Saddam and Osama: The Match-up

Aug. 15, 2002 -- Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are now closer than they have ever been before — at least in the public imagination.

As the White House adjusts its focus from the war on terror towards a potential war on Iraq, these two men have emerged with a common distinction. They are the men most wanted by the leader of the most powerful nation in the world.

But this pair has much more in common than their willingness to stand in the face of the world's sole superpower. Their personal histories and political situations show some distinct parallels.

It is their contrasts though, that may point to who should be the priority for the current administration — and who will be the bigger political prize.

Bin Laden, of course, is the alleged terrorist mastermind whose al Qaeda organization has killed thousands of Americans. Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush said of bin Laden: "There is an old poster out West. As I recall it said: 'Wanted, Dead or Alive.'"

Saddam Hussein is the president of Iraq who invaded neighboring Kuwait a decade ago — drawing a previous president, the current president's father, into the Persian Gulf War. He has also been accused of developing weapons of mass destruction.

The president said in April, "the policy of my government is to remove Saddam and that all options are on the table."

Commonalities of Fugitives

The biggest similarities between bin Laden and Saddam is their wanted status and their ability to maintain relatively public profiles.

Saddam, under the aegis of his own state, has continually taunted and refused Washington. In a nationally televised speech on Aug. 8, he said "the forces of evil will carry their coffins on their backs to die in disgraceful failure."

Bin Laden, in hiding, still managed to issue several videotaped messages to Arabic satellite broadcaster al-Jazeera in the months after U.S. forces took control of his former sponsor state of Afghanistan. However, it has been some months since the last tape aired which has prompted speculation that he has been killed or seriously wounded.

Knowing how badly Bush and other Western leaders want them dead, both men maintain a rigid security pattern aimed at confusing those who may be watching.

Before meeting Saddam for rare private talks last week, British parliamentarian George Galloway was driven around Baghdad for an hour, in a car with blacked out windows. He then met the Iraqi leader in a bunker that was so deep underground, his ears popped on the way down.

ABCNEWS' correspondent John Miller, one of the few Western journalists to meet bin Laden, said he was subjected to similar scrutiny when he interviewed him in 1998.

Miller recalled traveling for hours through rocky wastelands in Afghanistan, in a truck with darkly tinted windows — "It was clear they didn't want us to see where we were going," he said. "Every few miles, men in Muslim garb would jump out from behind rocks, pointing guns and ordering the truck to halt."

There have been no independently confirmed sightings of bin Laden since U.S. troops went to Afghanistan to hunt him down.

Both bin Laden and Saddam are also rumored to use body-doubles to stymie would-be assassins. And with good reason, too. Both men have learned that the United States apparently has no compunctions about their murders.

President Clinton launched missile strikes at Afghanistan in 1998, hoping, at least in part, to kill bin Laden. In June, ABCNEWS confirmed President Bush authorized the CIA to kill Saddam. The order allowed teams to kill him if they were acting in self-defense.

Both men are known to have made claims that they have outlasted the American leaders who began the charge for them.

The Mythic Self

While Bin Laden and Saddam have their doppelgangers, both men are proudly originals — having built for themselves massive cults of personality.

Portraits of Saddam cover walls and billboards across Iraq. School children memorize poems and songs extolling him. Bin Laden, meanwhile, has become the face of the global movement for fundamentalist Islam.

Both have adopted the image of a great military leader, despite emerging from distinctly non-military backgrounds. They're "military leaders in a Walter Mitty way," said Glynn Wood, a former American diplomat in the Middle East, and dean of the Monterey Institute.

Both men are also fond of presenting themselves as modern-day versions of Saladin, a Muslim hero who famously drove the crusaders out of the Middle East.

Before Saddam gained power, he had hardly any military experience — he was a revolutionary party cadre and a law student. Now he often appears in the uniform of an Iraqi Field Marshal, and fires rifles during his country's frequent military parades.

Part of the bin Laden legend is that he fought with the mujahideen, who drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan. In videotaped appearances, bin Laden has been shown firing a Kalashnikov assault rifle, and a carrying traditional knife. But experts say bin Laden was largely a supply officer in the war against the Soviets.

"He's not a leader in battle any more than Saddam Hussein is," Wood said.

