thedrifter
07-28-03, 06:09 AM
See How They Ran
They hoarded money. And they huddled in fear. Inside the flight path of Saddam’s sons. The raid that grounded them—and the hunt for the Ace of Spades
By Evan Thomas and Rod Nordland
NEWSWEEK
Aug. 4 issue — In his famous short story “The Things They Carried,” writer Tim O’Brien shows that you can learn a great deal about men by what they take into battle.
IN THE CASE OF the platoon he described slogging through the rice fields in ‘Nam, those items included love letters from home, grenades and land mines, lucky charms, insecticide, copies of Stars and Stripes, fingernail clippers, bags of marijuana, bandages, psyop leaflets and tanning lotion. “Often,” O’Brien writes, “they carried each other, the wounded and the weak.”
And what did Uday Hussein carry to the fight? After a hot and noisy siege last week, American soldiers found, in the rubble near his body, his briefcase. The contents, NEWSWEEK has learned, included painkillers, numerous bottles of cologne, Viagra, unopened packages of men’s underwear, dress shirts, a silk tie and a single condom. Uday and his brother, Qusay, also had with them a huge stash of cash, as well as, for some reason, two ladies’ purses.
THE SEARCH FOR HVT 1
Sounds like they were headed out for a kinky last night of disco, not a fight-to-the-death last stand. Still, American officials were deeply gratified to have bagged Saddam’s two sons, identified by the U.S. military as “high value targets” (HVTs) Nos. 2 and 3. (Their father is HVT 1.) The hope is that the Iraqis will finally realize that the old regime is dead and gone, that Saddam and his spawn are never coming back, that resistance to the new order is futile.
Should U.S. forces have taken Saddam's sons alive?
Yes. They could have provided intelligence and been tried for their crimes
No. they deserved to die for the terrible things they did
Maybe. But only if their capture didn't risk American lives
I don't know
Vote to see results
Should U.S. forces have taken Saddam's sons alive?
* 27281 responses
Yes. They could have provided intelligence and been tried for their crimes
20%
No. they deserved to die for the terrible things they did
30%
Maybe. But only if their capture didn't risk American lives
48%
I don't know
2%
Survey results tallied every 60 seconds. Live Votes reflect respondents' views and are not scientifically valid surveys.
Will the deaths of Saddam’s sons cool off a guerrilla war that is killing American soldiers almost every day? A Kurdish intelligence official told NEWSWEEK that “Uday and Qusay exercised real command and control” over the guerrillas, and one former official in the Iraqi Information Ministry estimated that as many as 35,000 of Saddam’s still-loyal troops had formed themselves into bands with names like The Black Brigades and The Revenge Army.
Excessive Force?
U.S. intelligence officials can’t quite decide if the guerrillas in Iraq are centrally organized or just a bunch of ragtag “dead-enders” taking potshots. But in either case, the holdouts are supposed to be demoralized—and everyone else in Iraq vastly relieved—by the sight of the corpses of two men who were lurid symbols of cruelty and torture.
The news of their demise was at first greeted in the streets with shots of joy. Red AK-47 tracers streaked through the skies over Baghdad. But, as inveterate conspirators, many Iraqis wondered: were they really dead? Saddam and Qusay were known to use body doubles, some Iraqis whispered. And the Americans certainly could not be trusted. The first photos released by U.S. forces showed some bloody, bearded men who might have been almost anyone fished out of the morgue. So the next day, American officials summoned newsmen to videotape Uday and Qusay as they lay, groomed and shaved, stitched up and waxed, but still riddled with bullet holes, on a pair of gurneys at the Army-Air Force Morgue at Baghdad International Airport.
CLAIMING THE BODIES
Some Iraqis were still not convinced and probably never will be. And many were offended that the Americans had flouted Islamic custom, which requires that the dead be quickly shrouded and interred. The bodies will be kept in cold storage until a family member comes to claim them. “If any of their family members want to come forward, we’d be delighted to speak to them,” joked Charles Heatley, the spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American-run outfit that rules Iraq.
So ended the reign of terror of two memorable monsters. Uday was the more grotesque. He supposedly had a penchant for raping the girlfriends of other prominent Iraqis and then branding them with the letter “U.” Iraqi soccer players remember Uday as the world’s only Olympic Committee chairman with a torture chamber in his headquarters. Players who failed to measure up could be dragged through a gravel pit then dipped in a sewer, so their cuts would fester. Saddam favored his younger son, Qusay, who was less flamboyant and more purposeful in his sadism, though no less wicked. He would watch as political prisoners got fed, feet first, into the wood chipper; when he grew bored, the prisoners were fed in head first. Qusay was chief of Saddam’s security forces. Uday ran the ragtag Fedayeen. Both men were feared by everyone in Iraq.
Yet in their final days, as reconstructed by NEWSWEEK, Qusay and Uday were mostly pathetic. Possibly, they were organizing and funding a guerrilla war. Or maybe they were preoccupied with running and hiding. In the end, it is interesting to note that these men, once surrounded by loyal squads, were protected by a single bodyguard.
