Republican Guard in Baghdad Streets.. Deputy of Sadam Takes Charge.....

Batchelor and Alexander | 3/22/2002 | 1stFreedom

[1stFreedom]

Just heard this now on this great show.

[tessalu]

I do not know if Saddam is really dead or not, but if it is a lie, it is the best one that I have heard in a while.

[AnalogReigns]

Bachelor and Alexander is really a great show, but is is just me, or do both of them each have a tone or manner of speech that sounds gay?

Don't get me wrong, I know nothing about either, and more than a few normal, straight people have sort of a sissy way of talking--but that's the one thing that really turns me off about the show, the way of speaking just creeps me out.

[justa-hairyape]

Awesome report and awesome news. Looks credible. The fools where probably wearing hats and sunglasses. Not knowing that their ears were flapping in the wind. Kudos to the CIA and their operatives if true. Probably the best covert work this world has ever seen. The original hashassins themselves might be rolling in their graves making room for the Butchers of Baghdad. We must of had CIA/Delta operatives with video cameras on every single bunkered building in Baghdad. Again, if true, awesome !

[Erasmus]

Here's what I know about fiber optics. If you lay fiber optics next to electrical cabling, it is entirely possible to 'tap' into the fiber optic lines. This is why the US government has stringent standards for office furntiure to separate cables in panel systems.

If by this you mean to be able to pick up the fiber signals by using the electrical cabling, there is absolutely no possibility.

A fiber cable can be tapped by physically cutting it and putting in, essentially, an optical 'tee' which can be passive in certain restricted circumstances, or otherwise active (i.e., amplified and needing external electrical power). In either case, you would need excellent cover for installing a covert tap, especially if it's in an indoor location with people around, and the outage that would occur while the tap was installed would need somehow to be overlooked by the fiber network supervisors.

And even then, the use of Optical Time Domain Reflectometry will disclose the existence and also the location of any such tap. If a fiber is supposed to be secure, OTDR would normally be done frequently thereon.

[justa-hairyape]

2. How would you square this with the mention of the timing of the bombing in Saddam's speech?

Obviously prerecorded or its not Saddam. Either way, the CIA probably wont 100 % confirm it just yet. At least not until we have a complete and unconditional surrender of all Iraqi troops and our M1 tanks are finally rolling into Baghdad.

[The Great Satan]

TEXT-Saddam Hussein speech after U.S. launches war

[FreedomFlyer]

that night, someone made a post with a good point: it was indeed a tape, a rehearsal for the actual live speech that was supposed to be made later. that's why he wore the glasses and read from the paper copy. after the attack, all they had available for release was the rehearsal tape. not my theory, but this was the best idea I saw posted that night

Great point.

Maybe he was practicing the night before and picked the next salient time. Or maybe he knew when launches were made and was practicing his speech while the missiles were flying toward him. This is the only explanation that fits ALL of the known facts and rumors. The question is: how much time was there between the beginning of the dawn raids and the destruction of the bunker? The alarm and anti-aircraft started only a few minutes before the bombing started, I think.

If it was a fully prepared pre-taped speech, it was too disorganized and badly done.

If it was a double who gave the speech, then it would have looked and sounded more like a double.

If it was done after the raids, then Saddam was apparently alive after the raids.

What if, instead, it was a dry run for his speech and he just got lucky on guessing the time during the first night that the attack would start? Indeed, what if Saddam went into the studio on the evening of the expiration of the ultimatum to do his speech if the attack happened immediately. When it didn't, he did a run through, guessing that if we weren't going to bomb at night that we would attack at dawn. Indeed, he might have thought that the B-52s would take that long to get to Iraq. So he just recorded a practice for the next possible time--dawn.

OR what if he was practicing in the bunker when the bomb hit him?

[dixiechick2000]

You pinged me to a thread that sounds similar to this, but it was pulled.

[ET(end tyranny)]

For what its worth. This link was in some other thread, which I can't locate now. Saddam double: it's all in the ears

It's possible that the tape of Saddam was old, and that the voice was taped as well, and that the man pretending to be Saddam was lip synching, which might explain why he had to read from a tablet.

At any rate, this arctile also speculates that Saddam may have been dead for years and doubles are being used to make it appear that he is alive.

What is interesting though is that the man pictured on the right looks like the man that read from the tablet.

