The American soldiers who guarded Saddam Hussein in his last weeks genuinely grieved for him

The American soldiers who guarded Saddam Hussein in his last weeks genuinely grieved for him.

The Prisoner in His Palace, a new book by Will Bardenwerper, a former infantry officer and Pentagon employee. “I feel like I let him down,” Specialist Adam Rogerson told Bardenwerper. It was as if he had lost a family member. “I almost feel like a murderer, like I killed a guy I was close to.”

Saddam loved Dostoevsky and Naguib Mahfouz, and after being captured, he frequently requested reading and writing materials. “You must understand, I am a writer,” he told John Nixon, a CIA interrogator, “And what you are doing by depriving me of pen and paper amounts to human rights abuse!”.

After that, he was handed to some U.S. army soldiers to guard him and those 12 soldiers were called the super twelve. One of those soldiers even called him a caged lion. Over the time they spent with him, Saddam shared many stories and smoked cigars, and it seems that the 13 men became friends.