Iraq: Seeing Double in Baghdad: Saddam Uses Look-Alikes to D

What you are allowed to think and what you do think are two different things, aren't they? That's another way of saying that this forum may be NSFW, if your boss is a Republican. A liberal won't fire you for it, but they'll laugh at you in the break room and you may not get promoted. Unless you're an engineer, of course, in which your obsession with facing reality is not actually a career-disabling disability.

Iraq: Seeing Double in Baghdad: Saddam Uses Look-Alikes to D

Postby admin » Wed Nov 08, 2017 5:31 am

Iraq: Seeing Double in Baghdad: Saddam Uses Look-Alikes to Disguise His Whereabouts
by Charles Recknagel
October 9, 2002

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


As U.S. President George W. Bush calls for a regime change in Baghdad, U.S. officials have said they would have few regrets if Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein were to be killed by his countrymen. But any attempts to target Saddam may be complicated by the fact that the Iraqi president routinely employs look-alikes to take his place at public appearances or to disguise his true whereabouts.

Prague, 9 October 2002 (RFE/RL) -- White House spokesman Ari Fleischer summed up the way many U.S. officials feel about Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein when he said he would be happy to see him dead.

Fleischer told a press conference in Washington on 1 October that the simplest solution to the Iraq crisis would be the assassination of Saddam Hussein. U.S. law forbids American agencies from assassinating foreign leaders, so Fleischer said he hoped the Iraqi people would take the matter into their own hands and save the U.S. the cost of a large-scale military operation:

"The cost of one bullet, if the Iraqi people take it on themselves, is substantially less than that. The cost of war is more than that. But there are many options that the president hopes the world and people of Iraq will exercise themselves of, that gets rid of the threat."

But targeting the Iraqi leader -- who is famous for the attention he pays to his own security -- is no easy task.

For one thing, Saddam is said to never sleep in the same place two nights in a row. During the 1991 Gulf War, his guards were reported to routinely arrive at dusk at the homes of ordinary Iraqi families to demand they prepare a bed for an unexpected visitor. At the last minute, Saddam himself would arrive at one of the homes to spend the night before leaving again early the next morning.

At the same time, the Iraqi leader is reported to make wide use of look-alikes to take his place at public events. The look-alikes not only fulfill some of his duties, their public appearances also hide the Iraqi leader's true whereabouts.

Falih Abdul Jabbar, a sociologist and researcher at London University in England, says the Iraqi public has long known Saddam employs look-alikes. He says the public has become adept at trying to detect which Saddam -- the real one or a stand-in -- comes to official ceremonies:

"People noticed that when the other guy, or 'the second Saddam,' was there, they could detect this very easily by looking at the bodyguards, who seemed careless, sometimes even laughing. They wouldn't do that in the presence of the real Saddam."

He continues: "Another observation by the public was that Saddam is very well-known among the Iraqis to be a camera-monger. He loves the camera and to be in close-up shots. And they notice that when the other guy, his 'spare part,' as they call him, [was there], the cameras would take faraway shots, rather than zoom in. Hence they would deduce this is not the real Saddam."

Experts say that apart from the way the bodyguards and the cameramen behave, there is often little way for the public to detect which Saddam is before them. The reason is that the doubles -- who are chosen from among men who closely look like the president -- have undergone extensive plastic surgery to further refine the resemblance. One man, Abdul-Latif, defected from Iraq in the mid-1990s after years working as a double for Saddam's son Uday. He said he fled partly to avoid undergoing yet another painful operation to make him even more closely resemble his master.

In an effort to learn more about Saddam's use of doubles, the German public television station ZDF recently asked a forensic specialist to make a scientific study of some 30 films of the Iraqi president taken from 1988 to late last month. The expert, Dieter Buhmann of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Saarland University in Homburg/Saar, found that the pictures reveal there are as many as three Saddam doubles who regularly take the president's place.

Buhmann described his work in a recent interview with RFE/RL: "I received 30 films from ZDF made during the period from 1988 to September 21 of this year, and in those films in which the picture quality was particularly good I found three doubles."

Buhmann says he found the doubles by looking for pairs of pictures in which Saddam's pose was essentially the same. Using a computer graphic program, the scientist marked each picture to highlight such features as the length and width of the head, the size of the eyelids and nostrils, and the forms of the ears and chin. By then overlaying the two pictures, he was able to calculate how closely the features matched, indicating whether the person in the pictures was the same man or not.

