He was married to the daughter of a prominent general and had two children.
But behind the awkward demeanour was a man as feared and as ruthless as his father. He was just more adept at hiding it than Uday.
By 1991, Saddam thought enough of his second son to put him in charge of the bloody suppression of the Shia rebellion in the south after the previous Gulf war in 1991. Qusay was just 25.
Later he was put in charge of hiding banned weapons from the first wave of inspectors.
Qusay's importance to the Pentagon became evident with the first wave of bombardments, which relentlessly targeted the intelligence headquarters on the west bank of the Tigris, a building that was hit more than any other.
RSS