Saddam Was Not in Hiding But a Captive?
This is a novel take on why Saddam was so disheveled at the time of his capture by US troops.
DEBKA.com is a site based in Jerusalem specializing in secret, inside stories on terrorism and military intelligence. Market Place's Morning Report did a piece on them by Adam Davidson which lends legitimacy to their reportage. Folks pay to subscribe to them and have done so for some 30 years. (Link in lower right hand corner of the site. Report begins ~4-1/2 minutes into the program. The report was done before the invasion, but the fact that folks pay thousands for hourly reports is impressive at any time.)
Another piece on their site says that the AWOL WMDs were buried in northern Syria and that they may be close to being discovered, particularly if Saddam is in a position to negotiate revealing their locations in exchange for moderation in his treatment. Its closing paragraphs read:
For now, the captured Iraqi dictator holds the means to fully vindicate President Bush in going to war against his regime in Baghdad.What will the captured man demand for giving the Bush administration its final triumph?
According to DEBKAfile’s intelligence experts, Saddam Hussein has never forgotten the terms of the deal offered him by his old friend, former Russian prime minister and KGB chief Yevgeny Primakov, to prevent the war. One month before the American invasion, Primakov visited Baghdad and advised the Iraqi ruler to take himself and his family into perpetual detention in one of the presidential palaces. They would be kept under lock and key for life under international custody - albeit in sumptuous circumstances. The only proviso for averting war and saving his life was that the Iraqi president surrender his forbidden weapons systems to the United Nations.
The Iraqi dictator turned the offer down, certain that the Americans if they attacked would be defeated at the gates of Baghdad. However, he told his Russian visitor that he reserved the right to come back to the proposal in the future.
This was the deal that may have kept Saddam going in the hole in the ground where he was found and which was behind the first words he said to the US troops who came to get him, namely a offer to negotiate. The entire deal is hardly likely to be available to the former ruler reduced now to wretched circumstances. But Saddam will no doubt apply all his guile and play every card in his deck to save his life. He will be lucky if he can trade his weapons of mass destruction for incarceration for life in Iraq – the Primakov formula minus the palace.
This is a site worth monitoring!
