Written In Blood - No, Really

So is it OK to laugh at Saddam Hussein yet? I may have been laughing already. Who can forget the indelible image of a cigar-smoking Saddam, standing on his balcony, firing a rifle into the air with one hand? Ah, but little did I know about the Koran written in blood. From Slate:

Saddam Hussein was never one for subtlety, so when it became politically expedient for him to be seen as pious, the dictator decided to show the world that he was willing to literally sacrifice his blood for the sake of his religion. The Guardian reports that over the course of two years in the 1990s, Hussein had regular sit-downs with a nurse who drew his blood and a calligrapher who used it as ink to transcribe a Quran. It took 27 liters of blood to reproduce the entire book, which is now locked away in a vault Baghdad. Having failed to dispose of it during the post-war looting, the Iraqi government now has to figure out what to do with it.

Yeah, you think you're devout? That's devout.