Iraqis accustomed to a life of deprivation and poverty are shocked and horrified to discover the truth about the Saddam Hussein clan’s extravagant, depraved lifestyles: Saddam’s Family Lifestyles Shock Iraqis.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The blacksmith paused from his looting of the palace to gape at a door a foot thick, and at the empty, marble-lined safe inside.

“This safe is as big as the room I rent, and I live there with my wife and two children,” said Ahmed Hamza, 28. “I thought the rumors were exaggerated, but these people lived in a different world.”

This house was owned by Hala Hussein, Saddam’s thirtysomething daughter, whereabouts currently unknown. She had two more across the street, several across the river, and even more scattered around the city. And that was just Baghdad.

With the Saddam family driven into hiding, Iraqis have begun to explore its secret world — one they always knew existed in their midst, but whose luxury and debauchery are nonetheless causing shock and anger.

Many of the palaces were bombed, then ransacked by looters, and are now under U.S. military guard. But journalists have been allowed into some of them, and there are so many — dozens in Baghdad and around Iraq — that U.S. forces can’t guard them all.

Iraqis always knew the Saddam family lived well, even as it claimed U.N. sanctions were starving its people and denying its children lifesaving medicine. But few realized just how well they lived.