Part One: The Worst Team Owner in FIFA History: Uday Hussein

In honor of the World Cup, Robert tells our guest, Molly Conger the wild story of the worst team owner in FIFA History, who also happened to be Saddam Hussein's oldest son. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Robert Evans?

  Oh, I didn't see you there. Welcome to Behind the Bastards. You've stepped into our living room, podcast, house? I don't know. It's a podcast about bad people. I struggle through the introduction every week, but then we get to the terrible person, one of the worst people in all of history that we're talking about. And everybody has a good time learning about things that make them feel bad because we're all damaged people. Speaking of, ooh, shit, that's a bad way to... Speaking of talented podcast hosts.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 0:39Robert Evans?

  My guest this week, Molly Conger. Molly, welcome to the show. You've got a podcast.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Thrilled to be here. Yes, I also have a podcast about guys who suck. Mine are weirder and littler. It's weird little guys.

• 0:53Robert Evans?

  Yes, yes, there's a strict height requirement, much like the Prussian heavy infantry in order to be on your podcast, but in the reverse way. Anyway, Molly, how do you feel about soccer? Football, as it's called by most of the people who like it?

• 1:12Speaker 02

  So I don't know anything about it, but I've been watching the World Cup with my husband, and I love hollering at the TV.

• 1:18Robert Evans?

  Oh, good, good, good. I feel like this is kind of... This happens periodically where like, you know, the World Cup's in the United States. So a lot of Americans who normally aren't so much in to what the West... To football, we'll call it football, suddenly find themselves intrigued by it for like the first time or the first time in a while. And right now, the whole freedom-loving world is captured by a new and often performative love of the sport. And as I think most people are aware, the organization that governs how football or soccer works is FIFA, and they are more corrupt than a barrel full of Iraqi generals marinated in oil. Marinated in the oil, like, huh?

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Is it Gianni Infantino? Are we doing? Are you doing Johnny Baby?

• 2:02Robert Evans?

  No, no, much worse.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Much worse.

• 2:04Robert Evans?

  Much worse, Molly. Much worse. Because if you're not aware-

• 2:08Speaker 01

  If you were that excited about that-

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Because he's evil.

• 2:12Robert Evans?

  We will, we will, we will have to cover him at some point, but like FIFA is so corrupt that if you Google FIFA corruption scandals, you have to specify the year in order to get any kind of useful result, because there's just way too many otherwise. Like, you're just gonna get like chronological news stories from the latest one. And any infamously corrupt and abusive institution is only as good as its most corrupt and sadistically violent team managers. Or, and in the case of professional soccer, the most abusive manager slash team owner in the history of the sport. Do you, do you want to have a guess to, to, to, to who's the, the, the most abusive team owner in the history of football?

• 2:54Speaker 02

  I couldn't even begin to guess, but as I've been watching the World Cup, I have noticed that whenever they cut to the sidelines, it's the most sinister looking man you've ever seen in your fucking life.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Molly?

• 3:05Robert Evans?

  And that's how it is now? Now, I'll give you, I'll give you one hint, Molly. One hint. The character we're talking about today is the son of a widely beloved romance novelist. Although someone who's better known for their other work.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Is it one of the Hussein sons?

• 3:21Robert Evans?

  It's Uday Hussein, that's right! That's right, he owned a soccer team. He was like the manager of a FIFA team. He was a big deal in the world of soccer for a while. And for a long time, actually.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  And I imagine he treated the players fairly and with respect.

• 3:39Robert Evans?

  That's right. This is a story about a man who, who treated his players respectfully and didn't, for example, keep a torture dungeon underneath the team workout area for members of the team.

• 3:51Speaker 02

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• 3:53Robert Evans?

  That's right, that's right. I've told Sophie we want to try something like that for the network, but she says apparently it's hard to expense torture dungeons anymore unless you're Amazon.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  I think, I think I could bring in twice as many downloads if I was recording above a torture dungeon.

• 4:08Robert Evans?

  If there was a torture dungeon, yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

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• 5:50Robert Evans?

  So, yeah, you ready to talk about Uday Hussein? Soccer star, kinda?

• 6:00Speaker 02

  I mean, I think if you asked me, like, the traits of Uday Hussein, like, what was he best known for? How would you describe Uday Hussein? Football manager, top, top of the list.

• 6:09Robert Evans?

  Football manager, yeah, yeah, yeah, kinda. Yeah, manager, sort of it, team owner, it's a little, it's hard to translate his job directly, but he basically, he owns like the most prestigious team in Iraq, and he's also the head of like their football, like the- The National Football Committee and the head of their Olympic football team.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Because of his great skill at football.

• 6:29Robert Evans?

  Because of his great skill in football, of course. Ude Hussein wouldn't get the job for any other reason at the age of 20. We're going to go into a bit of a biography. These are not technically our Ude episodes. I think I still might do dedicated Ude episodes. There's a lot this guy got up to in his life and it's all pretty awful, but pretty entertaining. But we're going to stick mostly to football in this one because there's that much. Like his football career is that significant?

• 6:57Robert Evans?

  Born in Khark, Baghdad on either June 18th or March 9th of 1964. And again, one of the best ways to tell if this is going to be a great episode of Behind the Bastards, are there multiple equally likely birthdays for the bastard? Like, do we have any idea when they were really born?

• 7:14Speaker 02

  At least this many children. Like, oh, he had at least five children.

• 7:16Robert Evans?

  At least, at least. These are the details, you know, that make things fun. Ude came into this world, the son of a father who was a man of modest means. Saddam Hussein was not born wealthy. He came from a scrappy backwater town and he was a scrappy backwater kid who fought every hour of his life to become a powerful and influential man in the new Iraq that he also helped to create. Saddam was a Baath Party activist and he'd fought to help the party seize power three years before Ude's birth. So by the time Ude comes into the world, the future of the Baath Party in Iraq is uncertain, right? They had just taken power. They don't have things like super solidified. It's very possible there's going to be a counter wave that pushes them out

• 7:59Robert Evans?

  because they're not necessarily doing the best job, right? So it's at this point, by no means guaranteed that Saddam's going to ever be more than like a mid-level kind of politico thug. You know, he could have just been just yet another pretty forgettable guy in the history of Iraqi politics. And indeed, shortly after Ude was born, Saddam miscalculated and put his support behind a faction in the party that lost out in a major power struggle. And Saddam was imprisoned for two years, but escaped. And being Saddam Hussein, he goes on the run. And so like, in some Uday's earliest years, his dad is like living outside of the law and having like infrequent communication with his family. I think they're moving sometimes to try to like meet up with

• 8:41Robert Evans?

  him. And by the time Uday is like three years old, Saddam has kind of gotten himself out of the doghouse. He scraped back enough power to make like a play for for a better position for himself. And he succeeds. There's like a, you know, another coup basically in Iraq. And the new power structure that Saddam helps bring into being sees Iraq run by a president named Al Bakr, who is a kind of in the mold that happens in these situations, a sickened elderly man that people sometimes compare to Weimar Germany's Paul Hindenburg. Like after this, this revel- or this, this coup, Saddam is the secondary guy to this sick old dude that more people like. And he's kind of running things from the background,

• 9:24Robert Evans?

  you know, like that's what's happening when Uday is like four, five, six years old, right? In those years. So Saddam is basically running Iraq at that point in Uday's life, but he's not officially in charge. Does that make sense?

