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| Iraq |
| Fate of ’Chemical Ali’ Remains in Question |
| 2003-04-08 |
| Rats. Since the first night of the war in Iraq, U.S. commanders have been trying to find and kill Ali Hassan Majeed known as "Chemical Ali" for ordering the use of poison gas against ethnic Kurds 15 years ago. Time and again over the last 18 days, U.S. forces have bombed and raided houses where they thought he was staying, only to turn up empty-handed. "Finally Rasputin is dead!" "Aaaaaarrrrrgggh!!!!" Over the weekend, an informer told U.S.-British forces that Majeed could be found at an office compound in Basra, the country's second-largest city then under siege by British forces. Majeed, a cousin of President Saddam Hussein and his military commander in the south, might have chemicals with him, the informer said. In swooped the F-16 jets, and the buildings exploded into fireballs. This morning, British officers said they found Majeed's body. By this evening, however, British forces said they believed Majeed might have survived the attack. But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials in Washington said they believed he was dead. Given Majeed's success in eluding his hunters, U.S. officers in Iraq remained more cautious. "Until they do a DNA, I'm not going to speculate," said an exasperated Col. Larry Brown, operations chief for the Marines in Iraq. "The guy has been like Freddy Krueger -- we've killed him five times already." Should have used a silver bullet. "There were concerted efforts to track him and kill him," said Lt. Col. Jamie Martin, the chief British liaison at Marine headquarters. "He's a very powerful figure of the regime, and his reputation for ruthlessness [was well known]. As with Saddam, his personal control has been quite a key function in what resistance there has been." "We felt he had his finger on the button and if he said, 'Deliver chemical weapons,' chemical weapons would be delivered," said Lt. Col. David Pere, senior watch officer at the Marine headquarters. Pere has overseen several attempts to kill Majeed and said the hunt alone has been enough to sideline the Iraqi commander. "We felt if we could take him out, we would reduce the possibility of chemical attack. And two weeks later, there's been no chemical attack, and he's been on the run." While U.S. military officials announced publicly that they had targeted Hussein in the initial barrage of Tomahawk missiles that kicked off the war, they did not mention that they were trying to hit Majeed as well. Hey, whoever we can hit. When they missed, they tracked him through intelligence to a house in Amarah, north of Basra, two nights later and sent in F/A-18 Hornets to bomb it. U.S. officials initially thought they had succeeded that time, and one officer jubilantly declared, "We think he's no longer breathing air." Not the case, they discovered; a week later, they thought they had found him again in Ash Shattra, a small town north of Nasiriyah. They launched a commando raid but came up empty again. The Basra strike occurred when a source told the U.S.-British commanders that Majeed would be returning to a complex of office buildings on the riverfront early Saturday morning, along with a general and two colonels, according to U.S. and British officers. "We set up a strike for later that morning," Maj. Bryant Sewall, a U.S. Marine liaison officer working with the British, said. "We made a positive ID on the target that was described." The officers first requested JDAM precision-guided bombs, but that was rejected because of fear of collateral damage, so instead a pair of F-16 jets dropped a half-dozen 500-pound laser-guided bombs. Sewall, studying satellite imagery accurate to a meter, talked in the pilots to the target and "cleared them hot." Sewall said he believed the strike got Majeed. There is "no credible evidence he's still around," he said, and people in Basra are "totally and completely convinced he was in there and is dead." A British officer, Maj. Andrew Jackson, told the Associated Press that Majeed was dead. But later in the day, other officers backtracked. British troops received a tip that Majeed was alive and began to pursue him again. "The Brits say they have him cornered," Pere said, "so when they said a couple days ago that it was 99 percent [certain that he was dead], I guess the 1 percent was right." Keep hunting, boys, and if you can take him alive, hand him over to the Kurds. That'll ensure the loyalty of the Kurds to us for the next fifty years. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #3 Wapo reports they may also have gotten head of Iraqi intel who was meeting with Majeed. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2003-04-08 08:42:42 |
| #2 Hard work, agreed. We do appreciate your dedication, Fred and Steve! |
| Posted by: therien 2003-04-08 02:57:00 |
| #1 Sorry. Iraq section. Man, blogging is hard work! |
| Posted by: Steve White 2003-04-08 01:39:17 |