To Boy, 3 1/2, Iraq Is Led by ‘Sadly Insane’

MANCHESTER, N.H. —  An Air Force sergeant’s 3 1/2-year-old son has come up with a nickname for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that has the White House laughing.

It took Pam Averill a minute to figure out what her son, Kyle, meant when he said, “Sadly Insane took Daddy away.”

Kyle’s father, Sgt. Kenneth Averill, was shipped from Maine to Saudi Arabia in August after Hussein’s troops invaded Kuwait.

“He has heard us talking and it’s hard for a little kid to say ‘Saddam Hussein,’ ” said Pam Averill, who is living with her parents while her husband is away.

Kyle’s grandmother, Joyce Austin, wrote President Bush to let him in on the joke. A typed reply from the White House carried the handwritten note at the end: “Sadly Insane? I love it.”