America’s 48 hours to kill Saddam
From Roland Watson in Washington
AMERICAN war planners believe that they have little more than 48 hours from the start of a ground war to kill President Saddam Hussein if they are to avoid a protracted conflict and a complicated peace.
Haunted by the failure to capture Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Washington is putting in place plans to limit the damage if it fails to topple the Iraqi leader swiftly.
They rest in part on persuading the Iraqi people that US forces control the country even before Saddam’s demise. The Pentagon is planning to drop emergency food and medical aid from the first day of airstrikes to try to win the “hearts and minds” of locals so that they will support the ensuing invasion.
The opening days of the war are planned as a massive air assault aimed at collapsing Saddam’s command structure, followed by a “rush for Baghdad” by ground forces. US special forces and CIA teams are already operating on the ground in Iraq. But if US forces cannot find Saddam or present credible evidence that he is dead, they will face stiffer resistance from the Iraqis. “If people think Saddam is still alive they will be frightened to come out and support us, even if he is powerless,” one US official said.
The American failure to get bin Laden “dead or alive”, in Mr Bush’s words, has provided an unsettling background to war planning in Iraq. “Osama bin Laden hangs very heavy over Iraq,” the official said. “We can’t afford another repeat.”
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here are formidable difficulties in finding Saddam, who has numerous body doubles and rarely sleeps in the same place two nights running, and America is hoping that its massive show of force will prompt a “palace revolt”.
Trying to identify Sadam will be no easier than identifying/locating BinLaden was: There is no limit to the number of disguises he can use, and his assets are even more extensive than BinLaden had. He may appear as an old woman shuffling along, he may appear as a much younger person, he may have a dozen body-doubles and actually look like none of them. Due to the reluctance of our troops to detain everyone and examine them before turning them loose, it would be a major miracle to see Sadam identified and isolated in 48 hrs… or 48 days… BinLaden hiked, biked and trucked across the mountains into freedom and beyond before our ground troops were in place in the north, and Sadam will do the same. Along with his bank accounts.
Glad the job to find him isn’t mine.