Saddam Hussein is terrified of germs, eats Raisin Bran for breakfast, and still thinks he is the president of Iraq, according to a group of young American soldiers who guarded the deposed Iraqi leader after his capture.

Five soldiers from a Pennsylvania National Guard unit were given permission by the Pentagon to speak to the American edition of GQ magazine. The guardsmen were activated for duty in late 2003 before being assigned to guard Saddam after his capture that December.

They found a friendly and talkative "clean freak", who did his own laundry and advised one young guardsman that he should settle down and get married. "‘You gotta find a good woman. Not too smart, not too dumb. Not too old, not too young. One that can cook and clean," he told the soldier.

The soldiers told GQ that Saddam greatly admired the late President Reagan and thought President Clinton was "OK". But he had harsh words for both Presidents Bush, against whom he went to war.

"The Bush father, son, no good," one of the soldiers, 22-year-old Corporal Jonathan "Paco" Reese, quoted Saddam as saying.

Another soldier, Specialist Jesse Dawson, quoted Saddam as saying of Bush: "He knows I have nothing, no mass weapons. He knows he’ll never find them."’

The men's nine-month assignment was so secret that they were not even allowed to tell their families what they were doing. But they were allowed to talk to the magazine as long as they signed statements forbidding the location of Saddam's detention centre and other key details.

The soldiers’ descriptions of Saddam’s life in prison match the recent photos of him that apparently were smuggled out of prison - showing the former dictator in his underwear and a long robe. They describe a man who once lived in palaces and now occupies a cell where he has no personal privacy.

Once, when Saddam fell down during his twice-a-week shower, the article says, "panic ensued. No one wanted him to be hurt while being guarded by Americans." One GI had to help Saddam back to his cell, another carried his underwear, it adds.

Saddam learned the names of the soldiers guarding him, was interested in the details of their lives, which they were not supposed to discuss, and sometimes offered fatherly advice. They conversed in English.

The soldiers say Saddam was preoccupied with cleanliness, washing up after shaking hands and using diaper wipes to clean his meal trays, his utensils and the table before eating. "He had germophobia or whatever you call it," Specialist Dawon said.

The soldiers told GQ that Raisin Bran Crunch was his favourite breakfast cereal. "No Froot Loops," he said. He also ate fish and chicken but refused beef at dinner.

Saddam prayed five times a day in his cell and kept a Quran that he claimed to have found in some rubble near the underground hideout. "He proudly showed (it) to the boys because it was burned around the edges and had a bullet hole in it," the report says.

According to GQ writer Lisa DePaulo, Saddam told his guards that when the Americans invaded Iraq in March 2003, he "tried to flee in a taxicab as the tanks were rolling in" and the US planes attacked the palace to which he intended to escape rather than the one he was in, injuring some of his bodyguards.

"But then he started laughing," said Corporal Reese. "He goes, ‘America, they dumb. They bomb wrong palace."’

Saddam told the guards his capture in an underground hideout on December 18, 2003, resulted from a betrayal by the only man who knew where he was, and had been paid to keep the secret. "He was really mad about that," said Dawson. "He compared himself to Jesus, how Judas told on Jesus. He was like, ‘that’s how it was for me." If his Judas never said anything, nobody ever would have found him, he said."

US officials said at the time that Saddam’s capture resulted from intelligence from several sources rather than a single informant.

The article says that if Saddam knew the statue of himself in Baghdad’s Firdos Square was toppled on April 9, 2003, he never mentioned it to the GI guards. He insisted that everything he did, including the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, was for the good of his people, and invited his guards to return to Iraq and stay at his palace after he was restored to power.

"He’d always tell us he was still the president. That’s what he thinks, One hundred percent," Dawson said.

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