Silly question. Do you want to be nuked or don't you? How did he know for a fact that "the U.S. was going to kill him in his bunker anyway"? Getting nuked is a little more certain, more difficult to survive. But if he had a strong enough bunker to hide in, he may have thought he could stall us, we'd suffer casualties, it would drag out, and then we weak-kneed Westerners would pull out and/or his pals in the UN would come to his rescue and tell us to pull out. This seems to have been how he thought he could survive the whole thing, based on how much attention he seemed to be paying to the UN process, bribing France/Germany/Russia/lefty Western politicians/public figures, etc. Right?
Isn't he supposed to be a madman of some sort? Oh, sorry -- I forgot. That was just part of the soccer-mom propaganda campaign.
My statements are not affected by whether Saddam Hussein is or is not a madman. They are based on my best interpretation of his actions: he seemed to actually think he could forestall a war in the UN and/or get us bogged down in a Mogadishu like "quagmire" and come out of it relatively unscathed (tens of thousands of dead Iraqi troops, or so; him, still in power). In any event, it is clear that he wanted to survive. A nuke would have been rather detrimental to his survival chances. Anyway, this is all hypothetical, surely you're not SERIOUSLY questioning the deterrence value of threatening to nuke someone?
Note: Clearly the U.S. had no intention of killing him in his bunker, as we are now starting to learn.
I am not starting to learn this. Clearly you need to "educate" me some more: what on earth are you talking about?
Where do you think Saddam Hussein is right now?
I have no way of knowing but if you want my wild hunch (and, you seem to) I suspect that he is dead, under the ground somewhere.
Clearly the U.S. must have offered him some kind of protection, or else he would have had no reason to refrain from using his WMDs.
I don't see this so "Clearly". This is based on such a large number of unsubstantiated assumptions (one of them being that Saddam Hussein is alive) that it's practically not worth discussing. This kind of wild speculation is more interesting in threads about cosmology, alternative universes and such.
After that disastrous meeting with April Glaspie in 1990, I can't imagine Saddam Hussein would be dumb enough to place any trust in the U.S. unless he held a very potent club over our head.
. . . he seemed to actually think he could forestall a war in the UN and/or get us bogged down in a Mogadishu like "quagmire" and come out of it relatively unscathed (tens of thousands of dead Iraqi troops, or so; him, still in power).
He obviously had no plans for a quagmire, since his military forces seem to have vanished from Iraq and he was effectively out of power about 30 minutes into the war.
. . . surely you're not SERIOUSLY questioning the deterrence value of threatening to nuke someone?
Threatening to nuke someone only has a deterrence value if his survival is at stake. If he perceives that he is going to die anyway, then there is no deterrance value. For evidence of this, see the blank page in any law enforcement manual under the sub-section titled "Deterring Someone Hell-Bent on Murder-Suicide."
Clearly you need to "educate" me some more: what on earth are you talking about?
There was a story posted here sometime this morning along these lines. Apparently, that initial "attack on Saddam's bunker" on Day 1 of the military campaign wasn't actually made on a bunker at all. In fact, nobody seems to know who or what the target was.
I have no way of knowing but if you want my wild hunch (and, you seem to) I suspect that he is dead, under the ground somewhere.
Maybe. I think it is just as likely that he is now the proud owner of a new 7-11 franchise in Paterson, New Jersey.