WAS HE A LOOKALIKE? Jake Tapper weighs in:

The individual who spoke in a videotaped appearance on Iraqi state television looked like Saddam Hussein. But he also looked a tad different - with a puffier face, more gray in his hair. Using bulky reading glasses the actual Iraqi dictator does not sport very often, the man on the tape could have been Saddam Hussein after a long, sleepless night - or someone else entirely. For a man known to have several look-alikes, the videotape posed more questions than it answered...

One also has to ask: Why didn't this "Saddam" actor specifically reference the attempt on his life? Why did he make only the most general, abstract accusations about "the reckless criminal little Bush" -- comments which might have applied to any first strike? Why didn't he describe last night's events in a way that would prove the contemporaneous origin of his own remarks?

I suppose it may have been a lookalike -- but just as easily, it could have been the real Saddam, recorded days or weeks in advance!

So what I want to know is this: If Saddam was rendered into toothpaste by our first surgical strike, on whose authority was this tape hauled out the vault and broadcast last night?

UPDATE: Rantburg notes that "Saddam" did mention today's date as he read from the notepad -- and also, that consensus is forming around the notion that it was most likely young Uday who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.