Idi Amin

The post I wrote about Idi Amin was a bit strange this morning - I found that article about the organ transplants on BBC News and then less than an hour later they announced that he'd died. As Tetsuo wrote in the comments 'Why is it the bad guys always seem to live a really old age?' and I think there was a sense of disbelief when it was announced that Amin was dead - you always expect people like that to stay alive, as though they're taunting the rest of us. I think there was a similar disbelief when Pol Pot died a few years ago.

Peter also has a selection of some of the stranger moments of Amin's madness in the comments. As I suggested there, Giles Foden's book The Last King of Scotland (Amin also believed that he was destined to become King of Britain and that the Scottish people loved him) is an excellent portrayal of the madness of Amin and the chaos Uganda descended into under his rule, but it also does illuminate how this man got to his position of power over Uganda and how people got sucked into his insanity.

There's plenty of stuff in the news today about Amin, but one of the more interesting revelations has been David Owen saying he suggetsed having Amin asassinated. Assassination as a way of solving the Amin problem is one of the subjects Foden's novel deals with and confirmation that it was discussed at a high level of government adds to the understanding of what was happening at that time.