Where is Saddam Hussein?

This war has been only 21 days. Unbelievable. That is less than half the time of the 1991 Gulf War. All the doom and gloom predictions of protracted door-to-door fighting in Baghdad were for nought.

I am still wondering what Wayne Grabert meant by this post. (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&postid=399348#post399348) I think he spoke way too soon. Oops.

It must tear up some people that we didn't have a lot of casualties.

Hussein's buddies are running for their lives. Those that are still alive, that is. A reporter speaking from Bagdad this morning, who has been there with Iraqi regime minders since the beginning, said her minder this morning was ripping up his intelligence service identification and had changed from a gruff butthead to a pleading puddle, begging for someone to give him a ride outta there! :D

We've been told over and over again that SH is a crazy, power-bloated madman... but unless he's completely bonkers, he was out of Iraq a while ago. Just from the 'if it were me' perspective. He loves himself, and had to know (pretty much as soon as Bush was elected) that his minutes were numbered. If he stayed, he really was as crazy as we portrayed him to be.

If it were me, I would have been out of there when Bush gave the 48 hour warning. I think Saddam was hoping for a chance to bloody our nose before going down in defeat.

I think it speaks volumes of how he feels about the Iraqi people that he stayed and continued to fight the fight for as long as he could, knowing full well he was going to lose.

[Mel]

Originally posted by Estimated Prophet
We've been told over and over again that SH is a crazy, power-bloated madman... but unless he's completely bonkers, he was out of Iraq a while ago. Just from the 'if it were me' perspective. He loves himself, and had to know (pretty much as soon as Bush was elected) that his minutes were numbered. If he stayed, he really was as crazy as we portrayed him to be.

The thinking is that SH was counting on the anti war movements turning ugly enough so his friends in France would be able to stop this war before he was toppled. Personally, I think his ego was too big for him to admit to himself that he could lose this gamble.

IF we do not find Saddam's body or at least pinpoint where he ran to, I think Bush is going to have a major problem on his hands. It's bad enough he "lost" Osama...... losing Saddam too just doesn't look so good on a resume.

[Denise]

Between us He's tied up in Linda's basement.

So Linda is harboring the enemy?? Say it ain't so!!


I think it's sort of unrealistic to expect that we can 'get' SH. A dead body the whole world can see would be acceptable, but we could very likely never find him and that shouldn't necessarily be a mark against us. He could easily be paste under a ton of rock and debris.

Originally posted by Estimated Prophet
So Linda is harboring the enemy?? Say it ain't so!!


I think it's sort of unrealistic to expect that we can 'get' SH. A dead body the whole world can see would be acceptable, but we could very likely never find him and that shouldn't necessarily be a mark against us. He could easily be paste under a ton of rock and debris.

He may live in exile in some host country like so many other despots (Idi Amin, et al.) have done.

Or he could be paste. I wonder if we have some Hussein DNA to match with any body found.

[Wayne Grabert]

Originally posted by LukeT
I am still wondering what Wayne Grabert meant by this post. (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&postid=399348#post399348) I think he spoke way too soon. Oops.

What specifically do you mean? Here is something I said: Whether or not Iraq becomes another Vietnam will depend on the attitudes of the Iraqi people. The neoconservatives convinced themselves that the US troops would be welcomed with open arms as liberators. Instead, it appears that many Iraqis regard them with contempt as invaders. Even the Iraqis in the south who want to see Hussein overthrown have made it known that they expect the US and the UK armies to leave immediately after Saddam falls or else they'll turn their sites on our troops.

It will be different than Vietnam in that the civil war that follows Saddam's removal will be a much more complicated, multifaceted one, and you will have terrorists groups joining in on the guerilla attacks.

It seems to me, Luke, that you are jumping to conclusions. How about those Iraqis in the South? Main Shiite group to boycott U.S. political talks. (http://http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=574&e=1&u=/nm/20030409/wl_nm/iraq_sciri_dc_1)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The main Iraqi Shi'ite opposition group said on Wednesday it would boycott a political meeting the United States is trying to arrange in southern Iraq (news - web sites) next week because of the U.S. military presence.

"We are not going to take part in this meeting in Nassiriya. We think this is part of General Garner's rule of Iraq and we are not going to be part of that project at all," said Hamid al-Bayati, the London representative of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

(snip)

SCIRI, which is based in Tehran and dominated by Iraqi Shi'ites, is one of the largest single groups in opposition to Saddam. It has taken part in meetings with other groups but has always been wary of cooperation with the United States.

Bayati told Reuters by telephone from London that SCIRI's objection to U.S. plans was that Washington envisaged an interim authority without full sovereignty over the country.

"We could be part of an Iraqi government but we can't be part of a military rule over the country," he said.

(snip)

Analysts say the attitude of Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim majority will be crucial to the success of U.S. plans in Iraq.

(snip)

Bayati noted that Iraq's leading Shi'ite cleric, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has not endorsed the U.S. presence.