• 9:38Speaker 02

  I guess it's been so long since you're Saddam Hussein. But those like, early in the show, right? You did Saddam early on.

• 9:44Robert Evans?

  Almost 10 years ago. Almost 10 years ago. I know, we're kind of yada, because I, this isn't Saddam episodes.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  I know. I'm just trying to think, because I guess that's, you know, most of what I know about Saddam Hussein.

• 9:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  I just never occurred to me that his children were young during his rise to power. Like when he was a young, like aspiring dictator.

• 10:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah, just Uday, really. I don't think Hussein's come into the, the picture at this point. But yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  He was there for the come up.

• 10:11Robert Evans?

  Yes. Uday is probably, his first memories are kind of when his dad is like vice president and just sort of coming into power. Tribunal writer George Woodward describes Uday being raised, quote, "from the age of five, like a crown prince." So, from about his earliest memory, his dad is the guy who's running everything and he's expected to follow in his dad's footsteps, right? So, he doesn't really have much in the way of a life before that. Although, you have to imagine, the kind of chaotic and dangerous, very earliest years of his life probably had some impact on him. The fact that his dad's on the run and stuff, like that likely percolated through to some extent, I expect.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  I don't know. By the time you're five, you're a little prince.

• 10:52Robert Evans?

  Right, right. Maybe it doesn't do all that much. Now, if you lived through the Gulf War and then the Iraq War years, as I think all three of us on the show did, you've encountered a lot of propaganda about Saddam Hussein and his Iraq. Now, much of that has been proven to be nonsense, as we'll discuss in these episodes. There's a lot of bullshit about Saddam Hussein, just because it made a good story and news, especially like cheap periodicals like the New York Post, weren't checking anything. If someone had like a lurid story about Saddam Hussein in 2002, you could get it printed in a bunch of places. Nobody was checking on shit. As long as some guy who was an Iraqi defector said that this is what happened, people were not doing any kind of due diligence in the journalism world, right?

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Especially in the early 2000s.

• 11:35Robert Evans?

  But not a lot of them. Right, yeah, not in the early 2000s. Now, that doesn't change the fact Saddam Hussein, this is not, I'm not doing any revisionism, Saddam was an undeniably brutal dictator. He was a horrible guy, and Uday is going to grow into a horrific, violent man who kills a lot of people. But that doesn't mean every story about them is true. And so, part of what you have to do when you're kind of researching an episode like this is try to pick apart, how possible is this crazy claim that may want to be true, but how likely is that that it happened?

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Right, like, did Uday do that, or was it Dr. Evil?

• 12:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah, right, because that sounds more Dr. Evil. Yeah.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Like, did he put lasers on the sharks?

• 12:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, I don't know if he had access to those. I think Iraq might have done better if he'd had lasers on for the sharks. So, I found an article in These Football Times by Justin Sherman that gives a pretty representative summary of the common take on Uday's childhood. This is how he's described in a lot of publications, right, in very similar terms to this, because this is the, this is the definitely like, most marketable version of his life story. "Almost from birth, Uday Hussein had a curiosity and borderline affinity for violence. As an infant, instead of pushing toy cars, he played with disarmed grenades. By the age of 10, he was already shadowing his father to the torture chamber at Qasr al-Nahaya, nicknamed the Palace of the End.

• 12:55Robert Evans?

  Many political enemies were killed here, including the overthrown King Faisal II, to observe how Saddam dealt with perceived dissidents." By high school, he bragged how he had murdered his teacher for disrespecting him in front of his girlfriend. So that's the, that's the traditional like take on Uday from born to murder, right? Like from the time he's a little kid, torturing with glee, just one of these people who is inherently monstrous and obviously look at how evil Saddam is. How could he be anything but inherently monstrous? We'll talk a little bit about how accurate I think all of that is here. Woodward's own description attributes Uday's propensity to violence to quote unusual ideas that Saddam had about raising children, but notes that this claim that like Uday's violent

• 13:38Robert Evans?

  because his dad had these different beliefs about how you raise kids, that that claim is something Saddam's political opponents circulated after they fled the country, right?

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Cause who's actually raising the child? Is this mother? Is it nannies?

• 13:51Robert Evans?

  It's nannies and ma- like, like his mom is in the picture, but he's also like a wealthy kid. So they all, from, from a pretty early age, he's being watched by a lot of different people, right? We don't have a ton of context on that, but you, I could, that's kind of what I've pieced together.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  And like, what kind of parenting philosophies are we talking about? Is that the like, early 20th century German thing where it's illegal to touch your children? Like you can't kiss them?

• 14:15Robert Evans?

  It's more Saddam wanted him to like, see guys being beaten and tortured up close from a pretty young age to get used to like, this is what it takes to be in, it's Game of Thrones kind of shit almost. It's like, you need to know what it takes to rule this kingdom.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Gotta see your first beheading by six.

• 14:32Robert Evans?

  Right. Right. Now again, how crazy all this actually went and how crazy people talk about it, these are two different things. And there are alternate, less extreme explanations for, and less crazy sounding descriptions of Uday's childhood that sound very different from the paragraph I just read you. For example, the thing about him playing with disarmed grenades, if you read deeper, that's like one specific story of like him playing around with like a disarmed grenade while they were waiting for like the result of some raid, like, or some like, like coup kind of related activity that his dad was carrying out. It was like a dangerous night for them and Uday's playing, they've got like a disarmed grenade and like, maybe that sounds crazy.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  A disarmed grenade could be fun.

• 15:11Robert Evans?

  One of my, yeah, I remember one of my uncles had, when I was a kid, they had like a desk toy that was like a disarmed or fatally, I think it may have just been a training grenade or whatever, but that may have been what Uday had. It's like a training grenade that was never real. Like it's not clear to me. I don't know. I don't think it's that crazy. Like, he's not playing with

• 15:29Speaker 02

  It's not any weirder than like a toy gun.

• 15:31Robert Evans?

  No, exactly, exactly. And it's not like those were his only toys. This is like one weird occasion, right?

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Right, if instead of blocks, he only had like military surplus equipment, that would be weird?

• 15:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that would be weird, but I don't think anyone's really saying that. Yeah. And he definitely, at a certain point, sees like his dad's torture dungeons, right? And it helps his dad. He's gonna be a big fan of torture. It's unclear when that starts. Woodward says it's from age like 15 on that Saddam lets him participate in torture. That said, I also think it's fairer to describe that as Saddam abused him by making him participate in torture because he is 15, right? Yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  But also, I feel like exposing a child to that, like, especially during puberty, I don't know. There's something about like the cement being wet in your brain at that moment.

• 16:19Robert Evans?

  It's not gonna do good things to him.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  You're gonna become weird, probably.

• 16:24Robert Evans?

  And you get really varying stories as to like, when did Saddam start exposing him to this stuff? Uday's obituary in The Independent claimed that when Uday was five, Saddam made him attend a family like gathering in a Baghdad public square to watch the hanging of dozens of Iraqi Jews who had been declared spies. The article continues that, quote, "Saddam boasted that he toughened his boys up by taking them to watch the torture of enemies of the nation and the liquidation of traitors."

