Saddam's mistake

Washington Times ^ | 4/18/03 | Arnold Beichman

[nopardons]

I think that they aren't " trumpeting " their deaths, because they are waiting for DNA tests to be done and possibly more solid proof ( whatever that may be ) to be gleaned from the rubble, before claiming that Saddam and his sons are dead. Would YOU believe such an announcement, without any concrete evidence ? I highly doubt that YOU will believe it, even WHEN they have DNA evidence.

My " mental process " is one based on reason, logic, and a preponderance of circumstancial evidence. What's YOU'S based on ?

[nopardons]

Right you are; on ALL accounts! :-)

[The Great Satan]

So your prediction is that we will be hearing conclusive proof from the US administration within the next few days that DNA tests have confirmed the deaths of Saddam and his two sons at one or other of the two sites we bombed? Just want to get you on the record here, to be sure you're serious.

[nopardons]

I AM serious ; however, I never said WHEN we'd hear of it. I'm not a mind reader, nor a prognosticator.

[The Great Satan]

How long do you think the DNA tests you talked about will take? Do you think it could stretch into months or years?

[nopardons]

I have absolutely NO idea how long it takes to get " good " DNA samples from dust and shreds. Do YOU ?

[this_ol_patriot]

How could Saddam Hussein have been so fatally wrong?

Simple, he forgot that Bush was not Clinton.

[The Great Satan]

Yes. We're talking hours or days. A PCR reaction takes a few hours to run, and requires only nanograms of DNA. Multiple reactions could take a few days at most. But you do believe we're trying our best to excavate that site and find the remains of Saddam, Uday, Qusay, Aziz, etc., don't you? BTW, were you one of those folks who believed we killed Saddam in the first bombing, before Saddam showed up waltzing through the streets of a bombed out Baghdad on Iraqi TV? Just curious as to where you came out on that.

[nopardons]

I didn't have an immediate response, after the first bombing...NO ! I don't make decisions based on thin air. Neither did I think that Saddam et al were sent to where the sun don't shine, immediately after the last bombing. Heck, I'm not even going to go out on a limb and say that the restaurant back room was the place they " got him ". There have been so many bombings, that I am NOT prepared to say which was the last resting place. OTOH, from what I have heard and read, I am assuming that he's gone.

Hours or days, when more than three people wree blown to smitherines ? Are you an " expert in criminal DNA recomberance, or whatever it's called ? If not, and I suspect not, then your time frame seems to be waaaaaaaaaaay out of line. Why ? Because it took MONTHS to do those test at the WTC site.

[John Valentine]

He and they had planned a new " STAINGRAD ".

Well, he did wind up as a stain on the floor of that Baghdad resaurant, so I guess he did get his "Staingrad" after all.

[The Great Satan]

Okay, so your prediction is that they killed Saddam, but it could take months to prove it. Ooh-kay, if it feels good, believe it...

[nopardons]

In a manner of speaking. LOL

[GretchenEE]

The former dictator used his own gun to blow off the head of his Minister of Health in the hallway after the chap reported some bad news in a staff meeting.

Pretty convincing.

[nopardons]

Unlike YOU , I don't go on " feelings ". I use logic, reason, and facts to back my suppositions. What you use, GOD only knows; it sure isn't your brain.

[TheMole]

Your answer is the best of all. Saddam had survived for 30 years operating the same way, and it wasn't totally unreasonable for him to expect that he could just rock on. If Al Gore had been President, he would have.

[BlackVeil]

Everyone is talking about Sadaam, but the odd thing is not just that he has disappeared - but a whole regime has gone with him. One general has surrendered, and they also grabbed these "half-brothers", who were so unimportant that they were never mentioned in either the Iraqi or US media until now.

Sadaam Hussein's sons, his generals and his well known ministers like Tarik Aziz have all apparently vanished into thin air. I never saw anything like it. There is something more to this, which is not being disclosed as yet.

And the WMDs have vanished too, or else, more probably, they never existed. I do not believe all these rumours - that they will be found here, found there. If they had existed, they would have been used during the war.

[The Great Satan]

Concur, except that I do believe Bush and Powell about the WMD. And I believe that that explains why Saddam, his sons, and his cabinet, have simply disappeared.

[Boot Hill]

The Washington Times asks:   "How could Saddam Hussein have been so fatally wrong? He must have thought it was a bluff. Otherwise he would have surrendered, hoping to fight another day."

He wasn't wrong. Saddam saw that America had been awakened by the events of 9/11 and that this was the end. He knew we'd set a trap for both him and his country for which there was no way out. He recognized what many in the West failed to see, that the impending attack on Iraq was not about weapons of mass destruction, it was about the terrorism that Iraq (and many other Middle Eastern countries) had fomented against the West for decades. Understanding that, Saddam saw that there was no way he, his terrorist network, nor the Ba'ath Party would be allowed to survive this attack.

Götterdämmerung: Twilight of the Gods. The final battle between the powers of good over the powers of evil. And Saddam clearly knew which side he was on.

--Boot Hill

[Amalie]

Agreed, but my feeling is that, on that first night, two bunker busters followed by 24 Tomahawks down a hole in the ground ended this deal. The latest media word is that the WMDs were moved east into Syria for safekeeping; this would make sense if Saddam's Russian handlers told him he would need to show he was complying with UN regulators, hoping the war would drag on and the US "invaders" would find nothing. The bunker busters were more than a wake-up call IMO.

And, as the some other posters mentioned, even if he was alive, there is no way he could have believed that all of his defenses were that vunerable. Therefore, nobody who has ever seen this guy shoot people in the head for bad news is going to tell him that things are even worse than that.

[Voltage]

The answer: Saddam was a dictator cross-dressing as a military leader.