WASHINGTON -- By GEORGE EDMONSON Cox News Service

Saddam Hussein's rise to power began with family. His hold on Iraq was solidified through his use of family. And if he is driven from office, his family almost certainly will face the same fate.

But that will be neither an elementary nor an easy task.

Some seemingly simple facts can be difficult to nail down, according to a variety of experts and former family intimates. Saddam's marital status is murky, as is the number of his offspring. It is unclear to many whether Saddam's two daughters, whose husbands were killed by Saddam after fleeing and then returning to Iraq, have remarried.

And the government and bureaucracy is filled with relatives and tribal relations.

"There's no nuclear family. It doesn't count," said Faleh A. Jabar, an Iraqi exile and research fellow at the University of London. "There is always the extended family."

But there are two members who have clearly exercised the most force: Saddam's sons Odai and Qusai.

By virtually all accounts, Odai, the eldest and the one-time heir apparent, is a psychopath who appears to delight in inflicting pain and exerting authority.

"He's a sadist," said Latif Yahia, who spent several years in the 1980s and early 1990s in Iraq serving as Odai's body-double, particularly to shield Odai from perceived danger at sporting events in his role as head of Iraq's Olympic committee.

Yahia, who escaped from Iraq in 1991 and now lives in London, said he saw Odai jail and torture athletes, sometimes for losing, sometimes for no apparent reason. Yahia said Odai once imprisoned him as well.

Other family members, including Saddam, were far more respectful of the workers around them, Yahia said. "At least they give a chance," he added. "Odai never gives a chance. He makes up any story just to torture you, put you in prison."

Unbridled brutality apparently contributed to Odai's downfall within the power structure and nearly caused his death.

He beat to death a valet he held responsible for arranging assignations for his father -- and thereby embarrassing Odai's mother -- said Jerrold M. Post, professor of psychiatry, political psychology and international affairs at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs.

For that, Post said, Saddam shunted Odai offstage for a year.

Then, fear of Odai also was thought to be a major factor in the 1995 flight of two brothers and their wives, both Saddam's daughters. The Kamil brothers held positions in Iraq's weapons programs and divulged information when they were outside the country. Convinced to return in 1996, divorces were hastily implemented and the brothers and other family members were summarily killed.

Post, whose psychological profiles, including one of Saddam, have been used by the U.S. government, said Saddam came to blame Odai for the considerable damage done to the regime by the whole affair.

"Odai has this collection of classic cars, apparently a remarkable collection, in a huge underground garage," Post said. "As a token of his displeasure, Saddam torched the entire collection."

In December 1996, gunmen tried to assassinate Odai and left him paralyzed. Since that time, his position is believed to have continually eroded. According to the State Department, Odai has been "increasingly marginalized in favor of his brother."

Fewer bloody tales circulate about Saddam's second son, Qusai, now generally viewed as the person in line to take over from Saddam if such an opportunity occurs. He likely was the person to whom Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz referred in a speech last week when he said that if the United States goes in to liberate Iraq, the country would not "be handed over to some junior Saddam Hussein."

Several experts said that while Qusai appears not to be as pathologically brutal as his brother, he's by no means soft. The State Department, for instance, noted that Qusai's authority extends to overseeing the country's intelligence, security and elite military forces and said he was responsible for executions of thousands of prison inmates.

Among his roles, the State Department reported, is to help his father "eliminate any real or perceived threat to the regime by using bloody and shocking 'tools of repression' to blackmail, force confessions and destroy opponents."

But it appears to some that the sons, both in their 30s, enjoy neither their full past prerogatives nor the total support of their father.

"It is said now that both sons, if they want to see their father, have to send a letter requesting an audience," Post said.

The current threats to Iraq come as Saddam's reliance on relatives and tribal relations appears to be under greater stress.

"There's an enormous split in his close family ... He's played a very delicate balancing game between all of them," said Turi Munthe, editor of "The Saddam Hussein Reader."

He estimated that there are a dozen or so relatives involved in the ruling circle, such as Abed Hameed Hmoud,(cq) a cousin who serves as Saddam's personal secretary. Many other posts, from bodyguards to military leaders, are said to be occupied by members of Saddam's tribe from the area in which he grew up near Tikrit.

Accounts of his early life diverge on some key points. He appears to have been born in 1937. Some sources say his father died before the birth, others that he left under unexplained circumstances soon after. In any case, Saddam was sent to live with an uncle who "worshipped power, the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler," Jabar wrote. And, according to Jabar, he inspired Saddam's "fondness for totalitarianism."

The uncle also was the father of Saddam's wife Sajida Khairallah Telfah. They married in 1958.

According to Yahia, who wrote a book, "I Was Saddam's Son," about his experiences, Saddam had a third son, Ali, with another woman. Some other sources cite Sajida as his mother, while others list only two sons. Like Saddam's daughters, Ali's public profile is low.

Several authorities said they are not sure whether the daughters have remarried since their husbands were slain.

"Most probably they have," Jabar said, because marriage is a way for Saddam to distribute and control power. "All females in this kind of tribal organization do not take any public responsibilities. They are not allowed to. This is a male-dominated society and very, very conservative in that sense."

Munthe said Sajida has little to do with Saddam and neither do the daughters.

"The family, in many ways, is in a state of disarray," Post said.

Still, its importance in the Iraq of Saddam cannot be overestimated, experts said. It has been a vital component throughout his career and took on added significance after the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

"He's played a very delicate balancing game between all of them," said Munthe, an editor in London. "But it's absolutely fair to say that in the last decade or so the family, in the extended sense of the family, has been what has run Iraq."