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Saddam is foremost on that list:

"A poor student, although not lacking intelligence, he earned respect the al-Khatabi way: by shooting and trying to kill the teacher who beat him at school.

Although Saddam was unable to read even at the age of ten, his uncle Khairallah - later to become Mayor of Baghdad - encouraged him, as did his son, Adnan, later to become the Minister for Defence. And what Khairallah, who had turned to teaching after his release from prison, schooled him in was the arts of manipulation and intrigue. When Khairallah moved to Baghdad in the mid-1950s he took Saddam with him, where he was plunged into a city alive with national fervour. The tough young peasant was about to become properly politicised.

Saddam had joined the relatively new Baath Party - which advocated both socialism and Arab nationalism - and where his first role was organising fellow students into a gang to intimidate political rivals. In 1958 Saddam killed for the first time. At the age of 21, he was implicated in the murder of a rival of his uncle's, a cousin who was the Communist Party chief in Tikrit.

Although there was not enough evidence to imprison Saddam or Khairallah, it was sufficient to mark Saddam as a candidate for a peripheral role in the attempted killing of the then Iraq leader, General Abdul Karim Kassem, by the Baathists in 1959 in revenge for his massacre of Baath supporters in the town of Mosul. The failed assassination was an event that was to become a key turning point for both the party and Saddam.

By the late 1960s - by when he had been in prison and exile in Egypt - the Baath Party had swept to power and a new version of Saddam had emerged. Although still a violent thug, he commanded respect, and had transformed himself from being a dim student from Tikrit into an autodidact who read widely and whose greatest understanding was of the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political power.

When the party seized control in 1968 his cousin Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr was president and chairman of the new Revolutionary Command Council. But Saddam was the real muscle and brains behind his relative.

The next 11 years marked a slow but determined progress as Saddam built up the support he required to grab power from his cousin. Although already regarded as the 'strongman of Baghdad' and the effective power, his coup in office was forced on him when rivals realised how powerful he had become and began suggesting that perhaps elections within the party might be necessary to stem his influence.

And on 22 July, 1979, Saddam finally seized power in what would be one of the most iconically terrible moments of his regime. President al-Bakr - Saddam's front man - had been quietly fading from the scene. On 11 July a closed session of the Revolutionary Command Council had removed his powers and transferred them to Saddam. On the 15th the 65-year President even helped his protégé, announcing on television that he was stepping down due to poor health. All that remained was for Saddam to eliminate opponents in the Revolutionary Command Council who might stand in his way.

And the man who would be the catalyst of this great purge was the RCC's Secretary-General, Muhie Abd al-Hussein Mashhadi, who had signed his own death warrant on 11 July by demanding a vote on Saddam's ascension to power.

On the 22nd, Saddam invited all members of the Command Council and other party leaders to a conference hall in Baghdad. As he sat by smoking a cigar, one of his cronies announced to the gathering that a foreign plot had been uncovered. Mashhadi, who had been tortured after his arrest by Saddam loyalists, was led from behind a curtain to confess. He started naming names and as he reeled off the list of those allegedly involved they were led from the room. There were 66 in total.

As Saddam got up from his chair and ascended to the lectern, he told the audience of his shock. He wept as he mentioned the name of one of the plotters. As one man cried out his innocence, Saddam waved him away with a shout of: ' Itla! itla! ' [Get out! Get out!] As a final chilling touch, Saddam had ordered the filming of the entire event, videotapes of which were circulated throughout the country.

It is a moment that set the tone for his future rule. In the two decades and more that would follow there would be other pieces of theatre of the macabre designed to frighten and impress: the gas attack at Halabja; the murder of this paper's correspondent Farzad Bazoft; the use of the Western human shields in the last Gulf War, and the murder of his son-in-law Hussein Kamil, coerced back to Baghdad after his defection. "

Yes, this is who all these mindless protesters, lemmings without a brain are protecting.

Sad.

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