“An audiotape purportedly made by Saddam Hussein told Iraqis on Sunday to step up their resistance to the U.S.-led occupation, saying the United States and its allies misjudged the difficulty of occupying Iraq.” Thus says AP.
This message, like many of Saddam’s messages toward the end of his rule, urges resistance in the name of jihad.
“Iraq will rebel against their evil intentions to colonize it and to wield influence in it. The evil ones now find themselves in a crisis and this is God’s will for them.”
Saddam, or psuedo-Saddam, “called on ‘mujahedeen,’ or holy warriors, to strike coalition forces ‘even harder.’ . . . The path of resistance is the path of choice to God and the people. . . . The land and fire of glorious Iraq that God has blessed with jihad because of valor in resistance… will swallow hundreds of thousands of troops that … will never achieve their plans.”
Now imagine for a moment that you are Saddam or pseudo-Saddam. Obviously you want to make the strongest possible appeal to your people, an appeal that will make them rise up against the Americans en masse. So you couch your appeal as a summons to jihad. Apparently it never crossed his mind that the majority of his hearers would misunderstand his call to jihad as an exhortation to purify their own souls.