- Good Morning, Jeff,
-
- Whoever was in that hole was a prisioner yes
- BUT no person's beard grows that much in one month !
- DEBKAfile is a disinformation specialist as usual.
- The money was a strange touch if we stop to
- think the person there was planning to leave.
-
- Why 750k and not tenmill?
- Or, were the stagers too cheap?
-
- The real Saddam is long dead.
- The prime player/double is gone with
- most of the ones who would eventually
- testify to his escape.
-
- The poor creature in the hole was probably kept
- in a house or hotel for 6 mos to allow the beard
- to grow to that length. During which time he was
- drugged, hypnotized, and programed to say what
- operatives THOUGHT a captured dictator would say.
-
- HOLLYWOOD SCRIPT
-
- The real Saddam would never have allowed himself
- to be brought down to such circumstances
- Even the doubles were intelligent and could
- have negotiated better.
-
- There were most likely many doubles being prepared
- for many months first by flattery by the one they
- believed to be the real Saddam. Then after repeated
- drugging and programming he was persuaded he was
- REALLY the real Saddam.
-
- This poor creature cannot focus or answer questions
- The real Sadam would have demanded his own doctors.
- I feel sorry for the human behind this puppet.
- The whole thing is a sham and he is beginning to
- see that -- and there is nothing he can do.
-
- Perhaps a suicide will be arranged before
- he remembers his previous life a long time ago.
-
- Brooklyn
-
- PS Yesterday AM yours was the first place i could find
any
- info when I heard it on radio - long before any others!
-
- Again WOW! to all of you and MERRY CHRISTMAS
- and JOY to all people everywhere!
- __________
-
- The following are earlier stories about Saddam's doubles...
-
- Iraq: Seeing Double In Baghdad
- Saddam Uses Look-Alikes To Disguise His Whereabouts
-
- By Charles Recknagel
-
- As U.S. President George W. Bush calls for a regime change
in Baghdad, U.S. officials have said they would have few regrets if Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein were to be killed by his countrymen. But any attempts
to target Saddam may be complicated by the fact that the Iraqi president
routinely employs look-alikes to take his place at public appearances or
to disguise his true whereabouts.
-
- Prague, 9 October 2002 (RFE/RL) -- White House spokesman
Ari Fleischer summed up the way many U.S. officials feel about Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein when he said he would be happy to see him dead.
-
- Fleischer told a press conference in Washington on 1
October that the simplest solution to the Iraq crisis would be the assassination
of Saddam Hussein. U.S. law forbids American agencies from assassinating
foreign leaders, so Fleischer said he hoped the Iraqi people would take
the matter into their own hands and save the U.S. the cost of a large-scale
military operation:
-
- "The cost of one bullet, if the Iraqi people take
it on themselves, is substantially less than that. The cost of war is more
than that. But there are many options that the president hopes the world
and people of Iraq will exercise themselves of, that gets rid of the threat."
-
- But targeting the Iraqi leader -- who is famous for the
attention he pays to his own security -- is no easy task.
-
- For one thing, Saddam is said to never sleep in the same
place two nights in a row. During the 1991 Gulf War, his guards were reported
to routinely arrive at dusk at the homes of ordinary Iraqi families to
demand they prepare a bed for an unexpected visitor. At the last minute,
Saddam himself would arrive at one of the homes to spend the night before
leaving again early the next morning.
-
- At the same time, the Iraqi leader is reported to make
wide use of look-alikes to take his place at public events. The look-alikes
not only fulfill some of his duties, their public appearances also hide
the Iraqi leader's true whereabouts.
-
- Falih Abdul Jabbar, a sociologist and researcher at London
University in England, says the Iraqi public has long known Saddam employs
look-alikes. He says the public has become adept at trying to detect which
Saddam -- the real one or a stand-in -- comes to official ceremonies:
-
- "People noticed that when the other guy, or 'the
second Saddam,' was there, they could detect this very easily by looking
at the bodyguards, who seemed careless, sometimes even laughing. They wouldn't
do that in the presence of the real Saddam."
-
- He continues: "Another observation by the public
was that Saddam is very well-known among the Iraqis to be a camera-monger.
