- BAGHDAD (AFP) - Saddam Hussein
is tanning in Tel Aviv; his wife Sajida and three daughters are sipping
tea in their mansion in Leeds, England; and his sons Uday and Qusay are
gambling in Monte Carlo.
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- Such wild conspiracy theories, widely believed by ordinary
Iraqis, are why Washington released what it said were photographs of Saddam's
slain sons amid great fanfare Thursday.
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- "It's a show," laughs sculptor Mohammed Ghani
Hikmat about Uday and Qusay's deaths, announced by the US military Tuesday.
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- "Everyone is talking. Some people say the family
is in England. Some people say Morocco. Some people say they're in America."
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- The deaths of Uday and Qusay, whose names became bywords
for the cruelty of the ousted regime, was, to many, the ultimate proof
of a secret pact between the United States and Saddam.
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- Welcome to the tired and feverish minds of Baghdadis,
humiliated by war and occupation, hateful of their old ruler and distrustful
of the new.
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- In an atmosphere redolent of post-World War One Berlin,
where Germans believed their country had been sold out by Jews and foreigners,
Baghdad today is rife with conspiracy theories as people ooze a palpable
sense of defeat.
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- Ali Abdul Hassan Haidar, 52, and Nasser Hindi, 50, chainsmoke
and play backgammon in the Umm Khathoum coffee shop. Both men hail from
Iraq's Shiite majority, long oppressed under Saddam. They have many reasons
to be happy about the strongman's overthrow.
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- But they are skeptical about the four-hour battle in
Mosul between 200 US forces and Uday and Qusay, that ended with tank shells
and a dozen heat-seaking missiles pulverising the luxurious mansion where
they were hidden away.
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- To them, the last stand of Uday and Qusay has the whiff
of a sell-out, just like Baghdad's swift fall to the Americans on April
9.
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- "There are a lot of possibilities," says Haidar.
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- "Maybe the Americans pretended to kill them to get
them out of the country in order to reduce the resistance," he said.
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- Haidar suggests the Americans are paying Saddam to sabotage
the country's electricity and oil pipelines to slow down the pace of rebuilding,
allowing them to entrench themselves deeper into Iraq.
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- "Maybe it's part of the deal," he says.
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- To hammer home his point, Hindi show off the front page
of the Islamist newspaper, Iraqi Life, which carrys a story about an alleged
phone conversation between US President George W. Bush and Saddam just
hours before US air strikes rang in the war on March 20.
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- Bush tells Saddam: "You are to obey what our agent
in Baghdad tells you. Keep holding military meetings and appearing on TV.
You must not worry, our agent in Baghdad will get you out safe. Have all
your belongings packed."
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- On a busy shopping street in Baghdad's Karrada district,
Fallahan Hassan, 33, has just finished selling two refrigerators and a
water cooler to US soldiers. They smile and exchange handshakes.
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- But as soon as they leave, Hassan says: "I don't
want anything to do with them."
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- He hates Saddam -- 10 of his relatives disappeared in
the 1980s -- but he suspects the Americans are here for oil, to control
Islam and protect Israel.
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- "Why did Iraq fall in 20 days and three months later,
they still haven't arrested the president?" he asks.
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- "Saddam is their secret agent."
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- One of his customers, Iyad Al-Mussawi, chimes in: "Maybe
he's in Tel Aviv. He's been their agent since 1980."
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- Inside a cramped studio, plastics artist Fuad Haman,
41, guesses the two-day delay in showing pictures of Uday and Qusay comes
from the elaborate preparations to fake their corpses.
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- "In a photo, you would never notice the difference,"
says Haman, an expert at making near-life plaster replicas of people.
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