[The Great Satan]

As postulated, 'if the world knew Saddam was dead there would be immense pressure to stop the tanks on the highway to Baghdad'. For example you could hear the peaceniks shout, 'why continue to kill innocent iraqi babies when Saddam is already dead ?'.

I would focus rather on the issue of minimizing the risk of a pre-arranged "doomsday option" being put into effect. If Saddam does not have one, or at least the credible threat of same, then his hard-won WMD capability is worse than useless: it is an actual invitation to take him out personally. That is a technical problem that has to be solved, and has been solved, by every state which possesses a WMD deterrent, therefore it is rational for us to be very concerned about it -- even if we can't be sure the plan exists or would really work. Taking the CIC out of the picture would make sense as a priority in any war where the objective is regime change -- but you'd want to make sure everybody below the CIC knows it's "GAME OVER" ASAP unless you were worried about a doomsday option. Now, maybe we went for a kill and really don't know for sure what the outcome was, but the ambiguity in the current situation could be a matter of convenience rather than ignorance. Finally, if it can be pulled off, an even safer option than a direct kill would be a snatch or, next best thing, sealing the CIC off in his bunker with no way of communicating with the outside world. Frankly, at this point, all these possibilities are still in play.

[The Great Satan]

Was that not close to when the deadline expired ?

That could explain the "morning prayers" reference (as could an after-the-fact overdub by the state TV) but it seems like a bit of a reach.

[Allan]

Alexander was married and has a daughter but since has 'come out'.

Batchelor presently is married with two children
but because he works with Alexander
and is a self confessed 'book-worm'
given to irony and subtlety
both tonally and verbally
many a jock might think he is gay
but
in my estimate
he is as virile as they come.

[Future Useless Eater]

Muslim prayer times for today are as follows, and are essentially the same as they were last THursday... The first prayer time - dawn(Fajr), represents the earliest glimmer of dawn. That was also an expected time of attack based on the 48 hour deadline being used up.

Day Fajr  Sunrise  Dhuhr Asr  Maghrib  Isha
Sun 4:40  6:03     12:10 3:38 6:16     7:35

Oh, and the attack wasn't at the DAWN prayer time. It was at 5:30 Baghdad time, closer to the Sunrise prayer time... I like the "rehearsal speech" theory the best...

That also explains why the speech has no specifics about the attack, the sloppy appearance and glasses, and lack of enthusiasm in his voice.

[The Great Satan]

Can you make the times clearer? What's the difference between "Dawn" prayer time and "Sunrise" prayer time?

Could well be that Saddam dropped out of sight and they were reduced to pulling a rehearsal tape off the shelf. I'd like to see that time-line nailed down precisely, though.

[Petronski]

Thank you very much for the ping.

[Future Useless Eater]

Fajr(Dawn) prayer time 4:40am is the time they claim to be the earliest dawn - when the eastern sky is just getting lighter.

Sunrise prayer time 6:03am is the actual time when the sun is first spotted on the horizon.

[justa-hairyape]

Thanks for clalrifying the times. The rehersal speech theory also does not eliminate the possibility that a double was used. As pointed out in this thread, Saddam may have taped a couple of radio speeches. They probably assumed that visual TV would be knocked out by the coalition early on. The appropiate audio recording could be played soon after the first attack. Now here they have an audio tape of Saddam, which of course would authenticate it as Saddam. However, they are worried because the coalition is publicly stating that Saddam was targeted. They need to reassure their people that Saddam is alive and well very quickly or the whole country will fall apart. Now all they needed was a good double to read the transcript of the tape in front of a camera. This would explain why the lip syncing and the sound were off as reported by some who watched it. Just speculation of course.

[Peach]

Oh, I believe this - would like to know the source so I can send to others in better format. Thanks.

[eno_]

What you say is correct. But I would not be suprised to find we installed a tap right in a rack in a Bagdad telco switching center. Standard SONET gear could be configued for this function. I bet if I gained physical access to a CO in the U.S. I could probably install something and it would be months, if ever, before it was noticed.

We could have sneaked in, or bought our way in. These facilities were probably not guarded against such an exploit since they expected them to be bombed, not hacked. We DID leaflet Bagdad warning civilians to stay away from possible targets. COs could have been unattended for long periods of time.

[Redleg Duke]

If we lay seige to the city, the media whores will focus on the suffering of the civilians and we lose big time.

I know it isn't right, but it is politics the way the media whores and leftists have framed it.