said, I also think it's fairer

(14:28):
to describe that as Saddam abused him by making him
participate in torture because he's fifty high.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah, but also I feel like exposing a child to that,
like especially like during puberty, I don't know, there's something
about like the cement being wet in your brain at
that moment.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
It's not gonna do good things to him.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
You're gonna become weird probably.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
And you you get really varying stories as to like
when did Saddam start exposing him to this stuff. Ude's
obituary and The Independent claimed that when Ude was five,
Saddam made him attend a family like gathering in a
Bagdad public square to watch the hanging of dozens of
Iraqi Jews who had been declared spies. The article continues

(15:08):
that quote Saddam boasted that he toughened his voice up
by taking them to watch the torture of enemies of
the nation and the liquidation of traders. That's very medieval,
and again I don't have trouble believing that that's in
line with some other stuff, and it's pretty consistent in
stories about them, But it's often described as like evidence
of Udai's early violent protrensity of violence and brutality were

(15:31):
more of what I'm seeing, And this will make sense
with some other stuff we're about to talk about. Is
that I think Saddam starts exposing to ude to violence
at a very young age, and it like fucks him
up and you can see it change him and damage him.
He was not a violent kid from an early age.
He's brutalized by his dad exposing him with this stuff.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
Even if as a twelve year old he's saying, oh, Daddy,
please take me to the public hanging. That's still a
child and it's juell your responsibilities to parents.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Because you make it sound cool, because I really know
what it is because he's twelve.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
You know, it's child abuse, I think, to take children
to the torture dungeon. I'm gonna stand it on one exactly.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
And it's not described as that often enough. It's it
always in these stories comes across as part of well,
this is a man who was just always, from the
earliest days of his childhood a violence size. No, this
is a child who was molded and abused into being
a violent psych That's kind of important, you know.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
It's not like those stories of like serial killers where
you hear like, oh, you know, as in middle school
he's sort of dismembering cats, Like this is not that.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
No, this is different than that, really, and like, yeah,
I don't know. Maybe I don't know enough about Adia's
childhood to know was he that guy? But there's reasons
to believe he wasn't. Right, and I'm inclined to doubt
the often repeated, possibly by Uday, story that he'd murdered
a teacher before he went into high school for disrespecting
to stay he would tell that right. Not only does
it sound fake, but I've read a book and it's out.

(16:52):
It's kind of hard to find, but there's some online
copies that is, like the Saddam Hussein approved version of
his life story for WESTS like it was a propaganda
thing that he came out. And one of the stories
in there is him holding his principle at gunpoint to
force him to like admit him to school because Saddam
loved being loved learning how to read, like love school.
His reading program actually was really good. He had a

(17:13):
very effective reading program for Iraq. It was one of
the things he was good at.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
To a literacy program was good, but it.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
Really did it where I worked quite well. But and
that's definitely how much children there's any real evidence, And
I think Ude may have told that lie because like, well,
my dad has a story about fucking being violent to
his teacher, I need an even more extreme one. That's
what I read there, because I don't have I don't
have any like good reason to believe he actually killed

(17:40):
a teacher. No one claims to know who this teacher
is or to have seen it directly. There are accounts
of Oude doing stuff like this later in life, but
I think that just makes people assume, well, if he
did that twenty years later. He must have done that
when he was ten, And that's nonsense, right.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
Right, That's that's personal myth building.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yeah, I think this is him myth building and cop
being his dad's I think that. And this isn't just
me thinking that because it's easier. We have some accounts
from some of his teachers, because Ude went to really
nice schools for most of his education, and the most
detailed account we have from one of his teachers comes
from a foreign teacher who worked in his because like

(18:20):
these are nicer schools in Iraq, a lot of the
teachers are foreigners. Dina Bitley from Yorkshire in the north
of England married a Kurdish man back in the nineteen
seventies and wound up working at a private school and
bag Dad when Ude Hussein is pretty a young kid.
Iraq has a long tradition of private school staff with
foreign teachers for the children of the elite and wealthy,

(18:40):
and even in Saddam's area, these people were respected professionals
who enjoyed a high degree of protection. The is certainly
not going to be killing like a white European teacher.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
Right, So that did we would like know about it
like this did not have heard have been safety was nineteen.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
Eighty now he also had Iraqi teachers. But again I
think someone would have said specific like we would hear
something besides, like he killed a teacher for being rude
to his girlfriend. We would have more of that story,
I think if it were real. And again, this just
doesn't comport with Dina's time with him when he was
very young in two thousand and three, and this is
like the height of Iraq war fever. Dina recalled to

(19:16):
ABC that time in her life when she was teaching
in Iraq and Ude was her student. He would have
been eleven years old at this point and prayer that
article quote Saddam Hussein, then second in command, was already
a powerful figure at the time. Ude arrived at school
with bodyguards, But she recalls a normal child who was bright, cheerful,
and responsive to discipline. He was always grinning and happy,
and as soon as they knew who he was, the

(19:36):
other children were a little bit wary. But he certainly
wasn't a bully, she said. People would like me to
say that he had two heads and was an unbearable pupil.
He wasn't asked about Uday's current reputation. She said it
must have been around the time of the nineteen ninety
one goal for when there were stories in the papers.
I don't know how true they are about his murderous ways.
That did surprise me because he was never aggressive or
a problem in class, she said, I had a good

(19:58):
relationship with him. He never tried to pull rank. He
certainly never said to me, do you realize who I am?
You know?

