You can read about the AC and his use of dark forces
in Daniel 8:23-25
Tony

Even on the run, Hussein has Iraqis under his 'spell'

By James Hider | Special to The Christian Science Monitor
8-6-03

BAGHDAD – As US forces rolled into Baghdad, Saddam Hussein, the Ace of Spades
in the US Army's deck of cards of wanted Iraqis, did a spectacular vanishing
act. Many Iraqis believe their former leader, a lifelong dabbler in the occult,
will never be found by coalition troops scouring the country. His trick, they
say, is a magic stone that protects him from harm.
Mr. Hussein and his inner circle were obsessed with the dark arts: his son Uday
even advertised on his own television channel for those with supernatural
powers to come forward and serve the ruling family. In a country where decades
of isolation and repression have cut people off from the modern world, belief
in the occult is commonplace, and Iraqis regularly consult soothsayers to find
stolen cars or tackle mental illness. Many believe Hussein has shrouded himself
in his dark powers.

"Saddam never takes any step unless he consults with his magician advisers. I'm
sure he has two or three with him now," says Qassem Ali, an electrician in
Baghdad.

"He brought them in from China and Japan because he wanted specialists," says
colleague Ali Mahdi. As they talked, a crowd gathered around to earnestly chip
in their stories about Hussein's supernatural prowess.

"Saddam is indestructible because of these powers," Mr.

Mahdi insists. Such a belief, widely but by no means universally held here, has
contributed to the atmosphere of fear and mistrust that is hindering coalition
attempts to rebuild the country.

Coalition leaders admit that a key to convincing Iraqis that the old regime is
dead is capturing or killing the bogeyman who still casts a long shadow over
Iraq.

The most commonly held view in Baghdad is that Hussein wore a "magic" stone
around his neck, which warded off assassins' bullets.

"It's all true about the magic stone," says car dealer Mokhaled Mohammed,
sitting in a cafe on Baghdad's upmarket Arasat Street. "First of all, he put it
on a chicken and tried to shoot it. Then he put it on a cow, and the bullets
went around it."

The interest in the occult was widespread in the regime. Hussein's
vice-president, Izzat Ibrahim, was said to have brought a sect of seers and
shamans, the Kaznazani, from his native northern district of Iraq and housed
them in Baghdad.

The Kaznazani used to entertain Uday in televised spectacles where they
appeared to stab themselves with swords or fired pistols into their bodies with
no ill effect.

One such spectacle was played on television the day after Uday was killed in a
gun battle with US forces.

Customers sitting in a cafe watching the show said they believed the gimmicks
were real, though with no close-up shots, it had the appearance of a hoax to
the Western eye.

Hussein's all-seeing network of informers and bugging devices, which allowed
him to know in advance of any impending plot, also contributed to his
reputation for preternatural power.

The summoner's tale

One of the Baghdad occultists who catered to the old regime was Abu Ali, a tiny
man with an ready grin who earns his living by summoning up a jinn, or genie,
for the credulous seeking to regain stolen property or lift curses.

"Uday and his guards had an all-night party and fell asleep at dawn, dead
drunk. When they woke up they found that somebody had stolen all the money from
their pockets. Uday sent someone to me to find the money. I discovered the
thief, and they said Uday punished him, though I don't know exactly what
happened to him," he says.

In addition to tracking down Uday's unfortunate thief, Ali claims to have
lifted a curse on a female relative of Abid Hamid Mahmoud al-Tikriti, Hussein's
cousin and presidential secretary.

Ali recalls how, one day, Hussein's security agents turned up at his house,
accusing him of plotting to use his juju against the president.

He says he convinced them he was doing no such thing, then put a curse on the
neighbor who shopped him to the police. She was paralyzed after a blood vessel
burst in her brain, he boasted.

Alharith Hassan, a psychologist at Baghdad University's Department of
Parapsychology, has spent years trying to scientifically debunk such
superstitions, a rationalist crusade which cost his department dear in slashed
funding under Hussein's occultist regime.

He said Iraqi people had become very susceptible to such myths in the long
years cut off from the outside world, and suffering brutal oppression from
which the only outlet was religion and sects, which the country's president -
whose peasant mother used to read the future with seashells - openly endorsed.

Nearly two thirds of the patients coming to see Mr. Hassan have already visited
shamans, who try to exorcise genies with spells and often viciously beat their
clients.

"It's all a lot of gibberish," says Hassan, who was however careful not to
dismiss the genie, a mythical creature mentioned in the holy Koran.

Obstacle to rebuilding

In such a climate, myths of Hussein's supernatural prowess have survived his
regime's demise, and contribute to the climate of fear still hindering
reconstruction.

"When they pulled down Saddam's statue, lots of men were jumping on it like
monkeys," says car-dealer Mr. Mohammed, a Hussein loyalist. "Then a child came
up and kissed the head. Why? I think the child was an angel."

But the magic ran out for Uday and Abdel Hamid, now dead or in custody, and
Hussein's legendary luck is also questioned by some occult practitioners.

While putting a man seeking his stolen car in a trance, Ali asked his genie if
Hussein would be arrested. The man's hand slowly twisted palm outward.

"Saddam will be caught. I know he has a stone against bullets, but they will
capture him," says Ali.