"Liberals.HATE.America!-
2003-07-22 17:37:18 UTC
Saddam's Sons Likely Killed in Firefight, U.S. Officials Say
MOSUL, Iraq Saddam Hussein's sons Odai and Qusai were "very likely" killed
Tuesday when U.S. soldiers stormed a house in the northern Iraqi city of
Mosul, U.S. military and Bush administration sources told Fox News.
Sources at the Pentagon and within the Bush administration told Fox News
that at least four "high-level" targets were killed inside the house, a
large villa that belonged to one of Saddam's cousins, and that there was a
"likelihood" that Saddam's sons were among the dead.
Officials said four bodies were transported out of the house. Three were
adults -- believed to be Odai, Qusai and a bodyguard. The fourth body was of
a teenager -- possibly Qusai's son.
U.S. officials said there will be DNA testing to confirm the deaths. Senior
defense officials said some sort of announcement would be made later
Tuesday.
The house was burned to the ground after a loud, four-hour gunbattle between
the people inside and soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division.
Residents of the city, 280 miles north of Baghdad, said the American
soldiers were searching for Saddam's sons, who have been reported in the
area. A reporter from Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera said eyewitnesses
told him that Saddam's sons were in the house when it was raided.
"Individuals of very high interest to the coalition forces were hiding out
in the building," Lt. Col. William Bishop of the 101st Airborne Division
told Reuters.
"This morning we went to the building and surrounded it."
According to the Reuters report, U.S. soldiers were fired at by people
inside the house as they approached, and the Americans called in helicopters
and an unmanned vehicle for assistance before storming it.
Fox News' Steve Centanni, reporting from the scene of the firefight, said
the two-story building was "a mess." U.S. forces apparently used all the
weapons in their arsenal, and the building, its columns and balconies were
pock-marked with bulletholes.
Members of Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion of the 101st Airborne Division,
wouldn't who -- if anyone -- they brought out of the house, but all the
troops "have smiles on their faces and they seemed to have carried out this
mission successfully," Centanni reported.
There were no U.S. fatalities.
Witnesses in the neighborhood said there are tunnels below the house. U.S.
forces towed away a gray SUV from the side of house.
Mosul was believed to be the exit route for some of Saddam's family members
trying to get out of Iraq and flee to Syria.
Fox News military analyst Col. Bill Cowan said he hoped Saddam's sons had
been captured and not killed.
"I think in this case, it'd be great to have them alive," he said.
"I think for the [Iraqi] population to see these two guys shackled,
incarcerated and really given some harsh treatment will have a most
profound and long-term psychological advantage."
The United States has offered a $25 million reward for information leading
to Saddam's capture, and $15 million for his sons.
Cowan added that Saddam's sons might provide good intelligence on their
father's whereabouts.
"It appears that good intelligence led to this raid," Ret. U.S. Army Maj.
Gen. Paul Valleley, a Fox News military analyst, said. "One event can lead
to the other. So hopefully, this will lead to determining in some way where
Saddam may be."
In Washington, President Bush's advisers were huddling around during a
conference call trying to determine whether Saddam's sons were alive.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has briefed the president personally on
the assault.
Intelligence sources say the U.S. task force -- Task Force 20 -- was going
after high-level targets during the Mosul raid, but they would not say
whether the soldiers knew they were going after Odai and Qusai.
Task Force 20 -- including Army delta forces and CIA operatives -- was
originally given the responsibility of finding Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction, but later it was ordered to refocus its efforts on hunting down
Saddam and his inner circle. Sources confirmed to Fox News that special
forces were involved with the raid.
The task force is basically a "hit team" that follows up only on solid
intelligence.
"I think we're all anxiously awaiting confirmation," about the sons' deaths,
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, told Fox News Tuesday. "There's no question
they were diabolical forces in Iraq."
Snowe, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the potential
death or capture of Qusai and Odai shows the world that the U.S. work in
Iraq is far from over.
"I think it goes to show how important our role is in Iraq and continues to
be that we have to remove these forces of fear," Snowe said. "Iraq was one
of the most atrocious regimes ... no one can really underestimate the threat
that Saddam Hussein posed."
I think that we all recognized that as long as Saddam Hussein continues to
exist, he poses a threat to the Iraqi people -- they will never be able to
breathe easy if they know he's there."
Odai, Saddam's eldest son, was commander of Iraq's paramilitary unit, known
as the Saddam Fedayeen, and he was also chairman of the Iraqi Olympic
Committee. He is No. 3 on the coalition's most-wanted list, after his father
and Qusai.
Iraqi Olympic athletes say they were routinely jailed and tortured for
losing competitions or disobeying Odai's orders.
During Saddam's reign, Qusai was in charge of all the military, intelligence
and security services in Iraq, including the elite Republican Guard and the
Special Security Organization, which protected the regime and its weapons.
From 1988 to 1999, Qusai often ordered mass executions of several thousand
prisoners, and suppressed revolts among the al-Dulaym tribe in 1995 and
among Shiites in 1997.
Both Odai and Qusai were active in the management of the general office of
the military intelligence service, the Istikhbarat, and the internal
intelligence service, the Mukhabarat.
Qusai was considered the more likely of the two to succeed their father.
Fox News' Bret Baier, Wendell Goler and Greg Palkot contributed to this
report.
--
Oh, be still my heart.
I'm falling in love with the guy all over again, while reading Hillary's
book.
Forget about her being the smartest woman in the world. She's the luckiest
woman!