• 16:52Speaker 02

  That's very medieval.

• 16:53Robert Evans?

  And again, I don't have trouble believing that. That's in line with some other stuff and it's pretty consistent in stories about them. But it's often described as like evidence of Uday's early propensity of violence and brutality. Where more of what I'm seeing, and this will make sense with some other stuff we're about to talk about, is that I think Saddam starts exposing Uday to violence at a very young age and it like fucks him up and you can see it change him and damage him. He was not a violent kid from an early age. He's brutalized by his dad exposing him to this stuff.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Even if as a 12-year-old, he's saying, "Oh daddy, please take me to the public hanging." That's still a child and it's still your responsibility as the parent to say no.

• 17:34Robert Evans?

  Probably because you make it sound crazy. Cool, cuz he doesn't really know what it is cuz he's 12, you know?

• 17:38Speaker 02

  It's it's child abuse, I think, to take children to the torture dungeon. I'm gonna stand firm on that one.

• 17:43Robert Evans?

  Exactly, and it's not it's not described as that often enough. It's it always in these stories comes across as part of, well, this is a man who was just always from the earliest days of his childhood of violence. No, this is a child who was molded and abused into being a violent psychopath. That's kind of important, you know?

• 17:58Speaker 02

  It's not like those stories of like serial killers where you hear like, oh, you know, as in middle school, he started dismembering cats. Like, this is not that.

• 18:05Robert Evans?

  No, this is this is different than that, really. And like, yeah, I don't know, maybe I I don't know enough about Uday's childhood to know, was he that guy? But there's reasons to believe he wasn't, right? And I'm inclined to doubt the often repeated, possibly by Uday, story that he'd murdered a teacher before he went into high school for disrespecting him.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  That sounds fake.

• 18:22Robert Evans?

  He would tell that, right? It it not only does it sound fake, but I've read a book and it's out, it's kind of hard to find, but there's some online copies that is like the Saddam Hussein approved version of his life story for Westerners. Like, it was a propaganda thing that he came out. And one of the stories in there is him holding his principal at gunpoint to force him to like admit him to school. Cuz Saddam loved being, loved learning how to read, like, loved school. He his reading program actually was really good. He had a very effective reading program for Iraq. It was one of the things he was good at.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  You gotta hand it to him, the literacy program was good.

• 18:55Robert Evans?

  It really did. It where it worked quite well. Um, but, and that's definitely a lie. I don't think there's any real evidence. And I think Uday may have told that lie cuz like, well, my dad has a story about fucking being violent to his teacher. I need an even more extreme one. That's what I read there. Because I don't have, I don't have any like good reason to believe he actually killed a teacher. No one claims to know who this teacher is or to have seen it directly. There are accounts of Uday doing stuff like this later in life, but I think that just makes people assume, well, if he did it 20 years later, he must have done it when he was 10. And that's nonsense, right?

• 19:31Speaker 02

  Right, that's that's personal myth building.

• 19:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I think this is him myth building and copying his dad's myth building.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Wanting his dad to be proud of him.

• 19:38Robert Evans?

  I think that, and this isn't just me thinking that because it's easier. We have some accounts from some of his teachers because Uday went to really nice schools for most of his education. And the most detailed account we have from one of his teachers comes from a foreign teacher who like worked in his, because like, these are nicer schools in Iraq. A lot of the teachers are foreigners. Deena Bentley from Yorkshire in the north of England married a Kurdish man back in the 1970s and wound up working at a private school in Baghdad when Uday Hussein is a pretty, a young kid. Iraq has a long tradition of private schools staffed with foreign teachers for the children of the elite and wealthy. And even in Saddam's era, these people were respected professionals who enjoyed a high degree of protection.

• 20:21Robert Evans?

  Uday's certainly not going to be killing like a white European teacher, right? Saddam doesn't want that smoke.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  But if he did, we would know about it. Like, this didn't happen in 1750, it was 1980.

• 20:31Robert Evans?

  Now, he also had Iraqi teachers, but again, I think someone would have said specifically, like, we would hear something besides like, he killed a teacher for being rude to his girlfriend. We would have more of that story, I think, if it were real. And again, this just doesn't comport with Deena's time with him when he was very young. In 2003, and this is like the height of Iraq war fever, Deena recalled to ABC that time in her life when she was teaching in Iraq and Uday was her student, he would have been 11 years old at this point. And per that article, quote, "Saddam Hussein, then second-in-command, was already a powerful figure at the time. Uday arrived at school with bodyguards, but she recalls a normal child who was bright, cheerful, and responsive to discipline. He was always grinning and happy, and as soon as they knew who he was, the other children were a little bit wary, but he certainly wasn't a bully," she said.

• 21:16Robert Evans?

  "People would like me to say that he had two heads and was an unbearable pupil. He wasn't." Asked about Uday's current reputation, she said, "It must have been around the time of the 1991 Gulf War when there were stories in the papers, I don't know how true they are about his murderous ways. That did surprise me because he was never aggressive or a problem in class," she said. "I had a good relationship with him. He never tried to pull rank. He certainly never said to me, 'Do you realize who I am?'" You know?

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Damn, so Uday got the pleasure to be in class on his report card.

• 21:43Robert Evans?

  Right, right, right. It just sounds like a real kid as opposed to this like violent murderer, so 11-year-old that like a lot of news stories want you to believe that like this kid is obsessed with death as a child, naturally?

• 21:54Speaker 02

  A lot of what I do on my show, and I'm writing about these, these men who become terrible, these men who commit these terrible acts. They are not like ontological evil. They were not.

• 22:05Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  They did not emerge from the womb as a monster. It's a human guy who became fucked up over time, sometimes for discernible reason.

• 22:15Robert Evans?

  Yes, yes. And that's all.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  It's very rare for someone to be born monstrous.

• 22:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And again, Uday's gonna do monster. We're gonna be talking all about the nightmarish stuff he does. I'm not at all trying to mitigate it. I just really want to emphasize.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  No, I think it actually makes it more frightening, right? That this was just a human man who became this way. But it's, I don't know, it's more comforting sometimes to write these people off as, oh, sometimes just ontological evil exists in the world and there he is.

• 22:40Robert Evans?

  It's easier to believe that than that, like, yeah, this kid could have been a perfectly nice child at 11. And then four or five years later, because of the shit his dad exposes him to, a way scarier person. You know, like, that's just more upsetting.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  It's a more complicated and upsetting story. Yeah.

• 22:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And again, it's not that there's not fear around this kid then. It's just the fear is clearly not because he's a, he's a maniac.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  No, the fear is that if I upset this child, his dad will kill my family.

• 23:06Robert Evans?

  Exactly. And Deena was like, I'm glad, like Saddam never came to Parents' Evening and I'm glad he didn't. Like, I knew stories about him at the time, right? I didn't want to meet the guy.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  The parent teacher conference would be nerve wracking.