The forensic expert confirms that extensive cosmetic surgery has been performed to create the doubles, but that there are limits to what surgery can do:

"You can do a lot with cosmetic surgery. You can change the external form of the ear, for example, or of the earlobes -- that is possible. You can also alter the prominent features either to make them more prominent or to remove them."

He continues: "But what you cannot change is the length and width of the complete head, and that is where one detects the doubles."

Looking at the pictures, Buhmann also concluded that Saddam himself has not appeared in public since 1998 -- that is, until he finally reappeared on 21 September of this year. The expert says that means people viewing images of the Iraqi leader should be very careful about deducing anything about his health or other characteristics until they first have determined whether it is Saddam himself or a look-alike.

With at least three doubles apparently taking Saddam's place in public, it may be little wonder that there have been few assassination attempts on Saddam as he moves around the country. He is also well protected.

Top officials who have defected from Iraq say that Saddam is always surrounded by 18 bodyguards, who are extremely well paid and form a living, protective rampart around him. The guards are responsible for shielding various parts of Saddam's body should he be attacked. The tallest bodyguard is assigned to protect Saddam's head, for example.

Abbas Janabi, a former private secretary to Saddam's son Uday, has reported that Saddam's life was saved in 1983 when one of the bodyguards threw himself against Saddam's chest as the president's car was machine gunned by seven assailants. The bodyguard died. In revenge, Saddam is said to have ordered the assailants' hometown of Al-Dijil to be destroyed, with 3,000 people killed and the rest of the 60,000 inhabitants dispersed.

Whether Saddam's bodyguards would similarly protect one of the president's doubles is unknown. But with the chances of catching the real Saddam in public so low, it seems likely that any assassination of the Iraqi leader would have to come not from the Iraqi people -- as outsiders might hope -- but from within Saddam's innermost circle.

(RFE/RL's Friedemann Woelfel and Jolyon Naegele assisted with this article.)
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Iraq: Seeing Double in Baghdad: Saddam Uses Look-Alikes

Postby admin » Wed Nov 08, 2017 5:32 am

Iraqis Doubt Real Hussein Behind Bars
by Mark MacKinnon
Globe and Mail
19 December 2003

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Baghdad — Jassim Abu Ahmed almost spits his disgust at the television set showing yet another image of the dazed and bedraggled Saddam Hussein.

"It's not him," Mr. Ahmed says, waving his hand and looking away from the screen. "Everybody knows it's not him. Why do they keep showing this?"

While Iraq's new leaders are planning for what they have dubbed "the trial of the century" and claiming a great victory over the Baathist remnants that are still fighting the U.S.-led occupation, many Iraqis remain deeply skeptical that the former dictator has been caught.

In a country where the press was always controlled by the state, and that is now occupied by a foreign power, people have learned not to trust what they see or hear in the media.

And after watching television news reports during the war that talked of Iraqi military victories — even as U.S. troops were entering Baghdad — many now believe they're still being fed lies. A fuel tanker that exploded in Baghdad Wednesday, killing 10, was first reported as another suicide bombing — then downgraded by U.S. military officials to a mere accident, further adding to the disbelief surrounding Mr. Hussein's arrest.

Some even saw the report of an eyewitness who has seen Mr. Hussein as part of the grand plan, disbelieving it when Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council who was among the handful of people who have visited the ex-dictator since his weekend arrest, went on television Wednesday to announce that Mr. Hussein was "still in greater Baghdad" and would remain in the capital until his trial.

Mr. Ahmed, an athlete who knew Mr. Hussein's oldest son Uday personally, says he is positive the person the United States is parading as their prize catch is not the former dictator. Mr. Hussein is known to have a tiny tattoo on his left hand, but in the relentlessly replayed video that shows him having his throat checked by a U.S. Army medic — the video that most of the world accepts as footage of the humbled former dictator — the markings are not apparent as Mr. Hussein strokes his straggly beard.

It's not the only detail that disbelievers have seized on. Others find it strange that Mr. Hussein's hair is black in the footage, but his beard is white.

"Everyone knows that Saddam dyes his hair, but after eight months hiding in a hole, it's still black?" asked Diaa, a 37-year-old taxi driver who gave only his first name. "Tell me how this is possible. When they captured [former information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf] after a few weeks, his hair was already white."

