Saddam : His Rise and Fall (56 page)

The Allies devised their own propaganda campaign to persuade the Iraqis not to fight, and while some of their measures were effective, the outcome did not always match the intention. Before the war, Arabic-speaking intelligence officers had contacted senior members of the Baath regime and the military on their private telephone numbers at home urging them not to support Saddam, but to help the coalition win a bloodless victory. This tactic was similar to the one that had been used by Saddam's intelligence officers to intimidate opponents living abroad. Only in this case the level of paranoia that existed in the higher echelons of the regime was such that the Iraqi officials believed the calls were being made by Saddam's intelligence service to test their loyalty. Afraid of arrest, incarceration, torture, and even death, they refused to cooperate. The initiative, however, did benefit the Allies because the Iraqi officers virtually stopped using their telephones altogether, which seriously impeded the regime's communications in the critical days before the war. Another Allied propaganda initiative involved dropping millions of leaflets on Iraqi troop positions urging them not to fight. Although the leaflets did not attract the mass desertions that the Allies had hoped for, they nevertheless had a serious effect on the morale of Iraqi troops, who realized that American bombers could just as easily drop their payloads on their locations, despite Saddam's claims about the resilience of the Iraqi air defenses.
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As the fighting entered its second week, the Iraqi tactics began to pay dividends. The Allies had dealt quickly and effectively with the regular Iraqi units as they made their rapid advance north toward Baghdad from southern Iraq, but they were not prepared for the often ferocious guerrilla raids launched on them by small bands of Fedayeen and remnants of the Iraqi army. The Iraqi irregulars conducted classic resistance operations, such as staging a number of hit-and-run attacks on Allied positions that had been made vulnerable by the speed of the advance on Baghdad. They also made a concerted effort to attack exposed supply lines, thereby disrupting the Allies' effort to concentrate their forces around Baghdad for a major offensive. In the south they repeated the tactic first seen during the Gulf War of setting fire to the oil fields, to obscure the view of both the invading troops and enemy aircraft. The Iraqis' defensive tactics played into the hands of critics of the war, who were not slow to point out that President Bush had promised to
deliver a quick victory. Following a meeting with Blair at Camp David, Bush answered his critics by insisting that American forces would fight in Iraq “however long it takes to win.” Even if Saddam was in no position to take direct control of the Iraqi resistance, he could take some degree of satisfaction from the fact that everything appeared to be going to plan.

On March 30 Saddam made his first television appearance since the bomb attack on his bunker on the opening night of the war. On this occasion he was joined by his sons Uday and Qusay and, in video footage that had been shot hours after Allied bombers had tried to knock state television off the air, the Iraqi leader could be seen giving money and medals to troops who had distinguished themselves in the fighting in southern Iraq. Although there was no way of knowing when or where the video had been made, its timing reminded Iraqis that Saddam, who was wearing military uniform and was chairing the meeting, was still running the country. A statement read at the same time by an Iraqi announcer said that Saddam had decorated commanders and troops of units in Umm Qasr and Nasiriyah for their “heroic” defense. In a separate statement read on television the same evening, Saddam announced that any members of the Eleventh Division killed fighting the Americans would receive medals, and their families would immediately receive two million Iraqi dinars ($750). In terms of rallying support, Saddam's appearance was certainly a boost to those involved in the fighting. However, rumors continued to circulate about his well-being after he failed to appear on television as promised the following day to deliver an address to the nation. Instead his speech was read by Muhammad Said al-Sahaf, the information minister; in it Saddam called on Iraqis to carry out suicide missions against the invading forces. “It is your chance for immortality,” read the statement. “Seize the opportunity, my brothers.”

From the start of hostilities Saddam had made it clear that he wanted the decisive battle of the war to be fought in Baghdad itself, where he believed that he could depend on his elite, and relatively well-equipped units, to fight to the death to defend the regime. As the Allied forces continued to concentrate their energies on driving toward Baghdad, Sultan Hasim Ahmad, the Iraqi defense minister, confirmed that the regime would make its last stand in the capital. “We will not be surprised if the enemy surrounds Baghdad in five or ten days, but he will have to take the city. But Baghdad cannot be taken as long as the citizens in it are still alive.” Allied commanders had planned their campaign on the basis that the ultimate battle for control of Iraq would take
place in the vicinity of Baghdad, and the twin-pronged attacks by the U.S. Third Infantry Division and First Marine Division were conceived with the intention that they would converge on the Iraqi capital, having first conquered the 350 miles of hostile terrain that lay between Kuwait and the Americans' ultimate objective.

