The Prisoner in His Palace

April 3, 2017
Bardenwerper, a U.S. Army veteran, eschews the usual war reportage fare of violence and valor as he profiles the “Super Twelve,” the unit of the 101st Airborne whose Iraq experience consisted largely of drinking tea and playing chess with a kindly old man who took an interest in their families and offered financial assistance for college. That man was Saddam Hussein, whom they were assigned to guard for the duration of his trial. The soldiers gradually warmed to their prisoner, who spoke good English, had a quick sense of humor, and enjoyed smoking Cohiba cigars. After a day of denouncing the American oppressors in court, “his demeanor would change the instant he joined his guards in the elevator.” His guards, meanwhile, escaped the physical dangers of the front lines, yet most still developed PTSD and similar afflictions. An alarming number wound up unemployed, homeless, or incarcerated. “Everything changed” for one soldier “when he led the old man he’d grown to know to his execution and was forced to stand by as his body was desecrated.” Bardenwerper’s engrossing history reveals that everybody has the capacity for good, and, more disturbingly, that every good person has the capacity for great evil. Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta, Zoë Pagnamenta Agency.