Nature versus nurture. It’s a debate as old as psychology. Are we what we are because of our genes, because of our environment, or some mysterious combination? Countless knowledgeable people have devoted their professional lives to pondering that simple question.
Arthur Guyton was born in 1919 in Oxford, Mississippi. His father was an ENT physician, and his mother was a physicist. Guyton was in his surgical residency when he was stricken with polio. Unable to perform surgery, Guyton devoted his extraordinary mind to the deep things of medicine.
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We lack the space to catalog that extraordinary guy’s accomplishments. In addition to devising the world’s first joystick-controlled wheelchair, the first motorized patient hoist, and a series of advanced orthotic braces, Guyton singlehandedly penned the standard textbook of medical physiology used by every reputable medical school on the planet. I was blessed to have him autograph my copy. Dr. and Mrs. Guyton had ten children, every last one of whom went on to become respected physicians in their own right. Theirs was a truly amazing family.
On 15 June 2013, 16-year-old Ethan Crouch killed four people while driving with a restricted license under the influence of drugs and alcohol. At his trial for intoxicated manslaughter, Crouch’s attorneys actually argued that he deserved rehab rather than prison because he suffered from “affluenza.” They reasoned that the kid had never been taught any limits, so it wasn’t his fault that he plowed his dad’s late-model Ford F-350 into a crowd. Crouch eventually fled to Mexico with his wealthy facilitating mother but was apprehended. Nature versus nurture—it’s indeed a murky question.
The Archetypes
Uday and Qusay Hussein were the sons of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Uday, the elder, was seen as Saddam’s heir apparent until he was badly injured in an assassination attempt. Both boys were born in Baghdad to Saddam’s wife/first cousin Sajida Talfah while the patriarch was in prison. The couple also had three daughters. Interestingly, in addition to his well-publicized forays into megalomania, Saddam also anonymously penned a best-selling romance novel titled “Zabibah and the King.”
Uday and Qusay were both crazy, but they were two different flavors of crazy. Qusay was the more cerebral of the two. He married Maher Abd al-Rashid and fathered four children. Qusay killed methodically, institutionally, and, most typically, in the shadows. Thousands of political prisoners were murdered on his orders simply to free up space in Iraqi jails. By contrast, Uday was a much more flamboyant madman.
Uday Hussein was a true old-school psychopath. He derived personal joy from other people’s suffering. Uday was a serial rapist who was granted unfettered institutional power. His henchmen roamed the streets of Baghdad, kidnapping attractive young women for his personal use.
Uday spent three days in medical school before dropping out. He then obtained a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a doctorate in political science. However, there were rumors that his coursework was actually done by others in exchange for gifts, political favors, and the threat of violent, gory death. One of his fellow students described him thusly, “He was really smart, probably smarter than his father—but he was crazy.”
In addition to sundry other duties, Uday was put in charge of the Iraqi Olympic teams. He would torture the athletes if they did not perform to his standards. Latif Yahia, Uday’s body double, later said, “The word that defines him is sadistic. I think Saddam Hussein was more human than Uday. The Olympic Committee was not a sports center, it was Uday’s world.”
Uday reportedly had a policy wherein he never had sex with a woman more than three times. Once he was done, he frequently had his subjects murdered and their bodies disposed of. When he was unable to be present for a victim’s torture, he often called in so he could listen to their screams over the phone.
The veracity of this story has been disputed. However, it was widely reported in 2003 that the man even ordered an industrial plastic shredder to be shipped to Iraq. He purportedly used the device to kill his enemies by gradually lowering them into the machine feet-first. In short, Uday and Qusay really desperately needed killing.
Assassination Attempts
You cannot treat people the way the Hussein boys did without making more than your share of serious enemies. Additionally, Saddam Hussein was Sunni, while the nation he ruled was majority Shia. This, combined with Saddam’s legendarily heavy-handed dictatorship, was the recipe for wet work.
As the quieter of the two psycho brothers, Qusay’s assassination attempt was the milder event. Members of the Iraqi National Congress opened fire on his motorcade on 1 August 2002. Qusay incurred a minor bullet wound to the arm but was otherwise unhurt.
Uday’s event was much more dramatic. He fell prey to his own depraved predictability. Every Tuesday around 7 pm, Uday would cruise around the Mansour district in Baghdad in his late-model Porsche sports car looking for fresh women to rape. Members of the Shia Shaaban resistance movement surveilled the area for three months, gathering intelligence before the hit. When the time was right, a group of assassins opened up, firing a total of fifty rounds at his vehicle. Seventeen actually connected.
The resulting purge resulted in a fairly predictable bloodbath. Countless political opponents, both real and imagined, were tortured and killed. As for Uday, after several surgical procedures, Iraqi physicians removed all but two rounds. However, the butcher had suffered significant spinal cord damage. While he was originally rumored to have been paralyzed, he eventually did recover well enough to be able to walk, albeit with a pronounced limp.