Speaker 2 (20:04):
So Ude got the pleasure to be in class on
his report.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
Card, right right, right. It just sounds like a real
kid as opposed to this like violent murderer, seleven year
old that, like a lot of news stories want you
to believe that, like this kid is obsessed with death
as a child. Naturally, a lot.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
Of what what I do on my show, and I'm
writing about these these men who become terrible, these men
who commit these terrible acts. They are not like ontological evil.
They were not They did not emerge from the womb
as a monster. It's a human guy who became fucked
up over time, sometimes for a discernible reason.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yes, yes, and that's always It's very rare.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
For someone to be born monstrous.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah, and again UDA's gonna do monsters. We're gonna be
talking all about the nightmarag stuff he does. I'm not
at all trying to mitigate. I just really want to
emphasize it.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
I think it motually makes it more frightening, right that
this was just a human man who became this way.
But it's I don't know, it's more comforting sometimes to
write these people off.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
Oh, sometimes just ontological evil exists in the world, and
there he is.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
It's easier to believe that than that, Like, yeah, this
kid could have been a perfectly nice child at eleven,
and then four or five years later because of the
shit his dad exposes him to a way scarier person,
you know, Like, that's just more upsetting.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
It's a more complicated and upsetting story. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah. And again it's not that there's not fear around
this kid then, it's just the fear is clearly not
because he's a he's a maniac.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
If I upset this child, his dad will kill my
face exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
Yeah, And Dina was like, I'm glad, like said, I'm
never came to parents evening, and I'm glad he didn't,
Like I had, I knew stories about him at the time, Right,
I didn't want to meet the guy. Yeah, you don't
want to have that one. And she also stated that
her colleagues, her Iraqi colleagues, were surprised that she was
willing to discipline Uday when he did misbehave. They were

(21:53):
too worried of his father to discipline it. Once again,
is it's based on him doing stuff? It's based on
Saddam right? Uh? She told another one other story I
find particularly interesting. He was leaping about in class one day,
so I took him by a tuft of hair and
sat him down. I said, we don't do this. I
am teaching, you are learning, now sit down. Another teacher
watching through the classroom window was horrified. She said to

(22:13):
me later, do you know who that is? It's a
dumb son. And this anecdote tells us a couple of things.
What is that there's enough fear around his family again
that most people don't want to discipline ude and that
must have had an effect on him, but Dina does
and nothing happens to her. Right. And it's also interesting
UDA's reaction to being chastised by his teacher. You could

(22:33):
see like the crazy version of this kid would have
gotten furious at her embarrassing him and would have had
some plan.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
For Riven or had her killed.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
Or Ude gets a haircut, so he has his barber
trim off the bit of hair that she'd grabbed him by,
and he like smiles and points it out, which is
like malicious compliance maybe, but that doesn't that doesn't suggest
a homicidal mind. That seems like a normal eleven year
old boy, you know, a rich kid maybe, but like.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
Pretty much, she lived, she lived to tell the tale.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
She lived to tell the tale, you know. Dina added,
he was not a high flyer, but he did his best.
He was always smiling, a bit of a clown. Wode
picked up a lovely Yorkshire accent from me. He's probably
still got it. It was nice because it reminded me
of home. So the Yorkshire folks in our audience. If
you're wondering how this fucker sounds as he's torturing soccer players,

(23:19):
football players like you. Sorry, that's not your false It's
not Dina's fault trying to teach the poor fucker English,
not pourfucker.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
So obviously ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, it's it's really funny to think of, and I
want you all to keep that thought in your mind
as we take a little trip down advertiser Lane and
we're back. Oh, I just got an email about a

(23:54):
FIFA party in Portland. That sounds awful. I don't think
I'm gonna be doing that.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
Should be RSVP, absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, RSVP, no, thank you, I don't like. I don't like.
Nope them, Molly, Sophie, shall we dive back in? Yep? Okay.
So Ouda's dead now, obviously, but he was noted as
speaking English very well, and all of the other hard
facts we have about his education comport with Dina's story.
He wasn't a great student, but he wasn't a bad one.

