This is not Saddam

The man the Americans are parading is not the real Saddam Hussein
When a liar is clever and careful, he is convincing because he is plausible and covers all his tracks. However, the longer the lie is spun out, the more clues are left. The Bush regime has been neither clever, nor careful nor plausible in its disastrous foreign policy, which culminates in parading a "Saddam" before the cameras who is certainly not the real Saddam Hussein, ex-President of Iraq.

The first attempts at justifying the illegal act of butchery called the Second Gulf War started in December 2002 when documents were forged by British and American intelligence operationals, trying to create a link between Niger and Baghdad, which was supposed to be buying yellowcake uranium for its "active nuclear programme". In the event, Mohammed El Baradei, the Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, saw the scam when the papers were presented to him. He said the letterhead was wrong, the names were wrong and the signatures were wrong. Those who showed the papers to him maintained a sullen and embarrassed silence and the issue was forgotten.

Suddenly, Washington stopped talking about Baghdad's "active nuclear programme" and concentrated instead on its Weapons of Mass Destruction and its chemical and biological warfare programme.

"Magnificent intelligence" was presented by Colin Powell at the UN Security Council, complete with maquettes and satellite photographs of "mobile chemical facilities". Soon afterwards, when the international UNMOVIC teams were unable to find the WMD, the Bush administration declared that "we know where they are".

So the act of butchery was launched. In the event, no weapons of mass destruction were found, nor even the production facilities and certainly no active nuclear programme. However, since nobody has spoken about these lies for a year, public opinion has forgotten them.

Next was the story of the murder of Saddam Hussein's sons, Ouday and Qusay, who were mysteriously together (when common sense would tell them to split up) with another man and a boy in a farmstead in the middle of a plain west of Baghdad. The story went as follows: hundreds of troops and a fleet of helicopter gunships finally killed the four after several hours of fighting.

This story sounded like the child trying to justify the fact that he had forgotten his homework, claiming that the dog ate it, the house caught fire and that someone stole his school bag on the way into the classroom. The photographs were not shown to the public immediately and when they did appear, Iraqis across the country shook their heads in disbelief, claiming that these were not Saddam's sons.

Then came the pictures of the hitherto clean-shaven, articulate, educated and proud Saddam Hussein, crawling out of a hole, disheveled, bearded and dirty, supposedly in December but with the date trees laden with mature fruits, which only takes place in August in that part of the world. Another strange occurrence.

The supposed Saddam was shown by an unconvincing Paul Bremer who declared "Ladies and Gentlemen, (pause) we got him!" The pause was telling, an unsaid "I am going to tell a lie". When the ex-President of Iraq's wife was taken to Qatar to see him, she burst out laughing and immediately said that this
was not her husband. Had the Americans fallen for their own trap, or were a small group of Americans fooling the others?

Curiously, the Saddam shown by the Americans has a long beard after capture and continues to wear an unruly beard now, whereas Saddam Hussein the president was always clean-shaven and with a moustache. Why the beard now? To hide the fact that he is not the real Saddam? To hide the jaw line?

Now, the Holy Grail is offered by Joe Vialls, who sent his article "Shaddam Shaddam's new Vaudeville Scam" to Pravda.Ru this morning. In this piece he points out that all photographers were banned from photographing "Saddam" in court for security reasons but then the CNN arrived in the person of
Christiane Amanpour, who immediately started shooting hundreds of metres of video footage, which was then transformed into stills.

Here was the mistake. As Mr. Vialls points out, the real Saddam Hussein had a fine set of teeth, completely even, in which the upper jaw closed over the lower (overbite). The figure paraded in court, as it is easy to see, has highly irregular lower teeth and a condition called "underbite", when the lower teeth close in front of the upper.

Touche. Dental records cannot lie. The set of teeth of the President of Iraq and the set of teeth of the man paraded before the cameras pretending to be Saddam Hussein are wholly and totally different.

The man they have in court is not the real Saddam Hussein. Yet another lie by this Bush administration is exposed. How much lower can this clique of criminals sink?