Saddam Hussein, looking healthy despite a hunger strike the led him to be fed with a tube, said today that he had been forced to attend his own trial, and that if he is convicted, he preferred to be shot, not hanged.

On a day of relative calm in Iraq, with fewer than a dozen people reported killed or found dead in Baghdad, Mr. Hussein offered what could be a final dose of public defiance.

He praised the insurgents who attack Americans. He denounced the court as illegitimate. He denied that he or his seven codefendants deserved to be charged with executing 148 men and boys in Dujail after a supposed assassination attempt in 1982.

Mr. Hussein’s main defense lawyers have boycotted the trial since July 10 to protest the proceedings, so court-appointed lawyers offered closing arguments for him today. They said that there was not enough evidence to show that Mr. Hussein ordered the killings.