Saddam’s Bunkers

Newsweek ^ | April 7, 2003 | Stefan Theil

[Cultural Jihad]

Saddam’s Bunkers

Beneath the ground, a realm of catacombs and secret passages, storehouses and hideouts

By Stefan Theil and Christopher Dickey
NEWSWEEK

April 7 issue — When one of the most secure and luxurious of his palace-and-bunker complexes was completed in 1984, at a cost of $70 million, Saddam Hussein moved in right away. But even protected by enormous layers of concrete, sand and steel, behind zigzag corridors and blast doors made to withstand a Hiroshima-size explosion, and guarded by men who knew they’d have to be ready to die for him, or be killed by him, Saddam apparently could not sleep.
	“ALL NIGHT LONG he heard a sound like the cocking of a pistol,” remembers Wolfgang Wendler, the German engineer who supervised the project. Wendler was summoned by angry officials to find out what was wrong. He discovered a faulty thermostat.         Today the bunker beneath the “305 Guest House” in Baghdad’s main palace compound is part of an underground world of tunnels, shelters and storage depots where Saddam may be hiding his most fearsome weapons, as well as himself. Iraqi scientist Hussein Shahristani and other exiles even talk of a phantom subway that was built but never opened in the 1980s. (“I’m still waiting to take a ride in it,” says a skeptical former U.N. inspector.) What is certain is that many underground bunkers and tunnels do exist, and they could be a subterranean nightmare for American and British forces. Day and night some of the most powerful “bunker-busting” bombs in the U.S. arsenal are being brought to bear on the massively fortified infrastructure. Some of the bunkers are buried so far beneath the city that when British Member of Parliament George Galloway met with Saddam in one of them last August, he wrote about taking a high-speed elevator “so deeply under ground my ears were popping.” ....

[The Great Satan]

Wouldn't it be better to just seal them off, wait for the occupants to die, and then go back in to fetch whatever information might be available?

Sounds like a job for Geraldo.

[Spunky]

"What is certain is that many underground bunkers and tunnels do exist,..."

I live where it is somewhat sandy soil. When you dig it is a little difficult to keep the sand from filling the hole back up.

I wonder how they did it?

[TheLion]

They ought to figue out a way to flood the underground in Bagdad and force the gophers to the surface.

[Minty]

Before sealing the thing release in there 1000 bee hives really pissed off and make them killer bees.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Bunkers, Shmunkers! That boy is burning in Hell right about now! And he's surrounded by seventy, dark-eyed harpies, stickin' forks in him to see if he's done!

And Helen Thomas, in nasal though perfect Arabic is haranging him in an eternal interview.

[tm61]

bring in Carl from Caddyshack