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Fri. Jul 25, 2003

Tales of Near Misses, Defiance, Defeat

Tales of Near Misses, Defiance, Defeat – “Five or six days after U.S. troops seized this city in April, Saddam, Uday and Qusay Hussein gathered secretly with a handful of aides at a house in the Adhamiya neighborhood.”

“The men were shocked at their defeat, having been convinced that Iraq’s military would keep U.S. forces out of Baghdad. They had not planned for any kind of underground, guerrilla resistance to what they now saw would be a U.S. military occupation.”

“But Hussein and his sons had been moving freely around Baghdad, often with astonishingly little effort to hide themselves. Uday had driven right past a convoy of U.S. soldiers, looking at their faces and quietly insulting the men who now controlled his country. And while disoriented, the Husseins concluded that fighting the Americans was still possible.”

“The meeting to plan a guerrilla war was restricted to a handful of Hussein’s top loyalists ‘so that no one would know the details of the resistance,‘ said one of Uday Hussein’s bodyguards yesterday.”

It’s a fascinating interview, filled with lovely anecdotal details: “An old woman in a black abaya walked up to Saddam and berated him with a boldness that, days earlier, could have gotten any Iraqi killed.”

“ ‘What have you done to us?’ she demanded.”

“Iraq’s once all-powerful leader smacked his forehead with his open palm and pleaded for understanding. ‘What could I do?’ he asked the woman. ‘I trusted my commanders. ... They have broken the oath they took upon themselves to protect Iraq. We hope we will be back in power and everything will be fixed.’ ”

“Many in the crowd began crying, Abu Tiba said. ‘He had told them one thing and another thing had happened,’ he said. ‘She was an old woman and she was not afraid.’ ”

It tells of many near misses, including one that was a sting: “Coordinating Iraq’s defense required frequent face-to-face meetings among the president, his sons and other top leaders. Too often for Saddam’s liking, the meeting places then would be bombed. Suspecting a captain on his staff of informing the Americans, Saddam gave him word that the top brass would be meeting at a house in Mansour April 7.”

“ ‘We went inside and then out the back door,’ Abu Tiba said. ‘Ten minutes later it was bombed. So they killed the captain. One of Saddam’s bodyguards did it.’ ”

There’s much much more, so go read it all. But it’s pretty clear it was Saddam and his sons organizing the resistance we’ve seen over the past three months.

Now it’s just Saddam.