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Only Qusay could say no to Uday at his parties. At the Boat Club, Qusay liked to sit at a table facing the river. Qusay always limited himself to two shots in this setting, says a butler, who poured for him. "Have more drinks," Uday would insist. "Why are you leaving us?" But the younger brother would always depart early. "This is enough for me," he would say. "I have some work to do."
Qusay disapproved of Uday's lifestyle and was open about it with relatives and friends, says his personal shopper. Another source who frequently visited Iraq's ruling elite says Qusay thought Uday's outrageous behavior contributed to the regime's dreadful image internationally. For his part, Uday complained that his younger brother plotted to marginalize him, says a source who has known Uday over the years. "Uday hates his brother with a passion," says this man. Whenever Qusay visited Uday's house, a worker there reports, "there was always shouting." Uday was so jealous of his brother, says a senior broadcaster, that he leaned on editors to keep Qusay's picture out of the media and threw tantrums when he couldn't prevent it. Uday's former business manager Adib Shabaan said the competition extended to women. Uday demanded that beautiful women who had had sex with his brother be brought to him. In several cases, Shabaan said, Uday also had sex with the woman, then had her branded on the buttocks with a horseshoe, producing a scar in the shape of a U, for Uday.
Saddam plainly favored Qusay, and certainly had more use for him. When Uday was in his mid-20s, Saddam wrote his tameless son a letter, on official presidential stationery, in an effort to rein him in. Two sources, a classmate of Uday's and one of his bodyguards, said Saddam used words to the effect of, "Don't be like your grandfather, with no morals or principles," referring to his father-in-law, a gout-stricken former politician known as the Thief of Baghdad for confiscating private property for himself. As for Qusay, says a staff brigadier in the Republican Guard, "Saddam trusted him completely."
In a letter to his father found at al-Abit palace, scrawled in Uday's loopy style, the elder son was obsequious and defensive. "You know, Dad, you are the only powerful man in Iraq who can stand up to a lot of big nations and defeat them," he wrote. Then he continued, "I'm not looking for the materialistic things, so that's why I don't want to work in government." He was pursuing other fields, such as sports, because they were no less important. "I want to learn," read the letter, "so I'll be ready for the stage after Saddam Hussein." When that day came, he said, with surprising frankness, he would be ready to defend against "the hatred toward you that will come out in the people after your death."