Death it will be, but Saddam sees a catch

AMMAN (JORDAN): Saddam Hussein has no illusions, his chief lawyer says. As he sits in his prison cell reading the Quran and writing poetry, Hussein knows the inevitable is coming a death sentence handed down by the Iraqi court trying him on charges of crimes against humanity.
"Saddam Hussein is convinced of this," the lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, said in an interview here."He's told us many times we won't be able to change this. He knows the sentence has been issued from Washington, and if there's an even greater punishment than the death sentence, he'll get it."
Yet Saddam refuses simply to submit to the fate that awaits him, Dulaimi said, for he believes there is a way out. According to Saddam's logic, president Bush will use the court's sentence as leverage to try to persuade him to tamp down the insurgency, so desperate are the Americans to stanch their losses.
Saddam believes the Americans might even reinstall him as president of Iraq, his lawyer said. "He'll be the last resort; they'll knock on his door," Dulaimi said, tapping a pair of gold-rimmed glasses against his knee. "The United States will use this sentence to pressure Saddam to save it from its mess."
Such are the thoughts that appear to be meandering through the mind of Saddam, 69, as his first trial nears its end.
Though the idea of salvation may seem quixotic at best, the latest in a long line of delusions that have helped land Saddam where he is today, Dulaimi asserts that Saddam's hopes do not lie merely in the realm of fantasy.
On the contrary, he said, it is the Americans who are now beginning to wake up from a dream world, realising that their invasion has delivered Iraq into the hands of conservative Shias in both Iraq and Iran.
NYT News Service