(24:25):
And there aren't really any clear incredible claims that he
was involved in hardcore violence. There are some, but not
any that I find super believable. Until he's fifteen and
his dad starts taking him to see and possibly help
out in the torture chambers that he's operating, right, Yeah,
And I think that, you know, assuming that's true, and
I think it does, it's pretty consistent. I can see

(24:47):
this being what sort of changes him because by the
time he's in an adolescent Saddam is looking at his
eldest son as the heir apparent. But that's not going
to last like forever, right, Uday's going to start to
really like change and take a turn for the brutal
as a young adult. It's a little unclear to me
when exactly that starts, but I can definitely see a

(25:10):
lot of this being the result of Saddam wanting to
raise his air to be strong and powerful and just
kind of destroying this kid's mind and turning him into
a dangerous, homicidal maniac because Saddam doesn't do the same
thing with Kuse. The funniest thing about maybe there's some
fundamental difference in the two of them. I don't know,
but it kind of reads to me just like he
got better at being a parent in between the two

(25:31):
and was like, Oh, I fucked up the main kid.
I got to pick a new air. I'm not gonna
make it. I'm i gotta make this next one turn
out more normal.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Say think he's an irma bomback quote. Right, Children are
like pancakes. You have to throw the first one out.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
Right, Right. That's kind of how Sadam treats Uda after
a point. But at this era, Uda is still looking
like the air apparent, you know, and he hasn't done
anything too crazy. So one person who claims to have
attended private school with Ude is Latif Yahya, and you
may have heard of this guy. He also becomes particularly
famous in the post Golf War period and then again

(26:06):
right before Operation Iraqi Freedom, when we invaded Iraq for
the second and really really illegal time. Right, So, if
you've heard of Latif Yaya, doctor Latif Yaya, it's because
he's going to claim to have been forced to serve
as Ude's body double. You've probably heard of Saddam's body doubles,
the whole family, a lot of stories. They may all

(26:27):
be lies. By the way, I can't prove We'll thought
I made you a dedicated story, I can't actually prove that.
Like they had body doubles in the way it was
usually reported, everyone takes it as red. But then when
you look into like, okay, well did they find any
of those guys, and it's like, no, they never did.
Oh that's weird. It's weird that like the actual individual
body doubles, the guys who claimed they were always have
really sketchy stories that you can't back up, and the

(26:50):
evidence like the body doubles that were supposed to be
found mostly weren't there, and it kind of looks like
maybe instead of having a stable of comedic body doubles,
it just was like some of his guards who looked
like him could also like, if you just want to
like run a dude out, he might look like the
boss to see if anyone's going to try to shoot
at him or something. And maybe it wasn't as crazy
elaborate as as all the news reported.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
Wo I was just watching v and there was like
a plot line in Deep where where her like primary
secret service assigned to her looks like her from the back. Yeah, Like,
it's not a body double. It's just like exactly, if
somebody's gonna shoot you in the back of the head,
maybe they'll shoot so.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Much late nineties early two thousands comedy relied upon fucking
Saddam Hussein body doubles. Like that was a really big
I don't know why in the media and it just anyway,
but this guy Latifyaya is going to claim to have
been UDA's body double, and so a lot of our
best Uday stories, the wildest stories of Uda being a
maniac come from doctor Latif Yaya.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
Oh, so from a guy who might be making them up.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
He's definitely making it. Latifiyaya's for sure a kan man,
a huge con man. He definitely lied about it onto stuff,
and there's zero evidence whatsoever he was ever UDA's body double.
However he may have known Uda, he didn't know him
at all, because there is some evidence that he may
have been connected to the regime in some like kind
of corrupt ways, like.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
A little bit of truth on the mat, like a
little new get of truth.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
He denies that entirely. There's just allegations. I don't fully
know what's going on with this guy, but there's not
there's no reason to really think he was Ude's body double.
But he may have in fact known Uday. He came
from a wealthy family and bag dad. He claims he
and Ude went to the same like primary school, private school,
like private primary school, and they very well may have.
I can't disprove that, so I will read you some

(28:36):
of his accounts, but I need you to remember, this
guy is for sure a liar, So I don't know.
I'm not gonna tell you to take that. You're gonna
run into this guy anytime you read about Uday. So
I don't want to ignore him because then people will
be like, why didn't you include this guy? Well, because
he's a fucking liar. But I will tell you some
of what he says, because again he may have known Uda,
there's some reason to believe that he just definitely wasn't

(28:58):
doing what he said he was. Uh. So here's his
account of supposedly Ude in like high school. Basically, first
came the bodyguards, then Uday, usually in a T shirt
and jeans like a cowboy. His hair was longer than ours,
and he wore it in an afro, like Jimmy Hendrix.
After a few weeks, we finally got used to the
daily performance. Ude was never friendly, never normal, never conventional,

(29:19):
and I actually found him repugnant from the very first.
He had no respect for the teachers or anyone else
who tried to tell him what to do. He couldn't
care less about tests or homework or anything. There were
twenty four of us in the class, and while everyone
else worked hard to succeed, Ude wasn't interested. If a
teacher tried to call him to the blackboard, Uda would
throw chalk at him and order him to change the
subject or simply to leave him alone. He came when

