Is Saddam alive or in hiding?

[N_Quire]

I am not sure whether Saddam is alive, injured, in control of the Republican Guard or not. There seems to be evidence pointing in all directions. Some of this could be disinformation from both sides.
What do you reckon? Any theories?

 

[iansmith]

My theory is that Saddam is alive but is not in Bagdah. In the first golf war, I heared Saddam lived in a small house and not in palace. The fact that he is not in Bagdah would explain we only see video recoding of its speech and message read by his associate.

 

[russ_watters]

Originally posted by N_Quire
There seems to be evidence pointing in all directions. Some of this could be disinformation from both sides.

What is the evidence that he is alive? I have seen nothing that would suggest he is. My guess is he died that first night of bombing.

 

[Alias]

I also believe he is dead. Otherwise there would be some evidence that he is alive. The performance of his military suggests that there are serious problems with leadership. This alone indicates that he is either dead or unable to lead.

 

[Zargawee]

Didn't you see him walking in the streets of baghdad ?
I Saw that on the Iraqi TV ... And the pictures where recently takes , because the smoke clearly appeared in the bakground of the vedio ...

 

[N_Quire]

Zargawee, that seemed to be Saddam but the newspapers here refuse to believe that it was conclusively him.

 

[damgo]

Honestly I think the whole second-guessing thing is getting pretty ridiculous. "Well, Wolf, it looked like Saddam, but he seemed thinner... that would suggest it's a body double. Or perhaps it was just a flattering new uniform..." Does it matter?

Maybe we should start asking if 'that tape was really George Bush?'

It has long been suspected that Mr Bush employs a string of lookalikes for difficult or dangerous speaking engagements, some of whom may have had their ears specially enlarged for the task.

Most of those who regularly monitor Mr Bush's speech patterns believe that it was the genuine article who spoke at Central Command HQ in Florida yesterday, pointing to a characteristic tendency toward quasi-biblical phrasing - "There will be a day of reckoning for the Iraqi regime, and that day is drawing in near" - and an almost total absence of words of more than three syllables.

Other experts disagree, pointing out that these consistencies originate with speech writers rather then the president himself, and that Bush's main vocal technique - the bewildered pause - is only too easy to imitate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,923848,00.html

 

[FZ+]

In the first golf war, I heared Saddam lived in a small house and not in palace.

Whilst polishing his clubs of mass destruction, no doubt.

I would agree that Saddam has already left. If I was him, that's what I would do. Indeed, if he did try to leave now, it is unlikely he would be caught due to the confusion of war. The US administration also seem to have caught on to this, hence the new stance that the war was not about killing Saddam after all. Even if Saddam did die, we will never be able to prove it. Someone will always continue on in his name.

The newspaper thing is interesting. I don't quite see Saddam using his Just for Men to dye his mustache for the cameras...

The performance of his military suggests that there are serious problems with leadership.

Given the abilities of other dictators at personally leading their armies, eg. Stalin, Hitler etc, this would seem conclusive proof that Saddam is still alive and leading (or mis-leading) his army. But I fear leading the coalition into Baghdad is precisely what Saddam always wanted. Stalingrad ring a bell?

russ_watters: Why does there need to be evidence he is alive? Shouldn't there be evidence that he is dead instead? If we use your logic, we would never have gone to war in first place since Saddam was "clearly" no longer in charge of Iraq...

 

[Zero]

So, the pointvis, we are destroying a country to kill one man, and we can leave when he's dead?