Saddam Hussein, Pen Pal

Christopher Love, a software engineer from Pennsylvania, decided after September 11 that the killing had to stop. So he did what most of us, so moved, might do: He sent an e-mail to Saddam Hussein.

“Someone must lead the charge for human rights,” Love wrote. “I believe that you, Mr. President, would be the likely candidate.”

It seems unlikely that Saddam Hussein would lead a charge for human rights. But it was also unlikely that Saddam would respond to Love’s e-mail, and by all indications, that’s just what the Iraqi dictator did. The website that Iraq keeps for its mission to the United Nations recently posted Saddam’s response. (No one knows for sure whether or not Saddam used a ghostwriter for his correspondence.) “In a letter of reply like this, there may be no room to say all I want,” writes Saddam. Three thousand words later he wraps up his missive to “Brother Christopher” by signing, “Yours truly, Saddam Hussayn.”

Is this the first (or second) glimpse of the softer side of Saddam? After all, he includes Brother Christopher in the brotherhood of mankind. He waxes philosophical about honor, sorrow, and cultural understanding. He even expresses condolences to the American people–not the government–for the September 11 attacks.

Aside from a few bouquets to his American correspondent, Saddam’s letter doesn’t have much substance. He trots out the familiar accusations of U.S. “terrorism” against Iraq and the “death en masse” caused by U.N. sanctions. He worries about defending crops because crops “cannot run, hide or draw a gun on those trying to harm them,” and warns of retaliation if the United States turns its anti-terrorist sights on Iraq.

Christopher Love says that he appreciates the response from the dictator. But, he told the New York Daily News, “I’m behind our government. I’m not going to jump on the Iraqi bandwagon.”

Good thing. Had Love made these comments in Iraq, he might have become a prime candidate for Saddam Hussein’s latest torture fad: tongue amputation.

Andreas Mavromattis, the U.N. human rights officer for Iraq, documented this new preferred method of torture in his most recent summary report to the U.N. Security Council. Saddam is slicing tongues off not only those who dare speak against his regime, Mavrommatis reports, but also those who refuse the praise-on-demand requests of his secret service.

Among Mavrommatis’s other findings: summary executions of women suspected of prostitution; a general terror campaign against Iraqi women conducted by the quasi-official “Feda’iyee Saddam” military units; and the continued killing of political opponents.

Mavrommatis’s report also highlights a new law permitting authorities to arrest women who have relatives living outside the country (a practice which has been going on for years without being officially enshrined in Iraqi law). If those relatives are wanted by the regime–for, say, opposing political executions–the women can be held to pressure the relatives to return to Iraq for a “trial.”

The U.N. report is troubling, to say the least, but a recent report from Amnesty International is more detailed, and even more grim. It begins: “Torture is used systematically against political detainees in Iraqi prisons and detention centres.”

The Amnesty International report cites a “wide range of forms of torture.” Victims “have been blindfolded, stripped of their clothes and suspended from their wrists for long hours. Electric shocks have been used on various parts of their bodies, including the genitals, ears, the tongue and fingers.” Other victims describe beatings with “canes, whips, hosepipe or metal rods and how they have been suspended for hours from either a rotating fan in the ceiling or from a horizontal pole often in contorted positions as electric shocks were applied repeatedly on their bodies. Some victims had been forced to watch others, including their own relatives or family members, being tortured in front of them.”

“Other methods of physical torture described by former victims include the use of Falaqa (beating on the soles of the feet), extinguishing of cigarettes on various parts of the body, extraction of finger nails and toenails and piercing of the hands with an electric drill. Some have been sexually abused and others have had objects, including broken bottles, forced into their anus.”

Last summer, Najib al-Salihi, “a former army general who fled Iraq in 1995 and joined the Iraqi opposition, was sent a videotape showing the rape of a female relative. Shortly afterwards he reportedly received a telephone call from the Iraqi intelligence service, asking him whether he had received the ‘gift’ and informing him that his relative was in their custody.”

If President Bush expands the war on terrorism to Iraq, as recent high-level statements seem to indicate he might, his administration will probably focus on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. More than half of Americans think Iraq is a legitimate target on that basis alone. But to increase support even further, the administration should highlight Saddam’s cruel abuse of his own people.

Still, in his letter to Love, Saddam claims U.S. administrations “have killed one million and a half Iraqis in 11 years as a result of the comprehensive blockade it has imposed on Iraq.”

“You can ask them for details via the internet,” he writes.

Love intends to. He’s going to forward Saddam’s e-mail to President Bush for his reaction. When he does, he should include the human rights reports, and should ask President Bush what he thinks.

It never hurts to ask.

Stephen F. Hayes is staff writer at The Weekly Standard.