Last week Sistani asked his millions of followers to remain neutral in the fighting between U.S. forces and people loyal to Saddam. But he has not issued any fatwas since then.

Bayati said Iraqis would give the United States very little time to hand over full power to Iraqis.

"The Iraqi people would like to see an Iraqi government as soon as possible and they expect the military forces to leave when things settle down. The position we agreed in London (last year) was that an Iraqi government should be established immediately after Saddam's fall," he said.


"So they must leave as soon as possible. I am thinking of weeks rather than months," he added.
So far, consistent with what I said back then.

What about terrorist groups joining in on guerilla warfare? A story from yesterday: Egyptiams signing up for jihad. (http://http://www.jordantimes.com/Tue/news/news9.htm) Thousands of volunteers from across the Arab world, including Egypt, are already in Iraq, where US forces have reached Baghdad.

Thousands more young and middle-aged Egyptians have been flocking to the Lawyers' Union in Cairo to sign up to fight.

The powerful syndicate has become the focal point of opposition to the war, with Iraqi, Palestinian and Egyptian flags flying over its gates.

Union officials say up to 13,000 Egyptians from all over the country have signed up to fight in the five days since they began taking applications.

That appears to be consistent with my warnings. It ain't over yet. I've always maintained that deposing Saddam would be the easy part.

Given the current situation, the best thing to do now would be to rush in as much humanitarian aid as possible (food, medical supplies, etc.) and to allow the U.N. to play a major political and peacekeeping role. However, given the arrogance and insensitivity of the Bush League Administration (BLA), I don't expect that to happen.

It is also clear that the whole argument about WMD was indeed a ruse. All we've gotten since the invasion is a series of false alarms. Saddam never used WMD on US troops, so he couldn't have been as willing to use them against Americans as Bush claimed. Even if some sort of WMD or chemical agents were to be eventually found, it is already clear that the BLA had no actual intelligence of the existence of such, but was just putting out speculation, none of which has any established basis.

Thank you, Luke, for placing so much importance on what I've posted. It reassures me that I was making others think.

EDITED TO ADD: If you look check my link on the Egyptian story, it details how the Egyptian government has been frustrating the would-be mujahideen's travel plans.

Your post, Wayne, seemed to be mocking my guess that the Republican Guard wouldn't put up much of a fight. And they didn't.

21 days.

[ssibal]

Originally posted by Wayne Grabert
It is also clear that the whole argument about WMD was indeed a ruse. All we've gotten since the invasion is a series of false alarms. Saddam never used WMD on US troops, so he couldn't have been as willing to use them against Americans as Bush claimed. Even if some sort of WMD or chemical agents were to be eventually found, it is already clear that the BLA had no actual intelligence of the existence of such, but was just putting out speculation, none of which has any established basis.


How would it be clear that they had no actual intelligence of the existence? It is possible to know that they were in the country without knowing exactly where they are (you know like we know Saddam was in there without really knowing where he was).

[reprise]

I'll believe that coalition governments believe their own statements that "the game is over" and that they can maintain order during the long transition to democracy when those coalition governments present a resolution to the UN proposing the lifting of sanctions against Iraq.

[Supercharts]

One guess would be Syria. I doubt very much he's in Iran.
Syria because of it's nearness and similar authoritiarian government. Not as bad as Iraq but run by the son of a satrap.
No way he's in Jordan, Kuwait or Saudi.
Jet to Lybia? No - Goofy is trying to be nice. And he uses different makeup than Saddam.

[Wayne Grabert]

Originally posted by LukeT
Your post, Wayne, seemed to be mocking my guess that the Republican Guard wouldn't put up much of a fight. And they didn't.

21 days.
You said that the RG would surrender at the first opportunity and they didn't. I don't dispute that their resistence was inept, but they did resist--and thousands of them died because of it.

If you were to search through my posts on the matter, I speculated (perhaps not in that particular thread) that there was a fairly good possibility that the war to depose Saddam would be over quickly, especially if the Iraqi army decided not to resist the inevitable and surrendered at its first opportunity. I just didn't state that with the certitude that you had. As it was, there was resistence, though it was not very determined aside from that of the fedayeen in the first two weeks. I have also stated at least a few times that once Saddam was gone, that would not be the end of the war. At this time, the BLA is saying the same thing and there are still pockets of resistence. Matters are still very unstable.

[Wayne Grabert]

Originally posted by ssibal


How would it be clear that they had no actual intelligence of the existence? It is possible to know that they were in the country without knowing exactly where they are (you know like we know Saddam was in there without really knowing where he was).
Okay, I'll concede that I am jumping the gun, but the impression is still unavoidable. What will you think of Bush if six months from now no WMD are found? What if only small quantities of short-range WMD or their agents are found? Will you feel that Bush lied?

