![]() ![]() ![]() I'm curious, do you ever do you think he cared about you?ĪR: If something would have happened, maybe there are some people in the squad he might not have cared about as much. At 22 years old, that's a lot to take on.ĬMK: You clearly in some way cared about him. And 100 percent I was willing to give my life to for him. Anytime you're willing to lay your life down for somebody or for something you get attached to it at the end of the day. He was getting up there in age and he was remorseful for the things that he did.ĬMK: You know all that all that time you spent with him.do you feel like you're like you became friends with him?ĪR: I would say a part of me. It was almost.I got the vibe, and this is just me, that he was almost sorry. He never talked to me about the evil stuff that he did. I'm like "you guys hung out?" And he's like "yeah, you know, he's the one who got me started smoking Cohibas" and I was like "wow, this is crazy." Just to hear him like reminisce about smoking cigars with Fidel Castro. I was sort of just checking out what he was doing and there were pictures of Fidel Castro and him on a boat and I was like "that's kind of cool." He was passing his time and I was passing mine.ĬMK: Do you remember any stories he told you?ĪR: He was looking at pictures one night smoking a Cohiba. ![]() We would sit by his little electric heater, and we would pass the time. What do you what do you say to this guy?īut when it's nighttime and he's relaxing and smoking a cigar, he just wants to B.S. He would be sitting there staring at me, and I would be sitting there staring right back at him. It was just weird.ĪR: we were sort of just feeling each other out. I'm just standing there thinking "I can't believe that Saddam Hussein is taking a leak right here." I mean this is the first time I ever meet him. Once he heard us come down, he got up to use the bathroom. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.Ĭharles Monroe-Kane: What was it like the first time you met Saddam Hussein?Īdam Rogerson: You could hear him sleeping. Recently, a decade after the execution, Charles Monroe-Kane sat down with Rogerson to find out what it was like guarding Saddam Hussein. One of those guards was Private First Class Adam Rogerson, a young soldier from Ohio. Those guards were dubbed the “Super Twelve,” and their story is told by author William Bardenwerper in " The Prisoner in His Palace." They were young men - many just out of basic training - who spent months, often in 8 hours shifts alone, in close quarters with a man the rest of the world reviled as “The Butcher of Baghdad.” Their charge was to protect this man through the trial, seeing him through to his hanging and its violent aftermath. He repeatedly accused the US soldiers that guarded him of regularly beating and even torturing him in captivity. The defiant Hussein repeatedly claimed innocence on all charges, his courtroom antics and tirades during the trial are legendary. The months prior to his execution, Saddam Hussein was tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity. On December 20, 2006, Saddam Hussein, the deposed president of Iraq, was executed by hanging, three years after being found by US forces in Adwar, near Tikrit, in his now infamous “ spider hole.”
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