Jewish World Review

JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
James Glassman
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports


Few dull moments for Hussein look-alike

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | (KRT) AL OUJA, Iraq - Saddam Hussein, dressed in a greasy blue jumpsuit, spends his afternoons pumping gas at this sleepy village's service station, just south of his hometown of Tikrit.

Or at least that's how it looks to visiting motorists who pull in for a fill-up and quickly do a double take at Muhammad Hussein Daoud, with his unmistakable heavy jowls, bushy mustache and big dark sunglasses.

"All of us around here have one grandfather," an ancestor nine generations back, "so it's inevitable," explains the 64-year-old Saddam look-alike. "My name is similar, and so is my face."

Similar doesn't begin to describe Daoud's resemblance to the missing dictator, a distant cousin who for a time attended the same grade school. Though Daoud was never recruited as one of Saddam's official stand-ins, he could be his double: Same paunch, same bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows, same lined face and sagging cheeks. All he lacks is a rifle in his raised hand.

Daoud's face has led him into no shortage of adventures over the years, from assassination attempts to mistaken rescues by Iraq's secret service.

But since Saddam fled into hiding after U.S. forces took Baghdad on April 9, the gas station attendant's mug has gotten him more attention than ever - particularly after the ruling coalition began offering a $25 million reward for Saddam's head.

Donate to JWR

In the days after the war, he was driving with a cousin up to the town of Baiji, where he had stashed his family during the fighting, when their car was stopped at a coalition roadblock.

A U.S. soldier walked up to the window, took a look inside and froze.

"He fixed his eyes on me, and said, `Please come with me,' " Daoud remembers. "He asked me to take off my sunglasses."

Convinced they'd caught the big fish and one of his bodyguards, soldiers quizzed the pair for some time and called for backup. Eventually, though, as neighbors and other passersby repeatedly confirmed Daoud's story, he was let go.

Since then, dozens of U.S. soldiers have stopped by the gas station to shoot photos with Daoud, their arm thrown around the shoulders of what looks just like a grinning Saddam Hussein.

"I'm enjoying this," admits Daoud, who works with a white turban wound around his head.

So far no one has tried to turn him in for the $25 million reward, at least that he has discovered, though his wife and three young sons joke they might try that themselves.

Mostly, though, his wife says she finds her husband's uncanny resemblance to Saddam worrying.

"It's natural that some people look alike," she said. "But I'm afraid someone will think he's Saddam."

Daoud, who knew Saddam distantly as a boy and once aimed slingshots with him, did manage one face-to-face meeting as an adult with his notorious look-alike. Years ago, when Saddam was still vice president, Daoud made an appeal to Saddam's office to be compensated for salary lost during three years he was jailed after wrongly being accused of being a communist by the Baath Party.

At the meeting in Baghdad, Daoud was escorted into Saddam's office with four other petitioners, all women.

Saddam "fixed his eyes deeply on my face - on my eyes, my nose, my mouth. It was strange," Daoud remembers. For a long moment the two look-alikes, just three years apart in age, stared at each other. Finally Saddam looked over his unusual petitioner's case file, granted compensation and shook his hand goodbye.

Over the years, Daoud has had his money refused by merchants, convinced he was a brother of the president, and has been invited to posh dinners by those seeking to make high-placed friends.

Once, sitting in a nightclub in Baghdad with a friend, he was approached by an armed secret service agent who urged him to flee.

"He told us, `Hurry, we have to leave this place,' " Daoud remembers. The agent had overheard other clients discussing an assassination plot and quickly hustled Daoud and his friend out of the building and into a waiting car.

"I had no idea what was going on," Daoud remembers. "We were astonished."

For now, the gas station attendant - who says that age has only made him look even more like Saddam - is keeping his head down. Several times since the reward was offered he has been followed, he said. He would prefer not to take any more chances than necessary.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


Comment by clicking here.

Up

© 2003, Chicago Tribune l Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services