In 1947, from the age of ten, Saddam Hussein left his parents, because his father was abusive. He then moved in with and was raised by his mother's brother, Uncle Khairullah Tulfah. Tulfah encouraged young Saddam to dream of growing up to become a great Arab hero. Tulfah was a school teacher when he raised Saddam, but before that he was an Iraqi army officer who had been imprisoned by the British for his activism against the English-backed monarchy of King Faisal I. Tulfah hated the British control of Iraq in post World War I, from 1917 to 1932. He raised Saddam to believe that any foreign influence on the politics of Iraq were evil -- that only an Iraqi should rule Iraq, by any means necessary. Second only to his mother, Uncle Khairullah Tulfah was the chief guiding influence of young Saddam's childhood and teenage years. Saddam practically worshipped his uncle. Tulfah inspired in young Saddam dreams of glory and power, based on tales he told his nephew about his service to the Arab nation. It was not until 1952, when Egyptian Gamel Abdel Nasser toppled Iraq's British-installed monarchy when Saddam was fifteen years old, that Uncle Khairullah Tulfah had competition for Saddam's loyalty and trust.

Tulfah became involved with the Ba'ath party and it is believed he was a key figure in instigating Saddam's first political murder, that of a prominent communist in Tikrit, when Saddam was twenty. When Saddam came into power over Iraq, he made his uncle governor of Baghdad. Khairullah Tulfah abused his power so feverishly by lining his pockets to such an extreme that Saddam eventually removed his uncle from the position. Another of Tulfah's known achievements is that he was the author of the Iraqi government published pamphlet titled, "Three Whom God Should Not Have Created : Persians, Jews, and Flies." The bitter hatred and need for blood in Hussein runs very, very deep, spanning generations of enmity against most other factions of the Middle East.