- Bonnie BLUE EYES, ***@aol.com, who insists everyone knows she is
White
MOSUL, Iraq Saddam Hussein's sons Odai and Qusai were "very likely" killed
Tuesday when U.S. soldiers stormed a house in the northern Iraqi city of
Mosul, U.S. military and Bush administration sources told Fox News.
Sources at the Pentagon and within the Bush administration told Fox News
that at least four "high-level" targets were killed inside the house, a
large villa that belonged to one of Saddam's cousins, and that there was a
"likelihood" that Saddam's sons were among the dead.
Officials said four bodies were transported out of the house. Three were
adults -- believed to be Odai, Qusai and a bodyguard. The fourth body was of
a teenager -- possibly Qusai's son.
U.S. officials said there will be DNA testing to confirm the deaths. Senior
defense officials said some sort of announcement would be made later
Tuesday.
The house was burned to the ground after a loud, four-hour gunbattle between
the people inside and soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division.
Residents of the city, 280 miles north of Baghdad, said the American
soldiers were searching for Saddam's sons, who have been reported in the
area. A reporter from Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera said eyewitnesses
told him that Saddam's sons were in the house when it was raided.
"Individuals of very high interest to the coalition forces were hiding out
in the building," Lt. Col. William Bishop of the 101st Airborne Division
told Reuters.
"This morning we went to the building and surrounded it."
According to the Reuters report, U.S. soldiers were fired at by people
inside the house as they approached, and the Americans called in helicopters
and an unmanned vehicle for assistance before storming it.
Fox News' Steve Centanni, reporting from the scene of the firefight, said
the two-story building was "a mess." U.S. forces apparently used all the
weapons in their arsenal, and the building, its columns and balconies were
pock-marked with bulletholes.
Members of Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion of the 101st Airborne Division,
wouldn't who -- if anyone -- they brought out of the house, but all the
troops "have smiles on their faces and they seemed to have carried out this
mission successfully," Centanni reported.
There were no U.S. fatalities.
Witnesses in the neighborhood said there are tunnels below the house. U.S.
forces towed away a gray SUV from the side of house.
Mosul was believed to be the exit route for some of Saddam's family members
trying to get out of Iraq and flee to Syria.
Fox News military analyst Col. Bill Cowan said he hoped Saddam's sons had
been captured and not killed.
"I think in this case, it'd be great to have them alive," he said.
"I think for the [Iraqi] population to see these two guys shackled,
incarcerated and really given some harsh treatment will have a most
profound and long-term psychological advantage."
The United States has offered a $25 million reward for information leading
to Saddam's capture, and $15 million for his sons.
Cowan added that Saddam's sons might provide good intelligence on their
father's whereabouts.
"It appears that good intelligence led to this raid," Ret. U.S. Army Maj.
Gen. Paul Valleley, a Fox News military analyst, said. "One event can lead
to the other. So hopefully, this will lead to determining in some way where
Saddam may be."
In Washington, President Bush's advisers were huddling around during a
conference call trying to determine whether Saddam's sons were alive.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has briefed the president personally on
the assault.
Intelligence sources say the U.S. task force -- Task Force 20 -- was going
after high-level targets during the Mosul raid, but they would not say
whether the soldiers knew they were going after Odai and Qusai.
Task Force 20 -- including Army delta forces and CIA operatives -- was
originally given the responsibility of finding Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction, but later it was ordered to refocus its efforts on hunting down
Saddam and his inner circle. Sources confirmed to Fox News that special
forces were involved with the raid.
The task force is basically a "hit team" that follows up only on solid
intelligence.
"I think we're all anxiously awaiting confirmation," about the sons' deaths,
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, told Fox News Tuesday. "There's no question
they were diabolical forces in Iraq."
Snowe, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the potential
death or capture of Qusai and Odai shows the world that the U.S. work in
Iraq is far from over.
"I think it goes to show how important our role is in Iraq and continues to
be that we have to remove these forces of fear," Snowe said. "Iraq was one
of the most atrocious regimes ... no one can really underestimate the threat
that Saddam Hussein posed."
I think that we all recognized that as long as Saddam Hussein continues to
exist, he poses a threat to the Iraqi people -- they will never be able to
breathe easy if they know he's there."
Odai, Saddam's eldest son, was commander of Iraq's paramilitary unit, known
as the Saddam Fedayeen, and he was also chairman of the Iraqi Olympic
Committee. He is No. 3 on the coalition's most-wanted list, after his father
and Qusai.
Iraqi Olympic athletes say they were routinely jailed and tortured for
losing competitions or disobeying Odai's orders.
During Saddam's reign, Qusai was in charge of all the military, intelligence
and security services in Iraq, including the elite Republican Guard and the
Special Security Organization, which protected the regime and its weapons.
From 1988 to 1999, Qusai often ordered mass executions of several thousand
prisoners, and suppressed revolts among the al-Dulaym tribe in 1995 and
among Shiites in 1997.
Both Odai and Qusai were active in the management of the general office of
the military intelligence service, the Istikhbarat, and the internal
intelligence service, the Mukhabarat.
Qusai was considered the more likely of the two to succeed their father.
Fox News' Bret Baier, Wendell Goler and Greg Palkot contributed to this
report.
--
Oh, be still my heart.
I'm falling in love with the guy all over again, while reading Hillary's
book.
Forget about her being the smartest woman in the world. She's the luckiest
woman!
- Bonnie BLUE EYES, ***@aol.com, who insists everyone knows she is
White