Originally posted by Wayne Grabert

Okay, I'll concede that I am jumping the gun, but the impression is still unavoidable. What will you think of Bush if six months from now no WMD are found? What if only small quantities of short-range WMD or their agents are found? Will you feel that Bush lied?

I stated long ago in my "this time I'm serious" topic, that I will be waiting for the evidence at the war's conclusion. I will also be waiting for evidence of a nuclear weapons program.

But it won't be just Bush that lied. It will be every nation that signed U.N. resolution 1441. And that included France, Germany and Russia.

[Brown]

Well, if news reports are right (a big IF), it seems unlikely that there will be any more Iraqi cheques going to the families of those who use explosives to murder civilians.

[jj]

Originally posted by LukeT
It must tear up some people that we didn't have a lot of casualties.


Would you mind stopping that kind of offensive insult? You're lucky if as many as one in a million US citizens feel that way, your paranoia about marxists quite aside. I'm getting quite tired of this crap about most of the people who didn't want the war to start.

To answer your question about Saddamn, I suspect he's washing his underwear. Repeatedly. Hopefully with polluted water. Or maybe he was lucky and his bunker collapsed.

I'm guessing he's in a bunker, alive, but with the bunker exit buried in 200 feet of bricks and dirt.

[Wayne Grabert]

Originally posted by LukeT

But it won't be just Bush that lied. It will be every nation that signed U.N. resolution 1441. And that included France, Germany and Russia.
They didn't lie. They were trying to prevent an invasion by the United States.

The entire war effort was built on a foundation of lies. (http:////www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ED08Ak05.html)
That lobby went into high gear immediately after September 11. Within just a few days, Perle convened the DPB to discuss how Washington could use the incidents as justification for attacking Iraq, and Woolsey was tasked to go to Europe to collect evidence that Saddam was linked to al-Qaeda. He spent many weeks on that mission, emerging with the story that an unnamed informant had told Czech intelligence that he had seen the leader of the September 11 skyjackers meet with an Iraqi agent in Prague in the April before the attack.

Even though the report was dismissed as not credible by US, British, French and Israeli intelligence agencies, it became the basis - endlessly repeated by Woolsey and other neoconservatives on television talk shows and in op-ed pages of major newspapers - of a major propaganda campaign against Iraq, even as Washington carried out its military campaign in Afghanistan in late 2001.

Woolsey even suggested that Saddam was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center towers and the anthrax-bearing letters sent to various lawmakers after September 11, and that US intelligence agencies could not find the connection because they lacked sufficient imagination. The campaign largely worked: by late last year, well over one-half of the respondents in one key poll believed that Saddam was somehow linked to September 11.
Whether you want to admit it or not, those who support the war were suckered.

[ssibal]

Originally posted by Wayne Grabert

Okay, I'll concede that I am jumping the gun, but the impression is still unavoidable. What will you think of Bush if six months from now no WMD are found? What if only small quantities of short-range WMD or their agents are found? Will you feel that Bush lied?

If no WMD are found, I think our intelligence agencies will suffer a bigger blow than Bush. My thoughts of Bush would not change. I did not vote for him last election and I will not vote for him in the next election. I would not go as far as calling him a liar since I have no way of knowing whether or not he knew there were no weapons. I suspect that there are some sort of weapons there. Whether it is some small quantities or a huge find is irrelevant to me. I have stated that I did not believe Iraq was a threat to the U.S.. I always thought the war was acceptable because it would remove the repressive government as well as the sanctions. Hopefully, the people will have better lives now.

Originally posted by Wayne Grabert

They didn't lie. They were trying to prevent an invasion by the United States.

The entire war effort was built on a foundation of lies. (http:////www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ED08Ak05.html)
Whether you want to admit it or not, those who support the war were suckered.

Read the resolution (http://www.un.int/usa/sres-iraq.htm) for yourself, Wayne.

[BobK]

Originally posted by Brown
Well, if news reports are right (a big IF), it seems unlikely that there will be any more Iraqi cheques going to the families of those who use explosives to murder civilians.


I wonder in what national currency they issue the checks?

Iraqi dinar is now worth zilch.

Except on Ebay.

[Wayne Grabert]

Originally posted by LukeT


Read the resolution (http://www.un.int/usa/sres-iraq.htm) for yourself, Wayne.
Why don't you cite the relevant portion? All the resolution does is set a process for inspections to complete the disarmament process interrupted in December 1998.

[patnray]

Most of the civil and military authority in Baghdad disappeared between the time of the bunker attack and dawn the next day. That suggests that most of the top level officials, probably including Saddam, were killed. Those who were left decided they had no desire to take their place and slipped out of town overnight...

The Iraq Republican Party, according to CNN, now admits that Uday was killed earlier, but states that Sadam and his other son were only wounded in the last attack. Given their refusal to admit earlier that Uday was dead, this is probably a lie to maintain the myth of Saddam's invicibility. That they would even say he was wounded suggests to me that he was actually killed...