The Scene at Baghdad's soccer field. US soldiers have posted the score on a war-torn scoreboard.
Posted on 07/24/2003 5:00:32 AM PDT by demlosers
Startled neighbors and U.S. soldiers detail standoff, firefight with fugitives Odai, Qusai
MOSUL, Iraq -- Neighbors didn't know what it meant at the time. But the beginning of the end for Saddam Hussein's notorious sons Odai and Qusai might have been when the men's host sent his wife and daughters away from his villa in his dark blue BMW.
That was about 7 a.m. Tuesday, neighbors said. Two hours later, U.S. forces arrived and issued spurned calls for surrender through a bullhorn. Shots rang out and a firefight escalated into a rocket attack. Hours later, four bodies were carried from the crumbling home.
The villa where Odai and Qusai died is in an upscale neighborhood of Mosul, an industrial city in northern Iraq. On Wednesday, residents speculated whether the owner of the villa had sheltered Saddam's sons and then set the trap for them to reap the U.S. reward of $15 million each.
U.S. military officials, meanwhile, deflected questions about whether a longer siege without such deadly force could have produced a different outcome: the capture of the two brothers alive.
The man who purportedly harbored them and perhaps turned them in was nowhere to be found around his beige tile, three-story villa. Neighbors said Sheik Nawaf al-Zaydan Muhhamad was the likely informer who tipped U.S. authorities to their presence in his home -- though that could be the contrivance of a rumor mill in this shell-shocked city.
American officials said they focused their attention on the house Monday night when a "walk-in" informer alerted them to the brothers' presence.
In a briefing in Baghdad, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, said Wednesday that the tip set officers to planning the "cordon" of the villa, which sits on a corner open from three sides. The forces included infantry, Kiowa Warrior attack helicopters with rockets and machine guns, Humvees equipped with anti-tank missiles and machine guns. Some reports said more than 200 troops were eventually involved.
One of the soldiers, Sgt. George Granter, said all he had known Tuesday morning was that the house was reportedly occupied by Baath Party members. "They heard high guys, but they didn't know how high," said Granter.
Anas Dosky, 17, who rises early for work in a nearby bakery, said he saw Muhhamad's son, Shalan, drive his mother and three sisters away from the house in the family's BMW about 7 a.m. and return less than a half hour later.
According to neighbors, U.S. troops approached the house about 9 a.m.
Halima Elias Baba, who lives two doors from the villa, said she saw Shalan run from the house and Muhhamad emerge with his hands on his head.
Neighbors said the two men were taken to a nearby home under construction. A contractor at that house said he overheard Muhhamad calmly tell U.S. soldiers that Odai and Qusai were in the villa and that they had been there 23 days.
Sanchez said troops first tried a bullhorn to get the wanted brothers to come out.
"The intent is always to ask the people to come out voluntarily," said Col. Joe Anderson, commander of the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade.
"Come out of the house or we will bomb it," Baba said she heard repeated in Arabic for nearly half an hour.
At 10 a.m., a detachment of soldiers from the 101st were sent into the villa. Sanchez said shots were fired as soon as soldiers entered.
Three U.S. soldiers were wounded trying to run up the stairs to the second floor. Sanchez said none of the injuries was serious.
The injured men were brought out of the house, and the Army began a two-hour crescendo of firepower. Grenades, machine guns and a couple of small rockets were fired at the villa.
With sporadic gunfire coming from the villa, helicopters came in and fired rockets while Humvee-mounted anti-tank missiles were readied. For Sanchez, this was all to "prep" the house for an assault.
At noon, according to Sanchez, troops re-entered the house, taking the first floor but finding resistance from what he called a "fairly well barricaded" second story. The troops pulled out again.
Then came the blows that probably killed Odai, Qusai and their bodyguard, Sanchez said. About 1 p.m., nearly three hours after the shooting started, the order was given to fire 10 anti-tank missiles at the house from Humvees on the street.
It was the most crucial decision of the day, made by the commander on the scene, and ended any chance to capture the men inside alive.
"I would never consider this a failure," Sanchez said in response to questions about whether U.S. forces would have been better off capturing the men to interrogate them about Saddam's whereabouts and anti-American guerrilla operations.
"Our mission is to find, kill or capture. In this case, we had an enemy that was defending, it was barricaded, and we had to take the measures that were necessary in order to neutralize the target," he said.
"The option to surround the house and wait out the individuals in the house was considered and rejected," Sanchez said. "The commanders on the ground made the decision to go ahead. . . . That was the right decision."
Of the brothers, Iraq's new 25-member Governing Council said it "would have liked for them to be arrested" to stand trial and confess their crimes.
But Jonathan Stevenson, a senior counterterrorism fellow at London's International Institute of Strategic Studies, suggested that killing them might have provided more propaganda gain than intelligence loss.
"The value of keeping alive the two sons was probably rated low, while the value of killing them, with its potential power to galvanize the larger population's confidence in the Americans to furnish security, was probably rated as high," said Stevenson, an American.
After the missile bombardment, troops re-entered the house a third time, charging up the steps to find a teenager, reportedly Qusai's son Mustafa, firing at them, Sanchez said. The soldiers fired and killed him.
Sheik Shahar Rashad al-Hazraji, 31, who lives across the street, said he saw the homeowner driven away by U.S. officials in the late afternoon.
Neighbors said Muhhamad and his brother were close to the regime and had won a multimillion-dollar job to build Saddam's Big Mosque. But they also had troubles with the regime. Residents said Muhhamad and his brother fraudulently claimed to be members of Saddam's Bani Nasr tribe. His brother even did time in jail last year for making the claim.
Al-Hazraji suspects Muhhamad had turned on Odai and Qusai for the reward.
"For the money, the $15 million, for asylum to any country he wants, because he's a hypocrite," al-Hazraji said. "He was willing to do anything for money."
Theres the families of over 3,000 dead Americans who would've gladly done it for free. Sounds like this guy's mad that he didn't get the chance to turn in these two monsters for $15 mil....
The Scene at Baghdad's soccer field. US soldiers have posted the score on a war-torn scoreboard.
Hey, when opportunity knocks...
Only a goddamn media whore could believe that this was a desirable outcome.
True. The sons would never have surrendered and the media knows it.
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