Some, like Mr. Ahmed, believe the ex-dictator's dead sons are also alive, and that the whole family has struck a deal with U.S. President George W. Bush to live abroad in secret exile.

The rumours have also allowed those who have been fighting in Mr. Hussein's name to draw continued inspiration.

Rumours that the man captured was a look-alike sparked celebratory riots this week in the Sunni Muslim town of Fallujah.

"It is someone wearing a Saddam mask," 25-year-old tire repairman Waleed Ibrahim told Associated Press in Fallujah yesterday. "It is a trick to help President Bush get re-elected."

U.S. armoured vehicles rolled down the town's main street, blaring messages to the contrary.

"The coalition forces have arrested Saddam Hussein. Reports that it is a Saddam double are false," a voice declared in Arabic from a loudspeaker. "The old regime will never come back. This is the end of the Baath Party."
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Iraq: Seeing Double in Baghdad: Saddam Uses Look-Alikes

Postby admin » Wed Nov 08, 2017 5:45 am

More Husseins Than Meet the Eye, Network Reports
by L.A. Times
September 27, 2002

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


BERLIN — A German television network said Thursday that it had made a scientific study of 450 photographs of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and concluded that there are at least three look-alikes posing as the Iraqi president.

The ZDF public television network, working with a German coroner, said it took the photographs and film clips of Hussein from its archives and used facial recognition technology to determine that men said to be him were look-alikes.

"In the film sequences since 1998 only the doubles appear," said a coroner whom ZDF consulted, Dieter Buhmann. "He himself has not been seen again."

ZDF said that "a scientific investigation proved that the 65-year-old ruler allows at least three doubles to replace him at official appearances."

ZDF said it was difficult to tell the look-alikes from Hussein.

"They have apparently undergone surgery to appear to look like the statesman," the television network said. "The doubles have mastered Saddam's gestures and perfectly mimic Saddam, with only tiny details separating them from the real Saddam Hussein."
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Iraq: Seeing Double in Baghdad: Saddam Uses Look-Alikes

Postby admin » Wed Nov 08, 2017 7:01 am

Saddam Hit? U.S.: Saddam Seen Leaving Baghdad Complex on a Gurney After Strike
by John McWethy, Brian Ross, Pierre Thomas and Martha Raddatz
ABC News
March 21, 2003

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


U.S. intelligence sources say Saddam Hussein was seen being wheeled out of a Baghdad residential complex on a stretcher after the complex was struck in "decapitation attacks" by the United States.

Eyewitnesses saw the Iraqi leader being taken from the complex on a "gurney, with an oxygen mask over his face" Thursday morning (Wednesday night U.S. time), the officials told ABCNEWS. Sources said there was clearly a U.S. observer nearby, watching the complex.

When asked today whether Saddam may have been injured in the attack, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said he wouldn't address rumors, but added ambiguously, "I don't know how Saddam Hussein is feeling today."

Three Critical Iraqi Leaders Believed Dead

Intelligence sources also said there has been a significant lack of communications between Saddam and his military structure since the airstrike

They are optimistic that the attack injured Saddam, though they are cautious about the extent.

The U.S. officials believe that one or both of Saddam's sons were also in the complex when it was struck. The attack was "massive, catastrophic," the Washington Post's Bob Woodward told ABCNEWS.

Still, there are unconfirmed reports that Iraqi Sunni and other armed groups loyal to Saddam have been told that the Iraqi dictator is alive but communication with his son Odai has been lost and it is suspected that he died in the attacks. Intelligence officials told ABCNEWS they have no hard evidence that one of Saddam's sons was killed.

In addition, Iraq TV showed Saddam, his other son Qusai and Defense Minister Saddam Hashem Ahmed in a meeting. The person who read the news on air said they met today, but the claim is not independently confirmed. Later, a TV newscaster read new decrees by Saddam offering rewards to soldiers who shoot down coalition planes and missiles or kill or capture or coalition troops.

U.S. intelligence officials are confident other high-ranking leaders in Saddam's regime were killed. ABCNEWS' Brian Ross reported that U.S. intelligence believes three Iraqi officials — Taha Yasin Ramadan, Izatt Ibrahaim al Douri, and Ali Hassan Majid (also known as "Chemical Ali") — were killed in the attack. A CIA spokesman said officials had no information to confirm the report.

