SADDAM'S NUKE........... Now here's a scenario..... Nothing that Saddam does, would surprise me. I've often thought that he would NUKE himself and the people of Baghdad, as HIS Final Salvo. But in this scenario............well.....read on. ..........I don't know who John Clark is. 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.