Posted on 03/28/2003 7:25:43 PM PST by veronica
Wants to take many down with him
As in the last days of Adolf Hitler, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is determined to take as many people as possible with him.
And he's not discriminating between his own Iraqi people and the U.S.-led coalition who have come to get him.
The more death and destruction on both sides, the better. His ideal is to have everything end with him and his sadistically murderous regime.
Like Hitler and his hopeless last weeks of fighting the World War II Allied forces, Saddam has the fanatical Fedayeen Saddam who resemble the SS regiments of the Nazi dictator. Working with them are special militia forces of Saddam's Baath Party who are similar to Hitler's Gestapo.
Between the two groups -- numbered in the tens of thousands -- they are the nutbars who have been sent out to intimidate and even kill Iraqi soldiers if they refuse to fight.
And, as in an uprising in a southern city earlier this week, they don't hesitate to turn their guns and mortars on their own Iraqi civilians. With not an iota of concern that their targets include innocent men, women and children.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld probably best described them yesterday:
"What they are is death squads, enforcers. They go into the cities and shoot people and threaten people ... they're vicious."
These same forces, along with some of the more fanatical parts of Saddam's Republican Guard, have been used to both launch hit-and-run attacks on coalition forces and to keep Iraqi regular forces from surrendering in the cities.
'SUICIDE MISSION'
For instance, it's believed some of these "Saddam thugs" forced an armoured column of Iraqi regulars to head south from Basra on what was termed "a suicide mission" -- straight towards coalition forces. They were cut to pieces.
Why would they do such a thing? Coalition commanders said they had information that some Fedayeen Saddam types threatened to kill the soldiers' families if they didn't drive out to their destruction.
Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, deputy director for the U.S. Central Command, said yesterday these fanatical bullies operate "more akin to the behaviour of global terrorists."
Of course, Saddam does have some terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network working with him. One killed an Australian newsman and others in northern Iraq in a car bombing attack a few days ago.
Another belonging to the same Ansar al-Islam group was shot to death yesterday at a Kurdish checkpoint in the north before he could detonate his Toyota Land Cruiser loaded with explosives.
S'funny, but guys like Canada's PM Jean Chretien and his pal, French President Jacques Chirac, have constantly insisted there's no link between Saddam and al-Qaida, the Muslim fundamentalist terrorists who blew up New York's World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon -- slaughtering more than 3,000 innocent people. Oh, and even if Chretien seems to constantly forget -- that included 24 Canadians.
Meanwhile, elements of the Fedayeen Saddam and Baath Party forces are the ones who have been wearing civilian clothes over their uniforms and attacking coalition forces. They also pretend to surrender and then suddenly attack approaching coalition soldiers.
They also are the ones who executed some coalition prisoners, as a British commander noted yesterday.
MASTERFUL JOB
However, despite Saddam's "gotterdammerung" plan to pull as many people with him to their deaths, the U.S.-led coalition is actually pulling off a masterful job. It has fought its way to the outskirts of Baghdad, landed forces in the north, took over western airfields to prevent Saddam from launching Scud missiles, saved Iraq's southern oil fields from Saddam's plan to destroy them, and badly damaged much of his command and communications system.
All this in the first week and with very low casualties.
Yesterday, U.S. President Bush and his ally, British PM Tony Blair, declared after their Camp David meeting that there will be no stopping until total victory is won.
"However long it takes," emphasized Bush.
The way things have been going, that shouldn't take too long -- despite the naysayers. And despite Saddam's murderous plans for all, both friend and foe.
Iraqi intelligence agents were arrested in Jordan and Yemen in the last 24 hours and were well advanced in plans to blow up and set fire to hotels that Americans frequent.
The Iraqi intelligence agent and terrorist connection is starting to go public.
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