The pot-bellied, olive-uniformed image of Saddam Hussein popped up on Middle Eastern television sets yesterday, along with a slurred, rambling call to arms, confounding US hopes that the Iraqi dictator is dead and fuelling fears he may have gone underground in the hope of fighting back another day.
Abu Dhabi TV showed a man sporting the trademark beret and moustache and looking every inch like Saddam acknowledging the acclaim of a crowd in a Baghdad street. It also broadcast a separate sound recording of an address to the Iraqi nation.
The network claimed both were authentic and were recorded in the Azimiyah district on April 9, the same day Baghdad fell with the toppling of Saddam’s statue.
If it was indeed Saddam, the tapes would confirm British intelligence suggestions that he survived an attempt to bomb him in a Baghdad hideout on April 8. And if so, he is clearly seeking to emulate that other notorious fugitive, Osama bin Laden, who, by evading a relentless manhunt and taunting his pursuers with occasional recorded musings, has maintained his mythic status among Arab militants.
The videotape, apparently filmed only 10 miles north west of the city square where his statue was being brought down by a US tank, shows Saddam surrounded by emotional supporters while his bodyguards look on nervously, machine guns at the ready.
At one point, he stands unsteadily on a car to drink in the final moment of public adulation, before being bustled in and driven away.
Among the figures around him appear to be his younger son, Qusay, his private secretary, Abid Hamid al-Tikriti, and his defence minister, Sultan Hashim al-Thai – the ace of clubs, ace of diamonds and eight of hearts in the US card deck of fugitive mugshots. Saddam himself is the ace of spades.
The taped message was recorded separately, indoors. It is a rambling, repetitive address to the Iraqi nation not to give up and to be ready to fight back when the time is right.
”We are confident that victory at the end will be ours, and that God will help us as much as we have ourselves have the stamina and belief for all the people, men and women, to fight on,” the message states.
It is filled with long pauses, filled only with the rustling of papers, when Saddam appears to lose his chain of thought.
For those who fail to share their former leader’s conviction, Saddam only has the judgment of the afterlife to threaten them with. If Iraq gives up, he warns the nation he terrorised for 25 years, ”then corruption will prevail, and you will pay the price due to those with weak souls”. – Guardian Unlimited Â