A Soldiers Blog

From: Patti Bader

OMG The rumor mill has begun!

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In Baghdad, Rumors Abound About Saddam
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By NIKO PRICE
Associated Press Writer

May 9, 2003, 3:08 PM EDT

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The CIA is hiding Saddam Hussein in the United States, but the deposed Iraqi president will return to unleash chemical weapons on his own people. Meanwhile, Saddam is taking a cut of the profits from all the oil the United States is secretly pumping in southern Iraq.

But wait -- that can't be right. Saddam has been dead for eight years, part of a plot by his son Qusai, who hired an actor for his father's television appearances. Saddam's other son Odai surrendered Friday, but the Americans are keeping it quiet because he's a U.S. agent.

True? You'd think so -- if you listened to the talk on the streets of Baghdad, where there are few newspapers, little electricity for radios or TVs, no authorities to give definitive answers and enough desperation and fear to excite an already overactive rumor mill.

"You hear a lot of things. Most seem impossible, but these are rumors -- Saddam's rumors," said Kamal Jehan Bakish, manning his fly-infested shampoo stall in a street market in the slum once known as Saddam City.

Graffiti, scrawled in the shadows, helps fuel the rumors. In eastern Baghdad's Zayuna neighborhood, pro-Saddam slogans appeared this week on a pedestrian bridge. "Long live the leader Saddam Hussein," said one.

Another was ominous. "We swear to God -- we swear to God -- that we will chop all the hands that wave to American soldiers whose hands are stained by the blood of our great martyrs," it read.

With little law enforcement, gasoline or electricity in Baghdad, most commercial establishments are closed. That leads not only to hunger and frustration, but to a lot of free time for trafficking in rumors in a part of the world where conspiracy theories flourish.

Complicating matters is the unresolved fate of the deposed Iraqi leader. No one can say definitively if Saddam's dead or alive, inside Iraq or not. And though many in Baghdad believe he's not dead -- and quite possibly in the United States -- the swirl of inaccurate information only makes things muddier.

In the Azamiyah neighborhood, where Saddam was last reported seen April 9, a group of men sat on wooden benches Friday, smoking cigarettes and sipping tea.

"If you want to know where Saddam is, ask the CIA," said Ahmed Jassem Issa, 56, a retired Irrigation Ministry worker. "They have him now. He is their son. I even heard he released an audiotape."

No, interjected Ahmed Rashad Ahmed, 57, a mechanic: "The tape was from Hala," Saddam's youngest daughter,

"I tell you, it was Saddam," Issa snapped back. "Just ask the CIA about him."

The rumor about Saddam unleashing chemical weapons has a history. At first, Saddam was to commit this atrocity on his birthday, April 28. "People were afraid," said 51-year-old Abdul Kalek Kamal.

When that day passed with no attack, several other dates were mentioned -- including Friday, one month after the fall of Baghdad.

After Saddam, the most common subject for the rumor mill is Iraq's oil. Pretty much everybody in Baghdad is convinced the Americans invaded to steal oil, and many believe they're already making a profit from it.

"They are secretly pumping oil and stealing it," said Nazar Mohammed, 59, fingering his yellow prayer beads as a mechanic worked on the fuel pump of his Chevrolet Caprice.

That rumor had made its way across town to the former Saddam City, where Kamal expounded on it from his empty wholesale food shop.

"There is a rumor that Saddam is demanding a share of the oil they are pumping," he said. "There is another rumor that the Americans will give it to him in return for his quick withdrawal from Baghdad."

Down the street, Hassan Jouma, 31, guarded a branch of the Bank of Baghdad with a pistol and tossed out another speculation.

"I heard Saddam has been dead since 1995," Jouma said. "The actual ruler was Qusai, and the man on TV was a double. That's why the Americans -- with all their technology -- can't find him."

Bakish said Saddam was probably in the United States, but added he'd be back soon. He said Saddam was promising to "return to power to rebuild Iraq and let people live in prosperity."

How did he know that? "Some people heard him say that on a secret radio wave," he said.

Kuwaitis also figure prominently in the rumor mill, often as marauders who arrived to exact revenge for Iraq's 1990 invasion of their country.

"I saw it with my own eyes. I saw Kuwaitis, accompanied by Americans, carrying gasoline," Jouma said. "The Kuwaitis burned our buildings, saying, `Now we have our revenge against Iraq.'"

There are many more rumors out there -- some widespread, some more obscure. At the Everyday Supermarket in Zayuna, the manager, who wouldn't give his name, said he was keeping his to himself.

"I have heard many rumors, but I'm not going to tell them to you," he said. "Maybe some of them are true."

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Niko Price is correspondent-at-large for The Associated Press.

Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press

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This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-the-rumor-mill,0,4670755.story

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