US offers to make Saddam Hussein a Napoleon

I am not entirely surprised by this piece of news.

Saleh al-Armouti, who is head of the Jordanian Bar Association, and also Saddam Hussein’s lawyer, revealed that Saddam himself told him in Baghdad prison last month, the US asked for the Mother of All help in ending the Sunni insurgency.

The reward for Saddam's cooperation would be a life in luxurious exile. Saddam told Saleh that the Americans promise he would be treated like Napoleon in exile in St Helena island. Of course Saddam knew that Napoleon ended up in a cold lonely cell right in the middle of nowhere.

However, the Americans warned Saddam that he refuses to play ball, he would instead be treated like Benito Mussolini. Towards the end of the war the Italian fascist dictator was shot and then hung up on a lamp post by Italian partisans.

Needless to say, the Americans denied the claim. As I said I wasn’t surprised, because the USA have a notorious history of sleeping with each and every convenient Devil, so why should the covert appeal cum deal with Saddam be startling at all.

The fact is the US has been desperate for some kind of solution to the Iraqi nightmare where young American men and women are dying, slowly and in relatively small numbers no doubt but still dying. Then there are those who have been and will be maimed by the Bush Administration's avaricious adventure.

But Saddam has been smart enough to recognise treachery in the Napoleonic analogy, and decided to reveal all.

The Americans must have been idiotic to compare the offered exile for Saddam to Napoleon’s fate instead of another Frenchman’s, Paul Gauguin.