Their cults of personality have also extended to their families. Saddam is believed to be grooming his sons Uday and Qusay to take over after his death.

Earlier this month, U.S. intelligence officials told ABCNEWS that Saad bin Laden, believed to be in his early 20s, has risen quickly through the ranks of al Qaeda, to become one of his father's most trusted deputies.

A Network of Ironies

Both Saddam and bin Laden also have a certain resonance in the American leaders they have become bogeymen for. While Saddam personified evil for former President Bush, bin Laden personifies evil for his son, the current president.

"It's somewhat ironic," Wood said, especially since the two Bushes come from a party that has traditionally aligned with Arab interests — and from a family whose wealth is based on oil.

Accordingly, both Saddam and bin Laden have both become rallying points for certain populations in the Middle East, and therefore U.S. access to the region's oil deposits becomes a component of the situation.

The American hunt for them both also incorporates Saudi Arabia, another major oil producer — whose proximity to Iraq will affect any move on Saddam, and whose powerful clerics can affect the fight against al Qaeda.

Saddam and bin Laden were also the patrons of U.S. largesse at one time during their rise to power. During the 1980s, the United States made covert arms transactions with the mujahideen in Afghanistan for their fight against the Soviets, and with Iraq, during its eight year conflict with Iran.

In Opposite Directions

However, while Saddam and bin Laden are similar in their means, they differ in the ends.

Bin Laden is a religious fundamentalist who has said his greatest ambition is to establish a pan-Islamic state. In contrast, experts said, Saddam's goals are simply to accumulate power.

"Bin Laden's goals are ideological," said Sharif Ali bin Al-Hussein, a spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group. "Saddam Hussein should be looked at as a gangster."

Saddam's "agenda is survival of his regime, himself,[and] Iraq," said Amin Tarzi, a former adviser on Iraq to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and now a researcher at the Monterey Institute.

Saddam sees himself as a champion of the Arabs — which precludes the Muslims in Africa, America and Southeast Asia that would play into bin Laden's worldview. Bin Laden, as a stateless terrorist, may even be a threat to Saddam, the head of a secular state, experts said.

The lives of these two men have gone in opposite directions. Saddam, poor and illiterate as a youth, has gone to living in opulent palaces. Bin Laden, born to one of the wealthiest families in the world, has spent much time lately living in caves and mud huts.

"One went from rags to riches and the other went from riches to rags," said Tarzi.

Who's Up First?

The differences between bin Laden and Saddam should also determine which one is the bigger priority.

Experts uniformly agreed that bin Laden, and more specifically, the al Qaeda movement, poses a greater threat to the United States. Even Ali, from the INC said bin Laden is more dangerous in the sense that his ideas have widespread appeal.

"Saddam Hussein doesn't offer anything, he's just a good administrator," he said. Tarzi also pointed out that Iraq has not declared war on the United States, while bin Laden has.

Removing Saddam from power would not do too much to change Iraq's hegemonic ambitions, especially on Kuwait, Wood noted. In addition, "it's quite embarrassing we haven't been able to find a 6' 5" Arab with a bad kidney," he said in reference to bin Laden who looks markedly different from the Afghans he is surrounded by.

Despite these assessments though, most experts also argued that Saddam is a more urgent target, especially since bin Laden was forced into hiding.

Ali said that Iraq's potential for threatening the rest of the world with weapons of mass destruction also made the case against Saddam more urgent.

"Getting rid of Osama bin Laden will not solve the problem [of fundamentalist terrorism] but getting rid of Saddam Hussein will solve the problem [of a rogue state obtaining weapons of mass destruction]," he said.

On a similar note, Tarzi said that removing Saddam from power would offer greater spoils than removing bin Laden from power. It would not only eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction, but it would stabilize the area, and perhaps prompt a positive change in Iran and Saudi Arabia, he said.

An Iraq which has joined the Western fold could also have positive repercussions for the oil markets, the Palestinian issue, and perhaps even the spread of Islamic fundamentalist terror, he said.

But Tarzi also warned that with the threat from al Qaeda still not completely resolved, and continuing tensions in other areas of the Middle East, going after Saddam Hussein is "a major gamble."

Such an operation has to succeed brilliantly — even beyond how Afghanistan has turned out — or "we'll be left without any cards to play," he said.