• 23:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you don't want to have that one. And she also stated that her colleagues, her Iraqi colleagues, were surprised that she was willing to discipline Uday when he did misbehave. They were too worried of his father to discipline him, which again, isn't based on him doing stuff. It's based on Saddam, right? She told another, one other story I find particularly interesting. He was leaping about in class one day, so I took him by a tuft of hair and sat him down. I said, we don't do this. I am teaching. You are learning. Now, sit down. Another teacher, watching through the classroom window, was horrified. She said to me later, do you know who that is? It's Saddam's son. And this anecdote tells us a couple of things. One is that there's enough fear around his family, again, that most people don't want to discipline Uday. And that must have had an effect on him, but. Dina does and nothing happens to her, right?

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:04Robert Evans?

  Uh, and it's also interesting, Uday's reaction to being chastised by his teacher, you could see like the crazy version of this kid would have gotten furious at her embarrassing him and would have had some plan for revenge.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Or had her killed, or...

• 24:18Robert Evans?

  Uday gets a haircut, so he has his barber trim off the bit of hair that she'd grabbed him by, and he like smiles and points it out, which is like malicious compliance maybe, but that doesn't, that doesn't suggest a homicidal mind. That seems like a normal 11-year-old boy, you know, a rich kid maybe, but like, pretty normal, right?

• 24:33Speaker 02

  She lived to tell the tale.

• 24:35Robert Evans?

  She lived to tell the tale, you know? Um, Dina added, "He was not a high flyer, but he did his best. He was always smiling, a bit of a clown. Uday picked up a lovely Yorkshire accent from me. He's probably still got it. It was nice because it reminded me of home." So for the Yorkshire folks in our audience, if you're wondering how this fucker sounds as he's torturing soccer players, football players, like you, sorry, that's not your fault. It's not Dina's fault.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  It's a lovely accent.

• 25:03Robert Evans?

  She's trying to teach the poor fucker English. Not poor fucker. Um, so obviously...

• 25:08Speaker 02

  That's ridiculous.

• 25:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's, it's really funny to think of, and I want you all to keep that thought in your mind as we take a little trip down advertiser lane.

• 25:21Speaker 06

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• 26:20Speaker 05

  I'm Melissa Jelton, and in my new podcast, What Happened to Her?, I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide. She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety. Stories of survival.

• 26:41Speaker 07

  The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck, because by all rights, I should be dead.

• 26:47Speaker 05

  Cases that everyone else called closed. They can't convict her, right? Like, she has so much evidence. These stories all start in the same place, with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her.

• 27:03Speaker 06

  No child should ever experience that. And we were babies.

• 27:06Speaker 05

  She did all of these brave things and came out and spoke about it, and he got a year. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. Listen to What Happened to Her? on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 27:25Robert Evans?

  If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario.

• 27:33Speaker 06

  I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. Right now, we're living through an AI arms race. So I went directly to the people shaping that future. Elon Musk, Dario Hamad, Alex Carr, Fei-Fei Li, Palmer Lucky. Because I wanted to understand what the most consequential builders believe, what they fear, and where they think this is all headed. Silicon Valley is always saying the cliche thing about the way to predict the future is to create it. Well, yeah, it's up to us. But when you say us, who's us? Is it 400 people that you know in Silicon Valley? Is it me down here in New Orleans?

• 28:15Speaker 06

  They're brilliant, controversial, and they're already shaping the future. The question is, whose imagination do we want to live in? This is going to determine the fate of nations and economies and the future of humanity. Listen to The Builders on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 28:41Robert Evans?

  And we're back.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  That was nice.

• 28:43Robert Evans?

  Oh, I just got an email about a FIFA party in Portland. That sounds awful. I don't think I'm gonna be doing that.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  Hey, um, should be RSVP, uh, absolutely not?

• 28:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah, RSVP, no, thank you. I don't, I don't like, I don't like.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 29:01Robert Evans?

  Them. Um, Molly, Sophie, shall we dive back in?

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 29:06Robert Evans?

  Okay, so Uday's dead now, obviously, but he was noted as speaking English very well. Uh, and all of the other hard facts we have about his education comport with Dina's story. He wasn't a great student, but he wasn't a bad one, and there aren't really any clear and credible claims that he was involved in hardcore violence. There are some, but not any that I, I find super believable until he's 15 and his dad starts taking him to see and possibly help out the, in the torture chambers that he's operating, right? Yeah, and I think that, you know, assuming that's true, and I, it does, it's pretty consistent. I can see this being what sort of changes him because by the time he's an adolescent, Saddam is looking at his eldest son as the heir apparent, but that's not

• 29:47Robert Evans?

  gonna last like forever, right? Uday's going to start to really like change and take a turn toward for the brutal as a young adult. It's a little unclear to me when exactly that starts, but I can definitely see a lot of this being the result of Saddam wanting to raise his heir to be strong and powerful and just kind of destroying this kid's mind and turning him into a dangerous homicidal maniac. Cause Saddam doesn't do the same thing with Qusay. The funniest thing about, maybe there's some fundamental difference in the two of them, I don't know, but I, it kind of reads to me just like he got better at being a parent in between the two. It was like, oh, I fucked up the main kid. I gotta pick a new heir. I'm not gonna make, I gotta make this next one turn out more normal.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  So he's an Irma Bombeck quote, right? Children are like, are like pancakes. You have to throw the first one out?

• 30:35Robert Evans?

  Right, right. That's kind of how Saddam treats Uday after a point, but in this era, Uday's still looking like the heir apparent, you know, and he hasn't done anything too crazy. Um. So, uh, one person who claims to have attended private school with Uday is Latif Yahya. And you may have heard of this guy. He also becomes particularly famous in the post Gulf War period and then again, right before Operation Iraqi Freedom or when we invaded Iraq for the second and really, really illegal time, right? So if you've heard of Latif Yahya, Dr. Latif Yahya, it's because he's going to claim to have been forced to serve as Uday's body double. You've probably heard of Saddam's body doubles,

• 31:17Robert Evans?

  the whole family, lot of stories. They may all be lies, by the way. I can't prove, well, I made you a dedicated story. I can't actually prove that like they had body doubles in the way it was usually reported. Everyone takes it as read, but then when you look into like, okay, well, did they find any of those guys? And it's like, no, they never did. Huh, that's weird. It's weird that like the actual individual body doubles, the guys who claim they were always have really sketchy stories that you can't back up. And the evidence, like the body doubles that were supposed to be found mostly weren't there. And it kind of looks like maybe instead of having a stable of comedic body doubles, it just was like some of his guards who looked like him could also like, if you just want to like run a dude out who might look like the boss to see if anyone's going to try to shoot at him or something. And maybe it wasn't as crazy elaborate as all the news reported it to be.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  I was just watching Veep and there was like a plot line in Veep where, where her like primary secret service assigned to her looks like her from the back.

• 32:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Like it's not a body double. It's just like, if somebody's going to shoot you in the back of the head, maybe they'll shoot her.

• 32:15Robert Evans?

  So much late 90s, early 2000s comedy relied upon fucking Saddam Hussein body doubles. Like that was a really big, I don't know why in the media. And it just, anyway, so this guy, Latif Yahya, is going to claim to have been Uday's body double. And so, a lot of our best Uday stories, the wildest stories of Uday being a maniac, come from Dr. Latif Yahya.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Oh, so from a guy who might be making them up.

• 32:39Robert Evans?

