http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/11/ ... index.html

Days before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein agreed in principle to accept an offer of exile from the United Arab Emirates, but the deal fell through, a UAE government senior official told CNN.

The reported offer came before an emergency Arab League meeting in Egypt in discussions between UAE officials and a Hussein aide, said the senior official, who was then a member of the UAE delegation to the Arab League.

The Iraqi president issued conditions, and the proposal went nowhere, the UAE official said.

The Hussein aide, Abed Hmoud, is now in jail in Iraq.

The UAE official's account was repeated by another source who attended the Arab League summit and, separately, by a senior UAE government official.

At the time, President Bush was calling for regime change in Iraq.

Hussein wanted guarantees and international assurances, including a resolution by the Arab League giving its approval for his exile, the senior official said.

thats not the full story, but i thought this was really interesting. wonder what would have happened if he did go.

i am sure we still would have gone in.

Gone in, hell we need a viable reason to attack a country

I remember Jack Straw telling parliament that Sadam had been given an offer of protected exile. This was around the time that the final ultimatum was issued prior to the invasion .

him being there was viable? i think not.

I ment to put the , I keep forgetting

Why did the deal fall through?

WARNING: CONSPIRACY THEORY

Would it be unreasonable to believe that the United States government purposely confined Saddam to Iraq for the purpose of going to war, so eventually there can be a front established against Iran and then finally there can be an oil pipeline running from the Caspian sea to the Persian gulf under the control of the US?

END CONSPIRACY THEORY

If Saddam left, Iraq would probably fall under control of its military and then we would have heard the media start defining their army as a terrorist army when some secret information was "revealed" that Iraq's army was training the wretched and unholy Al Qaeda.

Or maybe we would have thought that we won the war on terror.

He just would have found another country to rule and used thdir resources to maybe consider the possibility of attempting to think about perhaps planning some preliminary thoughts toward developing some kind of WMD-type program preliminaries, per chance.