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thedrifter
03-11-06, 07:58 AM
Blind flight, equally blind pursuit for Saddam
By Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor The New York Times
FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 2006

As American troops were fanning out across Baghdad, Saddam Hussein turned to his sons. "We are leaving now," he said.

The Iraqi leader was determined to make his escape before more checkpoints were set up around the capital. Saddam had not anticipated the fall of the city, and his plan was simple: Drive west toward Ramadi, where there were few American forces.

In an examination of Iraq's military strategy, the U.S. Joint Forces Command prepared a day-by-day reconstruction of Saddam's movements, which shows that his escape was desperate and improvised. The study also indicates that American intelligence knew little about his whereabouts during the war and that Saddam was nowhere near the site of two failed bombing raids intended to kill him.

For Saddam, the first strike was a surprise. Relying on CIA intelligence, President George W. Bush ordered a bombing March 19 at the Dora Farms complex southwest of Baghdad. A CIA operative had reported that Saddam was in an underground bunker there, and Bush hoped to end the war with one blow.

Two F-117 Stealth fighters dropped bunker-busting bombs on the site, while warships fired nearly 40 cruise missiles. The fighters scored a direct hit, and for a while American officials believed that Saddam was wounded or dead.

But the Iraqi leader was not at Dora Farms and had not visited it since 1995, according to statements made to American interrogators by Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, Saddam's personal secretary. The airstrike nonetheless appeared to rattle Saddam. After the attack, he arrived at Mahmud's home. The two men went to a safe house in Baghdad so the Iraqi leader could watch international news reports and draft a statement to the Iraqi people.

After an Iraqi man with thick glasses read the televised speech, American officials speculated that he was a double. In fact, it was Saddam, according to the secretary's account. Large text was printed on cue cards for him, but no printer was available and he needed glasses to read his writing. The tape was sent to the Information Ministry for broadcast.

For the next several weeks, Saddam moved through a network of safe houses. The United States bombed military command sites in the capital, but Saddam stayed in civilian neighborhoods. The United States never came close to killing him.

"Most of the leadership strikes were offset from where Saddam stayed during the war, denying use of government buildings, but not threatening his life," the classified study reports.

The Americans made a final attempt to kill Saddam on April 7 after the CIA was tipped that he was in a safe house near a restaurant in Baghdad's Mansour district. A B-1 bomber dropped four 2,000-pound, or 900-kilogram, bombs. The blasts killed 18 innocent Iraqis, according to Human Rights Watch.

"Saddam was not in the targeted area at the time of the attack," the Joint Forces Command study says.

Saddam did have a close call, but that was a pure coincidence. Early on April 7, he was in a safe house one and a half miles, or two and a half kilometers, from the route taken by United States troops on their second "Thunder Run" into Baghdad. Two days later, his situation was desperate. Army troops had moved into the western part of the city and the Marines were moving into the eastern part.

He appeared before supporters in Baghdad. But after his convoy encountered American armored vehicles, Saddam and his aides were frantic, and they forced their way into a Baghdad residence. As American troops searched, he hid there until morning.

Early on April 10, he decided to flee to Ramadi with his two sons and Mahmud, his secretary, according to the account that Mahmud provided after American troops captured him. Earlier, Saddam had thought that the main American attack might come from Jordan, but by now it was clear to the Iraqis that the United States did not have substantial troops in the west.

The escape soon became an ordeal. That night, the Americans bombed a building next to a Ramadi house where Saddam was hiding. Alarmed, Saddam, his sons and Mahmud got in their cars and drove toward Hit, spending the night in an orchard outside town.

The next morning Saddam decided they should split up to minimize the chances of capture. Qusay Hussein, Uday Hussein and Mahmud made their way to Damascus, where they were apparently turned away. Saddam's sons were apparently too hot for the Syrians to handle. They went back to Iraq, reached Tikrit and eventually Mosul, where American troops killed them in July 2003.

Saddam's first stop was Hit. In December 2003, American forces captured the unshaven Iraqi leader in a spider hole near Tikrit. On the walls of the dank hide-out were posters of the Last Supper and Noah's Ark; on the floor was a battered suitcase filled with clothes and a heart-shaped clock.

Ellie