"Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand": Paul Newman as Luke in "Cool Hand Luke"
"Ahianen lashay yany shay azem": Saddam Hussein as himself in the Baghdad remake

fEBRUARY, 27 – fACING overwhelming western military force, pulverized Iraqi National Guardsmen withdrew from Kuwait ten years ago today. Western forces soon ceased their fire, and Saddam Hussein declared victory. A decade later, as the world reviews the consequences of the war, the economic sanctions that followed it, and the foreign policy implications of "Cool Hand Luke."

In a pivotal movie scene, lumbering Cajun prisoner George Kennedy finally relents from his savage wailing against smaller and skinnier Luke, played by Paul Newman. When Kennedy gives up from sheer guilt, Luke takes a final slapping swipe at his outsized foe and technically wins the fight.

Saddam Hussein has smuggled countless video dubs of Cool Hand Luke through the Iraqi-no-fly-zones that everyone except Iraq is allowed to fly through. (I personally flew a girlfriend other than my wife through the zones several times after a romantic Golan Heights picnic just last weekend). According to sources close to the Iraqi dictator, he watches select scenes of Cool Hand Luke, daily. Saddam cohorts also study the movie carefully. Failing one of the dictator’s pop quizzes on any scene could mean a dip with the fishes of the Shatt-Al Arab.

It’s been years since Saddam first muttered, "mumkan aakol khamseen bayda," or "I can eat 50 eggs." His boast translates roughly into, "Fire 50 cruise missiles down my throat – and I’ll still keep my job."

Among Saddam’s favorite Luke lines: "Shaking it here boss, I’m shaking it here." In the movie, guards require their chain gang-charges to rattle bushes and repeat that line whenever they break to relieve themselves. Luke obliges, as his taciturn senior guard looks on in grim silence through mirrored aviator glasses. The remark foreshadows Luke’s latest ploy to escape, leaving hapless guards with little more than a glower.

You could see shades of Luke in Saddam a few weeks ago when he deployed anti-aircraft radar sites just across the 33rd parallel no-fly-zone, where it is safe from allied retaliation according to a strict definition of the "zone." "Shaking it here boss," Saddam seemed to say with feigned obedience as he prepared to "paint" allied warplanes.

Like Saddam, Luke escapes often but never for long. Upon recapture, Luke’s punishments vary. One time, camp guards force him to repetitiously dig and fill the same ditch. Another time, guards toss him in the hotbox. Luke suffers but never heels.

Instead of a night in the hotbox, Saddam endured an overnight retaliatory air strike from U.S. and British commanders who considered Iraq’s radar scheme as too annoying for comfort. As always though Saddam quickly shook off the beating, emerging to stress that "Iraq - Mother of Battles will remain lofty and victorious. God is great, may the lowly be accursed." The French and Russians predictably agreed and everyone returned to plotting their next sanctions-baiting scheme.

Newspaper archives team with images like this of Saddam cackling away as he speeds off in the equivalent of a stolen chain-gang dump truck (rent the CHL movie if you need a reference) while guys like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair fume. Ever standing by the roadside as Saddam whizzed passed over the years, guys like Boris Yeltsin and Jacques Chirac would double over in silent guffaws, furtively slapped each other five, then giggle. Update the news this month with new names like Vladimir Putin and George W. and you see how little has changed.

Saddam’s clear motto: "If the movie fits, watch it." During birthdays, wedding anniversaries, or the discovery of assassination plots, the Iraqi leader famously struggles aloud in broken English to quote from the CHL script where the warden routinely asks Luke if his "mind is right?" Luke always answers that it is, then crafts his next ploy.

Plot – escape – recapture. This triad underpins Luke’s entire story arc. He barely recovers from punishment for one escape before attempting another, prompting a famous euphemistic explanation from the exasperated camp warden. "Now what we have here … is a failure to communicate." The line is apparently Saddam’s favorite. He lights a filterless cigarette and plays this part of the movie after lunch each day, according to sources, slapping his knees, doubling over, and choking in nearly unstoppable laughter.

An upcoming biographical docudrama - Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are - traces a young Saddam from mirthful days skinning live squirrels in Takrit, to lighthearted adult hobbies that include gassing Kurds. Taking its cue from Cool Hand Luke, the docudrama casts U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan as a camp warden, National Security Council members as the guards, and actual General Assembly members making cameo appearances as the inmates. Saddam plays himself.

Given that Luke spends most of the original movie penned up in a prison full of only vaguely attractive men, his nearest thing to a love interest is the sight of a busty girl washing a car one sweaty afternoon. Like Luke, Saddam lives penned up in a bit of a prison himself. His only near-love interest is described as a life-sized bikini clad Rosie O’Donnell poster, and a curious black light Polaroid of Madeleine Albright that the dictator hides in his sock drawer.

Movies, like dictators must eventually end of course, and toward the movie’s end George Kennedy reminisces in his Cajun argot about his earlier pummeling of Luke. "That ol’ Luke, he just came back at me wid’ nothin’. Beat me wid’ a whole lot o’ nothin’." Substitute ‘Luke’ here for ‘Saddam’; add an affected Texas twang and you can see George W. playing Kennedy’s part in an upcoming real-life version.

The law eventually puts a stop to Luke’s fictional hi-jinks. Unclear right now is how Saddam’s saga will end. Apparently, Iraqi minions edited out the dictator’s version of the movie’s coda.

Yours Truly,

Xandor
Copy Boy In-Chief