How about Tariq Aziz as the betrayer . . . or even the Info Minister. The latter has definitely done a lot of good work gaining Saddam's trust the past few days . . .

One guy: "so, you guys get together over there, and I'll catch up with you after the bomb... er, I mean, after... I call... my mom."

Heh! No honor among thieves.

I still have trouble believing it. I think they're still roaming around. Any word on if Saddam's daughters were at the meeting too? Why would they collect in baghdad for a meeting when they could escape and meet elsewhere?

Ya know, that Tariq Aziz never was very trustworthy. And I don't think he's gotten a bit nicer since the days when he played Larry Tate on "Bewitched."

Aziz is no dummy; it could have been him. The information minister is an idiot; he is too loyal.

Please note, Skippy the Information Minister, who appears in every "canned" scene with Saddam shown up till now, was on CNN this afternoon. (Check down some links to "1:17 AM" Iraq time)
So that means he survived unless that CNN interview was taped the night (our time) before.

I like the "Larry Tate" theory...

Good to hear that Skippy survived. I wanna party with that guy.

Yes. Larry Tate.

I thought he did a pretty good job as Larry Tate...how he ever got hooked up with a loon like Saddam, I guess we'll just have to wait for the Barbara Walters interview to find out.

I hope Baghdad Bob survived. I hope he turned Saddam in. This is guy is too funny not to have his own sitcom.

Party with BaghdadBob? Like hell. I think I'm gonna get my company to hire him for a tech support role. Imagine that: "You think it isn't working? Yes it is. It is an illusion. Just keep clicking. It is fine. Thank you very much. Goodbye."

If it was Aziz, we'll never hear about it. Aziz is a Christian, and if he turned in Saddam, it would further fuel "jihad" against Christians in the Arab world (like these guys need any fuel).

Aziz could wind up with a new name, a nose job, and a nice home outside of Houston.

FastEddie - that's genius. I work in IT, I should have thought about that.

Don't count on it. Four bunker busters? There won't be enough left in that crater for souvenir hunters, let alone for forensic folks to make a positive ID. We have just made Saddan immortal.

I do think Baghdad "Skippy" Bob would have done quite well as an official spokesman for a major software company with whom we're all familiar. Alas, his resumé is hopelessly corrupted by now.

Fast Eddie - ROFL. That was great! HA. Get in line, I'm bringing him in as a full partner. VP-PR. LOL

I work in IT too. And the more obstructive the lower-level support guys are, the less likely I'm gonna get called. I thought of it the very first time I heard him speak...

There is no virus on the network! The infected emails are committing suicide at the border routers!

Just don't let Dogbert get anywhere near him....

That's my take. Our helpdesk is more like a glorified receptionist. Baghdad Bob could simply confuse the Hell out of someone, and make them give up.

The Internet is slow because you are looking at PORN! Go, infidel, commit suicide at the gates! We will be victorious!

It is not a bug. It is a feature.

"I've got a wild theory about Sahaf. Think COINTELPRO." - me, 2:19PM Pacific here.

Just in case...

Ya know, Baghdad Bob could have sold him given the timing. It would make sense.

"Sorry sir, I can't make the meeting. I promised to give a press conference, and it'll look like you're dea...er...losing control if I don't show up."

Can you imagine Baghdad Bob saying "the optics don't look good, fearless leader"?

If this attempt failed Saddam now knows not to use his "Jaguar" system any longer. Thanks Rita and Fox News for yet again giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Hell - Churchill let Coventry get bombed rather than let the Nazis learn about a SIGINT source.

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH

Eh, Saddam hasn't proven to be as smart as bin Laden.
If he had been, he would have known that his field commanders were lying to him and the US Army was already encircling the city.

If the Minister of Silly Talks has actually been working for us all along, then hand that guy the friggin' Oscar.

So that is why he was smiling during the press conference today!

I hope we really got him this time, otherwise we will never convince the locals that he isn't supernatural...

Then winning them over will be even harder...

MissPepper...I bet it was :-)

I read something today about an Iraqi general turning coat, giving information. He was promised a new home and identity--maybe England. Perhaps that's how they got the information.