(29:39):
he wanted to, left when he wanted to, and basically
did whatever he wanted. He never took his textbooks home
with him, and nonetheless he received the best grades at
the end of the school year. And I don't actually
have that much trouble believing it. You know that, Again,
this guy may have been in position to have known ude,
and that's not necessarily inconsistent with like five or six

(30:00):
years later, the kid that we heard about earlier, especially
going through some rough years with his dad, exactly the.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
Kind of behavior I would expect from someone who doesn't
have no said to him, You're not gonna punish h
You're not gonna flunk him, So why why would he
He's a teenage teenager, sure for sure.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
And again, as I just said, I think La tif
Yaya is not a super honest guy. But also if
you're gonna be running a con like that, there are
often based on some truths and there's evidence, you know,
it's not impossible, So I don't find that as super.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
This sounds super resief description. Yeah, of course he's disrespectful
to his teachers. What are they gonna do?

Speaker 1 (30:36):
Yeah, yeah, exactly right. So Yaya claims Udeo obeyed no
rules and even broke the strictest taboo of all girls.
This means that one time he brought his girlfriend to
class with him. Yaya describes him enjoying the teacher's helplessness
when Ude ordered him to continue teaching while he made
out with his girlfriend. He claims this teacher was gone
the next day and none of us ever saw him again.

(30:59):
And I think that that's a lie. And I guess
I might be able to believe that he knew Ude
a little, or knew him at a distance and just
kind of added some bullshit too. I don't know, maybe
this is all like, but there's one more study of
Udai school days and Yaya's questionable book that I will include.
He claims that in nineteen eighty, soon after Saddam took

(31:19):
power in the front power right, like, he's no longer
kind of sitting in the back portuning to be the VP,
Ude asked Yaya to paint a picture of his father
as a congratulations gift. So Yaya says he took this
as an honor initially, and he finishes a painting of
Saddam Hussein and he gives it to Uday in class,
and the dictator's son, he is really happy and compliments

(31:40):
him and quote, he heaped me with compliments, simply perfect,
simply perfect. He lisped because he had slightly protruding teeth
and thus a slight speech defect, although no one ever
mentioned it. This is interesting. I found one other account
at least that Ude had a speech impediment that I
can like to a separate person. So at least a
couple of people have said that. It's weird to me

(32:00):
that his English teacher didn't notice it. Maybe he didn't
have a lisp in English. I know, I guess that's
that's possible. I don't know, but a.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Lisp specifically, it is like a Isn't it like a
structural thing in your mind? It's like something you're doing
with your mouth that you would do in any language.
I assist, I mean, we can speak language.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
My momus a speech language pathologist, ironically, but I don't
know shit, so I'm not going to try to guess more.
I can't say that he's like because other people do
talk about him having it. It's just interesting that his
teacher didn't seem to mention that either. And I could
also see this him kind of wanting to make fun
of Uday, and this was the time in which it
was more acceptable. Obviously there's nothing wrong with him, was
speeching impediment, But in the nineties it was a lot

(32:40):
more acceptable to like mock people for stuff like that,
Like people did that a lot more openly. And this
is kind of a shitty guy, So that might just
be what he's doing here. I don't actually know, so yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Says that Ude was thrilled and start seeking him out
and trying to hang out with him every day after
getting this painting of Saddam and quote he even promised

(33:00):
he would give me everything I wanted, he would sort
it all out. But Yaya claims he instinctively knew to
keep Ude at a distance because he wasn't comfortable at
their peers kept pointing out how similar they looked, that, like, wow,
you guys really look a lot alike, and they looked
like he still look kind of similar. Little Yeah, I
don't look crazily but somewhat Yeah, Doctor Latif Yaya and Ude.

(33:21):
Now I'll caution against giving again too much credence to
anything in this fucker's book, but it's not too wild
to claim. Yaya claims that he and Ude lost touch
after graduating, like you do, and we'll hear more of
Yahya's claims next episode. We will talk about him more.
But let's get back to Ude. So after graduating, you
know the school, the high school where he and Yaya

(33:42):
went together, Ude went to Baghdad Medical College. And you
can kind of gather how legitimately he got intro. He
earned his introduction to Baghdad Medical College by the fact
that he dropped out three days later. Oh, his medical
school for ninety six hours, so like he.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
Wouldn't have even attended very lectures at that point. I
don't know if he attended any He signed up for classes,
he got to the door and he went home.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
Yeah, no, No, he might have getten spooked by his
first stethoscope. It's they got he didn't doctor Ude Hussein. No,
probably not a good idea.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
Okay, I looked it up, and maybe it's just I mean,
they're just like two guys who both have a mustache.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's the other thing. And this is
also part of the if you if you read like
the some of the like Saddam Hussein body double stories.
Having been to a rack a good amount of times,
I could just see those being stories of like, well,
they were just looking for a guy who's kind of
said on size and had a mustache because they needed

