Corridors Of Power: Should America Police The World? review: Why the Americans tolerated, then toppled, murderous tyrant Saddam, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS By Christopher Stevens Published: 01:24, 7 August 2024 | Updated: 01:24, 7 August 2024 e-mail View comments Corridors Of Power: Should America Police The World? (BBC4) Rating: However vicious the infighting among Tories , it's unlikely their autumn conference in Birmingham next month will be as bloodthirsty as Saddam Hussein's first party assembly as president of Iraq . Six days after he took power in 1979, he summoned hundreds of officials from his Ba'ath party to a meeting in Baghdad. As the delegates took their seats, the doors were shut and bolted.
Unless you're at a lock-in at a village pub, that's always an ominous sign. Archive footage on Corridors Of Power showed the grinning dictator chomping on a cigar, like Magnum star Tom Selleck doing a Winston Churchill impression. Traitors and conspirators were among them, he declared, and slowly announced their names.
Saddam Hussein waves to supporters in Baghdad, Iraq in October, 1995 'Ahmed . . .
' he began, and every Ahmed in the room broke into a muck sweat. Each of the men he identified as an enemy was marched outside, blindfolded, bound to a stake and then, after the rest of the party bigwigs gathered round to watch, shot dead. And shot a few more times, for good measure.
This cold-blooded execution, without any charges or trial, was a statement of intent. 'The messag.