It is not as easy to knock off Saddam Hussein as the people in Washington may want you to think.
I met Oliver Baxter III, who works for the CIA, at the bus stop outside of Langley. "What's going on inside?"
He said, "Are you cleared for top security?"
"I wouldn't be standing waiting for a bus if I wasn't," I said. "What's going on?"
"Well, we have just discovered there is more than one Saddam Hussein. He has lots of doubles. We are still not sure which is the real one, because everyone in Hussein's government looks alike. At least we've narrowed it down."
"What do you know so far?" I asked.
"Well, one of the Saddams has a mistress named Samira Shahbandar, and he sleeps in a different place every night."
"Because of security?"
"No, because he doesn't want Mrs. Hussein to find out about her."
"What is Mrs. Hussein like?" I asked.
"She is high-maintenance. She has dyed blonde hair, wears Western clothes, and she is terribly jealous. Saddam is her first cousin. She is known in Iraq as Sajida Khayrallah. We now know they have had a stormy marriage for 32 years."
He continued, "One of the Saddams is a big spender. Sajida doesn't know it, but every time he buys a piece of jewelry for his wife, he also buys one for his mistress."
"Why don't you think he's the real one?"
"Because if he was, Sajida would kill him."
"What about the Saddam who is always on TV shooting off his rifle into the air?"
"Have you noticed he never shoots down a pigeon?"
"That could be a smoking gun," I said. "What about the Saddam we see pictured at a cabinet meeting?"
"Have you noticed the cabinet treats him with no respect?"
"The real Saddam could be the one that shows up at anti-American demonstrations and burns the U.S. flag," I said.
"It would be very dangerous for the real one to show up because we might take a pot shot at him."
"The plot thickens," I said.
"The one we are taking a careful look at is the 'Saddam in the Bunker' theory," he said. "We know Hussein was a big fan of Hitler's, and Saddam knows he could end up the way Adolph did."
"Including hanging out with his mistress?" I asked.
"Possibly. We know Mrs. Hussein. She would never live in a bunker."
"Hussein has a son named Uday who is a terrible man. Does he have a double too?"
"Yes, but we don't know if the real Uday is a drunken driver or chases Iraqi girls."
"He does both. Question. If there are so many Saddam impersonators and we don't know who the real one is, does that mean we have to carpet-bomb Baghdad?"
"That's probably one of Bush's major options."
Just then the bus pulled up. As we got on, the bus driver, who knew Langley very well, said, "Watch your step."
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