(34:42):
somebody at a distance for a minute. But that's not
as crazy as he's got, like this team of men
who live their entire lives pretending to be him and
get like facial surgery. You know, I don't know which
is true. So he drops out of Bagdad Medical College,
and next he starts taking classes at the College of Engineering,
where he got a bachelor's degree, and then he attends

(35:02):
military Academy and he writes a thesis on the Iran
Iraq War. He's trying different things. Yeah, he's trying to.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Be a doctor, be a legendeer, be a general.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
Who knows yes, yeah, exactly. He needs to he needs
to establish his bona fides as like this is why
I'm I'm good to follow in my father's footsteps. You know,
I have the military experience. I have this, you know,
professional experience. Now he's not really doing much of any
work here. His thesis is nearly universally agreed to have
been written by like a professional military advisor in the

(35:32):
Iraqi Army. He just like writes it for Udai, which
would be nice. Although I guess in the United States,
if Pete Hegseth wrote your essay, I don't think it
would get you very much.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
So I guess it depends on who's grading.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
Yeah, because it's on who's grading. Per George Woodwards article quote.
While at university, Ude wanted to marry a fellow student
from a noble Iraqi family, but his father refused. He
wanted a bride from within the family clan. Ude obeyed,
but from then on was spoken of as a serial rapist.
Girls were allegedly abducted for him and forced into sex.
One of the most famous stories says that a bride

(36:07):
was kidnapped for Ude on the second day of her wedding.
After the rape, she could not live with the horror
and took her own life, and the groom, by Ude's order,
was hanged as a preventative measure. Now that's an awful story,
and you hear a couple versions of it, so there
it either means either he did stuff like this several times,
or like one person told this story about him and
maybe pieces of it were true and other pieces aren't,

(36:29):
but people just started spinning it off. It's very hard
for me to tell because there's slightly different versions of
this story and I don't know are these evidence of
him doing it a bunch or is this evidence of
like the same because a lot of these come from
like people dissidents who leave Saddam's Iraq and are telling
all sorts of horrible stories. And I don't doubt some

(36:50):
amount of this is happening. It's just hard to tell
what is happening and which stories are true and which
ones are like the in repetition of something that has
changed over telling about bunch of times. Right, I guess too.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
If you're you know, if he's murky, take us to
take us a given he is a serial rapist. He
is committing these sexual crimes. Good evidence that he was
abducting a woman on her wedding night and raping her.
Is this sort of worst scenario of this genre of crime?
This is very This is dictator's son premnocta type shit.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
I never doubt the basics of like a dictator's son
committed a lot of rape, but.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
The details is, like, what's the worst version of this
story you could tell.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
The theatricality always makes me second guess, like this doesn't
necessarily always seem like something a person would do, right,
like not even I don't think he's this bad. I
guess this seems weirdly elaborate, like.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
You're getting you're getting jaded, you have done too many
sex crimes.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
Yeah, maybe, and again, so I can't for reasons like that.
I can't throw all this stuff out either, because he
does some pretty crazy shit. Yeah. And one of the
reasons that kind of makes me hesitant about this is
that one of the most most detailed accounts of this
kind of like him murdering, like raping a woman after
her wedding and like they're being murders after that, comes

(38:07):
from Latif Yaya. Right, He's got a story that sounds
a lot like the one I just recounted to you
that I found from a two thousand and nine interview
he gave to The National And this is in an
article on Michael Thibodeau's This is years after Uday's dead.
He tells of a grotesque episode in El Habanya, Iraq's
leading honeymoon resort, when Ude noticed a newlywed couple walking

(38:28):
hand in hand and called over to them. Ude was
livid when they ignored him. Mister Yaya attempted to persuade
Ude to leave the couple alone, pointing out that they
had only been married a few days. Ude snapped back,
this isn't your business. UDA's pimps beat up the husband
and forced the beautiful bride to his suite, where he
raped her and shame. In despair, she later threw herself
to her death from the fourth floor window of the building.

(38:49):
Mister Yaya says the husband was accused of trying to
kill Ude and sentenced to death, but was later spared
because of his long service in a war against Iran,
for which he was awarded medals. The man, Yaya claims,
was one of those who nearly killed Uda in a
nineteen ninety six assassination attempt, and I have that. So
this is part of why I have trouble believing. Specifically,
is that we know this story Yaya gives claims from

(39:10):
when he supposedly Uday's body double and he almost certainly wasn't.
So that means I don't believe this story. And that's
so similar to the other one that it makes me
wonder how much of these specific really theatrical stories of
rape are just sort of like things that enemies concocted
in that period of time when it was profitable to
do so.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
And again, kernels of truth, right, So I'm sure they
raped married women who then killed themselves because within their culture,
she would not be able to go back to her family.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
Yeah. Yeah, and like colonels of truth, I don't kernels
of truth. It's just there's so much of it that's
like I or but then.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
He tried to kill him, and then he let him
live because of his medals. Like that's too many details.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
There's a lot of like, yeah, I don't know, we'll see.
I'm trying to present you with all this so that,
like you, the listener, can conclude what you want to
believe about ude Hussein, But it's hard to It's hard
to tell for sure with stuff like this. It's so politicized.
The fact that the US was looking for any excuse
to do a war against Saddam's Iraq makes it hard