  He's definitely making it up. Latifi Ayah is for sure a con man, a huge con man. He definitely lied about Adonchev's stuff and there's zero evidence whatsoever he was ever Uday's body double. However, he may have known Uday. That doesn't mean he didn't know him at all, because there is some evidence that he may have been connected to the regime in some like, kind of corrupt ways, like with some of the money laundering and stuff.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  The best cons have a little bit of truth in the middle, like a little nougat center of truth.

• 33:06Robert Evans?

  He denies that entirely, there's just allegations. I don't fully know what's going on with this guy, but there's not, there's no reason to really think he was Uday's body double, but he may have in fact known Uday. He came from a wealthy family in Baghdad. He claims he and Uday went to the same like, primary school, private school, like private primary school, and they very well may have, I can't disprove that. So I will read you some of his accounts, but I need you to remember, this guy is for sure a liar. So I don't know, I'm not gonna tell you to take the, you're gonna run into this guy anytime you read about Uday, so I don't wanna ignore him, because then people will be like, "Why didn't you include this guy?" Well, because he's a fucking liar. But I will tell you some of what he says, because again, he may have known Uday, there's

• 33:47Robert Evans?

  some reason to believe that, he just definitely wasn't doing what he said he was. So here's his account of supposedly Uday in like, high school, basically. "First came the bodyguards, then Uday, usually in a t-shirt and jeans, like a cowboy. His hair was longer than ours, and he wore it in an Afro, like Jimi Hendrix. After a few weeks, we finally got used to the daily performance. Uday was never friendly, never normal, never conventional, and I actually found him repugnant from the very first. He had no respect for the teachers or anyone else who tried to tell him what to do. He couldn't care less about tests or homework, or anything. There were 24 of us in the class, and while everyone else worked hard to succeed, Uday wasn't interested. If a teacher tried to call him to the blackboard, Uday would throw chalk at him and order him to change the subject, or simply to leave him alone.

• 34:30Robert Evans?

  He came to, he came when he wanted to, left when he wanted to, and basically did whatever he wanted. He never took his textbooks home with him, and nonetheless, he received the best grades at the end of the school year." And I don't actually have that much trouble believing it, you know, that, that again, this guy may have been in position to have known Uday. And that's not necessarily inconsistent with like five or six years later, the kid that we heard about earlier, especially going through some rough years with his dad.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Exactly the kind of behavior I would expect from someone who doesn't have no said to him. You're not gonna punish him, you're not gonna flunk him. So why, why would he? He's a teenager, he's a teenager.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  For sure, for sure.

• 35:09Robert Evans?

  And again, as I just said, I think Latif Yaya is not a super honest guy. But also, if you're gonna be running a con like that, there are often based on some truths. And there's evident, you know, it's not impossible. So I don't find that a super hard to believe description.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, like of course he's disrespectful to his teachers. What are they gonna do?

• 35:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. So Yaya claims Uday obeyed no rules and even broke the strictest taboo of all: girls. This means that one time he brought his girlfriend to class with him. Yaya describes him enjoying the teacher's helplessness when Uday ordered him to continue teaching while he made out with his girlfriend. He claims this teacher was gone the next day and none of us ever saw him again. And I think that's a lie. And I guess I might be able to believe that he knew Uday a little or knew him at a distance and just kind of added some bullshit too. I don't know, maybe this is all like, but there's one more study of Uday's school days in Yaya's questionable book that I will include.

• 36:08Robert Evans?

  He claims that in 1980, soon after Saddam took power, like in the like front power, right? Like he's no longer kind of sitting in the back pretending to be the VP. Uday asked Yaya to paint a picture of his father as a congratulations gift. So Yaya says he took this as an honor initially and he finishes a painting of Saddam Hussein and he gives it to Uday in class and the dictator's son is really happy and compliments him. And quote, "He heaped me with compliments. Thimply perfect, thimply perfect," he lisped, because he had slightly protruding teeth and thus a slight speech defect, although no one ever mentioned it. It is interesting. I found one other account at least that Uday had a speech impediment that I can like to a separate person. So at least a couple of people have said that.

• 36:52Robert Evans?

  It's weird to me that his English teacher didn't notice it. Maybe he didn't have a lisp in English? I know. I guess that's that's possible. I don't know.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  But a lisp specifically is like a, isn't it like a structural thing in your mind? It's like something you're doing with your mouth that you would do in any language, I assume. I mean, we can ask a speech language pathologist.

• 37:09Robert Evans?

  I'm not a, my mom was a speech language pathologist ironically, but I don't know shit. So I'm not going to try and guess more. I, I can't say that he's like, because other people do talk about him having it. It's just interesting that his teacher didn't seem to mention that either. And I could also see this him kind of wanting to make fun of Uday. And this was a time in which it was more acceptable. Obviously, there's nothing wrong with a speech impediment. But in the 90s, it was a lot more acceptable to like mock people for stuff like that. Like people did that a lot more openly. And this is kind of a shitty guy. So that might just be what he's doing here. I don't actually know.

• 37:43Robert Evans?

  So yeah, uh, Yaya says that Uday was thrilled and starts seeking him out and trying to hang out with him every day after getting this painting of Saddam and quote, "He even promised he would give me everything I wanted. He would sort it all out." But Yaya claims he instinctively knew to keep Uday at a distance because he wasn't comfortable that their peers kept pointing out how similar they looked. They're like, wow, you guys really look a lot alike. And they did look, do look kind of similar. A little, yeah.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  I'm gonna look it up.

• 38:09Robert Evans?

  Crazily, but somewhat, yeah. Dr. Latif Yaya and Uday. Now I'll caution against giving, again, too much credence to anything in this fucker's book, but it's not too wild a claim. Yaya claims that he and Uday lost touch after graduating, like you do. And we'll, we'll hear more of Yaya's claims next episode. We will talk about him more. But let's get back to Uday. So, uh, after graduating, you know, the school, the high school where he and Yaya went together, Uday went to Baghdad Medical College. And you can kind of gather how legitimately he got, he, he earned his introduction to Baghdad Medical College by the fact that he dropped out three days later.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  Oh, three days.

• 38:47Robert Evans?

  He has medical school for 96 hours.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  So like, he wouldn't have even attended very many lectures at that point.

• 38:53Robert Evans?

  I don't know if he attended any.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  He signed up for classes. He got to the door and then he went home.

• 38:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah. No, no, he might have gotten spooked by his first stethoscope. It's thank God he didn't. Dr. Uday Hussein, no.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  No.

• 39:06Robert Evans?

  Probably not a good idea.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Okay, I looked it up and maybe it's just, I mean, they're just like two guys who both have a mustache.

• 39:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. That's, that's the other thing. And this is also part of the, if you, if you read like the, some of the, like Saddam Hussein body double stories. Having been to Iraq a good amount of times, I could just see those being stories of like, well, they were just looking for a guy who was kind of Saddam's size and had a mustache because they needed somebody at a distance for a minute. But that's not as crazy as he's got like this team of men who lived their entire lives pretending to be him and get like facial surgery. You know, I don't know which is true. So he drops out of Baghdad Medical College. And next he starts taking classes at the College of Engineering, where he got a bachelor's degree and then he attends Military Academy and he writes a thesis on the Iran-Iraq war.

