Does anybody else see a strong connection between yesterday’s rumors that this high ranking Iraqi official was defecting, that to dispel this, Saddam put him on tv, and that later we blew up a bunker containing the Iraqi leadership?
Huh?
Beyond the fact that we are at war with Iraq?
You will not intimidate me by throwing brick-bats at my lieutenants.
Somehow I doubt that this will turn into a grand game of Whack-A-Mole. Somebody saw a chance to take a pot shot and did it. Probably missed, but who knows?
If you’re referring to the rumors of Tariq Aziz’s defection, the Iraqi Foreign Minister appeared on TV to dispel the rumor. Perhaps he has a body double too?
There are any number of people who would have had the specific information, and could have passed it on with a simple phone call.
Yes Aziz. We start the rumor that Aziz is defecting. Saddam sends him to the tv station where we’re waiting. We follow him back and find the bunker.
The Admiral Ackbar theory, eh?
I saw on CNN last night that one of the targets was actually a modest house somewhere in Baghdad. That was how Saddam was hiding out the last time.
I think we pulled the classic Mon calamari set-up.
Why would Aziz go to the TV station? They could video-tape him wherever he was and send the tape over. Even if he did go, why would go back to where Saddam is hiding. There are other places he could go to.
Folks, he may very well have been shot. He did not look like a million bucks when he showed up on TV. Just because he was shot, does not mean he could not stand. If you listen to his voice, it cracks more than my rice krispies…
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It looks like it came pretty close. Hussein looked terrible in his TV appearance. He read a fairly badly-written speech from a steno pad, wore glasses (never seen before) and didn’t have his usual presence and animation. Whether he was injured or simply in a bit of shock, he just wasn’t his old self.
Scylla I hope you’re right. That would really be one for the books. My guess is it wasn’t a set-up though because, if it were, they would have already had authorization to take action if the ruse worked.
Yes, Azizz could have done that. Maybe they didn’t have tape at the bunker.
It would have been a gamble, but a smart one, and the evidence looks pretty strong to me that they tried it, and it paid off.
The trouble is how do you locate this guy Hussain who has so many doubles and is so good at hiding himself.
The answer is you don’t try to locate him. You locate somebody who’s close to him instead but not an actual target himself. Someone like Azizz.
Instead of locating him, you try to get him to leave Saddam and go to a location where you can follow him if and when he goes back.
So, you say he’s defecting. You start the rumor. Azizz surfaces to dispel the rumor and then you follow him back to Hussain.
I would guess they probably thought it wouldn’t work, but tried it anyway. When it worked, we had a target of opportunity and took the shot.
The idea of Azizz defecting was a pretty wild rumor. How would it get started if he was with Saddam?
We probably specifically started it because we thought he would be with Saddam.
How else would we have gotten such specific intelligence?
No guarrantee that this is what happened, but it fits very nicely, doesn’t it?
Plus the comments from some “U.S. official” that said: “If Saddam did not die last night, it’s got to leave him wondering about the loyalty of some of those around him that we hit the target we did.”
Heh, clever. If there wasn’t a traitor before, they sure as hell are going to be looking for one now, imaginary or not.
Scylla
Did you hear this theory somewhere or did you come up with it yourself? The RAI (Italian state TV) is reporting this as fact. They aren’t giving any sources, though, so it may just be a racy internet rumour they’ve picked up on.
Maybe they got it from you! 
Not only is this my theory, I am the mastermind that planned and executed this Machiavellian scheme.
Considering how much saddam likes the Godfather, I keep drawing parallels. This is starting to sound so much like the scenes when Don Corlenoe is nearly killed.
“Papppppaaaa!”-Fredo
“They don’t say wether he’s alive or dead”. -Michael
“I wanna find out who fingered the old man”-Sonny?
That’s assuming it’s him and not a double. I heard somewhere that Saddam never wears glasses because he considers it a sign of weekness. The speech was so vague as to be worthless as an indicator of time (“We hate the US, the US will die” isn’t exactly breaking news). And everyone thinks it was a tape.
So, is he dead, or is he in hiding?
Tariq Aziz was great as Mr. Tate on Bewitched.
There’s two possibilities, either Saddam’s been sold out by one of his inner circle, or we’re doing our damnedest to convince him of that.
Think about it, for months now, the US has been saying that we know Saddam’s got WMD, but the best intel we can give the UN is pretty much worthless. And yet, we’ve got the e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers of the various Iraqi generals! Our intelligence agencies can get those things (And if we’re sending the e-mails to those generals work PCs, why aren’t they dead yet? Saddam surely has their e-mails monitored and anyone getting an e-mail from the US would most likely find themselves in front of a firing squad in short order, if Saddam sticks to his previous patterns.), but can’t give the UN inspectors the co-ordinates to Saddam’s cache of WMD? Something stinks.
Then there’s the fact that the US was saying we didn’t have much time to waste. Why? If we know where the stuff is, and we know what the inspection schedule is, we would know when the inspectors would get to the goods, but apparently, we can’t wait for that to happen.
Next is the attack. Saddam has some fifty palaces scattered through out Iraq, but we launched only 40 cruise missiles and dropped a few 2,000 lb bombs. One would think that if we were going after Saddam and didn’t have an idea of exactly where he was, we’d hit all of his palaces at once.
Since then, the US has met only token resistance and has been moving rapidly towards Baghdad.
It seems to me that someone in Saddam’s inner circle has ratted him out, and has gotten some of Saddam’s generals to go along. These generals have been supplied (by the US) with laptops and small satellite phones which are the size of cell phones. Using these, the generals are communicating with the US and negotiating terms. (I wouldn’t be surprised that a good number of Iraqi generals aren’t charged with crimes against humanity because it will be revealed that they helped the coalition forces during the war.) The reason that we had to hurry and launch the war now, is because whomever is the highest ranking official that we’re in touch with has informed the US that there’s a danger he could be discovered soon.
Interesting idea, tuckerfan - but that sounds too much like a Tom Clancy plot (The Cardinal of Baghdad?) for my taste. We’re all just guessing, really - and we’ll find out soon enough.
Well, the other possibility is that we’re doing our damnedest to make him think that he’s been sold out, in an effort to make him distrust those closest to him and put him off-kilter. Even the journalists are starting to think that the reason they’re there is to make sure that Saddam knows exactly what we’re doing. This war is very heavily relying on psychological operations as even the US Gov’t admits. (One journalist pointed out that the bombing of Baghdad seemed to be tailored to be highly visible from the camera locations of the press located in the city.