The guy reportedly has had doubles running around appearing in public for years. They even make public appearances and speeches, apparently.
So, if the US captures a guy who looks like Saddam, can they be sure it’s really him? Is there some Saddam DNA on file somewhere? Do they end up with a whole cell block full of Saddam lookalikes?
The Daily Telegraph (UK newspaper) this morning reported that the US authorities had DNA from one of Saddam’s relatives on file
How accurate that is is anyone’s guess. IIRC Saddam’s daughter and some grandchildren temporarily defected to Jordan in the 1990s, so theoretically it could have been acquired then.
The guy is probably living in a villa on the Mediterranean as we speak.
Will it really matter?
If the US (or UK… let’s not be too dismissive!) capture who they believe is Saddam, and parade him for all to see - including the Iraquis - will the sheer PR dispaly of that act be enough to convince all that the war is over, even if Saddam is still hiding in a Baghdad cellar?
Certainly, Saddam would not be able to return to power, or display himself in any public place - otherwise the US would just barge back in and get the right man.
Say Hitler did not die in the Berlin bunker - Germany was freed, a new government was put in place, the war was over, and Hitler was never seen again. And Germany was changed for the better. How could Hitler have resurfaced? Likewise, how could Saddam resurface in a now democratic and empowered Iraq? He’d have lost his power, and the fear he holds over the Iraquis would have vanished - like the Wizard of Oz when the curtain falls back… He’d be immediately captured by either the US, UN, or the Iraquis.
Which begs the question - why not just grab a lookalike?
The reason they know he has body doubles is because there are advanced photography methods which determine if you are you based on things like distance between the eyes, bone structure, etc. They would use one of those to determine if he was the real Saddam, that and DNA testing.
For that matter, how do we know it was the real Saddam that Dan Rather interviewed?