According to James Fetzer, founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, the evidence of the use of a Saddam double is abundant and compelling. As long ago as July 3, 2004, the Australian journalist, Joe Vialls, reported that the captured “Saddam” was not the real Saddam, based upon differences in their teeth and jaw. Saddam had excellent teeth and an overbite, while “Saddam” had bad teeth and an underbite, claims he substantiated with photographs. (See, for example, “Shaddam Shaddam’s New Vaudeville Scam!”) He had reported that Saddam’s wife, Sajida Heiralla Tuffah, had reluctantly been granted access to the prisoner in Qatar, but emerged asking, “Where is my husband?”
“That Saddam’s wife denied this was her husband bothered me enough to take a look at the evidence myself,” Fetzer said. He located official photos from the US military to use as a basis of comparison, which substantiated the claims advanced by Vialls and published an article, “When is Saddam not Saddam?” (July 15, 2004), offering corroborating evidence. “Although I was sure this was a double, I was not certain why the substitution had been effectuated. That is not something that would become apparent until I had the opportunity to speak with Yvonne Wachter on April 11, 2007, as my guest on ‘The Dynamic Duo,’ a radio program I co-host with Kevin Barrett.” (The interview transcript is available at Scholars’ website, 911scholars.org.)
Yvonne Wachter, the mother of B-1 bomber pilot, Capt. Chris Wachter, had a profoundly troubling story to tell. According to her, our intelligence agencies had been able to pin-point the location of Saddam and his sons, Uday and Qusay, at the Al-Sa’ah Restaurant in the Mansour District of Baghdad. This had been possible because all three of them were using British-made Racal Jaguar cell phones, which Saddam had had made in order to insure the confidentiality of his communications. But that also meant there were experts who were well positioned to intercept those calls.
According to Yvonne, her son was piloting his B-1 bomber in the vicinity of Baghdad and received urgent orders to head back to the city. “This is the big one,” he was told. General Tommy Franks, who was monitoring those cell phone calls from CENTCOM, ordered him to “triple check” his co-ordinates and to not miss. “At two minutes out,” she said, “Capt. Wachter confirmed with CENTCOM (under command of General Franks and General T. Michael Moseley) that the target was still in place and that they were ready to drop and he was told, ‘Don’t miss.’ The bombs were dropped and immediately upon the bombs hitting the ground, the cell phone conversations abruptly ended and the phones went dead.” The munitions were four Joint Direct Attack Munition bombs (JDAMs).
When they returned to their base, she added, the crew was met with cheers. “Sometime during the night after they had gone to bed, my son was awoken by his commanding officer and summoned quickly to a makeshift telecommunications center with the Pentagon,” Yvonne explained. “The Pentagon had ordered my son and his fellow crew members to do an live-feed interview from in-theater because, as his commanding officer told him, ‘You got him. You got Saddam and his two boys.” Capt. Wachter was interviewed on CNN and his name, his bombardier’s name and his CO’s name were broadcast worldwide. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and even Vice President Cheney would later confirm Saddam’s death.
On April 13, 2003, Yvonne said, United Press International reported, “Last Wednesday we went out on a limb in UPI analysis and concluded the evidence that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was already dead, his foul physical body obliterated last Monday by the four 2,000 pound bunker-busting bombs unloaded on him courtesy of the U.S. Air Force. The ‘wicked witch’ is indeed dead.” Al-Jazerra on the same day headlined an article, “Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has been killed during the night of 7-8th as the result of a bombing raid on the Al-Mansour District of Baghdad.”
As many commentators have observed, the celebration, “Mission Accomplished,” on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, had a surreal quality about it. The president flew aboard a fighter onto the deck, complete with military pilot’s uniform, and boasted that “major combat operations” had already ended, just a few weeks after our intervention. In spite of the news reports, nothing was said about having taken out Saddam. One week later, in The Baltimore Sun, “Cheney says he believes Hussein is dead” (May 8, 2003), Vice President Cheney was quoted, “I think we did get Saddam Hussein. He was seen being dug out of the rubble and wasn’t able to breathe.”
On May 25, 2003, Capt. Wachter spoke at Dr. Rober Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, CA, and reiterated what his commanding officer had said to him: “Seriously, you got Saddam and his two sons.” The next day, Yvonne said, he received an urgent order to fly overnight to Langley to meet with the heads of the Air Force in a secret meeting. When he returned, he said to his mother, “I was told the whole world owes me and my crew a debt of gratitude, but the rest of what I was told must remain classified. However, it looks like Saddam got away.” He was shattered, distraught, and clearly acutely distress. Which motivated Yvonne to figure out exactly why.
“As she explained during our interview,” Fetzer said, “ she had noticed that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had not been speaking out about the death of Saddam, which she found very odd. Pursuing the thought that perhaps he knew something the others did not know, she discovered he had been Secretary of Defense in the administration of Gerald Ford during the Church Committee investigations into abuses by the CIA, which had lead to the President’s signing Executive Order 11905 banning the assassination of foreign leaders of sovereign nations. Saddam fell exactly into that category.”
Indeed, Section 5G of that directive states, “No employee of the United Stated government shall engage in or conspire to engage in political assassinations.” Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan would reaffirm that directive and make its provisions even more explicit. Donald Rumsfeld, Yvonne observed, was Reagan’s Special Envoy to Iraq and was photographed shaking hands with Saddam in 1983. “There is nobody who knew better about the Executive Order ban on political assassinations than Mr. Rumsfeld.” Ironically, another familiar name in Washington politics would use these Executive Orders to bitterly attack President Bill Clinton.
In a column titled, “Braggadocio” (September 29, 2006), Oliver North used the existence of these Orders, one of which he had personally authored, as the basis for a biting attack on Bill Clinton, who, during an interview with Chris Wallace, was attempting to defend himself from criticism that he had not done enough to get Osama bin Laden. In a stunning display of hypocrisy that brings shame to the uniform he once wore, North assailed Clinton for trying to kill bin Laden. “Ordering the assassination of a foreign national is arguably more important than lying about a tryst with an intern in the Oval Office,” he said, bemoaning the lack of “shock and awe” from human rights standard bearers. He made no mention of Bush having actually killed Saddam.
Here is the sequence of key events that led to the imposition of a gag order on Capt. Wachter, whom most Americans would tend to regard as a national hero:
* March 19, 2003: US commences its attack on Iraq
* April 7, 2003: JDAM bombs kill Saddam and his sons
* April 13, 2003: UPI confirms that Saddam has been killed
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