(40:14):
to judge every piece of information as easily as I'd
otherwise like to. But yeah, anyway, all of this takes
us up to the early nineteen eighties. During this period
of time, Iraq was not yet the global pariah state
that it would become after Desert Storm, and it had
one of the best football teams in the entire Middle East.
Iraqis had become very proud of their team, which got

(40:36):
its first foreign manager at the Romanian Cornell, Draghushan in
nineteen sixty two, and in nineteen sixty five, under his leadership,
they won the Arab Nations Cup. They wanted again. In
nineteen sixty six, people started calling them by the nickname
the Lions of Mesopotamia, which is an undoubtedly cool name
for your football team. Sick. Yeah, that rocks. Yeah, that's

(40:58):
a dude's rock moment involved.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
I'm surprised there wasn't a real lion on the field.
Where's the lion? Give me a lion?

Speaker 1 (41:05):
I don't know that there wasn't, Molly, and I would
also like to remind you you've got you've got a
fucking Romanian man whose last name is basically dragon and
a team from of iraqis the mustache game in that team.
We don't have the capability to recreate mustaches that were
that powerful. Like, I need to see this amazing stuff. Yeah,
I can only imagine him in my dreams. There might

(41:28):
actually be pictures of the guy. I didn't look them up,
but I'd be disappointed if he doesn't have a beautiful mustache.
So first couple of years that this guy's working, you know,
the Iraqi team in the mid sixties is really starting
to get off the ground in a big way. It's
looking good and for a new country in Iraq is
a new country in the mid sixties having like a

(41:49):
football team that's a huge hit, like one of the
best in the region, that's a big deal like it's
and so it becomes like integral to like this burgeoning
sense of national pride that Iraqi people are. You know,
the team becomes very beloved for this reason. However, after
the mid sixties they kind of backslide for quite a while.
There's this initial period of greatness, and then through the

(42:10):
late sixties up through much of the seventies, you know,
there's a lot of unrest and disorder in the country.
Saddam is rising to power and causing a good amount
of that unrest. It's a rough period for the team.
So after Saddam takes power and starts a war against
Iran in nineteen eighty four, that war is consuming Iraqi

(42:32):
soldiers at a terrifying rate, and Saddam needs something to
bind the people together and improve morale because the population
is not happy with this war that did not need
to happen.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
And so you're saying, people don't love it when you
take them into an unnecessary war with Iran, and you
should distract them with soccer.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
Yes, Saddam, who's saying something that we wouldn't any leader exactly. Yeah, No,
it's never happened. Again. Never has a world leader started
an ill advised war with a and then tried to
distract the country by a soccer game against Iran. Yeah,
that's never happened before.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
It's never happened.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
So, yeah, there's wars consuming human beings at a terrifying rate,
and Saddam needs something to improve morale. I'm going to
quote from Justin Sherman's article again here. In the hope
that his son could help rebuild the spirit of the
nation while also proving himself a worthy successor, Saddam handed
ude the reigns of both the country's Olympic Committee and
its football federation. Through sports, Saddam believed that a fervent

(43:31):
nationalism would return permeating through the sun kissed football pitches
to the trenches in the desert. The appointment of the
twenty year old U Day would initially yield historic results.
Iraq would win the Golf Cup his first year in charge,
followed by the Arab Cup just a year later. However,
nothing could prepare them for what was about to come.
With a dramatic win over Syria and their final match
of qualifiers, Iraq punched their ticket to the nineteen eighty

(43:53):
six World Cup in Mexico, which to this day represents
their first and only appearance in the prestigious tournament. So wow,
pretty good early first two year run for the fail
for you know, Saddam's Nepo baby son.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
But like is that because of his management or were
they gonna go anyway? And he was just there so.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
Not long before this. And by by the way, I
should note Iraq is in the World Cup this year.
This was these are these articles are real? But I
think this is their first Yeah, qualified for the second
time in twenty twenty six, so that is something to
celebrate this year. Like I I love it.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
They can do it, They can do it without any
day they.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Could they finally did They finally did. It took a while,
and I have I've loved the country a long time.
Like it's it's unfortunately, when we're telling Iraqi stories, they're
often very sad, just because of how difficult that country's
recent history has been. But it's actually really awesome. I'm
really happy for them that they made it back to
the World Cup because that's that's going to mean a
lot to people, Like we've been talking about, like football

