From: nanowave (nanowave@shaw.ca)
Date: Wed Mar 26 2003 - 17:33:45 MST
John K. Clark writes:
"I’d like to hear the opinion of some of the very bright people on this
list, do you think Saddam Hussein is alive? At first I though he was but now
I’m not so sure. It has now been one week since a bunker the CIA thought he
was in was destroyed and he must know about rumors floating around that he’s
dead or badly injured, and those rumors can only weaken his regime, so if he
’s alive and healthy I can’t figure out why he doesn’t put a stop to them.
It should be very easy, just mention on TV some current event on the
battlefield or hell just say who won the Academy Award for best supporting
actress last Sunday, but all we’ve heard from Mr. Hussein is generic
speeches that could have been taped a month before fighting started,
including praise for his army’s 51’s division that surrendered in the
opening hours of the war and no longer exists. Why would he do that?"
Immediately following the initial "decapitation" strike I had the strongest
"gut feeling" that Saddam, his sons, and many of his top generals were
toast. So strong was this feeling, that I even posted a poem on this forum
expressing the sentiment.
Then I watched a biography on Saddam Hussein and something in my mind just
sort of clicked. I now believe we may have fatally underestimated this man.
I say "we" in the sense of those of us on the outside who are looking in.
Who knows what the "heads" of the allied military social organism are
thinking?
Below is a copy of a message I sent to the Washington Times two days ago in
response to an editorial analysis of Saddam's apparent "two ringed" defense
of Baghdad. I also sent a similar message to centcom from the Department of
Defense website.
____________
What if the innermost ring of Saddam's defense is actually one or more
nuclear devices set to flash when the allies overrun Baghdad?
Here's my chilling theory:
Saddam Hussein has combined his country's Oil Drilling and Bunker
engineering know-how to create a lateral access DEEP EARTH sanctuary below
the reach of Allied munitions - even penetrating nuclear.
He has acquired one or more nuclear devices of his own (probably from Russia
or Iran) and plans to detonate them within Baghdad shortly after the Allies
have secured the city (i.e. destroyed his palaces, his government
infrastructure, and his prized Republican Guards).
He has absolutely no qualms about incinerating his civilian population in
the overhead cataclysm, so long as the blast kills plenty of American troops
and possibly triggers a knee-jerk response such as nuking North Korea, Iran,
Russia or all of the above. He has squirreled away plenty of boxes of Kraft
Dinner and actually believes he can survive it.
Saddam (He who confronts) hopes to upstage 911 by spreading a little Shock
and Awe of his own - perhaps even uniting Arabs in an apocalyptic Jihad.
The more you think about it, the more it begins to make sense:
- One of Saddam's justifications for invading Kuwait prior to GW1 was the
charge that Kuwaiti's were "slant drilling" i.e. drilling under the Iraq
border at and angle from Kuwait to "steal" Iraq oil.
- Saddam immediately and joyously claimed victory at the end of GW1
demonstrating that his personal survival and his grip on power dwarfed all
other consideration with respect to civilian or military casualties.
- It was almost as if the Allied ceasefire (primarily because of
increasingly unpleasant images of Iraqi troops being slaughtered - The
Highway of Death etc.) confirmed a deep conviction of Saddam's that the West
could not stomach the horrors of war
- Surely he dissected the Allied battle strategy and examined the various
cracks in the coalition in the years following GW1
- Surely he understood that Allied Tech would be even better the next time
around and he would have to find a cunning way around that particular
advantage
- The GW1 and GW2 strategies are basically the same - high-tech blitz
- So why would he provoke a war that tactically promised an even bigger rout
than the first?
- A visitor to one of Saddam's "bunkers" reported that his ears actually
popped during the ride down.
- How deep might a rich dictator (obsessed with personal security) tunnel
into the Earth's crust if he has TWELVE YEARS to tunnel?
- If you lack the delivery systems to bring your NUKE to your victims, what
choice is there but to bring your victims to your NUKE!
- Let them come quickly, but put up a stiff resistance at the very "end" to
distract speculations of a possible TRAP
- Since Saddam now appears to be alive, and has stated: "The more the enemy
is defeated, the more the bombing will increase" - a senseless rhetorical
statement unless you view it in terms of the theory I have outlined above -
and then it makes deadly perfect sense, because the more the bombing
increases, the further the Allies will have moved into his trap!
- A simple, but elegant plan - he allows himself to be seen entering a house
known to have an underground shaft leading to a bunker (the target of
opportunity). He knows he has two hours before the first cruise missiles
arrives, so he boards an underground rail car and travels laterally for
perhaps several miles, or directly below a densely populated part of the
city. There he takes another vertical shaft to a depth where a nuke going
off on the surface barely produces a tremor. He knows the Americans will do
a wonderful job of pulverizing the first bunker and thus obliterating any
evidence of his escape route. He probably even sets off explosives of his
own to hide the entrance to his lateral shaft.
Saddam's House densely populated area
______________[ ]____________________________________[][][][][[][][][][][][]
[]________________
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vertical shaft |
|______________secret lateral shaft________________
|^ ^ ^ |
target bunker [ ] saddam's |
explosives |
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| vertical shaft
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[ ]
super bunker
As the nukes go off overhead, and elsewhere in the world, he quietly
celebrates with a crate of high grade hash, and a select maid or three.
My advice is to pull back from Baghdad at the most opportune moment. Arial
bomb the defenders and find a more creative alternative to going in on the
ground en masse. Enter only in small groups to investigate and, hopefully,
disprove this theory before taking the city.
Don't rule out time bombs even if you do end up with a body.
Russell Evermore
Independent Canadian Analyst
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