The McMillan Tac-338 but the specific rifle round is immaterial to the actual point which is that we could have either left it alone or contracted to have it done.
You may believe that Saddam had no enemies in Iraq that were both brave and capable and would take a $2 million USD contract on an enemy of theirs in a more relaxed pre-war environment but I don't believe that. The U.S. had an extensive spy network over there for decades before the Iraq war began and we knew who to pass it off to.
Consider that armed robbers are executed every year in places like Saudi Arabia. They arm themselves and commit the crime of armed robbery
knowing that they will be executed if they are caught.
But once Iraq escalated to their highest level of alert, which it did well before the war actually began, the opportunity would have been near impossible. And, I'm not aware of a U.S. bounty on Saddam while it was still feasible.
From a legal perspective, no standing Federal law criminalizes the assassination of a foreign official outside the boundaries of the United States. In the absence of such a statute, only Executive Order 12333 prohibits the act of state-sponsored killing.
This Order, which was drafted in the mid-1970s in the wake of revelations of government involvement in plots to kill several foreign leaders, has been maintained by every administration since President Ford despite several attempts by Congress to override Executive Order 12333 the most recent of which was H.R. 19 (“Terrorist Elimination Act of 2001”) which stated:
"Past Presidents have issued Executive orders which severely limit the use of the military when dealing with potential threats against the United States of America;... these Executive orders limit the swift, sure, and precise action needed by the United States to protect our national security; present strategy allows the military to bomb large targets hoping to eliminate a terrorist leader, but prevents our country from designing a limited action which would specifically accomplish that purpose."
But my comment
was a joke. I wasn't actually advocating for that though in the case of a psychotic sociopathic megalomaniac genocidist like Saddam Hussein, I can assert that such an action may have been justifiable and desirable for Israel to take as they were the ones facing an actual military threat.
However, my position is that we should have kept our involvement with respect to Iraq in the domain of diplomacy for many reasons (not the least of which they posed no actual military threat to the U.S.) and saved the taxpayers $2.4 trillion dollars.
Which USA rifle shoots .338???
On the understanding that ol' Saddam had this wood-chipping machine, I don't think men would have been lining up for the job of trying to assassinate the old boy. And then Saddam had 2 sons, what were their names? Fuchi & Smoochi or something.
As I recall Bush II had a big bounty on Saddam with no results.
