Unfinished Business

(2 of 6)

Leave it to Iraq's tenacious ruler to taunt his enemies and torture his people when he's supposed to be good and dead. Even after the second U.S. strike on a purported hiding place, even after his government had vanished and the statues had toppled, it required a leap of faith for the people of Iraq to believe he would never be able to touch them again. The streets of Baghdad itched with rumors. The Americans missed him by 10 minutes or 10 yards. He's in Russia, in Syria, on an island off the coast of Spain. No, he's right beneath our feet--he and a thousand guards hiding under the city in bunkers with a two-year stock of food and water, waiting to stage a coup when the U.S. withdraws. No, he left last fall and went to North Korea, which offered shelter in return for help with its nuclear program. No, Saddam and son Uday were shot by younger son Qusay, who fled to Syria and is secretly negotiating a swap with the U.S.: clemency in return for Dad's dead body.

Among the vividest and most recurrent were rumors that on April 9, the day U.S. tanks rolled into Baghdad, Saddam appeared outside the Adhamiya mosque in the northern part of the city, rising from the sunroof of his limo to greet an adoring crowd, with Qusay at his side. So it was uncanny when something like that very scene played on Abu Dhabi TV late last week. The network said its source insists the video was made on April 9, two days after Washington launched a bomb strike that many suspected had killed Saddam.

The White House can argue all it wants that Saddam's fate does not matter strategically. But it matters psychologically. For Iraqis, the new sighting confirmed their belief that, as a Baghdad resident put it, "we must see Saddam's body hanging from a lamppost before we can be truly at peace." Every fire fight, every explosion, every low-flying jet supports the widespread conviction. "No one believes Saddam is gone," says Ramzi, a Kirkuk oil worker. As cabdriver Faras Ahmad explains, "we have all been trying to forget him, but he's telling us, 'I am still here.' If he is alive, then Iraq is not safe."