Prefatory Comment
" THE TELEPATH, RE: "Saddam's 'defeated' body language".:
Here we are feted with a crowded tableful of that rich and laughable rubbish -- fanciful, arbitrary, cute, ingeniously and zealously designed to wow and surprise -- which PAID "experts", in such astrological specialties as this, are prone to cook up and serve out of their scientific vacuums.
This one leaps effortlessly across an ocean -- to an alien culture, nation, religion, language, situation, rare class of human being -- to melodramatically and caricaturally explain everything that is to be read in a finger, eyebrow, wrinkle, tilt, shoulder, or wink, with impeccable omniscience and precision, and not a trace of hesitation, suggestion of a secondary hypothesis, or smudge of qualification.
Much of what she grandiosely observes is trivial or useless, often mere half-truths or hemi-demi-semi-truths, or chockful of unadmitted or unrecognized assumptions; on the other hand, much that -- in fact, far more of what -- IS important or noteworthy goes unmentioned.
Odd that I myself saw so much of what Patti Wood speaks of so differently and often antithetically. I found Mr. Hussein unexpectedly dignified, mostly at ease, controlled, and impressive.
His ironic repost that it is Bush, not he, who has been guilty of a crime, and who ought to be on trial instead, was wittily telling and embarrassingly accurate.
Pretty pictures are not truth; and truth, for its part, is often ugly in its complexity, crosshatching, roots, hundred or ten-thousand branches, random meanders, and refusal to ever let itself be yanked up altogether from its soil.
"" Patrick Gunkel
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The BBC, 2004 July 1.
" "Saddam's 'defeated' body language"
NECESSARY IMAGES:
Saddam Hussein's posture during his court appearance suggested studied rather than spontaneous defiance, a US body-language expert told BBC News Online.
According Patti Wood, an Atlanta-based consultant, the former Iraqi leader projected a sense of defeat -- despite occasional fighting gestures.
"He did not appear disoriented, as he clearly was in the videotape of his capture," she said.
But neither did he hold himself like the absolute ruler he was, whose intense stare "penetrated you like a laser beam", Ms Wood added.
"That's gone," she said.
During the hearing he frequently looked down, with his shoulders sloped -- which signals lack of power, she argues.
"It's as if the rest of world is weighing on you," Ms Wood said.
"The old Saddam's shoulders came straight across".
Click here to see the rest of the article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3858315.stm
