For what it's worth, a Saudi newspaper is reporting that the guy walking around the street with the armed cheering battalion (well, actually, it looked more like a platoon) was a double.

Well, duh!! I could have told you that. The guy that paraded in front of the camera didn't have the despotic "pocmarked face" popular amound dictators worldwide. The double's face was very smooth, almost as if his skin had been pulled and stretched by a plastic surgeon...

The question begs, just when did any well informed source actually see Saddam? Could his followers be running the whole deal with stand ins? Look at what happened to Madalyn Murray O'Hare and L. Ron Hubbard. Organizations they started ran with the head supposedly "in seclusion" long after many people thought them to be dead. I think they eventually confirmed O'Hare had been dead for some time, while in "seclusion". After all what's more secluded than a shallow grave.

Now take this idea a step further, you run a country and control the secret police, or local Fedayeen Saddam. It would be easy to get "volunteers" to stand in for a dead despot. Especially if the volunteers family is being held as hostages. You would be especially prone to use fake leaders if weilding the power of fear against the general populace came from fear of the leader. The underlings of Saddam would surely know that to lose Saddam as front man would jepordize not only their cushy lifestyle, but their very lives.

Well, I've been upstaged by my better yet half again, she put into a few words, what took me many. Her take on whether its Saddam or not, "...pay no attention to that fool behind the curtain!!"