He loves the camera and to be in close-up shots. And they notice that when
the other guy, his 'spare part,' as they call him, [was there], the cameras
would take faraway shots, rather than zoom in. Hence they would deduce
this is not the real Saddam."
-
- Experts say that apart from the way the bodyguards and
the cameramen behave, there is often little way for the public to detect
which Saddam is before them. The reason is that the doubles -- who are
chosen from among men who closely look like the president -- have undergone
extensive plastic surgery to further refine the resemblance. One man, Abdul-Latif,
defected from Iraq in the mid-1990s after years working as a double for
Saddam's son Uday. He said he fled partly to avoid undergoing yet another
painful operation to make him even more closely resemble his master.
-
- In an effort to learn more about Saddam's use of doubles,
the German public television station ZDF recently asked a forensic specialist
to make a scientific study of some 30 films of the Iraqi president taken
from 1988 to late last month. The expert, Dieter Buhmann of the Institute
of Forensic Medicine at Saarland University in Homburg/Saar, found that
the pictures reveal there are as many as three Saddam doubles who regularly
take the president's place.
-
- Buhmann described his work in a recent interview with
RFE/RL: "I received 30 films from ZDF made during the period from
1988 to September 21 of this year, and in those films in which the picture
quality was particularly good I found three doubles."
-
- Buhmann says he found the doubles by looking for pairs
of pictures in which Saddam's pose was essentially the same. Using a computer
graphic program, the scientist marked each picture to highlight such features
as the length and width of the head, the size of the eyelids and nostrils,
and the forms of the ears and chin. By then overlaying the two pictures,
he was able to calculate how closely the features matched, indicating whether
the person in the pictures was the same man or not.
-
- The forensic expert confirms that extensive cosmetic
surgery has been performed to create the doubles, but that there are limits
to what surgery can do:
-
- "You can do a lot with cosmetic surgery. You can
change the external form of the ear, for example, or of the earlobes --
that is possible. You can also alter the prominent features either to make
them more prominent or to remove them."
-
- He continues: "But what you cannot change is the
length and width of the complete head, and that is where one detects the
doubles."
-
- Looking at the pictures, Buhmann also concluded that
Saddam himself has not appeared in public since 1998 -- that is, until
he finally reappeared on 21 September of this year. The expert says that
means people viewing images of the Iraqi leader should be very careful
about deducing anything about his health or other characteristics until
they first have determined whether it is Saddam himself or a look-alike.
-
- With at least three doubles apparently taking Saddam's
place in public, it may be little wonder that there have been few assassination
attempts on Saddam as he moves around the country. He is also well protected.
-
- Top officials who have defected from Iraq say that Saddam
is always surrounded by 18 bodyguards, who are extremely well paid and
form a living, protective rampart around him. The guards are responsible
for shielding various parts of Saddam's body should he be attacked. The
tallest bodyguard is assigned to protect Saddam's head, for example.
-
- Abbas Janabi, a former private secretary to Saddam's
son Uday, has reported that Saddam's life was saved in 1983 when one of
the bodyguards threw himself against Saddam's chest as the president's
car was machine gunned by seven assailants. The bodyguard died. In revenge,
Saddam is said to have ordered the assailants' hometown of Al-Dijil to
be destroyed, with 3,000 people killed and the rest of the 60,000 inhabitants
dispersed.
-
- Whether Saddam's bodyguards would similarly protect one
of the president's doubles is unknown. But with the chances of catching
the real Saddam in public so low, it seems likely that any assassination
of the Iraqi leader would have to come not from the Iraqi people -- as
outsiders might hope -- but from within Saddam's innermost circle.
-
- (RFE/RL's Friedemann Woelfel and Jolyon Naegele assisted
with this article.)
-
- http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2002/10/09102002155130.asp
-
-
- Saddam's 'Double' Trouble
- Opposition Leader Claims Hussein Died Of Cancer
In 1999
-
- World Net Daily
- 3-26-03
-
- The Bush administration has concluded the U.S.-led "decapitation"
attack failed to take out Saddam Hussein, but an Iraqi opposition leader
claims a higher authority already got the job done.
