Hussein a Fan of Doritos, Reagan

Saddam Hussein likes Doritos, washes his hands compulsively and thinks fondly of the late President Reagan, according to American soldiers who guarded him and tell their story in the July issue of GQ magazine.

The jailed former Iraqi leader described how Reagan, who was president during Iraq’s 1980-88 war with Iran, sold him planes and helicopters. “Reagan and me, good,” Hussein said, according to the article.

The article recounts the stories of five U.S. soldiers from the Pennsylvania National Guard who watched over the captive for nearly a year.

All five have completed their tours of duty and returned home, the article says.

President Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, are “no good,” but former President Clinton was “OK,” Hussein told his captors. The first President Bush directed a U.N.-led coalition that defeated Hussein in the 1991 Persian Gulf War after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

No date has been set for the trial of Hussein before an Iraqi tribunal on charges of crimes against humanity.

Hussein said he wanted to talk to the current president “to make peace with him,” they said. “He knows I have nothing, no mass weapons. He knows he’ll never find them,” they quoted him as saying.

He told the soldiers he had never dealt with Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Hussein, whom the Iraqi government intends to try for mass killings, seemed convinced he would return to power, they also said.

“He still thinks he’s the president,” one soldier said. They said Hussein told them that “when this was all over,” he wanted them to stay in his palace and see how beautiful Iraq was.

Of his capture in December 2003, when soldiers found him hiding in a hole in the ground, Hussein said only one person knew where he was and betrayed him. He was captured near his hometown of Tikrit, months after the U.S.-led military campaign had overthrown his regime.

According to GQ, Hussein liked to tell jokes, write poetry, tend his garden and smoke cigars. He likes Doritos and would sprinkle drops of water into the chip bag before eating them, the soldiers said. He requested a pingpong table but was refused, they said.

He would offer the guards advice on women, they said.

“He was like: ‘You gotta find a good woman. Not too smart, not too dumb. Not too old, not too young. In the middle. One that can cook and clean. Then you thank her, and you go ... ‘ And Hussein smiled and made the gesture of bending a woman over and spanking her, as if to say, ‘This is how you keep her in line,’ ” one soldier said.

Hussein washed his hands immediately after shaking someone else’s hand and wiped down his tray, table and utensils meticulously before eating, they said.