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New saddam video aired Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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New videotape of 'Saddam' aired
NBC, MSNBC and news services
The mystery surrounding the fate of Saddam Hussein deepened Friday with the broadcast of a videotape purportedly showing the Iraqi leader addressing supporters in Baghdad on April 9 -- two days after a U.S. bombing demolished a compound where he was believed to be attending a meeting. The videotape was broadcast by Abu Dhabi Television hours after U.S. military officials announced the capture of another top aide to Saddam on the U.S. most-wanted list.
U.S. OFFICIALS SAID that there was no way to immediately determine whether the videotape was authentic, saying it would take days to study clues that could allow analysts to pinpoint the time it was filmed.
Abu Dhabi TV correspondent Jaber Obeid said that an unidentified person who provided the videotape to the Arab network assured them that it was shot April 9, as U.S. forces moved into Baghdad.
The station said the pictures, taken in the Azamiyah neighborhood of Baghdad, "showed that there were parts of Baghdad that hadn't fallen at that day and that still had Iraqi security presence in them."
A CHEERING THRONG
In the videotape, the man identified as Saddam, wearing a beret and olive military uniform, moves through a crowd of people cheering, "With our bloods and souls we redeem you, Oh Saddam."
Helped by guards, the man ascends to the hood of a car and appears a bit embarrassed as he acknowledges the cheers. Some of those cheering him held AK-47 assault rifles.
Alongside him stood a man resembling Saddam's younger son, Qusai.
There was nothing to indicate definitively when the pictures were shot. Haze was visible in the background that could have been dust -- but also could have been smoke from U.S. bombardments.
But the latest pictures appeared to corroborate a report in a London-based Arabic newspaper on Thursday.
FOOTAGE MATCHES NEWSPAPER REPORT
London-based Al-Hayat newspaper quoted witnesses as saying that Saddam had delivered a half-hour speech to supporters from atop a car on April 9, speaking as U.S. forces were moving into the Iraqi capital and a crowd of Iraqis was toppling a statue of him in another part of the city.
Al-Hayat, which said that Saddam was accompanied by Qusai Hussein and his security chief , Al Amin Abd Hamed Hamoud, during the appearance near the Azamia mosque.
Witnesses told Hayat the Iraqi leader and his entourage departed about 12 hours before a U.S. air raid on the area which they said destroyed part of a graveyard behind the mosque.
A man who described himself as a former Iraqi army officer also told Reuters earlier this week that he saw Saddam at about that time outside a mosque in the northern Baghdad district.
A White House official, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, played down the importance of the tape.
"We still don't know if Saddam is alive or dead, but ... he is no longer in power nor is he a threat to anyone," the official said.
A SENSE OF RESIGNATION?
But Pentagon officials who discussed the tape with NBC's Jim Miklaszewski said the subdued tone of the speech differed sharply from other tapes in which he exhorted Iraqis to defeat the invading forces and lent credence to the suggestion that it was filmed after it became apparent that the coalition forces were winning the war.
"He appeared almost resigned to the fact that the U.S. military has taken over his country," Miklaszewski reported. "He tells his supporters to 'be patient in this time of despair. ... You will be rewarded with paradise in the end and glory from Allah.'"
Saddam has been known to use "body doubles" to confuse would-be assassins, but retired Air Force Lt. Col Rick Francona, an expert on the Iraqi military and an NBC News consultant, said the voice heard on the tape appeared to be Saddam's.
"It's his speech pattern and it's how he speaks," he said on MSNBC TV.
Another U.S. official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said that analysis of the tape would likely take days. It took intelligence analysts several days to determine that a tape of Saddam touring another part of of Baghdad, which was broadcast by Iraqi television on April 4, had been shot a month earlier than claimed, the official said.
HUNT FOR SADDAM CONTINUES
The United States is still searching for Saddam inside Iraq, especially in Baghdad and the city of Tikrit, his hometown.
U.S. troops also have been searching for forensic evidence in the ruins of a compound in west Baghdad that was hit by four satellite-guided bombs on April 7 after U.S. intelligence received information that Saddam was meeting with other Baath Party officials.
Resolving the fate of Saddam -- either capturing him or killing him -- would be a major step for American forces in their invasion of Iraq.
One senior White House official said Wednesday that the Iraqi leader is probably dead.
In the first of a series of White House Web chats, chief of staff Andrew Card was asked by a resident of Quincy, Mass., about what he knew about Saddam.
"He is not likely to be in Quincy, Braintree or my hometown of Holbrook. I think he's dead."
"The good news is that his regime is no longer a threat to the people of Iraq nor to the U.S. or our allies," Card wrote during the 30-minute online discussion titled "Ask the White House," which allows visitors to the official Web site to quiz Bush aides directly.
A senior U.S. official later told Reuters that the United States had not reached "any final conclusion at this point" and that he was unaware of any evidence confirming that the deposed Iraqi president was alive or dead.
President Bush, who is spending a long Easter holiday break at his ranch near Crawford, Texas, has said he does not know whether Saddam is dead or alive.
ANOTHER SENIOR IRAQI CAPTURED
Earlier Friday, U.S. Central Command announced that Samir Abd al-Aziz al-Najim, a senior leader of Saddam's shattered Baath party, had been handed over to U.S. forces overnight by Iraqi Kurds near the northern city of Mosul.
Al-Najim was on the list of 55 former Iraqi leaders whom the U.S. military wants killed or captured.
It was the second straight day that Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks opened his daily briefing by announcing the capture of a significant official. Thursday, U.S. forces grabbed Barzan Ibrahim Hasan, a half brother of Saddam and a former head of Iraqi intelligence.
Al-Najim is a member of the Baath party's Regional Command, the top decision-body in the party. He was Iraqi oil minister until earlier this year and was Saddam's chief of staff for several years after the 1991 Gulf War.
The whereabouts of thetop officialsremain a top concern for the United States and its coalition partners.
While they droveSaddamand his government from power in four weeks, the majority of the regime leadership remain at large -- and some are believed to have fled to Syria.
ONE OF THREE HALF-BROTHERS
Hasan is one of three half-brothers of Saddam and the second to be captured. On Sunday, coalition forces announced the capture of Watban Ibrahim Hasan, who once served as Iraq's interior minister.
Watban Hasan was one of the 55 regime figures whose pictures were distributed to troops to help them search for the Iraqi leaders.
Barzan Hasan, like his brother Watban, was seen as a major catch because of the likelihood he could provide information on Saddam's suspected weapons of mass destruction program, one of the major reasons the United States and Great Britain launched the war.
So far coalition forces have not found any certain evidence that those weapons still exist in Iraq.
The third half-brother, Sab'awi Ibrahim Hasan, reportedly had taken refuge in Damascus, Syria.
Damascus denies any top officials of the former government have been offered sanctuary.
NBC's Tammy Kupperman, Jim Miklaszewski and Robert Windrem
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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