Perhaps the strategic problems are the most difficult, the political ramifications of an assassination of a national leader by the U.S. would be difficult to overcome. But shouldn’t it be pretty damned easy tactically?
So it seems Bush at least wants the image of not being afraid to break the assassination taboo. The CIA and Pentagon could use the military and covert means to remove Husein from power without harming him (ala 80’s GI Joe cartoon battles), but does anyone really believe that is the intent?
We have reporters in Baghdad (Ashley Bancroft), do we not have CIA agents there as well who can paint a target?
Is the following scenario plausible?:
Saddam takes time for a public photo op. Fires a shotgun into the air a few times at a military parade or something. Maybe one of our agents got wind of this. :rolleyes: He paints the tent or balcony or whatever with a laser. Silent death slams in from 30,000+ ft. Saddam and his most loyal are pureed and flambeed.
A Global Hawk could hit him from 65,000 ft if it were equipped properly.
Is Bush just making noise? Would actually killing Saddam be that difficult if he wanted to badly enough? Does the F-117’s radar signature just make it harder to hit, or does it actually help it delay or avoid detection altogether? If the method I propose relies too heavily on overstated capabilities, then what other possibilities can you dopers envision?
How do we know where he will be in advance with any certainty? How do we keep aircraft loitering within close range over hostile territory? Most importantly, how do we kill him in that scenario without wiping out several hundred civilians?
Isn’t assasination of foreign leaders still illegal?
I thought there was an executive order, still not rescinded, that made it a violation of US policy to deliberately target individuals.
The strategic consequences of the death of Saddam are another question. Would the ensuing chaos and power struggles, civil war, uprisings by the Kurds, and possible invasion by Iran, be worth getting rid of Saddam? Don’t know.
Although I think Crusoe has hit on one of the major problems. We could, in theory, nuke Baghdad, and take him out that way. There are a host of lesser options available as well, but the smaller the chances of killing lots of civilians, the greater the risk of not killing Saddam.
And Saddam is as obsessive about personal security as he must be, as a murderous tyrant who wants to live past his next public appearance. Nobody knows in advance when he is going to appear in public. The videotape of him doing so are released after the fact.
But shouldn’t it be pretty damned easy tactically? Yes. The political risks and costs are high and unknownable.
In addition to what has already been mentioned, he is a good enemy for the US to have.
If we can “contain” him(and I’m not claiming or denying this as fact), he is a figure we can point to as evil and adverse to the interests of the area.
Bill Clinton proved having unpopular enemies can be an asset and Saddam may be ours.
I don’t know how easy it might be tactically either. LokiTheDog is right to point out that there is a lot of hype in the military area, as there is in any area where you don’t get independently audited. And the fact that everything is secret makes it easy to hide problems - you don’t want to advertise any failings of a weapon, do you?
I would rather argue from a position of facts - it has not been done, so there must be a difficulty we haven’t been able to sort out. Of course, we may have been trying for some time, and failing, like Cuba.
Dictators are harder to kill than democratic leaders because they don’t feel the need to go out and be seen in public. It wasn’t unusual for a dictator like Stalin, Hitler, or Hussein to go months without a public appearance.
In addition, Hussein may be evil but he’s not stupid. He’s paranoid and has the means to indulge his paranoia. As pointed out above, he lives out of dozens of different residences and no one knows which one he will be occupying at any given time (for example he has all his meals prepared for him at several different locations so even his cooking staff won’t know where he’s going to actually eat). Hussein’s also known to use a number of doubles and most likely appearances such as the one mentioned in the OP would use one of them rather than the genuine article. Hussein has also been ruthless in eliminating anyone in his entourage he suspects of disloyalty including family members.
There is a mere Executive Order that forbids us from assassinating other leaders (or at least being up front about it). If GWB wanted to, he could override that in a second with a mere executive order of his own.
I think in addition to the fact that we don’t exactly know where he is all the time is the vacuum of power it would create. It could cause even mroe unstability in Iraq, and mess things up even worse. Or there’s the “cornered rat” argument–if Saddam is about to be waxed, he’s likely to feel he has nothing to lose, and wouldn’t think twice against, say, launching a chemical/biological/etc. attack against, say, Israel.
Think of the can of worms that would get opened if that EO was rescinded. Who is the more vulnerable: shadowy dictators that enjoy widespread support from their often uneducated, fanatical and heavily suppressed victims…
…Or the leaders of the Free World, who are seen in public on a near-continuous basis?
Because the people who would assassinate the leaders of the Free World (i.e. the proponents of an Unfree World) care about United States executive orders?