(44:54):
means a lot to people. Teams like this, especially when
shit's really hard out there, means a hell of a
lot to people. So that's actually super nice to hear.
And that's why Saddam thinks this is a good idea, right,
And at first it kind of looks like it is.
You know, Uda pulls the team. It seems like Ude
pulls the team. Now, what's part of what's really happening
is they've recently brought on a new coach.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
And so that he's telling anything like Udi doesn't know
shit about managing he's the national soccer team.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
No, And I think this new coach had started before
and it's kind of that's kind of started to but
he doesn't fuck it up. You gotta give him credit
for that, Like he doesn't, he doesn't step over his
own dish, so's, yeah, I don't. I certainly can't say
that he was bad at the job at this stage, right,
But it may just be that's because he was too
nervous to like do anything. So maybe he was just

(45:42):
listening to his subordinates in this period of time, because
it's not gonna this is gonna be the only period
of time where things are like really good, uh for
the team. But yeah, at first things are going really well,
and and and at this stage in the story, like
the Lions of Mesopotamia, it's like a fucking nineties move.
It's like a Disney movie from like nineteen ninety six.
Like you've got the dictator's fail son who doesn't particularly

(46:07):
like football and has never been good at anything and
is desperate to please his father, and he takes on
this team that had been great once but they've fallen
into disrepute, and he welds them together into this like
group of lovable misfits and they make it to the
World Cup. Like that's that's a really good Disney watch.
The movie lost absolutely absolutely if you do not include
anything that happens after the World Cup. It's a great Disney.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
Credits roll over the football pitch.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
Yeah, over the football pitch and the torture chamber.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
No, No, at the World Cup. It ends there.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
It ends there. It ends there. That's right, It ends
there because there's no torture at the World Cup other
than having to watch football. There was as well. Yeah,
there's slaves too, there's slaves too. There's a lot of
issues top. Yeah. I was trying to go to ads
after accusing FIFA of complicity and slavery. They definitely are.

(47:03):
That is a fact. You know what else is a fact? Molly,
it's time for ads. Wow, we're back. So uh, it's
in the days right before the World Cup that we
first start to see science. If and I think this
is probably likely the success of the Iraqi team in

(47:23):
New Day's first couple of years is because he mostly
like stayed out of his own way and let other
people make decisions. If that's the case, then it's it's
right before the game that he starts to think maybe
I am a genius and I should be making more decisions.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
That's exactly the right time to fuck with the team, like.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
Right before you want to start doing it. That's when
you want to start doing it.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Let's put different shoes.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
He's accused later of having been a hardcore drug user.
There's certainly evidence that he used heroin and other like
pills on and pills and stuff on occasion. I've heard
allegations that he used a lot of coke. It would
certainly make sense. I don't know if he's doing that now.
That could if he's if he's coke because his team
went to the World Cup, that might explain when he
decides maybe I need to be making more of the

(48:10):
decisions I need I can't listen as a coach anymore.
This is all, but it's got its two day's time,
you know, I gotta gallut there. Yeah. So he's like,
while they're, you know, at the World Cup, he gets
asked to organize friendly matches while they're there with both
Brazil and England, and this is like a big deal.
These these don't count for the overall World Cup, but

(48:31):
it's still a big deal. Iraq is a new country
and their team is really has just started becoming good again.
Brazil and England's teams are both very well established, and
they're both as like, hey, that's like basically that's a
that's a huge compliment, saying we want to do this
like game with you. Right, it should be a huge
thing for Iraq. It's a really among other things, it's

(48:52):
the country being kind of invited into the global community
in like a really prominent, big way. It's a big deal.
It should have been a great moment. Ude says, no,
fuck off, we're not having any friendly games because he
thinks his guys will lose and then his dad will
be angry at him if they lose the friendly games.
And it's like, it's not about winning or losing. It's
about the fact that you're like part of this community

(49:12):
of nations and let your team is. And he can't
see that because he's scared of his dad.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
In fear of loss, that you're gonna have to play
those teams eventually.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
Yeah, you're gonna have to play him eventually like this
in a.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Relaxed manner where they're going to go kind of easy on.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
You, right right, exactly. And also it might make your
team better, like playing against might be really good teams. Yeah,
it's like and I can believe that he didn't do
this because he was scared of his dad. He didn't
want to, like he was scared would make him look bad. Right.
It's the kind of insecurity you would expect out of
a guy like this in this situation.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
A guy who's seen his dad torture somebody.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
Right, exactly. Yeah, And it makes it it makes it
clear why you Day was never going to be a
very good team manager. Right. And he makes the further
mistake after this of replacing right before the World Cup.
He replaces the I mean if he's not technically the
team manager, but he is doing that job. And he
replaces the guy who had been the official team manager
with his assistant right before the match for no real reason. Right,

(50:12):
He's just switching people around. He changes the team colors
from green and white to yellow and blue, with no
consideration that for twenty years Iraqi fans had gotten used
to the old colors. He just does it for no reasons.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
A police are so superstitious, they're so and paranoid. They spoke,
they spook like horses.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
They spook like horses, that's exactly, yeah, and so do fans,
to be honest, like, why would you do that? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (50:36):
There are people out there wearing dirty underwear because it's
their lucky panties like, right.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
Yeah, you can't. You cannot understand how crazy people are
about sports. Day I change it, and yeah, I wonder
how much of it is that he's not really into
sports like that that is emphasized in a lot with
Jury's he never really cared all that much other than
he didn't want to lose, you know. So Justin Sherman
argues that as a result of all this, the Iraqi
team are rives in Mexico for the World Cup, quote