Meryl -- not nearly close enough to the inner circle, plus not nearly timely enough, I think.

I'm going to go with Lonewacko on this one - Sahaf's disconnection with reality is just too perfect. He makes these wild claims, all the while smiling because he knows that he's going to get the upper hand on Saddam at some point. He goes to the restaurant, says "oh heck, I left the stove on at home - back in a bit!" and calls into his CIA handler.

If Rita and Fox News announced this it was only because an official source told them. They sure as hell didn't figure it out for themselves.

So, reading up on some of the latest Jaguar technology (available from, say, the NIST), I find that the Jaguar that I could find on NIST's site provides FIPS 140-1 compliance for encryption, using "DES". Now, that's remarkably vague.

Looking here, we find that the largest size key used is 64 bits. By way of comparison, your web browser, in secure mode, provides 128 bits of encryption, and even that shouldn't be that hard for the most technologically advanced snoops in the world to break quickly.

That is to say, if this equipment was sold to him by Great Britain in 1988, as Cosby noted, he's an idiot for using it. Breaking 40 bit DES is so trivial that no one should use it, because the computing power needed to break it quickly is probably available on your desk. 64 bits is orders of magnitudes harder, but keep in mind this is the NSA we're talking about here. Throw a teraflop machine at the problem and decryption of 64 bit DES is probably done in real-time. I don't have the exact numbers on that but it's got to be close.

If Saddam was trusting a Jaguar phone from 1988, he deserves what he gets. Anyone who has an ounce of sense would use something more secure, like this, or this).

Personally, I don't think Saddam is at all smart. The fact that he used electronics! And, electronics given to him by the people that currently want him dead!

A friend said if he had been smart, he should have used messengers with a written code.

And, yet again, tonight, I wait with bated breath, staying up late, just to get my daily entertainment with Baghdad Bob. Please, let him be on!

I doubt it's the Information Minister who betrayed; the Info. Minister probably isn't invited to these secret senior security meetings because of the fear of such an attack. If the Information Minister doesn't show up on TV for a few days, it's a bad sign for the regime and could lead the Iraqi people to take the hint that Saddam is gone. The Info. Minister has been so ubiquitous as of late that his absence would be quickly noticed, and this would create problems for Saddam. So I doubt that Saddam keeps his Info. Minister close. Also, I'm not sure that someone could have betrayed Saddam. I think that if Saddam had noticed, at the beginning of the meeting, that someone was missing, he would cancel it and move the crowd to another bunker. For a man on the run, that seems like too simple a mistake to make. As for Tariq Aziz, we haven't seen him at all during the war. Could he be dead?

Most likely, I think that it's a combination of surveillance intercepts which gave the Allies an idea and were followed up by on-the-ground human research. The US and Britain have an eye and ear in Baghdad, and I have to imagine they can listen to any conversation happening in the city. Maybe they've tracked one general or official, unbeknownst to the poor soul, and are using him as an unwitting tool to destroy Saddam.

The point is really this: We don't know, and we may never know, how this came about. Let's just hope we have the right guy.

DES uses 56 bit keys. It can be cracked fairly easily using custom hardware, or by throwing enough resources at it. See http://www.eff.org/descracker.html for a description of a hardware DES cracker that the EFF built. And that was back in '98, five years ago. They can probably get pretty close to real time cracking now, perhaps a delay of a few hours.

"Any word on if Saddam's daughters were at the meeting too?"

I doubt that they would be there; brutal regime stuff is the province of sons and men. Still though, betrayal by a revengeful daughter (since Saddam murdered their husbands) has a touch of plausibility.

z

of course expect a lot of disinformation from our govt. too. why give away the farm? but there must be some reason why they put so much ordinance on that spot.

i am sure a cover, a semi cover a deep cover and a real story exist.

we may never know

but i would guess that if a human betrayed him, that this person has a "get out of jail free" card with a new face and home in the witness protection programs

Q: Who has blonde hair, blue eyes, large breast, and is living in Sweden?

A: Tariq Aziz