Complex Reportedly Housed Bunker

The strikes targeted a large residential complex in a Baghdad suburb, not a military installation or one of Saddam's palaces. Saddam and his advisers were believed to be sleeping inside a "hardened bunker" beneath the ground floor, intelligence sources said.

Yet within hours of the predawn bombardment, Saddam appeared on Iraqi television, condemning the U.S. attacks and calling on his people to defend the country in a jihad, or holy war, against its enemies.

A debate soon began: was it really Saddam making the speech, or one of the body doubles he is reputed to use as a security measure?

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing today that he had no doubt that the bunker was destroyed. But, he added, "The question is what was in there." Rumsfeld said officials had no definitive evidence that Saddam was dead or still alive.

Was Puffy-Faced Man Really the Iraqi Leader?

Saddam is believed to have at least three body doubles, and many who saw his speech thought they were looking at one of them.

The photograph on the left is an image taken from a speech broadcast on Iraqi TV hours after the first strikes began. The image on the right shows the Iraqi leader during a television appearance three days before the strikes. (Iraqi TV via APTN/AP Photo and AP Photo)

The man at the podium wore glasses, and looked puffy, old and tired, unlike the Iraqi leader's robust appearance three days earlier.

The White House said today it does appear to be Saddam in the videotape, but press secretary Fleischer said there's no way to know when it was really recorded.

U.S. officials concluded it was Saddam after conducting voice analysis of the speech and using computer algorithms to compare the speaker's face with known images of Saddam. They also studied a second video purporting to show the Iraqi leader meeting with members of his Cabinet in the hours after the attack.

CIA officials said the man who gave the speech was the real Saddam, without his contacts, without his make-up, and without a good night's sleep.

Dieter Buhmann, a German pathologist who has meticulously studied hundreds of photographs of the Iraqi leader's public appearances, said he agreed with the CIA's conclusion. He said he was almost certain that the man who appeared on Iraqi TV was Saddam.

Buhmann, of Homberg University, had earlier measured and mapped Saddam's mustache and eyebrows, and concluded that he uses at least three different doubles.

Ex-Mistress Says It Was a Double

But there was a different assessment from a woman who claims to have known the Iraqi leader intimately. Parisoula Lampsos, who says she was Saddam's mistress over a period of nearly 30 years, told U.S. officials and ABCNEWS that the man who appeared on TV was not Saddam.

Lampsos had previously distinguished Saddam from his doubles in more than a dozen cases and she said that Saddam would never come out of the bunker during battle to deliver a statement.

Last year Lampsos explained to ABCNEWS' Claire Shipman how she could spot Saddam's doubles.

For starters, she said, the real Saddam has an unusual tattoo: two dots on his left hand that he received in prison years ago. But his eyes are the real giveaway, she said.

"Look everywhere — it might change," Lampsos told ABCNEWS. "You can change your teeth, everywhere. But the eyes, no."

ABCNEWS' John McWethy, Brian Ross, Pierre Thomas and Martha Raddatz contributed to this report.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Iraq: Seeing Double in Baghdad: Saddam Uses Look-Alikes

Postby admin » Wed Nov 08, 2017 8:57 am

Will The Real Saddam Hussein Please Step Down
by Tom Zeller
The New York Times
October 6, 2002

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


IN a rhetorical turn that conjured Clint Eastwood, Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, suggested last week that the estimated cost of a war in Iraq -- tens of billions of dollars by most counts -- might be needlessly high. ''The cost of one bullet,'' Mr. Fleischer said, ''if the Iraqi people take it on themselves, is substantially less than that.''

The none-too-subtle implication, of course, was that any ambitious fortune hunter with a firearm and a clear shot of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein should recognize the opportunity and take aim.

Mr. Fleischer subsequently backpedaled, but sympathetic marksmen in Iraq could have told him that even a point-blank opportunity might prove fruitless. Shoot Saddam Hussein? Fine. But which one?

It's a question that even American troops might face.

Intelligence officials have long suspected that the Iraqi president makes ample use of body-doubles -- an idea reinforced two weeks ago when a German television news program asked a forensic pathologist to examine hundreds of archived photographs and video stills of the Iraqi leader. The pathologist, Dr. Dieter Buhmann of Homberg University in Saarland, determined that there are at least three Saddam Hussein lookalikes in rotation, making public appearances, firing rifles, smoking cigars, waving and strutting. (The doubles rarely speak, it was suggested, because Mr. Hussein has an inimitable lisp.)

