Saddam Gets Desperate

Here’s an underreported story from the Mirror.

SADDAM Hussein has been in secret negotiations with US forces in Iraq for the past nine days, we can reveal.
The Iraqi dictator is demanding safe passage to the former Soviet republic of Belarus. In exchange, he has vowed to provide information on weapons of mass destruction and disclose bank accounts where he siphoned off tens of millions of dollars in plundered cash.
President Bush is being kept abreast of the extraordinary talks by his National Security advisor Condoleezza Rice. She is co-ordinating negotiations in Baghdad which are led by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of American forces in Iraq.
[…]
He [a senior Iraqi] maintained that Saddam had decided to seek a deal “because he is desperate, trapped and finding fewer and fewer people willing to give him shelter.”
He added: “He resorts to arriving with a posse of armed men, and forcing them to give him hospitality. When he leaves the frightened ‘hosts’ are told they’ll be killed if they say a word.”
The United States has vowed never to negotiate with Saddam and want to take him dead or alive, but the White House hopes the clandestine talks will allow them to pinpoint the tyrant’s exact location.

If this story is true, that much ballyhooed “resistance” isn’t going so well after all. And come on. No one should be surprised.
(Via Sean LaFreniere.)