Stardate 20030401.0931

(On Screen): As I write this, in about ten minutes Saddam will reportedly give another TV speech to the people of Iraq.

If it turns out to be another general exhortation to resistance, without any clear reference to specific events in the immediate past, then it will mean that Saddam is either dead or dying and it was another tape made much earlier. This is a key test.

Iraq's Sabri has been extremely visible, but Saddam has been uncharacteristically invisible since the bombing mission the first night which tried to kill him. There have only been two TV appearances and neither of them contained any material which unambiguously proved that they were not prepared before the war.

I think that the Iraqi government knows that this is important, but of course if he truly is out of the picture there's nothing they can do. If he actually is still alive and is actually able to deliver a new speech today, they will pretty much have to make sure it contains material which unambiguously proves that he really did do it today.

Prediction: it won't contain such material; he isn't in command. Whether he's dead or in a coma I could not say, but I don't believe he's actually making a speech today.

Update: He didn't appear. The statement was topical but was read by the Information Minister, Mohammred Saeed al-Sahaf.

The only possible conclusion is that Saddam didn't appear because he couldn't. Either he's dead, or he's in a coma, or he is so badly wounded as to make it impossible to disguise the fact on TV.

By the way, notice that there's been no trace of Qusay or Uday since the bombing? I think we got all three of them.