ABANDONING UDAY
Uday had always intimidated and bullied his lackeys. But during the war, he began to flail as his power was mocked by the American onslaught. Ahmed (a pseudonym), who managed security for Uday’s Olympic Committee, told of being summoned by Uday shortly after the Americans invaded in March. Uday was in a panic. He explained to his staff, some of whom he had just fired, that he “wanted a lot of security” and asked them to stay by him for the duration of the war. “You’re not fired anymore,” he explained. “We need you now,” he pleaded. Most of his men, disgusted, refused and wandered off.
Uday did try his hand at generalship, sort of. He dispatched a trusted guard, Adib Shabaan, who doubled as a press secretary and pimp, to Jordan to procure SUVs for the Fedayeen. When Shabaan failed to return promptly, Uday dispatched more guards to find him and threatened to kill their families if they failed to reappear with Shabaan. In the meantime, he imprisoned Shabaan’s family. Shabaan did eventually come back from Jordan (with or without the SUVs; it’s not clear) and was also thrown behind bars.
Uday was said to have killed 17 of his bodyguards so they would not betray him; to have remodeled a garbage truck and filled it with jewels for a getaway; to have instructed that his vast fleet of luxury cars be burned at a Muslim cemetery. On April 9, as Baghdad was falling to the Americans, Uday summoned his mother. He wanted to see her one last time. Then he disappeared.
TARGETED BY TASK FORCE 20
For more than three months, his whereabouts, and those of his brother and father, were the objects of an intense manhunt by the U.S. military, and in particular a secretive group known as Task Force 20. At the heart of Task Force 20 is the blandly named Combat Applications Group, otherwise known as Operational Detachment Delta, and the Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group, more popularly known as SEAL Team Six.
For months, they chased tantalizing but false leads, then on the morning of July 22, around 10 o’clock, about a score of Task Force 20 soldiers showed up outside the door of the gaudy mansion in Mosul, up near the northern border of Iraq. They knocked on the door, and the owner, Nawaf al-Zaidan, 46, opened up.
If the owner showed surprise, it was an act. An inveterate opportunist, Nawaf was about to make his biggest score. Nawaf was known to be in the import-export business. During the reign of Saddam, according to his neighbors, Nawaf obtained contracts from the ruling family to trade oil and agricultural products under the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program, allegedly kicking back cash to his patrons in the government. Nawaf was proud of his connections. He posed his family for portraits with Saddam and his clan and had them hang about his house, according to a neighbor, Mukhlis Dhahir al-Jibouri.
continued.......
They hoarded money. And they huddled in fear. Inside the flight path of Saddam’s sons. The raid that grounded them—and the hunt for the Ace of Spades
By Evan Thomas and Rod Nordland
NEWSWEEK
Aug. 4 issue — In his famous short story “The Things They Carried,” writer Tim O’Brien shows that you can learn a great deal about men by what they take into battle.
IN THE CASE OF the platoon he described slogging through the rice fields in ‘Nam, those items included love letters from home, grenades and land mines, lucky charms, insecticide, copies of Stars and Stripes, fingernail clippers, bags of marijuana, bandages, psyop leaflets and tanning lotion. “Often,” O’Brien writes, “they carried each other, the wounded and the weak.”
And what did Uday Hussein carry to the fight? After a hot and noisy siege last week, American soldiers found, in the rubble near his body, his briefcase. The contents, NEWSWEEK has learned, included painkillers, numerous bottles of cologne, Viagra, unopened packages of men’s underwear, dress shirts, a silk tie and a single condom. Uday and his brother, Qusay, also had with them a huge stash of cash, as well as, for some reason, two ladies’ purses.
THE SEARCH FOR HVT 1
Sounds like they were headed out for a kinky last night of disco, not a fight-to-the-death last stand. Still, American officials were deeply gratified to have bagged Saddam’s two sons, identified by the U.S. military as “high value targets” (HVTs) Nos. 2 and 3. (Their father is HVT 1.) The hope is that the Iraqis will finally realize that the old regime is dead and gone, that Saddam and his spawn are never coming back, that resistance to the new order is futile.
Should U.S. forces have taken Saddam's sons alive?
Yes. They could have provided intelligence and been tried for their crimes
No. they deserved to die for the terrible things they did
Maybe. But only if their capture didn't risk American lives
I don't know
Vote to see results
Should U.S. forces have taken Saddam's sons alive?
* 27281 responses
Yes. They could have provided intelligence and been tried for their crimes
20%
No. they deserved to die for the terrible things they did
30%
Maybe. But only if their capture didn't risk American lives
48%
I don't know
2%
Survey results tallied every 60 seconds. Live Votes reflect respondents' views and are not scientifically valid surveys.
Will the deaths of Saddam’s sons cool off a guerrilla war that is killing American soldiers almost every day? A Kurdish intelligence official told NEWSWEEK that “Uday and Qusay exercised real command and control” over the guerrillas, and one former official in the Iraqi Information Ministry estimated that as many as 35,000 of Saddam’s still-loyal troops had formed themselves into bands with names like The Black Brigades and The Revenge Army.
