Three years ago, if you would have told me Mark Hoppus came up with a plan to catch Saddam Hussein, I would have said “who?” But after someone explained who Mark Hoppus is to me, I would have said “who cares about some washed up musician’s ideas, that guy hasn’t been relevant 9/11 anyway.” But then we elected a C-List celebrity who probably has Alzheimer’s president, which I thought would never happen because I had forgotten about Ronald Reagan, so all bets are off.
It turns out Hoppus did have an idea for catching Saddam Hussein, though, and he had actually shared it with a Navy admiral.
Here’s how Hoppus described his plan.
At the time, Hussein was in hiding but continued releasing videotaped messages to his followers. My idea was to have trucks with big speakers drive around BLASTING time code just out of frequency range of human hearing, but within the dynamic range of the video camera’s microphone. When Saddam released a tape, he would have inadvertently recorded the time code. Using the time code, you could go back and pinpoint a general radius from where the truck was. With that information, you start the research. Also, knowing the general area of the recording, you can bring in more trucks to canvas there, and if you don’t find him and he released another videotaped message, you can use the multiple trucks’ time codes for triangulation, revealing his exact location.
I mean, that isn’t a bad plan. Of course, due to the famous competence of how the US waged the Iraq War, had we enacted that plan we just would have welded a boom box to a Humvee and it would still be driving aimlessly around Tikrit today.
Hoppus did give me an idea, though. From now on, in honor of his plan, let’s only play Blink-182 just out of the range of human hearing. I think it would be a nice way to honor his plan and it’d keep anyone from accidentally listening to Blink-182.