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| Iraq |
| Messages Imply Sammy May Be Dead |
| 2003-04-12 |
| American intelligence officials said today that they had intercepted communications in which former Iraqi officials said among themselves that they believed that President Saddam Hussein had been killed in a bombing raid in Baghdad. But the American officials said they were not certain that Mr. Hussein had been killed, citing the lack of physical evidence and the fact that forensic teams had not yet examined the site of an American bombing raid on Monday in the Mansur neighborhood of Baghdad, where intelligence reports indicated Mr. Hussein was meeting top aides. The officials who described the communications intercepts today have disputed reports from military officials in the field who said Mr. Hussein was seen Thursday at a mosque in Baghdad that was the site of a firefight later that day. "Dark-haired guy with a moustache, right? Yep. That was him..." American officials warned that it is possible that the midlevel Iraqi officials discussing Mr. Hussein's death did not know the truth, or were passing on disinformation, convinced that the American intelligence agencies would be eavesdropping on their conversations. Likely they know about as much as we do, if that much... Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that he had not seen enough intelligence information "that would enable me to walk up and say that I have conviction that he's dead." Even so, American officials said that there were two, and possibly more, intercepted communications involving different Iraqi leaders discussing Mr. Hussein's death. In the conversations, the Iraqis did not specifically refer to the circumstances in which Mr. Hussein was supposed to have been killed. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 The Iraqi street already believes what we cant quite get ourselves to accept. That is, in the words of the great Dr. McCoy: "He's dead Jim". "Bunker Busters" are great advances in weaponry, but they dont leave a whole lot left to identify. I suspect we will have to put up with years of storys of Saddam escaping to Argentina in a Uboat ( whoops, sorry, wrong despot!). This sort of thing fits into human mythology as well, some people are never really allowed to die like normal mortals. Hitler, JFK, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and back in history it was Frederick the Great to whom German legend had it was 'just sleeping' and would arise when Germany was in great need. King Arthur also suffered the same fate, in legend anyway. Alive or dead, his impact is the same. No country is going to take the risk of getting caught with him, thereby inviting the now demonstrated military strength of the US by doing such a thing. Saddam is(was)a cosmopolitan, not a bedouin who can just go back to goathearding if things go bad, like whats-his-name. Quite frankly, Who would want to consort with such a loser? His best hope for maintaing any reputation at all is to find out he died early in the war, hence the reason he did so poorly. |
| Posted by: Frank Martin 2003-04-12 18:20:29 |