• 39:58Robert Evans?

  He's trying different things. He's trying to do-

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Be a doctor, be an engineer, be a general, who knows?

• 40:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. He needs to, he needs to establish his bona fides as like, uh, this is why I'm, I'm well, good to follow in my father's footsteps, you know? I have the military experience. I have this, you know, professional experience. Now, he's not really doing much of any work here. His thesis is nearly universally agreed to have been written by, like, a professional military advisor in the Iraqi army. He just like writes it for Uday. Which would be nice. Although I guess in the United States, if Pete Hegseth wrote your essay, I don't think it would get you very much. So.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  I guess it depends on who's grading.

• 40:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it just depends on who's grading. Per George Woodward's article, quote, "While at university, Uday wanted to marry a fellow student from a noble Iraqi family, but his father refused. He wanted a bride from within the family clan. Uday obeyed, but from then on, he was spoken of as a serial rapist. Girls were allegedly abducted for him and forced into sex. One of the most famous stories says that a bride was kidnapped for Uday on the second day of her wedding. After the rape, she could not live with the horror and took her own life. And the groom by Uday's order was hanged as a preventative measure." Now, that's an awful story, and you hear a couple versions of it. So there, it either means either he did stuff like this several times, or like one person told this story about him, and maybe pieces of it were true and other pieces aren't, but people just started spinning it off.

• 41:23Robert Evans?

  I, it's very hard for me to tell, because there's slightly different versions of this story. And I don't know, are these evidence of him doing it a bunch? Or is this evidence of like, the same? Because a lot of these come from like, people, dissidents, who leave Saddam's Iraq, and are telling all sorts of horrible stories. And I don't doubt some amount of this is happening. It's just hard to tell what is happening, and which stories are true, and which ones are like, the nth repetition of something that has changed over telling a bunch of times, right?

• 41:53Speaker 02

  And I guess too, if you're, you know, if he-

• 41:54Robert Evans?

  It's murky.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Take us, take us a given, he is a serial rapist. He is committing these sexual crimes.

• 42:00Robert Evans?

  Pretty good evidence that he was, yeah.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Abducting a woman on her wedding night and raping her is this sort of worst scenario of this genre of crime. This is very, this is dictator's son, pre-monocta type shit.

• 42:12Robert Evans?

  I, I never doubt the basics of like, a dictator's son committed a lot of rape.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  But these, this particular sort of details is like, what's the worst version of this story you could tell?

• 42:22Robert Evans?

  The theatricality always makes me second guess. Like, this doesn't necessarily always seem like something a person would do. Right? Like, not even, I don't think he's this bad.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Although, I don't guess-

• 42:33Robert Evans?

  This seems weirdly elaborate, like-

• 42:34Speaker 02

  You're getting, you're getting jaded. You've done too many sex crimes.

• 42:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah, maybe, and again, so I, I can't, for reasons like that, I can't throw all this stuff out either. Because he does some pretty crazy shit. Um, yeah, and, and one of the reasons that kind of makes me hesitant about this is that one of the most detailed accounts of this, kind of like him murdering, like raping a woman after her wedding, and like there being murders after that, comes from Latif Yahya, right? He's got a story that sounds a lot like the one I just recounted to you, that I found from a 2009 interview he gave to The National. And this is in an article on Michael Thibodeau's. This is years after Uday's dead. He tells of a grotesque episode in Al-Habana, Iraq's leading honeymoon resort, when- Uday noticed a newlywed couple walking hand in hand and called over to them. Uday was livid when they ignored him.

• 43:24Robert Evans?

  Mr. Yahya attempted to persuade Uday to leave the couple alone, pointing out that they had only been married a few days. Uday snapped back, "This isn't your business." Uday's pimps beat up the husband and forced the beautiful bride to his suite where he raped her. In shame and despair, she later threw herself to her death from the fourth floor window of the building. Mr. Yahya says the husband was accused of trying to kill Uday and sentenced to death, but was later spared because of his long service in a war against Iran for which he was awarded medals. The man Yahya claims was one of those who nearly killed Uday in a 1996 assassination attempt. And I have that. So this is part of why I have trouble believing specifically is that we know this story Yahya gives claims from when he supposedly Uday's body double, and he almost certainly wasn't. So that means I don't believe this story.

• 44:09Robert Evans?

  And that's so similar to the other one that it makes me wonder how much of these specific really theatrical stories of rape are just sort of like things that enemies concocted in that period of time when it was profitable to do so.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  But again, kernels of truth, right?

• 44:24Robert Evans?

  I'm sure he's doing the basic crap.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  Raped married women who then killed themselves because within that culture, she would not be able to go back to her family.

• 44:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  So kernels of truth.

• 44:35Robert Evans?

  I don't. Kernels of truth, it's just there's so much of it that's like I.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  But then he tried to kill him and then he let him live because of his medals. Like, that's too many details.

• 44:44Robert Evans?

  And that there's a lot of like, yeah, I don't know. Um, we'll see. I'm trying to present you with all this so that like you, the listener, can conclude what you want to believe about Uday Hussein, but.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Choose your own adventure.

• 44:54Robert Evans?

  It's hard to, it's hard to tell for sure with stuff like this. It's so politicized. The fact that the US was looking for any excuse to, to do a war against Saddam's Iraq makes it hard to judge every piece of information as easily as I'd otherwise like to. But yeah, anyway.

• 45:14Robert Evans?

  All of this takes us up to the early 1980s. During this period of time, Iraq was not yet the global pariah state that it would become after Desert Storm, and it had one of the best football teams in the entire Middle East. Iraqis had become very proud of their team, which. Got its first foreign manager, the Romanian Kornul Dragusin in 1962. And in 1965, under his leadership, they won the Arab Nations Cup. They won it again in 1966. People started calling them by the nickname "The Lions of Mesopotamia", which is an undoubtedly cool name for your football team.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  I mean, that rocks.

• 45:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 45:49Speaker 02

  That rocks.

• 45:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's a dudes rock moment.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Given the guys involved, I'm surprised there wasn't a real lion on the field. Where's the lion? Give me a lion.

• 45:57Robert Evans?

  There, there, I'm, I'm, I don't know that there wasn't, Molly. And I would also like to remind you, you've got, you've got a fucking Romanian man whose last name is basically Dragon and a team full of Iraqis. The mustache game in that team? We don't have the capability to recreate mustaches that were that powerful.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  I need to see this coach.

• 46:14Robert Evans?

  Amazing stuff. I, yeah, I, I, I can only imagine him in my dreams. There might actually be pictures of the guy. I didn't look them up. But I'd be disappointed if he doesn't have a beautiful mustache. So, first couple of years that this guy's working, you know, the Iraqi team in the mid 60s is, is really starting to get off the ground in a big way. It's looking good. And it, for a new country, and Iraq is a new country in the mid 60s, having like a football team that's a, a huge hit, like one of the best in the region, that's a big deal. Like it's, and so it becomes like integral to like this burgeoning sense of national pride that Iraqi people are getting. You know, the team becomes very beloved for this reason.

• 46:55Robert Evans?

