Posted on 04/08/2003 5:43:28 AM PDT by kattracks
The Pentagon launched a massive air strike to kill Saddam Hussein yesterday after receiving a tip that he was at a restaurant with his sons and intelligence chiefs.
A B-1 jet dropped four 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs on an upscale neighborhood where the al Saah restaurant is located at 2 p.m. local time, leaving a steaming 60-foot crater.
Saddam was shown on Iraqi TV last week making a defiant street appearance in front of the same fried chicken place.
The success of the strike was unknown. Pentagon officials told NBC their informant was "extremely reliable" and said they were "highly confident" the dictator was dead.
"We are confirming that a leadership target was hit very hard," said Maj. Brad Bartlett, a spokesman at Central Command war headquarters in Qatar. "Battle damage assessment is ongoing."
The high-rise building was pulverized into a pile of smoking rubble, suggesting little evidence may be left to indicate who was inside.
"It's a hole in the ground," said an administration official. "It might be difficult to prove [who was killed], but a lot of effort will go into determining it."
U.S. officials acted after sources pinpointed the Iraqi leader's whereabouts. London's Guardian newspaper said a bug planted in the building was believed to have picked up the dictator discussing escape routes out of the city.
American troops were heading to the site to search for clues, even as local rescue workers used a yellow bulldozer and their hands to look for victims in the tangle of concrete and twisted steel.
In all, three buildings were flattened and as many as 14 civilians — including nine members of one family — were killed in the strike on the Mansur neighborhood, a stronghold of Saddam's Baath Party.
Getting rid of Saddam has always been the primary goal in the war on Iraq.
The opening March 20 air strike was a similar attempt at "decapitation." It would be easier for the Pentagon to persuade the Iraqi people to quit resisting and welcome American troops if they could show tangible proof of Saddam's demise.
Appeared on TV
Earlier in the day, Iraqi TV aired more video of Saddam chatting with his commanders, but as usual it was not clear when it was filmed.
Since the first night of the war, the Pentagon has tried to goad Saddam into showing himself by dismissing the Iraqi TV videos as potentially old or featuring a double.
But Saddam is wily. He has thwarted American and Israeli Mossad efforts to get him for the better part of a decade by keeping on the move, never sleeping in the same place twice in a row, traveling in old taxis or trucks, using couriers to communicate with aides and sending body doubles out in public.
He has also built a labyrinth of tunnels under the city for quick getaways.
Whether Saddam was killed or not, allied soldiers made it very clear he was as good as gone by taking control of his lavish Baghdad palace earlier in the day.
Just before dawn this morning, as the call to prayer wafted over the darkened city, machine gun fire and explosions were heard at the palace complex as Iraqi forces apparently tried a counterattack. U.S. troops fired rockets and flares.
Iraq's increasingly ludicrous Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf claimed there were no foreign troops in Baghdad, even as U.S. soldiers snoozed in his master's flower-filled palace gardens.
And whatever Saddam's fate, Secretary of State Powell declared the war nearly over.
"The hostilities phase is coming to a conclusion," he said.
President Bush met in Belfast with British Prime Minister Tony Blair to map out a postwar Iraq.
Search for chem weapons
Meanwhile, the crucial hunt for chemical weapons heated up.
National Public Radio reported that the 101st Airborne Division found chemical-filled rockets in a warehouse just outside Baghdad.
NPR said there were about 20 BM-21 unguided rockets, part of a 40-year-old truck-mounted missile system with a range of about 15 miles. The rockets' warheads were filled with sarin and mustard gas, the report said.
There was no official confirmation.
Near Karbala, debate over whether troops there had found sarin or pesticides continued.
Buried barrels of suspicious chemicals were found Sunday at an agricultural site. Field tests came back positive for sarin, but the division's Gen. Benjamin Freakley said the drums could contain mosquito killer.
The barrels shown on TVlooked old and corroded, hardly the stuff of lethal potions. Samples have been flown to anAmerican lab for gas chromatography analysis.
Wearing body armor, chocolate-chip desert camouflage and a 9-mm. Beretta pistol tucked into his belt, Gen. Tommy Franks paid his first visit to Iraq to salute troops in Basra and Najaf and show off his firm grip on the southern part of the country.
Franks flew in a Kevlar-lined Pave Low special ops helicopter to Basra. He visited the British 1st Armored Division in Basra, then moved on to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force headquarters at Numiniyah and the 101st Airborne near Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad.
Central Command spokesmen said that during one motorcade, Franks was welcomed by kids offering candy — a neat twist on the traditional military-child sweets exchange.
In Basra, firmly held by the British for the first time, civilians were reported to have begun looting and attacking Fedayeen Saddam paramilitary fighters.
The Times of London described one attack: "A crowd descended upon one paramilitary, striking furiously at him and departed, leaving his lifeless body on the street."
People streamed out of the Central Bank of Iraq and the bomb-damaged Sheraton Hotel with chairs, tables, carpets and other goods.
Originally published on April 8, 2003
Is this how Bloomberg plans on enforcing his smoking ban in NYC bars?;-)
Just what I was thinking. How appropriate.
They blew that guy to bits. Why, there were bits of guy everywhere.
I didn't know they had a KFC in Baghdad. I guess Saddam, George Costanza and I share a common bond. We all love those boneless Honey Barbeque Wings.
Just what I was thinking. How appropriate.
The Sleeping Giant has awoken (finally!)
The Islamofascists and UNsocialists will have a hard time putting this genie back in the bottle.
Great photo
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