[oceanview]

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.

[Swampmarine]

A friend of mine had the same theory and the scales dropped from my eyes. A perfect explanation and accounts for the several different scripts he was shuffling during the taping. That was not a finished production, just a run thru. Something happened before the make-up and contact lenses were applied. How bout BOOM.

[The Great Satan]

Plus that would explain the absence of hair dye on his moustache...

[Allan]

: 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.

That's exacly what I thought.
He looked like a buffoon
clumsily flipping the pages
of his cheap notepad
held practically in front of his face.
It looked like a rehearsal.

[Mitchell]

The rehearsal idea feels like it could be right. I didn't think of it when watching the tape; I just wondered at why it looked so unprofessionally done. But that would explain it.

The reference to the time of the attack is more problematic. I guess it's possible that those few words were spliced in. A speaker of Arabic would have to watch the videotape to see if that seems feasible; there's no way to tell from the transcript, or even from watching the dubbed-in English version.

[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?