With Saddam Hussein's body freshly decomposing in the Bagdad soil, I felt it was not to soon to shamelessly capitalize on the death of the Iraqi dictator. And since I could not come up with something original fast enough to beat the OTHER vultures to the corpse (and because it's easier to work with a tune you already know), I reworked Bob Dylan's song "The Hurricane". OK, so it's not perfectly accurate (but neither, frankly, was Dylan's ode), but it's fast, and hopefully will garner me much, much money so that I can hire writers to do this stuff for me.

Enjoy!

Pistol shots ring out in the Bagdad night
Enter a CIA agent from the upper hall.
She sees the Kurd in a pool of blood,
Cries out, "My God, they killed them all!"
Here comes the story of Saddam Hussein
The man the authorities came to blame
For somethin' that he never done.
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The dictator of the world.

Three bodies lyin' there does the agent see
And another unknown fellow, movin' around mysteriously.
"I didn't do it," he says, and he throws up his hands
"I was only stealin' the oil, I hope you understand.
I saw him leavin'," he says, and he stops
"One of us had better call up the cops."
And so the agent calls the cops
And they arrive on the scene with their red lights flashin'
In the hot Iraqi night.

Meanwhile, far away in another part of town
Saddam Hussein and a couple of friends are drivin' around.
Number one contender for the dictator's crown
Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down
When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road
Just like the time before and the time before that.
In Bagdad that's just the way things go.
If you're Sunni you might as well not show up on the street
'Less you wanna draw the heat.

The fellow had a partner and he had a rap for the cops.
Him and his buddy were just out prowlin' around
He said, "I saw two men runnin' out, they looked like middleweights
They jumped into a white car with out-of-country plates."
And Mr. CIA agent just nodded his head.
Cop said, "Wait a minute, boys, this one's not dead"
So they took him to the infirmary
And though this man could hardly see
They told him that he could identify the guilty men.

They open up a spider hole and they haul Saddam in,
Take him to the hospital and they bring him upstairs.
The wounded man looks up through his one dyin' eye
Says, "Wha'd you bring him in here for? He ain't the guy!"
Yes, here's the story of Saddam Hussein,
The man the authorities came to blame
For somethin' that he never done.
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The dictator of the world.

Four months later, the ghettos are in flame,
Saddam's in Kuwait, fightin' for his name
While George W. bush plays the hegemony game
And the cops are puttin' the screws to him, lookin' for somebody to blame.
"Remember that murder that happened in a bar?"
"Remember you said you saw the getaway car?"
"You think you'd like to play ball with the law?"
"Think it might-a been that dictator that you saw runnin' that night?"
"Don't forget that you are white."

George W. Bush said, "I'm really not sure."
Cops said, "You're slumpin' in the polls and could really use a break
We got you for election fraud and we're talkin' to that other fellow
Now you wanna show the world that you ain't yellow.
You'll be doin' society a favor.
That sonofabitch is brave and gettin' braver.
We want to put his ass in stir
We want to pin this triple murder on him
He ain't no Gentleman Jim."

Saddam could take a man out with just one punch
But he never did like to talk about it all that much.
It's my work, he'd say, and I do it for pay
And when it's over I'd just as soon go on my way
Up to some paradise
Where a thousand virgins wait and the air is nice
And ride a horse along a trail.
But then they took him to the jailhouse
Where they try to turn a man into a mouse.

All of Rubin's cards were marked in advance
The trial was a pig-circus, he never had a chance.
The judge made Saddam's witnesses drunkards from the slums
To the Shiite folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum
And to the Iraqis he was just some crazy dictator.
That was gonna have to be run out sooner or later.
And though they could not produce the gun,
The D.A. said he was the one who did the deed
And the all-Shiite jury agreed.

Saddam Hussein was falsely tried.
The crime was murder "one," guess who testified?
Bush and Blair and they both baldly lied
And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride.
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game.

Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While Saddam went to the gallows from his ten foot cell
An innocent man who was put through hell.
That's the story of Saddam Hussein,
But it won't be over till they clear his name
And give him back the life he's lost.
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The dictator of the world.