Saddam jokes provided a furtive source of critical comment about a regime that brooked none. "Hey, there's a new show on TV," goes one, taking off on Saddam's multi-hour long orations that dominated the airwaves. "It's called, 'The President Sleeping'." This joke is usually told with a loud snore.
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Granted, many of the jokes don't translate well. Perhaps you have to have spent time in Iraq to appreciate this one, which takes off on the president's constant and unpredictable changes of costume, from business suits to sheikhs' robes to combat fatigues. Izzat Duri knocks on the 20-foot-high front door of the palace and Saddam's wife shows up in a babydoll nightie, tells him Saddam isn't there, but holds the door wide open. The hapless Duri drags himself off and all night long he ponders whether she had been coming on to him. The next day Duri goes back and again the wife opens the door, this time only in her underwear. He may be slow, he may be thick, but he finally gets it. The third day, Duri returns to the palace in the buff, and knocks expectantly on the door. Saddam opens it. "Izzat, why are you naked?" "I, uh, Sir, I couldn't remember if we were supposed to wear civvies or military today."

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Iraqis aren't the only ones telling jokes these days. American soldiers occupying the country haven't yet started in on Iraqis; the situation is still too raw and chaotic. Instead, the butt of American jokes remains the French, who rebuffed the coalition and did their best to prevent the war. "How does a French soldier salute?" asks Marine Lt. Matt Nichols of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, stationed in Nasiriya, while he was taking a sponge bath with a bottle of mineral water. This one's a sight gag: Nichols throws his hands up as if to surrender. Another Marine pitches in. "For sale, used French weapons. Never been fired. Only dropped once." Or, "Too bad the French weren't in the coalition. They could have taught the Iraqis how to surrender better."

A British officer in Basra tells this joke, in the spirit of the mainly Anglo-American coalition. A British gentleman and a French lady with a lap poodle are sharing a compartment in a train with an American soldier. The soldier gets up to open the window and bumps into the French woman. He starts to apologize, but she berates him as rude and clumsy. After a few minutes of this he calmly reaches over, grabs her poodle by the scruff of the neck and throws it out the window. Beside herself with rage, she demands that the Brit come to her assistance. "Certainly, madam," he says, turning to the American. "I beg your pardon sir, but it appears that you have thrown the wrong bitch out the window."

The Brits also have a few jokes about the Americans, though they tend toward the polite. "The world needs to go to war every once in a while, if only to teach you Americans a little geography," says an officer in the Royal Commandos. It is true that an awful lot of the American brass, having routinely mispronounced the country hosting the U.S. Central Command as Gutter instead of Qatar (more properly voiced as KAH-tar), are now calling Iraq, "Arak," which sounds more like the alcoholic drink so popular in the region.

» MSNBC: 1,001 Iraqi Jokes