Saddam is extremely cagey. For example, he has a number of doubles who look like him, and they all move around going to different places in government vehicles in a kind of perpetual shell game. His living quarters are deep inside hardened bunkers. He vanishes from view for long periods of time, probably as he moves out of areas incognito.
His personal guard is an especially loyal branch of the Republican Guard, chosen because they are personally known to Saddam and have deep ties into the administration. Also, I believe they are all family men, and Saddam essentially holds their families hostage.
Saddam has a deep network of informers and false critics throughout the Republican Guard and the army. He actually has people going around trying to entrap others into saying things that Saddam doesn’t like. So people don’t like to say bad things about Saddam in any circumstances.
Here’s an example: The interior structure of Saddam’s residence is a secret. When it was finished, he had someone chat up the architect at some function, pretending to be interested in architecture, and trying to see how big a mouth the architect had. Apparently, the man said a little too much about the details of Saddam’s residence, so Saddam had him arrested and shot.
Well, perhaps he isn’t holding parades on a monthly basis, but I’ve seen clips of him (or doubles) at them. Surely these weren’t spontaneous events where thousands of people just happened to all gather on the same stretch of road and thousands of soldiers and weapons just happened to pass by right in front of Saddam.
Although it would be sweet to knock out a mile long line of troops and millions of dollars worth of tanks and artillery at a time like this, that’s not what I’m suggesting. Just one simple missile aimed at the podium when jack-ass starts to speak. And if the speaker turns out to be a double? Fine. keep killing them until the best impersonator they can find is some redheaded teenager. At first the Iraqi people might believe Saddam has nine lives, wow, he can really dodge a bullet. But eventually they will probably lose faith that the guy speaking to them is in fact their leader. It might facilitate a coup.
But we are beyond that point. Bush has already made it clear that he intends to overthrow him. Unless Bush is full of shit and just trying to win some points for bravado…
And we’ve got bombs for that.
So hit all of his palaces at once. Hit all of his cavalcades at once. It seems like we made a half assed attempt at that back in the early nineties and he rebuilt. Make him rebuild again. On a monthly basis.
I just think it’s pretty lame that the world knows the CIA and Pentagon have been instructed to use any means necessary to eradicate Saddam and yet nothing has come of it. Bush should not have given the orders if he doesn’t want them executed or knows they are not feasible. **It makes us look impotent. **
How? The United States has the most formidable army in the world, but it couldn’t be sure of killing bin Laden, and it won’t be sure of killing Saddam until his corpse is displayed under glass.
I don’t think there should be any embarrassment about that. The man has the resources of a medium sized country at his disposal. The job will be no pushover.
You don’t see how that can be construed as being impotent?
Sure we’ve got the biggest tool on the block, but we can’t seem to sink the pink with it.
When we proclaim that all of our vast power and resources will be used to destroy a simple little turd, and we fail to do so, it makes us look impotent or incompetent, neither is good. It feeds the resolve of our enemies.
I’m not blaming our boys overseas, I applaud them for their efforts. It’s the boasting and empty threats from our leaders that make us look foolish. I see no need to project our intentions unless we are reasonably certain that we can achieve them.
Who wants him dead? I think Bush prefers him alive and healthy. In that way every new scandal he manages to get into will have a quick exit. “We are in war against terror”
I can see quite a few difficulties with this problem (apart from the whole issue of allied support and the resulting power vacuum).
Firstly, you can’t just push a button and have a missile instantly vapourise Hussein. You have to have a platform nearby, program co-ordinates without advance warning, and wait for the flight time. Hussein would be long gone by the time your Tomahawk gets there, even assuming it hasn’t crashed or been shot down in the meantime. And even if he still happens to be there, one missile does not have such pinpoint precision that you’re guaranteed to kill him. You couldn’t have aircraft loitering around for days over hostile territory on the off-chance that Hussein appears, you find out about it and he’s unguarded. I think you’re hugely underestimating the tactical difficulties in successfully striking someone whose location you don’t know in advance while avoiding massive civilian casualties.
Secondly, killing his lookalikes would have two negative side-effects. One, it would confirm to Hussein that you’re trying to kill him, and drive him to greater secrecy and precautions. Good luck trying to find him then! It would also make the US look like murdering buffoons, detonating missiles randomly around Iraq and no doubt killing some civilians in the process. Cue frosty diplomatic relations with borderline allies.
Good god, when you have Sikh gentlemen beaten up after 11 September, and the endless confusion over “Middle Eastern appearance”, I shudder to think how accurate your “picking lookalikes” might be.
Any Iraqis with a dusky skin and moustache, take cover…
