A 'great mystery:' Was Saddam hit?
https://web.archive.org/web/20050311000317/http://www.iht.com/articles/90371.html
excerpts:
How a tip led to surprise start to war
WASHINGTON Intelligence officials had long been frustrated in their attempts to track Saddam Husseins erratic movements. Then, on Wednesday, according to senior U.S. government officials, Iraqi informants produced a lead.
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The Iraqi leader, and possibly his two sons, were said to be in a private house built over an underground bunker in southern Baghdad.
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What happened next, one senior administration official said Thursday, has created one of the great mysteries of the first day of the war did we hit anyone and if so, who did we get?
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On Thursday night, officials were still holding out hope that one of the American 2,000 pound bombs and nearly 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles, each carrying 1,000 pounds of explosives, may have struck Saddam or one of his sons, Qusay and Uday.
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It may take days, the official said, to sift through it all.
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The mystery deepened as intelligence agencies monitoring Iraqi communications detected a significant drop in intercepted conversations among the top leaders of the country. Some officials speculated that Iraqs leadership had gone underground, others believed that, as one official put it, their phones melted.
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Around 3:30 p.m., Tenet and Rumsfeld carried the information to a meeting with Bush and his top national security officials in the Oval Office. For three hours, the group discussed the source of the information, how likely it was to be true, and the risks of the operation. They spoke to Franks and came to the decision, the official said, that Tomahawk cruise missiles alone would not destroy a bunker that intelligence showed was buried under layers of dirt and concrete.
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Assembled for the discussion about the attack was Bushs war council: were Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, national security adviser Condoleeza Rice, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card Jr., and General Richard Myers of the air force, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. The group concluded that it was imperative to send the friend-117s, which can carry bunker buster bombs, a much heavier payload than a cruise missile.
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As the White House meeting wore on, military planners ordered the coordinates of the Baghdad house entered into the guidance systems of cruise missiles based on eight ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf and prepared to launch friend-117A stealth bombers from their base at Al Udeid air base in Qatar.
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At 7:12 p.m., senior administration officials said, Bush gave the order to execute the strike. The decision was made three minutes before a 7:15 deadline when advisers said the attack on the Baghdad bunker could no longer be carried out. Lets go, Bush said.
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Administration officials said Thursday that while they were unsure if they had killed Saddam, they were sure they had hit a bunker of top Iraqi officials. To this moment, we dont know who it was, a senior administration official said. There was some belief it was him. But there was absolute certainty it was leadership.
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Administration officials also said they were relying on intelligence from Iraqis who had not spoken to them in the past. People are talking to us now and telling us things now that they would never have dreamed of telling us, an official said. People are sticking their necks out in all kinds of way in Iraq that they never would do before.
It seems to me that if you think you can get the top leadership, and it doesnt happen to fit your plan, it would be irresponsible not to take the chance, one senior official said. Wouldnt you have backed an effort to get Hitler in 1939?
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The Iraqi leader, and possibly his two sons, were said to be in a private house built over an underground bunker in southern Baghdad.
.
What happened next, one senior administration official said Thursday, has created one of the great mysteries of the first day of the war did we hit anyone and if so, who did we get?
.
On Thursday night, officials were still holding out hope that one of the American 2,000 pound bombs and nearly 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles, each carrying 1,000 pounds of explosives, may have struck Saddam or one of his sons, Qusay and Uday.
.
It may take days, the official said, to sift through it all.
.
The mystery deepened as intelligence agencies monitoring Iraqi communications detected a significant drop in intercepted conversations among the top leaders of the country. Some officials speculated that Iraqs leadership had gone underground, others believed that, as one official put it, their phones melted.
...
