"Threatening me with death doesn't mean anything...I don't care less. The life of any one Iraqi is no less valuable than mine... I am the commander in chief... I prefer it to be by firing squad," lawyer Issam Ghazzawi quoted Saddam as telling him and another attorney Ramsey Clarke during a meeting in basement of a Baghdad courthouse on December 7, The Washington Times reported.

"I'm not afraid of death,... Of course, I'm not guilty, but I know they want me dead," Saddam is supposed to have told both of them when they raised the possibility of his execution if found guilty by the court.

The paper said Saddam was quite exuberant about the ongoing insurgency in Iraq and how this had stopped a superpower in its tracks; and called on fellow Arab nations to come to his help as he had stood with them in the past.

"I'm fighting against US tyranny on behalf of Iraqis, Arabs, all the people of the world. ... The US will not be able to formulate a new world."

"They tried in Iraq and failed badly, so by standing against (President George W) Bush we are protecting other countries and regions of the world. Now the US will think a thousand times before daring to attack another country," Saddam was quoted by the paper.

A Kurdish grave digger( assisted by others ) unearth the anonymous grave of a secondary student he says that he buried along with 18 other students in 1986 in Erbil's Black Hill cemetery. The students had been executed by firing squad by the Iraqi authorities.

Saddam claims beaten by Americans
-Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Saddam Hussein accused his American captors of torturing him, claiming at his trial today that he had been beaten “everywhere on my body.” A Shiite witness testified that the former Iraqi leader’s agents had tortured people by ripping off their skin. The trial’s chief prosecutor said that if American-led multi-national forces had abused Saddam, he would be transferred into the custody of Iraqi troops. The prosecutor, Jaafar al-Mousawi, said he would investigate. “I want to say here, yes, we have been beaten by the Americans and we have been tortured,” Saddam responded, before gesturing towards his seven co-defendants, “one by one.” Launching into an extended outburst after sitting quietly through several hours of testimony, Saddam said he’d.......    More