Iraqi dissidents have told stories of impostor Husseins in the past -- of recruitment schemes and plastic surgery, of training in mannerisms, strides and tics. The differences can seem remarkably subtle. In some instances, Dr. Buhmann suggested, the face of the doppelgänger was just a hair too wide. In others, the area under the mouth was just a bit too small and too low.

Which makes it all the more unlikely that the Bush administration would accept Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan's suggestion -- apparently made in response to Mr. Fleischer's tough talk -- that the two presidents simply take it all outside and settle things mano-a-mano in a duel (with United Nations oversight, of course). How could anyone be sure that the man behind the mustache was really Mr. Hussein?

''One of the main reasons for using a double is to avoid being shot,'' said Dino A. Brugioni, a former officer with the Central Intelligence Agency's National Photographic Interpretation Center and the author of the book ''Photo Fakery'' (Brassey's, 1999).

Indeed, the pop-culture fascination with cloak-and-dagger devices like doubles, disguises and decoys tends to give Mr. Hussein's use of lookalikes a sort of buffoonish quality. But this is serious business, with a long history. And it would be naÛve, some intelligence officials have suggested, to think that everyone isn't playing the game.

''The truth must have a bodyguard of lies,'' said Antonio Mendez, a former chief of disguise for the C.I.A. and a co-author of the book ''Spy Dust'' (Atria Books, 2002). He was paraphrasing the famous words of Winston Churchill, who was known to have made use of a double himself. So too did George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Most world leaders, in fact -- and the intelligence apparata surrounding them -- consider doubles and decoys a part of their bag of tricks.

''It's definitely a play that one wants to have in their arsenal,'' Mr. Mendez said. ''It's the sort of thing that comes to mind immediately when you think about the good guys and the bad guys. The idea of bilocation -- of being able to be in two places at once -- is key to some situations of security,'' he said. ''Everyone uses it.''

J UST what lengths a government like Iraq might go to is only a matter of resources. Finding lookalikes willing to serve a higher calling isn't difficult, Mr. Mendez said, particularly when patriotic passions are inflamed. Makeup artists are deft at making temporary changes. And turning to plastic surgery for more permanent alterations is common in every corner of international intrigue. Iraq is not likely to be an exception.

Which would make expediting so-called regime change in Iraq with an assassin's bullet -- whatever the savings, both in lives and cash -- a bit more daunting.

''It's a matter of playing a little bit of roulette,'' Mr. Mendez said. ''It goes with the turf.''

Photos (MSNBC); (Central Intelligence Agency); ZDF-auslandsjournal); (Royal Army Pay Corps) Chart: ''The Many Faces of Saddam . . .'' Spotting impostor Saddams can be a daunting business. Facial features need to be scrutinized, mustaches and eyebrows measured. Here's how a German team went about it. FOREST OF FACES -- Hundreds of photographs and video stills of Saddam Hussein were examined, looking for similar angles and profiles. The best shots were selected for digital enhancement so that facial features could be compared. LINING THEM UP -- As images were selected, they were resized to align facial features with those on images known to be of the real Saddam Hussein. REFERENCE POINTS -- Facial relationships that should remain stable over time, such as the width of the eyes, were mapped, measured and compared. In the end, the research suggested that Saddam uses at least three different doubles. At left, what might be a boatful of them. These four images came from the German research project. Can you spot the real Saddam among the impostors? . . . Are Simply Part Of a Global Game Both in war and times of peace, most governments make use of doubles -- for security reasons or otherwise. GOOD GUYS -- At Gibraltar and in Algiers during World War II, the actor Clifton James (bottom image) doubled for Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery (top). BAD GUYS . . . -- Mao Zedong's double was spotted by analyzing his ear (below). In the book Photo Fakery, the middle Mao is said to be the impostor. . . . AND BUFFOONS -- Uganda's Idi Amin was known to employ a body-double -- most frequently when he thought he was in danger of being shot. The real Mr. Amin is in the bottom image.

Correction: October 20, 2002, Sunday A picture caption on Oct. 6 with an article about President Saddam Hussein's use of lookalikes in Iraq reversed the identities of Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery and his lookalike in World War II, Clifton James. Mr. James was shown in the top picture.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am


Return to Another View on 9/11

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests

cron