Delta Forces on a Urgent Mission to Kill saddam

[AR182]

I hope this mission is achieved very quickly for obvious reasons.



World News



March 20, 2003

Delta Force on urgent mission to kill Saddam
From Tim Reid in Washington



ELITE teams of US Delta Force commandos have been inside Iraq for weeks and are preparing to descend on Baghdad with the objective of capturing or killing President Saddam Hussein, US defence officials said yesterday.

Small, highly mobile units picked from the US Army?s most revered and secretive fighting force have been assigned a key mission of the war: to hunt down Saddam, his two sons and at least a ?dirty dozen? of Iraq?s top military and civilian leaders.

The Delta Force, the US equivalent of the British SAS, has 306 men. It has been training for several years with the CIA for the specific mission of hunting down the Iraqi leader, officials said.

Last night they were being mobilised to infiltrate Baghdad and Saddam?s home city of Tikrit to begin the hunt.

As plans were revealed to drop the commandos from Black Hawk helicopters to sites outside Baghdad, it became clear that, if US forces locate Saddam, the likelihood is that they will kill him and his closest henchmen rather than capture them.

?The expectation is to kill him within days (of the start of the war),? a Pentagon official said.?It?s what Delta has been training 24/7 to do.?

Assassinating a foreign leader runs counter to a 1976 executive order signed by President Ford. But White House officials cite international law, which states that, once a war begins, there are no limits on military actions against enemy leaders. Saddam, as Commander-in-Chief of Iraq?s Armed Forces, is a legitimate target, they say.

CIA operatives have been photographing and spying on Saddam?s numerous presidential compounds, while US spy satellites take daily pictures of the Iraqi leader?s suspected hideouts. Some of the most detailed information on his possible whereabouts, Pentagon officials said, is coming from Jordanian intelligence.

Saddam will prove a highly elusive prey, however. During the 1991 Gulf War, allied aircraft bombed 260 ?leadership targets?, including underground bunkers, command centres and offices, but failed to touch him.

The Iraqi leader, who has at least three surgically enhanced body doubles, spent 38 nights of Operation Desert Storm hiding in the homes of ordinary families, never staying in the same place twice, a tactic that he is likely to repeat.

He also claims to have more than 400 hideouts in Baghdad, homes and apartment buildings indistinguishable from ordinary Iraqi residences. The US commandos are preparing to conduct house-to-house searches for him, officials said.

In Baghdad, a city of more than five million people, Saddam has a dozen presidential compounds, connected with tunnels built by Yugoslav experts who built a network of underground hideouts for Marshal Tito during the Cold War. Saddam also has several unmarked lorries in which he can live for days at a time.

The Iraqi leader views himself as an indefatigable survivor, emerging unscathed from at least seven domestic assassination attempts, a CIA-sponsored coup attempt and the 1991 Gulf War. Jerrold Post, an expert at George Washington University, puts the chances of him fleeing in the face of a US-led attack as ?between zero and none?.

The first job of the Delta Force commandos will be to isolate Saddam from his military commanders. As soon as they arrive, they plan to hack into and shut down Iraq?s communications and power facilities using laptop computers.

They hope to prevent Saddam from communicating with senior officers who might help him to escape or might be awaiting orders to use chemical or biological weapons.

Pentagon officials concede that the best chances of finding him lie with informants. ?We?ve been trying to track Saddam down since the beginning of the Gulf War, without success,? retired Marine Lieutenant Gregory Newbold said.

Peter Singer, a Washington-based Iraqi expert said: ?He carries a gun, is always surrounded by armed bodyguards and will not want to be captured. The order is not to risk US lives to capture him alive. But it could take a very, very long time to find him.?

If Saddam is captured, he will be tried for war crimes, although the forum has not yet been decided on. The likely choice is between the International Criminal Court in the Hague, a body the US has refused to recognise, or a military tribunal set up by the US.

One advantage of a prosecution is the mass of damning evidence that would emerge, justifying the invasion.

Michael Vickers, a former Special Forces officer now with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis, a Washington think-tank that specializes in military affairs, said: ?A lot?s going to happen in a very compressed time.?

With fears high that if Iraq strikes Israel or US forces it will be with chemical or biological weapons, the hunt for Scuds and weapons of mass destruction is a top priority, Mr Vickers added.

 

[TORONTO-VIGILANTE]

interesting article....

thanks for posting it.

 

[RAYMOND]

your like cnn

 

[AR182]

This is an interesting article that is connected to the article that I posted above:

Thu 20 Mar 2003

Technology gives US forces best chance to zero in on Iraqi leader

DAN MCDOUGALL


THEY are called Micron and Trumpet, circle the globe at 14,000mph and present perhaps the biggest threat to Saddam Hussein?s hopes of escaping Iraq?s borders.

