The search for deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has switched to San Francisco, following sensational claims that he has spent the last three years not in Baghdad, but instead living as part of the Bay area’s gay scene. There have been numerous reports of a man fitting his description hanging around various local gay night-spots, apparently attempting to recruit young men to appear in porn movies. “He was just so handsome, with that beret and that big butch moustache – not forgetting those really tight leather trousers and the very fetching earring,” recalls Jake Bozack, a gay stereotype who was approached the man he knew as ‘Mr Crackafat’ in a popular San Francisco gay bar. “I was so shocked when I turned on CNN a few months later and saw Mr Crackafat in military uniform being denounced by President Bush! He had seemed such a genuine guy – he’d wanted me to go into the john with him and strip naked so he could audition me for his next movie! Still, he did look incredibly horny in that tight uniform!” Several people have contacted local television stations claiming to have seen the former Iraqi dictator – billed as Yasser Crackafat – performing in the video Arab Stallions. “I’m sure it was him playing the patriarchal owner of the stud farm who can only become aroused after riding his big black stallion naked,” Vince Tremble, a waiter in an Oakland coffee shop told reporters. “Obviously the moustache and homburg hat were a big giveaway, but the clincher was when you get a full frontal shot of him naked – his wang curls up at the end just like those weird shoes you see Arab guys wearing!”

The FBI is taking these reports very seriously and has obtained a copy of the video, which they believe was shot in the San Francisco area somewhen during the last three years. “We are currently trying to trace the makers of this film, which I must say was surprisingly well made -that scene where he jumps down from his steaming horse and mounts one of the stable boys, the camera cutting from the horse’s sweaty flanks to Crackafat’s heaving buttocks, is very artistically shot,” commented Special Agent Dan Klinker. “Currently, we’re comparing all known photographs of Saddam’s old man with a video capture of the suspect todger. It could be that Saddam’s lamb cannon turns out to be the smoking gun.” Further credence has been given to these claims by the acknowledgement of several intelligence experts that Saddam has not made any authenticated public appearances in Baghdad for at least three years. “It is entirely possible that he saw the writing on the wall and decided that there was no future in the Middle Eastern dictator game and instead decided to relocate to the West and start a new career – leaving the public appearances to his doubles,” says Willy Pego, a former CIA analyst currently working for NBC News. “Moreover, his involvement with the gay porn scene would make sense – that moustache is the perfect disguise, and we have recently uncovered evidence that he has previous experience of gay porn film-making in Iraq.”

Indeed, British journalists recently uncovered a box of video tapes marked “Saddam’s Gay Porn Movies” in the cellar of one of his bombed out Iraqi palaces. “I’ve no doubt these are genuine,” says Daily Mail reporter Mick Liar, rejecting suggestions that the tapes could be fakes planted by US intelligence agents to discredit Saddam amongst his remaining Arab supporters. “After watching them several times, I’m convinced that it really is him – there is no mistaking the moustache and beret!” The tapes are said to include the notorious 1968 prison flick La’iba al-Waladaani (The Two Boys Played) – in which a 34 year old Saddam (appearing under the name Omar Studdif) portrays a wrongly convicted young peasant who is initiated into homosexuality by a series of older and more experienced convicts.

“The sex scenes in this movie were so explicit that Saddam is said to have had every copy located and destroyed once he became Ba’ath Party leader – owning it became punishable by death,” says Kuwaiti film historian Wizra Al Jizzum. “Whilst it might seem incredible that a man like Saddam once acted in such films, he apparently made as many as eighty five of them when he was a young soldier and law student desperate for money. Not only that, but he was apparently addicted to gay sex! He liked the sense of power it gave him over other men – subjugating them to the will of his powerful weapon!” So great was his addiction that even after becoming Iraqi leader, Saddam apparently continued to make his own porn movies. “There are many stories of young Kuwaiti men being taken by Iraqi soldiers to a secret porn studio near Baghdad during the 1991 occupation and being forced to participate in these films. Many were never seen again,” says Al Wizram. “He was apparently still making such films until quite recently – one of the recently discovered tapes shows him, naked except for his homburg, buggering doubles of Blair and Bush, whilst firing a Tommy gun into the air.”

However, not everyone is convinced of the films’ authenticity. “This is outrageous American propaganda! Saddam Hussein is the manliest of men! He would never participate in such degenerate behaviour! This sort of thing is only for your disgusting Western perverts! We Arabs know nothing of such things,” declared Tariq El Oofterpah, a former spokesman for Saddam, now living in exile in Syria. “If any films featuring naked young men were made by President Hussein, they were merely educational films extolling the natural beauty and superiority of the Arab physique – nothing more! Any filthy bottom-sex scenes are evil CIA fakery!”

Even some US experts believe that the films could be faked – but by Saddam rather than the CIA. “It is a well-known fact that the drugs Saddam was taking for a long standing heart problem would have resulted in impotence,” declares Willy Pego. “There is no way that he could have sustained the type of erections seen in these films – it was clearly a double performing in them. Obviously Saddam wanted to keep his pecker problems secret – it would have been perceived as a sign of weakness by key allies – and had the films made to ‘prove’ his continued virility and stamina.” El Ooofterpah is predictably outraged by such suggestions. “More lies! President Hussein’s manhood is magnificent! He has erections of iron which would make stallions jealous! I have seen and felt them myself many times!” he raged from his Damascus apartment. “Even now he laughs as he buggers and subjugates your puny infidel American bottoms!”