-
- Moslem al-Asadi, a doctor living in exile in Iran, said
he believes the real Saddam died in 1999 from cancer.
-
- "The real Saddam died because he had cancer of the
lymph nodes, and since his death in 1999 they're just showing his doubles"
he told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
-
- In a plot reminiscent of the Hollywood tale of a body
double subbing for an incapacitated American president titled "Dave,"
al-Asadi claims Saddam's sons, his first wife and Deputy Prime Minister
Tariq Aziz run a scheme to keep the truth under wraps using three doubles.
Al-Asadi alleges Saddam's younger son, Qusay, actually holds presidential
authority.
-
- The absence of live messages by the Iraqi leader since
coalition airstrikes crushed the residential compound, in which he was
believed to be with his sons, has fueled speculation of his demise.
-
- Hours after the initial attack, Saddam appeared on state-run
television, wearing a beret and his reading glasses, and read from a prepared
text urging Iraqis to resist the invaders and draw their swords.
-
- "The criminal little Bush has committed a crime
against humanity," Hussein said. "Let the arrogance be debased.
Long live Iraq, long live jihad, long live Palestine."
-
- Days later, Iraqi state television showed footage of
him chairing meetings with top officials.
-
- But U.S. and British intelligence suspected the footage
was prerecorded prior to the attacks.
-
- As WorldNetDaily reported, British intelligence in Cheltenham
intercepted an urgent call Saturday suggesting that Saddam is still alive
in a secret hideaway in Baghdad but required medical intervention the Iraqis
could not provide.
-
- "They said he was not critically injured but demanded
urgent treatment because he had lost blood and could get worse. This regime
wouldn't go to that trouble for anybody else - including members of his
family," an official told the British daily The Sun.
-
- Yesterday, Saddam again appeared on Iraqi television
giving a speech and meeting with Qusay.
-
- He referred to his "brave and heroic people"
and referenced commanders and their locations, including the port of Umm
Qasr, taken by coalition forces amid stiff Iraqi resistance.
-
- Despite the reference to Umm Qasr, British intelligence
thought the broadcast may have been prerecorded.
-
- "We are well aware that he spent many hours recently
tape-recording various messages. We have to do a little more analysis of
what he was actually saying to see whether or not that in fact was Saddam
Hussein," British Defense Minister Geoff Hoon told reporters.
-
- White House spokesman Ari Fleischer echoed the suspicion.
-
- "I think there are some doubts about whether that
tape is canned or whether it's fresh and based on recent events. It would
not be a surprise if Saddam Hussein had some time ago put in the can numerous
statements designed to be released later," he said.
-
- But the Washington Post reported that because Hussein
seemed assured and so much his old self, dressed in a military uniform,
the CIA decided it didn't have to analyze the voice to confirm his identity,
and senior Bush administration officials believe the message was taped
after Thursday's attack.
-
- "The voice is easy to simulate and doubles constantly
study video and audio records," argued al-Asadi.
-
- The exile maintains the footage purported to be Saddam
Hussein provides the evidence to support his claim that look-alikes are
all that remains of the dictator.
-
- Specifically, he asserts Saddam had big, oval ears but
one of the doubles' ears do not match Saddam's, which had a special bend.
Al-Asadi also said Saddam has an overbite, but one of the doubles doesn't
have such a defect. While Saddam has wide and strong shoulders, those of
two doubles are narrow and almost sloping. Saddam had big hands, said al-Asadi,
while one of doubles has small hands. Lastly, a second long finger of one
of the doubles doesn't match that of the real thing.
-
- Corriere della Sera reports the testimony of former doubles
corroborates al-Asadi's thesis.
-
- Longtime bodyguard Saddam Michael Ramadan in 1979 wrote
in the book "In Saddam's shadow" that the Iraqi leader was so
ill he was dependent on pain killers, according to the newspaper. Ramadan
is reportedly now under the protection of the CIA.
-
- The paper quotes another former bodyguard, who fled Iraq
for Israel two months ago as declaring, "Saddam whom you now see,
was photographed some years ago."
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