Uday’s extensive injuries also purportedly rendered him impotent. As you might imagine, for a prolific recreational rapist, that represented an undeniable blow to his pride. He subsequently had the secret police spread spurious stories about his extraordinary sexual prowess.
Operation Tapeworm
After the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, hunting down the major players in the Hussein government became the top priority. Coalition forces famously produced a deck of playing cards containing the most infamous personalities. Saddam was the ace of spades. Qusay and Uday were the aces of hearts and clubs, respectively. Coalition forces placed a combined bounty of $30 million on the two reprobates. They christened the mission to unalive these two scumbags Operation Tapeworm.
$30 million is a lot of money. That’s enough cash to allow a man to start afresh somewhere. Amidst the war-torn maelstrom of defeated Iraq, the means to set one’s family up on a metaphorical island somewhere was enough to raise a few eyebrows. A pair of those eyebrows belonged to one Nawaf al-Zaidan.
Nawaf al-Zaidan was a successful businessman and member of the Hussein inner circle of trusted confidantes. When Uday and Qusay needed a place to hide out, they pinged good old Uncle Nawaf. Uday, Qusay, Qusay’s 14-year-old son, Mustafa, and their bodyguard Abdul-Samad had been quietly holed up in Nawaf’s Mosul mansion for about three weeks when Nawaf left the compound on some pretense with his son. The rest of the al-Zaidan family had gone out for breakfast earlier.
Al-Zaidan reported to a nearby 101st Airborne base and explained that the Hussein boys were chilling at his crib. Despite being justifiably terrified–keep in mind that these were the same two fun-loving kids who supposedly maintained their own recreational plastic shredder–he offered physical details that corroborated his story. At 1000 on 22 July 2003, eight Delta Force operators, along with some forty 101st grunts, decided to run down the lead.
Monster Killing 101
The 101st infantrymen established an airtight cordon, and the D-boys gave the Hussein brothers a shout using a bullhorn. When they got no response, the Delta shooters breached the front door for a look-see. They were greeted by sleeting AK-47 fire that wounded three of the assaulters. As the entry team egressed, the Americans took fire from the upper story of the house that wounded a fourth US operator. That’s when these American heroes did what they do best.
In the actual military world, there’s just no such thing as overkill. Fairness and parity of firepower don’t mean bupkis if it is your hide on the line. The surrounding Screaming Eagles opened up with M2 Browning .50-caliber machine guns, AT4 antitank rockets, and Mk 19 automatic grenade launchers to systematically pulverize the structure. Uday and Qusay fought back, but this was turning into quite the big show. Everybody wanted a piece of it. In short order, a further 200 American grunts showed up ready to party. They brought along a handful of OH-58D Kiowa Warrior armed helicopters and several Humvee-mounted TOW launchers. The American people were about to get their money’s worth on some of that astronomical defense budget.
Doing the Deed
Around 1300 hours, some three hours after the Delta team first initiated their breach, the 101st grunts pumped ten BGM-71 TOW antitank missiles into the house. Support weapons and the Kiowa Warriors added to the carnage. Twenty minutes later, an American assault team moved into the rubble to check things out.
Uday and Qusay were blown to smithereens. 14-year-old Mustafa had barricaded himself in what was left of a bedroom with a Kalashnikov. When approached by US forces, the boy unlimbered his rifle. The American shooters cut him down.
The Rest of the Story
US troops recovered what was left of the four Iraqis and verified their identities via dental records and DNA assays. Uday and Qusay had grown their beards long in an effort to alter their appearance. Also, Uday had shaved his head. Uday, Qusay, and Mustafa were buried alongside each other in a cemetery in Tikrit.
Saddam, for his part, took the news with stoicism. Not that it mattered. Five months later, Delta operators dragged the disheveled despot out of a hole in the ground outside a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near Tikrit.
He was armed with a selective fire Glock 18C that was later presented to President Bush as a war trophy. Three years later, the 69-year-old dictator kept his date with the hangman at Camp Justice in Baghdad.
Nawaf al-Zaidan’s home was completely destroyed in the operation. However, don’t be too torn up about that. He got the $30 million he was promised by Coalition authorities for ratting out the Hussein boys. Al-Zaidan subsequently disappeared with his wife Mohassin, his 18-year-old son Shalan, and his four daughters.
As part of the agreement, al-Zaidan and his family were covertly relocated to the US. After a purported one-year training period on a US military base, wherein the family learned English and were schooled in the rudiments of wealth management, they were allowed to move anywhere in the States they wished.
All seven members of the family were given Green Cards with the option of applying for full citizenship five years later. I checked Google and found no reference to where they ended up. They could be living right down the road from any of us.
It’s dark—no moon, can’t see your hand in front of your face dark. The stars in the sky are uninterrupted by light pollution, thousands of them scattering from horizon to horizon. My NODs are pulled down over my left eye creating a landscape of green hues. Even with the night vision supplied by Uncle Sam that relies on ambient light to work properly, it’s impossible to see until I turn on the IR light attached to my rifle..gif)
