According to this UPI column, the CIA thinks that Saddam is alive, and being moved from one safe house in Baghdad to another.

I don’t know whether it’s true or not (it’s certainly not implausible), but what I found interesting was this:

According to U.S. intelligence officials, Saddam and his entourage simply move in with a private family. Members of the family, including children, are taken as hostages so that no other family member will be tempted to inform on Saddam’s whereabouts.

These sources said that when Saddam is ready to move to another safe house, the hostages are returned and the family is paid as much as $50,000 for the temporary use of their home.

Now Saddam and his family are notorious for their brutality, so to actually return the hostages seems a little out of character. But from a game theory standpoint, it makes perfect sense.

There’s a classic game theory construct called the Prisoner’s Dilemma. From the link:

Tanya and Cinque have been arrested for robbing the Hibernia Savings Bank and placed in separate isolation cells. Both care much more about their personal freedom than about the welfare of their accomplice. A clever prosecutor makes the following offer to each. “You may choose to confess or remain silent. If you confess and your accomplice remains silent I will drop all charges against you and use your testimony to ensure that your accomplice does serious time. Likewise, if your accomplice confesses while you remain silent, they will go free while you do the time. If you both confess I get two convictions, but I’ll see to it that you both get early parole. If you both remain silent, I’ll have to settle for token sentences on firearms possession charges. If you wish to confess, you must leave a note with the jailer before my return tomorrow morning.”

Note that for both prisoners they are incentivized to confess, with either an outcome of going free (if the other doesn’t), or getting early parole. The worst case is to not confess and get screwed by your partner in crime.

The interesting thing about the game is that if, as in this case, it’s only played once, there’s no point in cooperation–there’s no way to punish your partner for screwing you over. But if it’s a repeated game, where you’ll be interacting with that person in the future, it become in your interest to cooperate, rather than defect, because mutual cooperation offers the best value for both. This is the basis for much of Robert Axelrod’s work in computer simulations, to mimic the evolution of cooperation as a useful characteristic of organisms.

So how does this apply to Saddam? Not in the structure of the dilemma itself, but in the fact that he has to now take into account future interactions in a way that he’s never had to in the past.

When he was in power, he could use and abuse people as he pleased, with no apparent consequences. Now, on the run, he’s vulnerable. It might please him to just murder the hostages when he’s done with them, and stiff the family for the money, but if he does so, and word gets out, the next home he tries to take over won’t cooperate, since there’s nothing to gain by doing so.

When he was the state, he didn’t have to behave honorably. Now that he’s in somewhat of a state of anarchy, on a more equal footing with the populace, he must.

(Former?) liberal WaPo columnist Richard Cohen’s going to have trouble getting invited to the right parties. He’s seems to have become a full-fledged admirer of the simian in the White House. Either that, or he left his computer unattended…

To the dismay of many, Bush has so far proved effective because he has not shied from using force. He has shown he means what he says. When he said he wouldn’t deal with Arafat, he didn’t deal with him. When he said he would whack Iraq, he whacked it. When he said he would get involved in the peace process, he did. He not only can bang heads together, he will. His record so far says so…

…To the chagrin of those who criticized Bush for doing nothing in the Middle East, to the horror of those who abhor the use of force, the president may succeed where every American president in modern times has failed. Like Alexander, he didn’t fuss with the Gordian knot. He cut it. It’s called changing the facts on the ground.

The end times truly approach.

It’s time to tell your congressman, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (chair of the House Judiciary Committee) to keep model rockets legal.

Oh, and Frank, even though you can’t blog, you might consider giving your dad a call yourself…

Dave Trowbridge has the story of his marriage proposal–in his church.

Don’t miss this year’s NEC (that’s the Nigerian Email Conference).

[Via Paul Hsieh]

Carl Limbacher and Newsmax have an interesting list of questions that Barbara Walters should–but certainly won’t–ask Hillary in her upcoming interview.

A teenage girl died tragically avoiding cigarette smoke.

I guess second-hand smoke can be deadly.

Some on the left have commented sarcastically that the Bush administration plans a state-run health-care system for Iraq, though they won’t allow one here.

Now, it appears that even though Americans aren’t allowed to have “assault weapons” (at least until the prohibition sunsets next year), the Iraqis will be allowed to keep theirs.

A lot of people from all sides of the political spectrum have pointed out Bob Geldof’s apparent apostasy, in which he praised George Bush, and said that when it came to aiding Africa, Bill Clinton did, errmmm…nothing. Actually he used a much cruder phrase than that, but this is a family blog. Follow the link, and you can read it yourself.

What I found surprising is that no one has pointed out the most egregious example of Clinton being all hat and no cattle when it comes to Africa. President Bush is being praised by Mr. Geldof for pledging fifteen million dollars to AIDS relief. Remember Bill Clinton’s trip to Africa in the spring of 1998, on which he took seemingly half of his administration, including Betty Currie (after pressuring her to perjure herself on his behalf)? The GAO estimated that it cost over forty million dollars.

Imagine how much more usefully that money could have been spent for Africans than on an African junket for his staff and photo ops for a man who was in the process of trying to distract the country from his intern and perjury problems. But apparently poor Mr. Geldof hasn’t learned that Mr. Clinton is above criticism, particularly when it comes to Africa–he is, after all, the first “black President.”

[Update at 8:15 PM PDT]

D’oh!!!!

A commenter points out that Bush pledged fifteen billion dollars, not fifteen million. Big deal–I was within three orders of magnitude.

My point still stands. Clinton was all show, and no go. Geldof was right.

Here’s a pretty nifty piece of software from IBM.

I tried it with “luxury yacht.” If it had been my code, I would have programmed it so that if it saw those words together, it would come out “throatwarbler mangrove.”