Saddam + Sex : Tabloids Dish Up Juicy Insider Tidbits on Hussein

Forget about Vanna, Oprah, Liz and Cher. The screeching, screaming headlines of America’s gossipy supermarket tabloids have discovered Saddam Hussein, “the Butcher of Baghdad.”

The 79-cent scandal sheets are full of juicy tales of marital woes, lurid sexual exploits and innovative weapons--everything from “warrior dolphins” to a lethal booby-trap planted by intrepid plumbers in Hussein’s gold-plated toilet.

They also report on cultural whims. Hussein, for example, made his wife dye her hair blonde to resemble Diane Keaton in the “Godfather” movies, says the Feb. 19 Star.

“Right now, it’s the major topic of interest and importance,” said National Examiner editor Paul Levy.

People turn to the tabloids to get the personal tidbits they don’t get on the evening news, says Iain Calder, editor of the National Enquirer, which reports that Hussein’s favorite television shows are “Little House on the Prairie” and “Charlie’s Angels.”

Calder said he would love to interview Hussein’s “wife, his mistress . . . or his clairvoyant or astrologer.”

The tabloid reports on Hussein are pouring in from an array of “informed sources,” “outside experts” and articles already published in Britain and other European countries.

Old-fashioned legwork also plays a role.

National Examiner reporters tracked down Hussein’s ostensible “love child,” an 18-year-old named Bruce Latosky who told the paper he wants to leave his job in a convenience store, join the U.S. Army and fight his “father,” whom he called a “sick, barbaric, insane dictator.”

The mainstream media reported extensively on the Iraqi leader’s luxurious, nuclear-blast-proof, underground bunker.

The National Enquirer told the world about the bunker’s bathroom and boudoir. The toilet, it said, has gleaming turquoise tiles and the faucets look like silver fish.

The National Examiner, however, said the commode is ivory.

The Enquirer also spoke with a former Hussein bodyguard in hiding in France about “the shocking secret life of smiling killer Saddam.”

The man, going by the name Karim Djabbouri, described the tyrant’s voracious sexual appetites--and the price one young woman paid for kissing and telling.

“Saddam Hussein sleeps with up to three women a night--and he had one girl murdered just because she talked about it later. . . . He is a merciless monster,” the former bodyguard was quoted as saying.

The Star in its edition dated Feb. 19 takes a look at Hussein’s 32-year marriage--arranged when he was 4 years old--to his first cousin, Sajida Khayrallah, “the Baghdad blonde” who uses “evil cunning to keep her man in line.”

Angered when her husband took a mistress some years ago, Sajida hired a hit man--her son--to kill the lovers’ go-between, the Star said.

The tabloids also reported some military threats that may have been missed by the mainstream Pentagon reporters.

Flamboyant former wrestler Hulk Hogan, according to the Sun, wants to “body slam Saddam.”

“Warrior dolphins,” says the Examiner, are a potent weapon in the Gulf, pinpointing mines and killing Iraqi frogmen.

Despite U.S. Navy denials, it said in an article--accompanied by maps of dolphin base camps--”Flipper’s real-life counterparts are fighting shoulder-to-fin alongside U.S. combat sailors.”

Perhaps the most fearsome weapon was outlined in the Sun. It said that four daring American and British “plumbers” planted a time bomb “in the Iraqi dictator’s gold-plated toilet bowl.”

The booby-trap, the tabloid said, was designed to “catch Saddam Hussein with his pants down.”