Talk of Tikrit's Favorite Diner: Hatred of Hussein, Fury at U.S.
If there is a favorite meeting place here in Saddam Hussein’s hometown, it is a tightly packed, crockery-clattering, $1-a-plate restaurant called Al Mudhaif — Arabic for a place of hospitality, or inn — on the town’s scrappy main street. Anybody wanting to know Tikrit can stop by and listen to the talk as waiters shuttle by with plates of flat-baked bread and spit-roasted chicken. All types gather here, including, one recent day, a posse of heavyset men with traditional Arab tribal dishdasha robes and checkered kaffiyeh headdresses. With jutting beards, old combat jackets and narrowing eyes, they were identified by other diners as members of the “resistance,” still working, other diners said, for the restoration of their fallen idol, Mr. Hussein. Full Story