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| Iraq |
| Saddam, Uday, and Qusay never left Baghdad? |
| 2003-07-25 |
| Edited for brevity. Uday Husseinâs personal bodyguard broke a three-month silence yesterday to give the first authoritative account of how Saddam and his sons spent the war. In an exclusive interview with The Times, the bodyguard claimed that, far from fleeing Baghdad, the three men held out in the capital for at least a week after its fall. He said that they evaded repeated American attempts to assassinate or capture them, and even appeared in public under the noses of US troops. During a three-hour interview in a house in a town an hour northwest of Baghdad, the bodyguard said that Saddam and his sons had remained in the capital throughout the war, convinced they could hold the city. When the first bombs fell on a house in a southern suburb, where the Americans believed Saddam and his sons were meeting, he and Uday were on the other side of the city in one of dozens of safe houses belonging to trusted friends and relatives through which the three men were to pass in the weeks to come. The bodyguard said the Americansâ next âdecapitationâ strike came a lot closer, and that Saddam survived only because several safe houses had come under attack and he suspected there was an informant within his camp. Saddam asked the suspect, a captain, to prepare a safe house behind a restaurant in the Mansour district for a meeting. They arrived, and left again, almost immediately, by the back door. âTen minutes after they went out of the door, it was bombed,â the bodyguard said. Saddam had the captain summarily executed while the Pentagon was claiming that the strike had probably finished off Saddam and Uday. In a way, this is encouraging. Perhaps Saddam is still in Baghdad, and if so his luck will run out eventually. |
| Posted by:Dar |
| #13 LH: I guess moving in the day (how else would you be able to see a soldier's sunburn?) is part of my definition of tooling around, but not yours. :-) My gut feeling is that the Hussein's are running out of money. Their ability to terrorize is increasingly limited as the Baath Party structure is destroyed. The Sunnis are becoming increasing aware that Saddam can no longer defend them. So the Husseins must turn to money favoring (see Pryce-Jones) to maintain their shrinking networks. Since they have no positive cash flows and their caches are constantly being raided, their ability to operate independently is decreasing. Live by the bribe and torture chamber, die in terror and broke. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2003-7-25 5:57:11 PM |
| #12 If Saddam and the boys were making appearances in Baghdad under the American noses it confirms why there has been less than steller assistance from the Iraqi population to this point. I expect a flood of intel to start flowing now that the boys were bagged. |
| Posted by: Yank 2003-7-25 4:30:42 PM |
| #11 "The men never appeared in public again, but the bodyguard said that they were able to travel freely from safe house to safe house in unmarked cars, sometimes under the noses of the Americans. " this doesnt sound so much like tooling around in broad daylight, as running undercover. Likely just as feasible in Mosul as in Baghad - so the real question is why did they hole up at all, why not keep moving? Most likely increased USe roadblocks were making incognito movement more difficult - and there was more aggresive search activity going on in the Sunni triangle then in Mosul. Why'd they both go to the same (not so) safe house?? Most likely it was the only one they could find - implication is that they were running out of places to hide. Which would seem to indicate Saddam is likely to be found soon - finding the sons first is pure chance. Lower levels who are less recognizable may survive longer, but WaPo/MSNBC the other day indicated we're getting a lot of the mid-level Baathists. Real questions then are what happens when baathist command structure collapses does violence end? How much damage can Jihadis, disorganized deadenders, etc do? Possibly a shift from more organized "guerilla" attacks (mortars and such) to more purely terrorist tactics? |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2003-7-25 3:02:44 PM |
| #10 But LH, why go from an area where you could tool around in your car in broad daylight and openly go to mosque on Friday to an area where you might get tagged? (and eventually did) Did they give up and decide to leave? Did they run out of cash and have to go open a new cache up north? Did Saddam tell them to escape in order to preserve the family name while he seeks glorious martyrdom in Tikrit? Were they trying to activate new cells in what had previously been a pacified area? Answer those questions and you learn a lot about the state of the resistance (or reaction as Wolfowitz like to call it). |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2003-7-25 2:47:11 PM |
| #9 IIUC, the 173rd Airborne is in the Kurdish area, while 101st has the Sunni Arab area in the north, from Mosul to the Syrian border. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2003-7-25 1:50:58 PM |
| #8 Mosul is on the edge of the Kurdish area, and has a large Kurdish minority, but is majority Sunni Arab, and is historically a major source of Iraqi officer corps. Queasy and ebay were apparently in the upper class, Sunni arab part of the city. Its also relatively close to the Syrian frontier, if either they were planning on making a run for it, or had recently been tossed out of Syria. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2003-7-25 1:48:10 PM |
| #7 This story seems to indicate that there was a large enough sea for three pretty big fish to swim in within the Sunni areas. It's only when Uday and Qusay left the pond that they got captured. The question is, why did they leave the pond? |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2003-7-25 11:51:13 AM |
| #6 B-a-r: But what could the captain have done? If he knew the building would be targeted, I doubt he'd have hung around to become collateral damage. I think Saddam, with his three decades of experience surviving and ruling through violence and paranoia, simply outwitted us in this chapter. Better luck to our guys next time. |
| Posted by: Dar 2003-7-25 11:35:05 AM |
| #5 per FOx - 13 arrested near Tikrit, 10 are saddams personal bodyguards. asked if Saddam is nearby - Centcom responds - we're following numerous leads, lots of info flowing in. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2003-7-25 11:25:14 AM |
| #4 CN and Fox reporting a group of Saddams bodyguards captured, details to come. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2003-7-25 11:19:30 AM |
| #3 They arrived, and left again, almost immediately, by the back door. âTen minutes after they went out of the door, it was bombed,â the bodyguard said. Seems to me the captain should have covered all his bases, and kept an eye on all exits. After all, the captain himself knew about the existence of the safe house that was attacked, and as such, probably knew all facets of its layout, including all egress points. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2003-7-25 11:14:55 AM |
| #2 The full story supports the theory that Uday & Qusay were leading the resistance.One more to go. |
| Posted by: El Id 2003-7-25 10:40:36 AM |
| #1 Typing faster than I'm thinking--Title should read more appropriately "never left Iraq?" |
| Posted by: Dar 2003-7-25 10:18:21 AM |