...This was the new Roman Empire at its peak - better than Ridleys Scott's Gladiator: a real, captive barbarian emperor, paraded on the Circus Maximus of world television...Holes big enough to accommodate armies of spiders remain in the carefully-choreographed Pentagon screenplay. Suppose Saddam - well versed in the treachery levels in the Arab world and well aware that a close family friend had denounced his sons Uday and Qusay - had indeed chosen to hide in a hole in the ground only a few hours before his capture. It's still remarkable how the "rat" managed to elude capture when thousands of American soldiers were combing every inch of the Sunni triangle..also remarkable that someone who foiled all sorts of assassination plots chose to be holed up in a farm near his hometown - the most obvious place where he could be found - and without any protection. Only two of his cousins from the al-Douria tribe were with him at the time of the arrest. Unlike the Pentagon version, sources tell Asia Times Online that they were simply peasants, not Saddam's bodyguards...Not only one of his daughters, but local villagers, are absolutely convinced that he was drugged before the capture, a vital element in the Pentagon choreography to show to the world - especially the Arab world - the picture of a disoriented bum....The "documentation" found with Saddam is also very suspicious, as it might conveniently contain a list of names of people leading the Iraqi resistance in the Sunni triangle...
Only three months ago, this correspondent met scores of people in Baghdad and the Sunni triangle whom were absolutely convinced that former CIA friend Saddam and Washington were still involved in some sort of secret deal. Now European, Asian and Arab diplomats and businessmen are commenting off the record that there's every possibility that the CIA, or even Bush himself, may have struck a deal..They are all suspicious of the impeccable timing: and if a deal was not in the cards, then the CIA knew exactly where Saddam was for days or weeks...exactly when Halliburton was under extreme pressure for effectively swindling American taxpayers...The Iraqi occupation is absolutely illegal, so Washington will not even consider trying Saddam in the Hague..So the consensus is moving towards a public trial, in an Iraqi court, conducted by Iraqis..But there's a huge problem: a tribunal in Iraq, like everything else at the moment, will have no legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqis and the Arab world because it will be subservient to the occupying power. One can already see the daily guerrilla attacks outside the courtroom. The trial will only make sense if there is a real representative Iraqi government in place...Saddam...could finally expose the hypocrisy and double standards of the West as a whole, and specifically America..
Still today, nobody has told the real story preceding the invasion of Kuwait..He will give American names. He will detail the American deal under which the US was to have helped the Shi'ites. He will prove that those exhumed bodies incriminate the Anglo-American alliance as much as himself....all the way back to 1989..American - and European - companies exported biological viruses for at least four years to various Iraqi government agencies and other companies, with licenses from the US Commerce Department....a non-stop roll-call of civilian deaths and non-stop supply of arms...back to 1959, when a young Saddam was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad which botched the assassination of then Iraqi prime minister General Abdul-Karim Qasim.
The last thing that the White House, the euphemistic Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the ICG (dubbed "the imported government" by Iraqis) want is real democracy in Iraq....The occupiers and their local collaborators know very well that an elected constituent assembly would naturally demand what the overwhelming majority of Iraqis want: the immediate end to the occupation, total Iraqi control of Iraqi oil and first choice for Iraqi companies in the rebuilding process....Like Shi'ite and Sunnis all over Iraq, former CIA asset Saddam Hussein is also plotting his revenge. One can bet he is sure that when he talks he may be able to hurl George W Bush all the way back to his ranch in Crawford - along with Saddam's close collaborator Dick Cheney and Saddam's old friend Donald Rumsfeld.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EL19Ak01.html