Saddam..A SUFI WITH CUBAN CIGARS AND ITALIAN SUITS: There is an annoying construction of Saddam's (false) heroic image in Al-Quds Al-`Arabi. All of Saddam's conversations with his lawyer are reported in details. Today, we learn more about the last meeting between Saddam and his lawyer. He reports that Saddam was sorry because "he was not permitted to be martyred when he was arrested." He said: "I wished I had my gun on me at that moment, so that I would have been martyred or cut the throat [sic, he used the word "dhabaht"] of one of the Americans at least, but providence did not permit me that." Saddam again claims that he was arrested in the house of his friend in Ad-Dawrah. He wants to believe that he was praying at that point because Saddam, like Noriega, has found God in jail. He said that he was betrayed but did not want to identify the person responsible. As usual, Saddam sent "his salutations" to the Palestinian people. I hate it when he does that. His regime used he Palestinians but never cared about them unless you count his support for the terrorist Abu Nidal as support for the Palestinians. And in the 1980s, his regime entered into negotiations with the Israelis but Saddam's supporters do not want to believe that. But nothing, NOTHING, irritated more in this 1st page article than this sentence: "And Saddam lives in a state of religious Sufism [mysticism] since the collapse of his rule that made him ascetic in his life and inside his jail cell." As if the brutal tyrant has a choice. Like he can choose to eat caviar in his cell? And An-Nahar's newspaper claims that it received (and published) the text of letters exchanged between Saddam Husayn and Muhammad Baqir As-Sadr from March 1980, one month before Saddam executed As-Sadr. But there are no photocpies produced to judge the athenticity of the letters. The letters published, in my estimation, represented the thought and the style of both, but how knows?