Lt.
Commander Bill Goss, USN (Ret) is an internationally
known speaker and author. Enlisting in 1974,
Bill worked on underwater weapons in Europe
for the U.S. Navy until he was discharged
as a Mineman Second Class in 1977. A former New Jersey Golden Glove boxer, Bill was also the light-heavy weight boxing champion at the U.S. Naval Air Stations in Pensacola, Corpus Christi, and Jacksonville. After his enlisted tour of duty, Bill attended
Rutgers University on the GI Bill and earned
an MBA from the Southern New Hampshire University. Bill graduated Aviation Officer
Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida, and
earned his Navy Wings of Gold the following
year in Corpus Christi, Texas.
As a P-3
Orion pilot, Bill flew missions against
Soviet submarines in the North and South Atlantic
and Mediterranean and deployed to a very wide
variety of sites around the world. He became
an instructor pilot in the T-44 Pegasus and
then the Assistant Navigator of the nuclear
aircraft carrier, USS Carl Vinson, deploying
throughout the Pacific from the Vinson's homeport
in the San Francisco Bay area. Bill and his
family returned to the east coast where he
flew P-3 Orions and a variety of other aircraft
while working for the admiral at NAS Jacksonville.
While there, Bill was diagnosed with a rare
form of cancer called amelanotic malignant
melanoma, had surgery, and retired from the
Navy. Bill is the author of The Luckiest
Unlucky Man Alive: A Wild Ride Overcoming
Life's Greatest Challenges -- And How You
Can Too. His second book, published by
Simon and Schuster's newest hardcover imprint,
Atria Books, is titled There's a Flying
Squirrel in My Coffee: Overcoming Cancer With
the Help of My Pet.
Bill is a contributing writer to many other
books including the New York Times bestseller,
Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul.
Bill's life story has been featured on national
and international radio shows, and in publications
such as the Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles
Times, New Jersey Star Ledger, The Dallas
Morning News, The St. Petersburg Times,
and Maxim Magazine.
A motivational and inspirational speaker,
Bill is featured every month on the Discovery
Channel's Animal Planet. Bill's mailing address
is:
Bill Goss International
P.O. Box 7060
Orange Park, FL 32073
I believe that Saddam Hussein lived a more lavish style than any person in the history of the world. He had an almost countless number of enormous palaces and homes built expressly for him. They were spread out across a country the size of California, one of America's largest states. These palaces were built on the best and most scenic real estate that Iraq had to offer, with river and mountain views, or in the center of Iraq's greatest cities, like Baghdad. The cost of these monuments of excess was many billions of dollars. Just in the thousands of kitchen and bathroom fixtures made out of gold in his honor (but really forged out of fear) Saddam maintained his personal hygiene in bathrooms valued at more than the entire net worth of many Iraqi villages.
How this multi-multi-billionaire transitioned in less than one year from "the world's most powerful human being for life" to someone who looked like you might expect to find him holding up a sign with "Will Work For Food" scribbled on it, is really one of the more unbelievable stories of human failure, a story that is almost mythological or biblical in its "falling from power" and "falling from grace" elements.
Once the father of two of the most powerful and despicable heirs apparent, now Saddam Hussein is the father of nothing but his own failure to fight to the death for what he stood for and believed in, something that he forced the many millions of people he ruled over to do - unless they wanted to watch their families get raped, tortured, and then pushed off the tops of four-story buildings onto cement sidewalks.
But Saddam, even though he had a pistol on his lap, emerged from the rat hole he was now calling home -- living in squalor just a bullet's flight from one of his presidential palace estates with over 60 buildings in his hometown of Tikrit - without even an inkling of a fight in him. I've always thought Saddam Hussein the ultimate survivalist and not at all the courageous man that he had persuaded so many of the world's population to believe he was. And, no surprise … Saddam not only didn't use his pistol, he didn't get to use the three quarters of a million dollars he had with him in U.S. dollars, (instead of in the former Iraqi dollars with his picture printed on each bill). Instead, ending one of the most intense manhunts in world history, Saddam exited his "spider hole" proclaiming he was the president of Iraq and that he wanted to negotiate.
As I predicted three months ago in my op-ed piece about Saddam's blood-thirsty sons, Uday and Qusay, titled: TWO DOWN AND ONE TO GO - SADDAM CANNOT BE TOO FAR BEHIND HIS SONS - finding Saddam, dead or alive, was inevitable when you have the resources that America's military has at its disposal … it was only a matter of time.
And it's only a matter of time before we get - or discover what happened to - Osama bin Laden.
I concluded that particular op-ed piece this way:
"However, I have a feeling that another 25 million dollars will sooner or later bring us Saddam - and frankly, I don't think it's going to take too much longer before we smoke him out. It won't be too much longer before Uday and Qusay are joined by their father in that special place so many of us hope and believe was designed for people just like them. Just make sure you don't follow them to that special place. Because to spend an eternity in the same place as Uday, Qusay, and Saddam - yes, that would be Hell."
I was partly wrong about my above conclusion, because thankfully, although the U.S. government had offered a reward for his capture or death, Saddam's arrest came due to interrogations rather than from tips. So, at least for now, the collective American taxpayer was saved a cool 25 million in this particular arrest. It wouldn't surprise me if other offers of rewards start getting snapped up by those in the know, now that they realize that uncollected money helps no one, and that this kind of money could at the very least help out entire Iraqi villages with new schools and modernized infrastructure.
But that's all in the past. Let's talk about the future.
Here's what I want to know from Saddam Hussein now that we've got him, and I don't care how this information is extracted from this most brutal of murderers. What happened to Scott Speicher from Jacksonville, Florida, the outstanding U.S. Navy officer who was shot down in 1991 while piloting his F/A-18 Hornet on the opening night of the first Gulf War?
Scott was listed as killed in action (KIA) until October 2002, when his status was changed to missing/captured in action (MIA/POW). I've been told that this is the first time this kind of status change has been done by our government.
According to Time magazine, Saddam told interrogators "No" when he was asked if he knew of Scott's present location. He also said, "We have never kept any prisoners. I never knew what happened."
To the interrogators I'm asking - please - don't believe this pathological liar. His answer is exactly what we would expect out of him. But as the leader of a country completely afraid of doing anything significant without his knowledge, you can be sure that an American pilot shot down over Iraq would be viewed as the ultimate prize for someone like Saddam. He knows exactly what happened to Scott Speicher.
Scott Speicher went through Navy pilot training in Texas the same time that I did. His daughter went to pre-school with my children in Orange Park when he was shot down. All of North Florida and particularly his home community of Orange Park and his hometown of Jacksonville, loves Scott and his family and we support him in the greatest of ways.
It's time to find out from Saddam Hussein exactly what happened to Scott Speicher and please do this as fast as possible, and in any way possible, because if Scott is alive, which is still a possibility, then EVERY SECOND COUNTS for us to get to this remarkable person.
So let's get the answers out of Saddam about Scott Speicher. And let's get them any way we can. And let's make getting the answers these questions a top priority.
Even before finding out about weapons of mass destruction.
For Scott - and those that love him - every second counts.
