Let's Give Him What He Wants!

This is great - One Hand Clapping is reporting Drudge as saying:

CRAZY SADDAM: AMERICANS MIGHT REINSTALL ME AS PRESIDENT!

Saddam Hussein believes the Americans may reinstall him as president of Iraq, the NEW YORK TIMES is planning to report on Sunday, newsroom sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

Saddam Hussein has no illusions, his chief lawyer says. As he sits in his prison cell reading the Quran and writing poetry, he knows the inevitable is coming — a death sentence handed down by the Iraqi court trying him for crimes against humanity.

Yet Saddam refuses to submit to the fate that awaits him, Khalil al-Dulaimi, said, for he believes there is a way out:

President Bush will use the court’s sentence as leverage to try to persuade Saddam to tamp down the insurgency, he said, so desperate are the Americans to stanch their losses.

In his madness, Saddam believes the Americans might even reinstall him as president of Iraq!

I love it - here's what I think we should do:

Find an area in the desert southwestern US that resembles the Iraqi desert and climate. Build a replica of a palace and surrounding cityscape. Use cardboard and duct tape if you have to - maybe even put the whole thing inside the Astrodome if you have to, nobody's using it.

When Saddam is sentenced to death, have a crack US team "rescue him" in the night, telling him Bush has decided to reinstate him to the throne, and supposedly fly him back to Iraq. In reality, you take him to this "New Iraq" and turn him loose in it - constantly monitored 24/7 by undercover agents disguised as generals, townspeople, servants, sycophants, even his (dead) two sons. Let him believe he's really in charge back in Iraq. Use whatever Truman Show/Capricorn One/Star Trek holodeck technology and stagecraft is necessary to pull off the illusion, and have our people subtly press him for information about where all the leftover Iraqi secrets are hidden. Eventually Saddam would give someone an order to dig up a bunch of live WMD's he ordered buried in the sand, or put in a call to Syria to ask for the stuff back he shipped there before the war started. Then get all the Al Quaeda and other terrorist cell contact information he has.

Even have Bush or Condeleeza Rice pay him a visit, to maintain the illusion that we've really put him back in power.

Then, when we're all through with him, we "attack" and "capture" him again. Provide him the route to another spiderhold to hide in. Arrest him, put him back on trial. Set up another "escape"...

Repeat ad nauseum. As long as you can keep everyone from cracking up when they talk to him, you should have a grand old time screwing with his head for years to come...