You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Iraq
Iraqi Leaders Are Nowhere To Be Seen
2003-04-10
Edited for length:
Secret CIA and military teams in Iraq and surveillance devices set up to monitor Saddam Hussein's inner circle reported yesterday that nearly the entire Iraqi leadership had vanished. U.S. military commanders said they suspected that some leaders had headed to Hussein's hometown of Tikrit for a final bloody showdown and that others had fled to Syria. Dogged fighting by Iraqi forces at Qaim, near the Syrian border, has led some U.S. and British officials to suspect that Iraqi troops there may be protecting important Iraqi leaders or family members, although it was not clear who.
"Most of them" would probably cover it, though...
As Baghdad slipped from Hussein's control yesterday, covert CIA and Special Operations teams dedicated to killing or capturing the Iraqi president and senior leaders discovered that the Baath Party leaders, Republican Guard leaders, troops and high-level government officials they had targeted were not at their usual posts. Even the information minister, who had been briefing journalists with outlandish versions of daily events, did not go to work. "All of a sudden, all communications ceased and the regime didn't come to work," was the way one senior administration official described what happened in Baghdad. "Even the minders for [foreign] journalists did not go to work," he added. The most likely explanation for the sudden dropoff in detectable communications and activity among such a large number of key people, according to reports from analysts in the CIA's Iraq Operation Group at Langley and those working at the U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, is that an order to disappear was given in Hussein's name, and that he is still alive.
"RUN AWAY!!!!!!"
Either that, or Sammy was either in the building when it got boomed, or was greased in another operation that didn't get the attention. With Sammy dead, then it'd become every man for himself. Because of the timing and the abruptness of the turnaround, I think he's probably jam. The only other thing I could think of that would explain it would be total, blind panic on the part of the collective Iraqi leadership — "Omigawd! We're all gonna die! What'll we do?"

I also don't believe for a moment that our intel agencies aren't getting indications from chatter on whether or not Sammy's still alive — if it's a topic of major interest to us, it's a topic of vital interest to the Iraqi chain of command.
"There was no sign of any leaders, anywhere," a senior U.S. administration official said. Another less probable possibility, intelligence sources said, is that the Iraqi leader died in one of two U.S. air attacks that targeted Hussein — one March 20, the other April 8 — and that word of his death finally leaked out.
Somebody(s) got wacked in those bombings, wonder how many?
If Hussein is alive, he and his loyalists may have sought refuge in Tikrit, a town about 90 miles north of Baghdad on the low bluffs overlooking the Tigris River. Some Iraq analysts, such as former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack, said Hussein is highly conscious of how he will be perceived by history. Therefore, he would be unlikely to leave Iraq, and would probably prefer to make a last stand in Tikrit. Tikrit has been a special target of U.S. precision bombing, including what was described as a major underground bunker that Brooks called a command and control center. He said last week that U.S. Special Forces have set up checkpoints on the main roads between Baghdad and Tikrit to prevent movement between the two cities. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld raised the possibility that Iraqi leaders are fleeing to Syria. "Senior regime people are moving out of Iraq into Syria, and Syria is continuing to send things into Iraq," he said. "We find it notably unhelpful."
Syria is trying real hard to take Iraq's former position in the Axis of Evil.
The most likely escape routes to Syria include Qaim and Mosul, where fighting also continues. At the same time, U.S. intelligence officials said allied forces continued to stop and turn around busloads of non-Iraqi fighters attempting to come into Iraq from Syria.
Just bury them next to the road as a message
Posted by:Steve

#6  Hmmmm......it's amazing how he looks a little like Jim Backus (Thurston Howell III on Gilligan's Island, and also the voice of Mr. Magoo).
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2003-04-10 22:14:36  

#5  Well, at least we know where ONE of them is:


Thanks to Day by Day.
Posted by: Dar   2003-04-10 13:28:35  

#4  Beehive rounds are not something to mess with.
Posted by: mojo   2003-04-10 12:27:48  

#3  Hope they're being "turned around" by an M1A2 with a canister round.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2003-04-10 11:49:04  

#2  If they are such fierce martyrdom-determined fighters, how are they being turned around without a fight? Pussies without jobs, educations, futures...
Posted by: Frank G   2003-04-10 10:20:33  

#1  You mean they're not just taking out the buses with missle strikes? Damn! Turn them around for what?
Posted by: George   2003-04-10 09:45:49  

00:00