Besides bluster and BS. Consider your general. Major General.

He wasn't killed, he was exiled.

By a ruthless SOB who didn't hesitate to kill anyone he didn't care for. (Saddam)

One wonders why. One would suppose the good general would have carried into exile knowledge Saddam wouldn't want out of the country.

And yet Saddam risked that, sparing his life, and exiling the guy. To be a pain in the neck? To start cooperating with Westerners? To give away Saddam's hideaways, and communications structure even more?

And since then he's been changed, powdered and buffed, presented to Americans as an ideologically pure Iraqi Major General under Saddam Hussein.

One sometimes has to apply reason to knowledge, and then accept the obvious. Occasionally the more remote possibility becomes more possible. But until then, the obvious usually suffices.

Arf