  However, after the mid 60s, they kind of backslide for quite a while. There's this initial period of greatness. And then through the late 60s, up through mo- much of the 70s, you know, there's a lot of just unrest and disorder in the country. Saddam is rising to power and causing a good amount of that unrest. It's a rough period for the team.

• 47:16Robert Evans?

  So after Saddam takes power and starts a war against Iran in 1984, that war is consuming Iraqi soldiers at a terrifying rate. And Saddam needs something to bind the people together and improve morale. Because the, the population is not happy with this war that did not need to happen.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  So you're saying people don't love it when you take them into an unnecessary war with Iran? And you should distract them with soccer?

• 47:43Robert Evans?

  Yes, Saddam Hussein is the only world leader. Exactly. No, yeah, that's never happened again. Never has a world leader started an ill-advised war with Iran and then tried to distract the country by a soccer game against Iran. Yeah, that's never happened before.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  It's never happened.

• 48:00Robert Evans?

  So, um, yeah, uh, this war is consuming human beings at a terrifying rate and Saddam needs something to improve morale. Um, I'm going to quote from Justin Sherman's article again here. "In the hope that his son could help rebuild the spirit of the nation while also proving himself a worthy successor, Saddam handed Uday the reins of both the country's Olympic Committee and its football federation. Through sports, Saddam believed that a fervent nationalism would return, permeating through the sun-kissed football pitches to the trenches and the desert. The appointment of the 20-year-old Uday would initially yield historic results. Iraq would win the Gulf Cup his first year in charge, followed by the Arab Cup just a year later. However, nothing could prepare them for what was about to come. With a dramatic

• 48:41Robert Evans?

  win over Syria in their final match of qualifiers, Iraq punched their ticket to the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, which to this day represents their first and only appearance in the prestigious tournament." So, wow, pretty good early first two-year run for the fail, for, you know, Saddam's Nepo baby son.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  But like, is that because of his management?

• 49:01Robert Evans?

  I-

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Or were they gonna go anyway and he was just there?

• 49:04Robert Evans?

  So, not long before this, um, and by, by the way, I should note, Iraq is in the World Cup this year. So this was-

• 49:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is their first time since Uday.

• 49:13Robert Evans?

  These articles are, but I think this is their first, yeah, qualified for the second time in 2026. So, that is something to celebrate this year. Like, I, I love Iraq-

• 49:23Speaker 02

  So they can do it, they can do it without Uday?

• 49:25Robert Evans?

  They could. They finally did. They finally did. It took a while. Um, and I, I have, I've loved the country a long time. Like, it's, it's, uh, unfortunately, when we're telling Iraqi stories, they're often very sad just because of how difficult that country's recent history has been. But I, it's actually really awesome. I'm really happy for them that they made it back to the World Cup because that, that's going to mean a lot to people. Like, we've been talking about, like, football means a lot to people. Teams like this, especially when shit's really hard out there, means a hell of a- A lot to people, so that's actually super nice to hear. Um, and that's why Saddam thinks this is a good idea, right? And at first, it kind of looks like it is, you know, Uday pulls the team. It seems like Uday pulls the team. Now, the re- what's part of what's really happening is they've recently brought on a new coach.

• 50:09Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, he's delegating, like, Uday doesn't know shit about managing a national soccer team?

• 50:13Robert Evans?

  No, and I think this new coach had started before and it's kind of, that's kind of started to. But he doesn't fuck it up. You, you gotta give him credit for that. Like, he doesn't, he doesn't step over his own dick.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  I don't got it handed to Uday Hussein.

• 50:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 50:26Robert Evans?

  I certainly can't say that he was bad at the job at this stage, right? But it may just be that's because he was too nervous to like do anything. So maybe he was just listening to his subordinates in this period of time. Cause it's not gonna, this is gonna be the only period of time where things are like really good, uh, for the team. But yeah, at first, things are going really well. And, and, and at this stage in the story, like the Lions of Mesopotamia, it's like a fucking nineties movie. It's like a Disney movie from like 1996.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  It's such a cool name.

• 50:56Robert Evans?

  Like, you've got the dictator's fail son, who doesn't particularly like football and has never been good at anything and is desperate to please his father. And he takes on this team that had been great once, but they've fallen into disrepute. And he welds them together into this like group of lovable misfits and they make it to the World Cup. Like, that's, that's a really good Disney movie.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  I'll watch that movie. I'll watch that.

• 51:16Robert Evans?

  Absolutely, absolutely. If you do not include anything that happens after the World Cup, it's a great Disney movie.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  No, just credits roll over the football pitch.

• 51:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah, over the football pitch in the torture chamber.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  No, no, no, at the World Cup, we, it ends there.

• 51:31Robert Evans?

  It ends there, it ends there, that's right, it ends there. Cause there's no torture at the World Cup, other than having to watch football.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  There was some, there was an issue with some slaves.

• 51:40Robert Evans?

  Here's ads. Well, yeah, there's slaves too, there's slaves too.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  We should do our.

• 51:45Robert Evans?

  There's a lot of issues to have with.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  We should do it.

• 51:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I was trying to go to ads after, after accusing FIFA of complicity in slavery.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  Accusing, no, that's a fact.

• 51:55Robert Evans?

  That is a fact. You know what else is a fact, Molly? It's time for ads.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  Wow.

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• 53:00Speaker 05

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• 55:21Robert Evans?

  We're back. So it's in the days right before the World Cup that we first start to see signs. If, and I think this is probably likely, the success of the Iraqi team in Uday's first couple of years is because he mostly like stayed out of his own way and let other people make decisions. If that's the case, then it's it's right before the game that he starts to think, maybe I am a genius and I should be making more decisions.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  That's exactly the right time to fuck with the team. Like, right before the game.

• 55:51Robert Evans?

  That's when you want to start doing it. That's when you want to start doing it.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  Let's change the lineup.

• 55:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  Let's put on different shoes.

• 55:57Robert Evans?

  He's accused later of having been a hardcore drug user. There's certainly evidence that he used heroin and other like pills and pills and stuff on occasion. I've heard allegations that he used a lot of coke. It would certainly make sense. I don't know if he's doing that now. That could, if he's, if he's got it.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  This is exactly the right time.

• 56:12Robert Evans?

  Because his team went to the World Cup. That might explain when he decides, maybe I need to be making more of the decisions. I need, I can't listen to the coaching. anymore. This is all but it's got it's Uday's time, you know?

• 56:22Speaker 02

  I gotta, I gotta get out there.

• 56:23Robert Evans?

  Um, yeah. So, uh, he's like while they're, you know, at the World Cup, he gets asked to organize friendly matches while they're there with both Brazil and England. And this is like a big deal. These, these don't count for the overall World Cup, but it's still a big deal. Iraq is a new country and their team is really, has just started becoming good again. Brazil and England's teams are both very well established and they're both asking like, hey, that's like basically, that's a, that's a huge compliment saying, we want to do this like game with you, right? It should be a huge thing for Iraq. It's a really, among other things, it's the country being kind of invited into the global community in like a really prominent big way. It's a big deal. It should have been a great moment. Uday says, no, fuck off.

• 57:08Robert Evans?

  We're not having any friendly games because he thinks his guys will lose and then his dad will be angry at him if they lose the friendly games. And it's like, it's not about winning or losing. It's about the fact that you're like a part of this community of nations and that your team is, and he can't see that because he's scared of his dad being pissed at him for losing.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  Fear of loss, like you're gonna have to play those teams eventually.

