Posted on 12/20/2003 7:23:55 PM PST by Happy2BMe
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John F. Burns and Eric Schmitt, New York Times
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Published December 21, 2003
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SADD21
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ADWAR, IRAQ -- Before his capture in a coffinlike bunker near the the desolate town of Adwar, Saddam Hussein spent months moving furtively among 20 or 30 nondescript safe houses in the Sunni Muslim heartland, where a tightknit network of family and clan members sheltered him and brought him news from across U.S.-dominated Iraq, U.S. military officials say.
With that, he used a word-of-mouth system of couriers to carry his instructions back to Baathist cells that helped him guide the anti-coalition insurgency, said U.S. intelligence officers with the 4th Infantry Division, which captured Saddam.
The 66-year-old Saddam traveled on foot, by small boat on the Tigris River and along back roads in an ever changing mix of cars, taxis and pickup trucks, often at night, rarely with more than two or three followers to avoid notice.
He let his hair and beard grow, survived on chocolate bars, honey and canned fruit and shed the uniforms and Italian-tailored suits he favored in Baghdad for traditional Iraqi dress, a dishdasha robe and a checkered headdress.
In a strange twist, he came back, in the end, to a place he wove into his political legend: the site on the Tigris where, in October 1959, as a 22-year-old fleeing Baghdad and his part in the failed assassination of the Iraqi military ruler, Abdul Karim Kassem, he claimed to have swum the river to escape pursuing troops.
The farmhouse where he was seized last Saturday lies a few hundred yards from the riverbank where Saddam came each year to mark the anniversary with a choreographed swim.
Further isolated
Before they were killed by U.S. forces in a shootout in the northern city of Mosul on July 22, U.S. officers say, Saddam's two sons, Uday and Qusay, merciless enforcers of his terror in the years of power, met their father periodically at the safe houses, plotting stratagems before separating to avoid standing out.
Their deaths further isolated Saddam from the top officials of his government, many of whom were being hunted down from a U.S. most wanted list of 55 men. In the process, some offered tantalizing clues as to where Saddam might be found.
Much of Saddam's life as a fugitive remains a mystery. But before his capture and since, U.S. intelligence officers and ground commanders in Iraq have pieced together a sketch of his life eluding U.S. troops.
The officers said they believed that Saddam fled north within days of the fall of Baghdad, the cocksure defiance of his last days in power shattered by the speed of the U.S. takeover and of his government's implosion.
A tyrant who built a totalitarian state on a web of betrayals, he broke one last vow, to stand and fight beside his followers, that he made as he stood atop a battered Volkswagen outside the Abu Hanifa mosque, one of the Sunni Muslims' most sacred shrines in Iraq, on April 9, the day of the city's fall. As he spoke, U.S. tanks were less than a mile away.
Until the raid that captured him, Saddam's desperate forays about Baghdad in the days just before and after the city's fall were the last public sightings of him. Piecing together accounts given by one of Saddam's bodyguards and other witness accounts, U.S. intelligence documents paint a picture of the dictator, with his son Qusay, careering about the city in an armored Mercedes, then jumping into a Nissan sedan, trying frantically to stop Iraqi soldiers from joining the mass defections that began as U.S. tanks headed for the city center.
Two days later, Saddam and his two sons disappeared, heading north out of Baghdad to their tribal homeland.
In Salahuddin province, a sprawling region of more than 3 million people that includes Saddam's hometown, Tikrit, he went into hiding. There, he fell in among family and tribal members who associated with him before his rise to power and profited handsomely after it.
Leni
My guess is very, very close (several times).
His underwear probably still have major $hi% stains.
The article says he was spouting off at the mouth while our tanks were less than a mile away.
Gotta love this country.
Leni
SUBMITTED BY PASADENA PHIL
LOL! This reminds me of a photo in volume two of Ian Kershaw's Hitler bio. It shows a nazi holding up the pair of pants Hitler was wearing when his would-be assassins set off that bomb during the war. They were shredded below the knees. I can imagine what the seat looked like.
Before they were killed by U.S. forces in a shootout in the northern city of Mosul on July 22, U.S. officers say, Saddam's two sons, Uday and Qusay, merciless enforcers of his terror in the years of power, met their father periodically at the safe houses, plotting stratagems before separating to avoid standing out.Their deaths further isolated Saddam from the top officials of his government, many of whom were being hunted down from a U.S. most wanted list of 55 men. In the process, some offered tantalizing clues as to where Saddam might be found.
How appropriate that his two sons were taken out the way they were:
Saddam sons killed in loo [bathroom]
$30 Million worth of trash
Uday Hussein, left, and Qusay Hussein
They're dead, Jim.
LOL ! Great pics you've posted here ! ...Anybody wanna buy a T-Shirt ?? No? Then how about a has-been Socialist politician ?? ...
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