Excessive Force?
U.S. intelligence officials can’t quite decide if the guerrillas in Iraq are centrally organized or just a bunch of ragtag “dead-enders” taking potshots. But in either case, the holdouts are supposed to be demoralized—and everyone else in Iraq vastly relieved—by the sight of the corpses of two men who were lurid symbols of cruelty and torture.
The news of their demise was at first greeted in the streets with shots of joy. Red AK-47 tracers streaked through the skies over Baghdad. But, as inveterate conspirators, many Iraqis wondered: were they really dead? Saddam and Qusay were known to use body doubles, some Iraqis whispered. And the Americans certainly could not be trusted. The first photos released by U.S. forces showed some bloody, bearded men who might have been almost anyone fished out of the morgue. So the next day, American officials summoned newsmen to videotape Uday and Qusay as they lay, groomed and shaved, stitched up and waxed, but still riddled with bullet holes, on a pair of gurneys at the Army-Air Force Morgue at Baghdad International Airport.
CLAIMING THE BODIES
Some Iraqis were still not convinced and probably never will be. And many were offended that the Americans had flouted Islamic custom, which requires that the dead be quickly shrouded and interred. The bodies will be kept in cold storage until a family member comes to claim them. “If any of their family members want to come forward, we’d be delighted to speak to them,” joked Charles Heatley, the spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American-run outfit that rules Iraq.
So ended the reign of terror of two memorable monsters. Uday was the more grotesque. He supposedly had a penchant for raping the girlfriends of other prominent Iraqis and then branding them with the letter “U.” Iraqi soccer players remember Uday as the world’s only Olympic Committee chairman with a torture chamber in his headquarters. Players who failed to measure up could be dragged through a gravel pit then dipped in a sewer, so their cuts would fester. Saddam favored his younger son, Qusay, who was less flamboyant and more purposeful in his sadism, though no less wicked. He would watch as political prisoners got fed, feet first, into the wood chipper; when he grew bored, the prisoners were fed in head first. Qusay was chief of Saddam’s security forces. Uday ran the ragtag Fedayeen. Both men were feared by everyone in Iraq.
Yet in their final days, as reconstructed by NEWSWEEK, Qusay and Uday were mostly pathetic. Possibly, they were organizing and funding a guerrilla war. Or maybe they were preoccupied with running and hiding. In the end, it is interesting to note that these men, once surrounded by loyal squads, were protected by a single bodyguard.
ABANDONING UDAY
Uday had always intimidated and bullied his lackeys. But during the war, he began to flail as his power was mocked by the American onslaught. Ahmed (a pseudonym), who managed security for Uday’s Olympic Committee, told of being summoned by Uday shortly after the Americans invaded in March. Uday was in a panic. He explained to his staff, some of whom he had just fired, that he “wanted a lot of security” and asked them to stay by him for the duration of the war. “You’re not fired anymore,” he explained. “We need you now,” he pleaded. Most of his men, disgusted, refused and wandered off.
Uday did try his hand at generalship, sort of. He dispatched a trusted guard, Adib Shabaan, who doubled as a press secretary and pimp, to Jordan to procure SUVs for the Fedayeen. When Shabaan failed to return promptly, Uday dispatched more guards to find him and threatened to kill their families if they failed to reappear with Shabaan. In the meantime, he imprisoned Shabaan’s family. Shabaan did eventually come back from Jordan (with or without the SUVs; it’s not clear) and was also thrown behind bars.
Uday was said to have killed 17 of his bodyguards so they would not betray him; to have remodeled a garbage truck and filled it with jewels for a getaway; to have instructed that his vast fleet of luxury cars be burned at a Muslim cemetery. On April 9, as Baghdad was falling to the Americans, Uday summoned his mother. He wanted to see her one last time. Then he disappeared.
TARGETED BY TASK FORCE 20
For more than three months, his whereabouts, and those of his brother and father, were the objects of an intense manhunt by the U.S. military, and in particular a secretive group known as Task Force 20. At the heart of Task Force 20 is the blandly named Combat Applications Group, otherwise known as Operational Detachment Delta, and the Navy’s Special Warfare Development Group, more popularly known as SEAL Team Six.
For months, they chased tantalizing but false leads, then on the morning of July 22, around 10 o’clock, about a score of Task Force 20 soldiers showed up outside the door of the gaudy mansion in Mosul, up near the northern border of Iraq. They knocked on the door, and the owner, Nawaf al-Zaidan, 46, opened up.
If the owner showed surprise, it was an act. An inveterate opportunist, Nawaf was about to make his biggest score. Nawaf was known to be in the import-export business. During the reign of Saddam, according to his neighbors, Nawaf obtained contracts from the ruling family to trade oil and agricultural products under the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program, allegedly kicking back cash to his patrons in the government. Nawaf was proud of his connections. He posed his family for portraits with Saddam and his clan and had them hang about his house, according to a neighbor, Mukhlis Dhahir al-Jibouri.
continued.......