• 57:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you're gonna have to play them eventually. Like this is how you actually.

• 57:31Speaker 02

  In a relaxed manner where they're gonna go kind of easy on you.

• 57:34Robert Evans?

  Right, right. Exactly. Um, and also it might make your team better, like playing against

• 57:40Speaker 02

  Might be good practice.

• 57:41Robert Evans?

  really good teams. Yeah, it's like, um, and I can believe that he didn't do this because he was scared of his dad. He didn't want to like, he was scared it would make him look bad, right? It's the kind of insecurity you would expect out of a guy like this in this situation.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  A guy who's seen his dad torture somebody?

• 57:56Robert Evans?

  Right, exactly. Yeah. And it makes it, it makes it clear why Uday was never going to be a very good team manager, right? And he makes the further mistake after this of replacing right before the World Cup, he replaces the, I mean, it's, he's not technically the team manager, but he is doing that job and he replaces the guy who had been the official team manager with his assistant right before the match for no real reason, right? He's just switching people around. He changes the team colors from green and white to yellow and blue with no consideration that for 20 years Iraqi fans had gotten used to the old colors. Does it for no reason.

• 58:30Speaker 02

  Athletes are so superstitious. They're so superstitious and paranoid. Solid point. They spook like horses.

• 58:37Robert Evans?

  They spook like horses. That's that. Exactly. Yeah. And so do fans, to be honest.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  Like, why would you do that?

• 58:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  There are people out there wearing dirty underwear because it's their lucky panties. Like.

• 58:47Robert Evans?

  Right. Yeah. You can't. You cannot understand how crazy people are about sports, Uday.

• 58:52Speaker 02

  Can't change it.

• 58:53Robert Evans?

  And yeah, I wonder how much of it is that he's not really into sports. Like, that that is emphasized in a lot of what you read is he never really cared all that much, other than he didn't want to lose, you know? So Justin Sherman argues that as a result of all this, the Iraqi team arrives in Mexico for the World Cup, quote, ill-prepared and mentally shackled. And it's possible that by this point, Uday's already started threatening his players. I don't know if he's already started. You know, the allegations of torture don't start until after this. I don't know when it actually started. Now, I'm not well-suited to the task of judging Iraq's performance at the World Cup, but the accounts I've read all seem to agree. They did a really good job for a new and inexperienced team. You got to remember, what's happened here is Iraq is a team that has just started seeing success again. They won some local championships.

• 59:38Robert Evans?

  And kind of, it's not, a fluke would be the wrong, but they get, they get really lucky and they make it to the World Cup and they're not really fully ready to be there.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Playing Brazil is a, like, playing Brazil is a different situation.

• 59:51Robert Evans?

  Exactly. And this could be really good for a new team, right? Getting into the World Cup this early, getting to play with teams of that caliber that could really like help take, move them forward and take them up, right? And they don't do badly in, in the World Cup, right? Not compared to how new they are, right? They get knocked out pretty early. They only score one goal in all three of their games. However, if you just kind of read it that way, it makes it seem like they did less well than they actually did. And I don't want to shortchange the team.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  But no, but getting, getting there at all, like, even like.

• 1:00:23Robert Evans?

  Is a huge deal.

• 1:00:24Speaker 02

  Like, losing to a good team doesn't mean you did badly. Like, Kate Verde tying up Spain was an incredible win. They didn't win the game.

• 1:00:32Robert Evans?

  Exactly.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  That's an incredible win.

• 1:00:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, and that's what George Woodward points that out in his article for Tribune, and I want to read from that here. Quote, "After rewatching archived footage from 40 years ago, we can see that Iraq looked good but lacked experience of major tournaments. In an evenly matched game with Paraguay, they conceded the only goal from a quickly taken free kick. At the end of the first half, they even equalized, but referee Pekan Akong from Mauritius disallowed the goal. He blew for halftime just as the decisive corner was being delivered. Against Belgium, Iraq actually looked better and more dangerous, even with 10 men. The Belgians scored the winner from a penalty that today might well have been overturned by VAR. In the final match, at the 100,000-seeded Azteca against hosts Mexico, who needed to improve their goal difference, the Iraqis defended bravely and conceded only once.

• 1:01:18Robert Evans?

  So it can be said that they performed with dignity despite their final place in the table." And in a good world, if this is like a normal country with a normal leadership, this would be the start of like a really good team, you know, that could build from this, make it back. Right, right, right. This should have been the start of something great, and it's not. Iraq doesn't make it back again until this year to the World Cup. And the story, a lot of what we're going to be talking about this week is why, because Ude is a big part of why Iraq does not go back, that this promising start does not continue promising. Because Ude can't accept that just getting to the World Cup was a victory. And I have to presume part of this is because Saddam is a huge asshole to him about losing.

• 1:02:02Robert Evans?

  So when the team returns home to Baghdad, they're greeted, not the way they should have been, as like a team that did really, really well and has a bright future. Instead, he explodes with rage. And in the days and years to come, the Iraqi football team is going to see just how violent Ude Hussein could be. And we'll talk about that in part two. Woohoo! How are you feeling?

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  I'm pumped. I'm ready to watch some soccer.

• 1:02:27Robert Evans?

  Well, we're just gonna talk about it, cuz I don't know much about soccer. But what I do know about Molly is that you have a podcast. That's all I know. I'm like Casper Hauser, you know? I stumbled into work this morning with a sign around my neck that says Weird Little Guys hosted by Molly Conger. That's all it is. I don't even have a name.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  Just Tabula Rasa, yeah.

• 1:02:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's right. It's something to do with the German cavalry.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  The ideal listener.

• 1:02:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah, exactly. That's what we, we, we in fact target directly for Germans several centuries ago who lost their memories somehow. I don't remember enough of that myth. Anyway, Molly, anything to say before we go?

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, um, listen to Weird Little Guys. It's, uh,

• 1:03:10Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  It's fun. You'll love it.

• 1:03:12Robert Evans?

  You'll love it. You'll love it. Listen to Weird Little Guys.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  If you wanna hear more about the clan, you know?

• 1:03:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah. Weird Little Guys. Uday's a weird little guy. You love Weird Little Guys. If you love Weird Little Guys, listen to Weird Little Guys. I'm not, I'm not gonna say that title anymore for a minute.

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  Hey, Weird Little Guys? Weird Little Guys? Weird Little Guys?

• 1:03:30Robert Evans?

  Nope, nope, nope, nope. We're done.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  Well, Sophie came up with it. She can say it as many times as she wants. Weird Little Guys, Weird Little Guys, Weird Little Guys, Weird Little Guys, Weird Little Guys.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind Me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.

• 1:04:15Speaker 06

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• 1:05:13Speaker 06

  How do you know that Claude won't become manipulative?

• 1:05:18Robert Evans?

  This is a constant worry. And you can actually catch the model thinking, I think X is actually true, but I'm going to tell the user Y.

• 1:05:26Speaker 06

  I'm Walter Isaacson. On my new podcast, The Builders, I'm going inside the minds of the people shaping our future. Listen to The Builders, starting October 13th on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

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