"5) It is still not at all clear saddam is alive."

The question is who is in charge? I say it's a 99% chance that Saddam is no longer in charge. Of course, it's likely that Saddam was never in charge- meaning he was a mostly a puppet. In this case Saddam's death is only a PR problem.
I say that Saddam as a puppet is as probable than Saddam the leader who makes real decisions. If you are making real decisions, then you need to spend large amounts of time going over the options. Saddam is probably fairly lazy, yet manages to spends a lot of time giving speechs. It's more probable that Saddam spends most of his attention is on being in the public eye. Think of it this way, why if someone who was really important, spend so much time droning away on some stupid speech?
Our leaders spend a lot of their time involved with political work- we live in a democracy- that their job. Their decisions are based on options provided by cabinet members, ect; and could be or could not be a kind of consensus. Our President holds real power, he/she makes the final decisions in regards to military power. But if you think of Saddam as a kind of a permanent press secretary, it makes a lot more sense. Maybe, he actually was sad that he had to kill some of his family- "had to" because he was ordered to give the order. And this explains why any invitation to Saddam to leave the country wouldn't work, he's a prisoner- enslaved to the whims of others.