Theres a lot of chatter on-line today about our capture of Saddam Hussein a few days ago. As could have perhaps been predicted, people all over the world are speculating that there may be more to the story than weve been led to believe.
One of the more interesting threads has to do with photos taken of Saddams spider hole. According to some, the color of the dates hanging from trees in the distance is not consistent with what dates should look like at this point in the growing season. Heres a little clip from the Metafilter conversation on this point:
The fruit on the date palm behind the soldier is yellow. Date fruit grows from March-August and is harvested in early fall. Dates are yellow (ie. just ripened) in August, not December. I’m not invoking conspiracy – I’m just asking: what gives?
If you follow the logic, the gist seems to be that Saddam was in fact captured earlier and that the news was just now made public (perhaps to remove the media spotlight from Halliburton and the fact that they were caught with their hand in the cookie jar, overcharging the US for oil being delivered to troops in Iraq).
The other theory, which seems to me to be more likely, is that we did find Saddam when we said we did, but that it was a little less risky an operation that wed made it sound. (Think back to the heroic rescue of PFC Jessica Lynch.) According to this theory, the Kurds found Saddam some time ago, kept him drugged, and negotiated his release to US forces.
OK, now take ten paces to your left and you’ll see a handle sticking out of the dirt. Pull it up. Hes at the bottom of the hole, tied to a crude urinal.
Heres a story on this theory from Scotlands Sunday Herald.
If this is true, if we did get Saddam kind of handed to us, it kind of brings to mind the recent story about Vice President Dick Cheney and his canned hunt. It seems a bit unsporting to have your prey kind of tethered there, ready for you to kill, but I suppose its more convenient, especially when you’re on a tight schedule. And, it certainly allows for better photo ops, and leaves less room for error.
Theres another story going around the web which postulates that Bush may have met with Saddam during his Thanksgiving visit to Iraq.
My sense is that the theres probably a bit of truth to some of this. While I dont necessarily think that we were sitting on him, waiting for the right moment to turn the crank and send him popping out of his spider hole, I do think that he was probably doped up and left in a hole for us to find. That wouldnt surprise me at all.
