Comment from Rayelan: Saddam has several doubles. I wouldn't put it past Iraq to keep the doubles in power until they are sure that Uday, Saddam's son is ready to assume power.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Middle_East/2001-01/iran040101.shtml

Iraq scoffs at claims of Saddam stroke
By Patrick Cockburn

4 January 2001

Iraq has denounced reports that President Saddam Hussein is in hospital because of a stroke after a military parade in Baghdad last Sunday.

"These press reports are stupid and do not even merit a response," a spokesman for the Information Ministry in Baghdad said yesterday.

At the parade, the Iraqi leader had saluted his troops by "firing a rifle into the air 142 times using one hand" and had stood for five hours, he said.

An opposition group based in Damascus, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, had claimed that the President, 63, had suffered a "severe stroke". The London-based Saudi-backed newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported that he had collapsed at a banquet after the parade and was removed to an intensive care unit in hospital.

Sources in Iraq have confirmed that foreign doctors have recently been summoned to Baghdad.

The President also gave some observers the impression last autumn that he was preparing for the end by asking for the Koran to be written out in his blood – presumably heavily diluted. Reports in the Arab press said he had been diagnosed as having cancer two years ago, and that it had spread to his lymph glands.

He appeared healthy until a few years ago. Former associates say that he had some back pain, but worked hard, often rising before dawn.

If the President dies, his successor is likely to be one of his sons, Uday or Qusay, or his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid. Of these, the most likely is Qusay, his younger son.

Uday, badly wounded by an assassin in 1996, is a powerful newspaper owner with a well-established reputation for cruelty and debauchery.

The Iraqi leader has made it difficult for any family member to take over easily. When his son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, returned to Iraq after defecting to Jordan in 1995, he was killed. Despite the Gulf war and a decade of sanctions, the President is very much in control.