Saddam Hussein with sons

Whether he actually murdered a teacher may be a subject of dispute, but there is little question that Uday Hussein had no reservations at all about flexing his muscle in school. Former classmates (few have ever described themselves as Uday's friends) told the Telegraph that it was a given that, regardless of his performance, Uday Hussein always ranked at the top of his class. As the Telegraph put it, if Uday Hussein demanded extra time to finish a test, his teachers needed only to glance up at the phalanx of beefy bodyguards that surrounded the young pupil before deciding to grant his demand.

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Even then, Uday, who would later be known for his flamboyant personal style — his Italian made suits, his penchant for expensive Havana cigars, and his well known, and decidedly un-Islamic taste for fine liquors — flouted the conservative restrictions the school placed on other students, and both he and his younger brother, Qusay ignored both the schools dress code and its ban on students driving their own limousines to school.

But though the brothers may have shared their contempt for the strictures of school life, most observers in the years before the fall of Baghdad insisted that they shared little else in terms of personality and personal style. In fact, even in their teens, there was a marked sibling rivalry between the two boys.

Ahmad al Rikaby

It was not that Qusay was any less brutal or sadistic than his older brother, wrote Heidi Kingstone wrote in the Jerusalem Report in 2001. "Qusay is said to be just as sadistic as his older brother," Kingstone wrote at the time, "but more low-key." As Ahmad al-Rikaby, then chief correspondent of Radio Free Iraq, told Kingstone, "There is certainly jealousy between the two brothers. In Middle Eastern society, the older brother thinks he has the right to everything. Uday is full of hatred toward Qusay."

Even in the years before the deaths of Uday and Qusay however, there were some who believed that the rumors of their mutual hatred were not overblown but were part of a conscious disinformation campaign engineered by their father. "The idea that Uday and Qusay will fight to the death when Saddam dies is certainly a popular scenario, though there some who maintain that this sibling rivalry is merely a piece of political theatre, stage-managed by Saddam," Brian Whittaker wrote in the British newspaper The Guardian on Aug. 28, 2001. "According to this view, if the loyalists can be encouraged to rally around Qusay, and the disaffected to rally around Uday, then Dad can be sure that he has everyone in his grasp."

Whether the hatred was real or not, in the end, it was moot. After the fall of Iraq, while their father was hiding in a spider hole, the two brothers went to their death, fighting side by side.

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