Television Son of Saddam tells the story of Latif Yahia, who was the body double for Saddam Hussein’s eldest son, Uday.
Director David Bartlett talks about the making of the film

Lee Tamahori’s The Devil’s Double (2011) gave us an inside view of the horrors and excess in Saddam Hussein’s household. Based on the eponymous book by Latif Yahia, The Devil’s Double told his story as the Fedai or bullet catcher of Saddam’s eldest son, Uday, who seems to be an all-round crazy psycho person. The super hot Dominic Cooper played both Uday and Latif (Uday was so much more eye catching) and the movie celebrated Eighties excess in every frame. There was drugs, sex and rock n roll and torture aplenty in the overripe film.

“That was classic Hollywood,” says director David Bartlett over the phone. Talking about Son of Saddam , an episode on Banged Up Abroad for National Geographic that he directed, Bartlett says: “This is very gritty. The styling is based on the Bourne films. There is a lot of handheld camera work. It is edgy and visceral.”

Talking about the difference between the film and the documentary, Bartlett explains that the two ends at different points and also Son of Saddam has Latif facing the camera to tell his story. “Latif Yahia is a man who chooses carefully who to open up to. He is a very intelligent man, and has been through a lot of trouble and pain. He has written two books on his experiences, The Devil’s Double and The Black Hole and when Raw Television contacted him with a view to dramatising his life story, he was very keen to engage with us, on the grounds that we would faithfully represent his and his family’s plight. He is a relatively private man, but I gained his trust through many conversations, and we came to a position of mutual respect. From that position, Latif felt comfortable enough to open up very candidly and bravely in what turned out to be a very long interview in front of the camera.”

While most episodes on Banged up Abroad feature people who are stuck in a foreign country, Son of Saddam features Latif who was Iraqi in a different kind of prison in Iraq. “The series tells the story of survival when caught in difficult situations and Latif’s story is true representation of human spirit that refused to get bogged down by the situation.”

Like the movie, the same actor plays both the roles — the honest, good Latif and the evil psychotic Uday. “We needed either twin actors or the same actor playing both the roles.
Sam Vincenti played Uday and Latif. It was a terrific performance as quite often he had to act against himself. There was clever editing involved as well.”

Shot on the northern coast of Tunisia, in La Marsa principally, the feature is gripping for the window it offers into another world.

Son of Saddam will air on 5/September/2012, at 10 p.m. on National Geographic Channel.

UK support for military action in Syria is not in America's best interest
Lessons of Iraq show that British support should not be seen as a green light to American leaders to send in the troops.
The last time a British prime minister endorsed an American president's plans for military intervention, it resulted in the US invasion of Iraq – one of the worst foreign policy blunders in recent American history.

That is why last week's endorsement by David Cameron of a warning by Barack Obama that even the threat of chemical weapons by Syria could trigger a military intervention should be viewed with alarm on both sides of the Atlantic.

There is something in the psyche of Americans that gives British views on foreign policy more credit than they deserve. If the Brits say it is so, it must be so is the common reaction of many Americans to pronouncements by British leaders. Americans are inclined to believe their friends across the Atlantic, given their centuries of involvement with countries around the world, have acquired skills to deal with foreign policy issues that Americans – with barely a century of global domination – simply do not possess. This is simply not true.

While there may be some truth to this belief in British prowess in dealing with other countries, there is an overriding reason to not give British support too much credence: The UK's support is rarely based on facts on the ground and objective analysis. It is driven instead by a self-serving exaggerated view of the "special relationship" with the United States.

I have always believed that former President Bush would have had a very difficult time selling his unilateral invasion of Iraq to Americans had Prime Minister Blair refused to support American military plans.

Why then would Britain, America's closest ally, the co-inventor of modern Iraq, with intimate knowledge of, and deep historical ties to, the Middle East, and with its powerful understanding of Arabs and Islam, not have influenced its American ally's actions more wisely?

Dean Acheson, one of America's most gifted Secretaries of State, would have had a ready explanation for why it was not in Britain's best interest to oppose the United States' plans to invade Iraq.

Addressing a student conference at the US military academy, West Point, in 1962, he presciently said, "Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role. The attempt to play a separate power role, that is, a role apart from Europe, a role based primarily on a 'special relationship' with the United States … is about played out."

The American invasion of Iraq destroyed the delicate balance of power relationships involving Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. A balance that Iraq's ruthless dictator had maintained for years.

A precipitate collapse of the Assad regime in Syria would magnify this instability in the heart of the Middle East by, for instance, encouraging a push by Syrian Kurds for an independent Kurdish State – the worst nightmare of Turkey, one of America's closest allies in the Middle East. That is why Turkey, the country most affected by the mayhem in Syria (over 200,000 refugees have crossed into it for safety), is politically divided about militarily intervening in Syria.

And, American military involvement in Syria, would further damage the relationship between the United States and Russia, Syria's benefactor. That would doom American and Nato plans to remove US troops and material from the war in Afghanistan through Central Asia and Russia; leaving Pakistan as the only route out of the Afghan quagmire. Is that in American national interest?

If Britain wants to help re-engineer Syria, a country it helped to invent in the first place, it should be free to do so. But Americans would be wise to make it clear to their elected officials that they have no wish to intervene on one side of a civil war. America has other priorities for its blood and treasure, and they do not include another war in the Middle East.

In this closely fought US presidential election season when President Obama is being hammered by conservatives to act militarily in Syria, what the world did not need is a public declaration of UK support for US military intervention in Syria. The US has been down this road before, in Iraq. Does anyone really want to repeat that movie?

Listen to the American Publisher's defence of the theft of Latif Yahia's book by Skyhorse Publishing, New York, USA.

If you have bought or Pre-ordered any of these books I urge you to cancel your purchase or return the book and ask for a refund.

These books have been used as tools in the propaganda for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

My Best Friend, Journalist Marie Colvin an American working for Britain's The Sunday Times, was killed in Homs-Syria today.

Her intrepidness invited comparisons with the pioneering war reporter and fellow American Martha Gellhorn. Born in Long Island, she was educated at Yale University and started her career as a police reporter for a news agency in New York before moving to Paris and then London. She joined the Sunday Times in 1986 as a Middle East correspondent, covering the strife in Beirut, the intifada in Israel, the Iran-Iraq war, and Yemen, where she smuggled herself in from Djibouti by boat. By the time the first Gulf War came around in 1991 she was already battle-hardened. She was decorated for her reporting from Chechnya, where she was pinned down by fire from Russian aircraft and troops. Finding her last relatively sensible line of retreat cut off by paratroopers, she escaped over an icy mountain path into Georgia, but after four perilous days' journey found herself stranded.

Marie had a knack for getting into places before her contemporaries and leaving long after they had given up, her goal, to report the whole story and in depth. She was a brave and courageous woman and will be sorely missed. My first meeting with Marie was in Vienna, Austria in 1995, when she did a piece on me for The Sunday times, we kept in contact over the years, anyone who met Marie was immediately taken by her strength of character and her ease of wit. The only battle scars that Marie showed were the physical ones and with her usual elan she made them into a positive rather than a negative. Marie's dedication to reporting made her the respected name is journalism that she is. I fear that with her loss the world of journalism has lost a lot more of it's integrity.

Marie's death came as a double blow to me, firstly the loss of such a wonderful person and journalist and secondly for her death to occur in Syria a country so beautiful but troubled, a country that I have fond memories of because it was there that I reunited with my family in 2004.

Marie you are immortal in our memories, R.I.P.  My condolences to your family and everyone who's life you touched, like me they too will never forget you.