Nero's playing his fiddle as Rome burns....

“You see things … on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience is never removed from immediate consciousness.”
-Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

So here's a conspiracy theory for you all to kick around. Friday started with the headlines that Halliburton overcharged the government by $61 million. Sunday, we have headlines that we caught Saddam. Hmmmmmmm, any paranoid people out there wondering if we had Saddam the whole time and orchestrated this, as a little sleight of hand, to take attention away from the Plunderers? Could entirely be a coincidence, but it's awfully convenient.

Unforgiven SC - the NEW home of Unforgiven SC

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exactly. this war is about two things.

1) re-establishing an american hegemon in the mideast. in part to counter the growth of the EU and China, which are grooming themselves to be the big superpowers of this century, and the US wants to stay on top.

remember, back when it was the US versus the Great Commie Hordes, we and the russians were playing a big game of speed chess with countries in central and south america and eastern europe. it was all about having the most strategic locations under your control.

2) stabilize the oil market. we've all known for some time that Saudi Arabia is not a nation we can count on, 911 really brought that home. the fact that the oil and auto companies are trying their damndest to keep high-gas-mileage cars off the road doesn't help.
so now we're stuck. we can either figure out a way to reduce our dependence on oil from unstable terror-supporting states, or we can just go make ourselves a happy pro-american mideast state, and buy oil from them. hell, it worked in 1953 in Iran, at least until the religious nut-balls took over.

of course, Iraq was the clear choice; it is in a strategic location, sitting on huge stocks of oil. the fact that Hussein was already an enemy of the US sealed the deal; everybody still remembers Hussein from Gulf War I. all they needed was the right context to convince the people to let them invade. and 911 gave it to them in spades.

seriously, if this is all about saving the Iraqi people, why did the administration uphold UN sanctions, which we knew were really bad? why does this administration, chock full o' the same guys who gave Hussein weapons in the first place despite knowing that he was a psycho, suddenly care? why is the Saudi Arabian royal family so tight with the Bush family, even though they (SA) rule their people with an iron fist as well? why is Bush friendly with the president of Uzbekistan, a guy who boils political dissidents alive?

again, it's all about business.

He's a killer and a thug. He was tracked down and eventually someone close gave him up. Period.

Patriotism isn't bindly following a leader (that wasn't really elected in the first place) that's what lemmings do.

I'm not anti American, I'm anti the people getting the wool pulled over thier eyes.

I'm a flag waving gun owning harley riding red blooded all American country boy. I just don't play follow the leader blindly.

But this isn't really the right subject for the scooter board.
It's stopped raining for now, I think I'll go out for a ride. My '59 is finally completely finished (just got the floor rails on) after sitting in storage for about 8 years.

Anyway your right of course. This ain't no place for this anyway. I apologise.

my 0.02$

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Scootart inc.
http://www.scootart.com

This is a great day for freedom and the I am super happy. Paying off mafia underworld people to get that asshole is fair game to me, I dont care how and I am happy with the result.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/06/60minutes/main582354.shtml

~Scott

So far everyting is just speculation, everybody has a different story, but I don't think that the US medias first version is going to turn out to be it, and by the time the truth comes out, if it ever does, nobody will care

The US media claimed he was armed and had cash on him.
Most recent reports are:

1)He was buried in a hole that supposably wasn't meant to be openable from the inside.
2)There were two men guarding the hole w/ AK47's that ran off, most likely not guarding the his life, more likely guarding a valuable asset to make sure it doesn't get away. They were the only potential opposition.
3)The money/guns were not found in the hole with him, they were found elsewhere near the hole.

There are also reports that the people holding him had called in a doctor (who later tipped authorities) to try and get Sadam to talk because for awhile he was in pretty bad shape and not coherent. His freinds that were hiding him were trying to extract info from him? Probably not.. If that is the case I'd say the people holding were trying to find out where he had hidden loot before turning him in for a reward.

These stories of "He was armed but surrendered" were just US media hype, people are dumb, they cheer and wave some flags, and when they find out it was all a lie a couple of weeks later, they don't care anymore. Nobody talks about weapons of mass destruction anymore either, now that the hype is over nobody cares that the only weapons they probably ever had were the ones we gave them.

My bet is that he was being held by some local Iraqi gang that was trying to collect the 25mil reward, and to save face (what headlines look better "US Army captures Saddam" or "US pays $25m ransom to Iraqi gang for Saddam") and not pay out $$$ to a "terrorist" orgainization we went in and just took him.

The thing about a doctor providing the tip to find him was from an interview on the news last night, not sure who they were interviewing though, it wasn't a US forces guy, it was a middle eastern diplomat or newsperson, maybe BBC? looked middle eastern, spoke very eloquently.

The rest is all from random TV and radio news. Other then the article that SE posted above, I haven't seen all that stuff put together yet. Who knows, maybe we did happen to trip over a peice of carpet and find a burried room near a mud hut in the middle of nowhere on our own, but I think the odds are slim that that's the case.