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Just checking in.

I have been wondering what was going on underground in Baghdad so I found this article. Anyone got anything interesting? This, it seems to me, would be a very likely place to find some of the things we are looking for.

Troops work to infiltrate a Baghdad underground

Tunnels probed for weapons, escape routes

Sunday, April 13, 2003

BY KEVIN COUGHLIN
Star-Ledger Staff

As American soldiers and Marines fought their way through Baghdad while a worldwide television audience watched last week, comrades waged an unseen war of hide-and-seek in the bowels of the city.

Probing for Saddam Hussein, his Republican Guards and their alleged stockpiles of deadly weapons, U.S. forces hoped to unravel the enduring mystery of just what's buried below Baghdad. Analysts expect they will find an incredible labyrinth of tunnels, perhaps linking palaces and bunkers.

"For the type of regime we're dealing with, the tunnels represent an ideal spot to conceal weapons and serve as a hide-out and in some cases an escape route," said Lt. Mark Kitchens, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command.

One tunnel coughed up an Iraqi colonel, who was directing artillery fire from his lair.

At the airport, soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division descended into a cave with 12 rooms, white marble floors and fluorescent lights. They found some tea bags and cigarette butts, but no Iraqis. Through a "staff only" doorway under the baggage claim area, another search team found empty tunnels in all directions.

Just how far they go is anyone's guess.

"They've got enormous miles and miles of underground tunneling," said U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in December, arguing against further United Nations weapons inspections. U.N. inspectors suspected a vast network tunnel but never proved it.

From cosmic rays to infrared sensors, scientists have struggled to ferret out the tunnels, a favorite tool of American adversaries from the Viet Cong to the North Koreans to Osama bin Laden.

"We don't have the technology to find these tunnels, let alone examine them," said Richard A. Muller, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley.

"We depend completely on people telling us, on human intelligence. It's the only way to find out."

Iraq's former top nuclear scientist claims Saddam ordered his military to convert plans for a Baghdad subway into more than 60 miles of tunnels for secreting weapons of mass destruction.

"We can hide them, we can move them around," he said, according to Hussein Shahristani in an interview on "60 Minutes" in February.

At least one of the tunnels may be hardened against nuclear attack, said the scientist, who was jailed and tortured for refusing Saddam's order for an atomic bomb. Shahristani's knowledge of the tunnels was not first-hand, however.

A California firm, the Parsons Corp. of Pasadena, was involved in Iraq's subway project in the early 1980s. U.S. officials reportedly grabbed the company's blueprints during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

A man claiming to be a former Saddam bodyguard contends weapons of mass destruction lurk below Baghdad, and in sand-dune bunkers at Ouja, near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit.

"Saddam built an entire area under (Baghdad's) main streets, and that's where the weapons are," Jassem Abdullah -- the name is an alias -- told Debka.com, an Israeli Web site devoted to military matters.

Muller said infrared equipment sometimes can spot tunnels by the heat they emit. Gravimeters sift clues by comparing differences in gravitational fields at varying depths. Ground-penetrating radar actually led inspectors to some missile parts smuggled into Iraq.

But such measures work much better in the desert than in cluttered cities, said Muller.

"We don't know much about them at all," retired Army Gen. John Reppert said of Iraq's tunnels. "But we are working with the locals, people who run the sewers and tunnels, and they are being very helpful. We will know a lot more."

Reppert doubts Saddam stashed his banned weapons beneath Baghdad; tunnels pose too many security headaches. But that won't stop coalition forces from searching. It's not a coveted assignment.

"Most people aren't comfortable in tunnels, and not just people with claustrophobia," said Reppert, now at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

"It's very disorienting ... you can't even tell what's up or down," Bill Manofsky of the Navy's Tunnel Warfare Center told a military publication.

Tunnels might serve as an equalizer for technically inferior Iraqi troops, Reppert said. The coalition's night-vision equipment won't work in total darkness. Most radars are useless underground; so is global positioning system technology for pinpointing locations.

"You can't call in air or artillery support. If you're shot at, you have to shoot back at them with your individual weapons," Reppert said.

Robotic devices may be helpful for peering around corners. Other gear amplifies faint sounds. "Shock and flash" grenades temporarily blind anyone creeping in the shadows. Tear gas is an option for soldiers with gas masks.

U.S. forces also have superior systems for communicating underground, Reppert said.

Since Sept. 11 and the Afghanistan campaign, he added, U.S. forces are better prepared for urban combat. "We will use some of those same techniques" in Baghdad, Reppert said.

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-8/1050215010157930.xml