(51:01):
ill prepared and mentally shackled, And it's possible that by
this point Ouday has already started threatening his players. I
don't know if he's already started. You know, the allegations
of torture don't starting to la after this. I don't
know when it actually started. Now. I'm not well suited
to the task of judging Iraq's performance at the World Cup,
but the accounts I've read all seemed to agree they
did a really good job for a new and inexperienced team.

(51:24):
You got to remember what's happened here, as Iraq is
a team that has just started seeing success again. They
won some local championships and kind of it's not a
Fluke would be the wrong. But they get they get
really lucky, and they make it to the World Cup
and they're not really fully ready to be there.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
And the like playing Brazil is a different situation exactly.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
And this could be really good for a new team, right,
getting into the World Cup this early, getting to play
with teams of that caliber that could really like help
take move them forward and take them up. Right. And
they don't do badly in the World Cup, right, not
compared to how new they are, right, they get knocked
out pretty early. They only score one goal in all
three of their games. However, if you just kind of

(52:08):
read it that way, it makes it seem like they
did less well than they actually did. And I don't
want to short change the team.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
Getting their all, Like, even though it is a huge
losing to a good team doesn't mean you did badly.
Like Verde tying up Spain was an incredible win. They
didn't win the game exact, that's an incredible win.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
Yeah, yeah, And that's what George Woodward points that out
in his article for Tribuna, and I want to read
from that here quote. After rewatching archive footage from forty
years ago, we can see that Iraq looked good but
lacked experience of major tournaments. In an evenly matched game
with Paraguay, they conceded the only goal from a quickly
taken free kick at the end of the first half.
They even equalized, but referee picon Akong from Mauritius disallowed

(52:49):
the goal he blew for halftime just as the decisive
corner was being delivered. Against Belgium, Iraq actually looked better
and more dangerous even with ten men. The Belgian scored
the winner from a penalty that to day might well
have been overturned by vart In the final match at
the one hundred thousand seated as Techa against hosts Mexico,
who needed to improve their goal difference, the Iraqis defended
bravely and conceded only once, so it can be said

(53:12):
that they performed with dignity despite their final place in
the table. In a good world, if this is like
a normal country with a normal leadership, this would be
the start of like a really good team, you know
that can be from this and make it back right
right right. It's there, should have been the start of
something great, and it's not. Iraq doesn't make it back again.

(53:33):
Until this year to the World Cup and the story.
A lot of what we're going to be talking about
this week is why because Uda is a big part
of why Iraq does not go back, that this promising
start does not continue promising because Uda can't accept that
just getting to the World Cup was a victory. And
I have to presume part of this is because Saddam
is a huge asshole to him about losing. So when

(53:56):
the team returns home to Baghdad, they're greeted not the
way they should have been and is like a team
that did really, really well and has a bright future. Instead,
he explodes with rage, and in the days and years
to come, the Iraqi football team is going to see
just how violent Ude Hussein could be. And we'll talk
about that in part two. How do you feel it?

Speaker 2 (54:18):
I'm pumped. I'm ready to watch some soccer.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
Well, we're just going to talk about it because I
don't know much about soccer. But what I do know
about Molly is that you have a podcast. That's all
I know. I'm like user, you know, I stumbled into
work this morning with a sign around my neck that
says weird Little Guys hosted by Molly Cocker's. That's already
I don't even have a name table. Yeah, yeah, that's right,

(54:41):
that's right, that's right. It's something to do with the.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
German cavalry, the ideal listener.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
Yeah, exactly, that's what we we in fact target directly
for Germans several centuries ago, who lost their memories somehow.
I don't remember enough of that myth anyway, Molly, anything
to say before we go?

Speaker 2 (55:00):
Uh yeah, listen to Weird Little Guys. It's a good yep,
it's fun. You'll love it.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
You'll love it, you'll love it.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
Listen to Weird Do you want to hear more about
the Klan?

Speaker 1 (55:09):
You know? Yeah? Yeah, weird little Guys. Oo days a
weird little guy. You love weird little guys? If you
love weird little guys, listen to Weird Little Guys. I'm
not not gonna say that title anymore for a minute.

Speaker 3 (55:21):
Hey, weird little guys, weird little guys, weird little guys.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
Nope, Nope, nope, nope, we're done.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
But so we came up with it. She can say
it as many times as she wants.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
We're a little guys, We're the guys, We're guys, We're
little guys. Guys, We're for guys. Behind the Bastards is
a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool
Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com or
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the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday

(55:50):
and Thursday. Hit remind me of Netflix. You don't miss
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