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- Yasso met Hussein in 1979 at a banquet in Baghdad, where the pastor gave a speech commending the president for his kindness to Christians. “Saddam was 100 percent American then,” he says. “He arranged for the government to pay for my trip and [for me to] stay at the best hotel in Baghdad.” After learning that Yasso’s Michigan parish was in the red, Hussein promptly wrote a check, the first of two, for a quarter of a million dollars. After Yasso’s triumphant return, an influential member of his flock convinced Coleman A Young, the controversial mayor of Detroit at the time, to give Hussein the key to the city.