As allied forces close in on Saddam and his cohorts, US special forces hope two of the world?s most advanced spy satellites will lead them directly to the trophy they would treasure most of all.

Controlled from a bunker far below the US Special Forces Central Command in Tampa, Florida, Micron and Trumpet have been at the front line in the war against Iraq for 12 months. They have intercepted calls and walkie-talkie transmissions from Iraqi military sites, pinpointed the position of Saddam?s motorcade and even photographed movement within his palaces.

For the SAS and Delta Force operatives already in action behind enemy lines, satellite technology will give them the best chance of tracking down Saddam and his inner circle.

In the 1991 Gulf war, Saddam moved daily to avoid more than 250 allied air strikes on "leadership targets". According to a Pentagon adviser, Mike Vickers, US officials hope that monitoring his use of satellite and mobile phones will provide clues to his whereabouts.

He said: "Tracking a tyrant as concerned about his personal security as Saddam is challenging, to say the least. One either has to have an intelligence break on his movement that is actionable or maintain continuous surveillance on him, which is very unlikely."

It is no secret that the US has been undertaking a vigorous military and intelligence effort to track, and possibly kill, Saddam and close aides. It is understood that nearly 250 US and British special forces operatives and more than 60 CIA agents have conducted reconnaissance missions in Iraq?s deserts and outside its major cities since September.

Their missions have included monitoring troop movements at bases used by the Iraqi Republican Guard, Saddam?s most loyal defenders, and scouting landing strips - but they are also at the front line in the hunt for Saddam.

In addition, nearly 35,000ft above Iraq, a converted Boeing 707 is flying ten hours a day, every day, recording conversations of top Iraqi officials and pinpointing the location of those calls to within a mile.

According to Wafiq al-Sammarai, the former chief of Iraq?s military intelligence who defected to the West in 1994, Saddam will be more than aware of the special forces teams assigned to track him down. He said: "Saddam knows American special forces are drawing in on him but he has been living with the threat of assassination attempts for decades. His contingency plans will make it very difficult for him to be captured. It is well known that he uses doubles who often travel in motorcades. In many ways, he rules from the shadows and doesn?t even use his presidential palaces with any regularity. He is one of the most paranoid, but also one of the best-defended, leaders in the world. He will make it hard, maybe even impossible, for America to get him."

According to military experts Saddam?s expected response, assuming he survives, is also becoming discernible. It is believed that in a bid to counter the US plans to launch a modern-day blitzkrieg on Baghdad, he has begun positioning what is left of his loyal forces to defend him.

The most likely resistance to US forces will come from the six Republican Guards divisions, numbering 10,000-12,000 men each. Four divisions are around Baghdad; a fifth is moving much of its force to Saddam?s home town of Tikrit, 100 miles north of Baghdad, where much of the Iraqi leader?s power is concentrated. A sixth remains near Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

According to Mr al-Sammarai: "In the hunt for Saddam the Americans know that even the Republican Guards may not be loyal. So the apparent movement of his core protection units towards Tikrit is particularly significant. Saddam?s last stand could take place in his family?s ancestral home, since that would make him a legend in the Arab world. Tikrit also has the advantage of being in the Sunni Arab heartland, far from the Kurds in the north and the Shias in the south."

He added: "Saddam?s closest allies, including relatives, tribal loyalists and others, face jail or death should the dictator be toppled. They will fight to the death. The people in the Special Republican Guard have been drawn from Saddam?s own village. The people have ties to him by tribe and clan and a lot to lose if he is overthrown."

The real question remaining is exactly what the allied forces would do if they capture Saddam or his cohorts. Last year the Americans launched a campaign to indict the Iraqi leader on war crime charges, lobbying for the creation of an international court that would put Saddam, his two sons and at least nine of his inner circle on trial.

Yesterday?s decision by the CIA to admit it has a list of 50 wanted men within the Iraqi regime would add weight to the theory that the US envisions a showcase international trial, perhaps in The Hague.

It is believed Washington has set aside ?100 million for a special court and has given ?2 million of that to US war crime investigators who are gathering testimony from prominent Iraqi exiles.

Luckily for investigators, the ruling Ba?ath party is obsessive in its documentation. Some 5.5 million pages of documents captured in Kurdistan and stored at the University of Colorado in Boulder make chilling reading. One of the most clearly documented cases concerns an order signed by "Chemical" Ali Hassan Al-Majid, Saddam?s first cousin and a senior figure in the Baghdad regime, concerning the Anfal campaign against the Kurds in the 1980s, in which tens of thousands were killed.

To give further impetus to the effort Washington recently declassified satellite photographs showing an aerial view of Iraq?s southern marshes, which the US claims the Baghdad regime is draining to eliminate cover for rebels.

One White House source said: "The elimination of a people?s way of life and livelihood is a war crime and our primary objective is to see Saddam Hussein and the leadership of the Iraqi regime indicted and prosecuted by an international criminal tribunal."