The blundering dictator

IN THE spring of 1990, Iraqi state television commemorated Saddam Hussein's 53rd birthday by playing, over and over, extended footage of the leader touring an art gallery. Room after room, the display consisted entirely of works sent as birthday tributes. To the jolly strains of Mozart's “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”, Iraq's president and his train of uniformed henchmen nodded, smirked and gestured appreciatively before paintings featuring Saddam, Napoleon-like, atop a rearing white stallion, or Saddam, commanding a tank, gesturing towards a blazing battlefront, or Saddam, in profile, facing the Dome of the Rock, clad in the chain-mail tunic and spiked helmet that Saladin, the Muslim liberator of Jerusalem, was made to wear in Egyptian costume dramas.