One problem with that analogy is that Tariq Aziz is a Christian, who has no possibility of any power base in Iraq -- that's why Saddam picked him to be his #2. I doubt Aziz would be hanging around if his patron were dead. Here's what Aziz told ABC News on Sunday:
ENGEL: What evidence — we never see Saddam Hussein; we’ve only seen some cassettes —AZIZ: Saddam Hussein is seen by the people who should see him. The leadership and those who are fighting the enemy. Saddam Hussein is the president. I was with him yesterday we appeared on television. But he is not going to go to places where he could be attacked by the Americans and the British, he is intelligent enough to know that this is one of the traps which are being made to catch a leader, you see. Saddam Hussein is an experienced commander in chief, he was a leader of Iraq and leader of the Iraqi armed air force during eight years of war with Iran. When he was personally targeted by the Iranians and he was also targeted in 1991 so he knows how to behave.
ENGEL: So ... so he was targeted at the first day of the war? By the Americans?
AZIZ: They say that. He was not in that place; he was not in that place. They are bluffing and they are actually — what astonishes me is that maybe in times of war people would make some lies, make some deceptions in order to discourage the enemy for grander reasons, for psychological reasons. But what is happening now, and I tell you, I don’t want to be rude — when I listen to what they say I laugh. Because they are cheating themselves, they are deceiving themselves.
We probably had a pretty good idea that Saddam would go to ground once the bombs started falling, based on his behavior during the Gulf War, and we are wringing every bit of value out of that we can. Why not? Ambiguity has been maintained, so there's isn't much of a downside.