By April 1 American forces had reached the outskirts of Baghdad and begun to make their preparations for an assault on the city. There were many issues that first needed to be resolved before commanders could plan their advance. Uppermost in their thoughts were the high-grade intelligence reports that they had received that Saddam's forces were equipped with battlefield WMD, and that the most likely moment for these weapons to be deployed was at the point where Allied forces began to threaten Baghdad. Saddam was believed to have a drawn a “red line” around the city and given orders that if Allied troops succeeded in crossing the line, then WMD were to be used in defense of the city. The Iraqis were known to have prepared a number of sabotage operations to impede the Americans' progress, such as blowing up the Hadithah dam, which would have flooded the key crossing points of the Euphrates and turned the area into a quagmire of bogs.
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Commanders had to contend with the cunning tactics of some of the Republican Guard divisions deployed at the approaches to the city. The Medina Division, for example, which was regarded as the largest and most capable of the Republican Guard formations, had skillfully dispersed its fighting elements within the suburbs and villages lying to the west of Baghdad. Much of its weaponry and support structure lay in or next to mosques, schools, and hospitals, as well as in public and private buildings, making it almost impossible for U.S. high-performance aircraft to attack their positions without incurring large numbers of civilian deaths. The Allies were particularly sensitive about civilian casualties after a huge explosion had claimed more than fifty lives in central Baghdad at the end of March. It was unclear whether the deaths were caused by the Allied or the Iraqi weaponry, but the loss of innocent life led to renewed calls by the antiwar lobby to halt the hostilities.

With an estimated two hundred thousand U.S. troops moving into position for an assault on Baghdad, Saddam made two public appearances in quick succession in an attempt to rally support. With statues and portraits of the Iraqi dictator being destroyed and defaced in areas of the country that had been conquered by the Allies, it was imperative that Saddam broke cover to
demonstrate that he was still in control. First he made what the Iraqi authorities insisted was a live television appearance in which he urged his people to put the invaders into “the fire of hell.” Soon afterward a portly, genial figure bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Iraqi dictator was filmed making an impromptu visit to a Baghdad suburb, where he was filmed holding a young Iraqi girl in his arms and receiving the acclaim of a group of delighted civilian onlookers. By making these appearances Saddam laid to rest any suggestion that he had been killed or severely incapacitated during the decapitation strike. Allied intelligence reports claimed that the Iraqi war effort was being run on a day-to-day basis by Qusay and, to a lesser extent, Uday. Saddam's public appearances, however, confirmed that he was still running the country and was well aware of how the war was progressing. In the television broadcast, Saddam made specific reference to a U.S. Apache helicopter that had been shot down—so it was claimed—by an Iraqi farmer. This was classic Saddam propaganda. If an illiterate, elderly, toothless peasant could shoot down a highly sophisticated American war machine, there was no reason why the great and ancient nation of Iraq should not prevail over the American invaders. If the Iraqis summoned the courage and the will to fight, David would defeat Goliath.

The big breakthrough for the Americans came on the morning of April 2 when the Third Infantry Division finally succeeded in winning control of the river crossings at Karbala, about seventy miles south of Baghdad, after encountering and eventually overcoming fierce resistance from Republican Guard units. When they realized that they could not defend their positions any longer, Iraqi engineers attempted to blow up the main bridge across the Euphrates, but although the charges caused significant damage, they were not sufficient to destroy the bridge, and by late afternoon American troops had crossed the bridge and secured the crossing. With Karbala under American control, the road to Baghdad was clear. As Lieutenant General William Wallace, the task force commander, commented later that day, “At that point I was pretty confident that we had Saddam by the balls…I knew we were essentially home free.”
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American commanders wasted no time pressing home the advantage. Within hours the Third Infantry Division was moving through the decimated ranks of the Medina Division, which had been subjected to several days of intensive bombardment by American bombers. In the three days preceding the fall of Karbala it was estimated that three thousand precision-
guided bombs were dropped on Republican Guard positions, most of them aimed at the Medina. Consequently as the American soldiers moved through the Medina's destroyed defensive positions toward Baghdad, they encountered scenes of unimaginable carnage. A sergeant who had served in the Gulf War said, “I hope I won't experience anything like that again…. When I see that many bodies, I just don't want to be here anymore.”
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It was a testament to the resilience of Saddam's propaganda infrastructure that, in the face of these catastrophic setbacks, officials at the Iraqi Information Ministry were still making outlandish claims to the effect that the Iraqi defenders were killing scores of American and British soldiers, destroying their tanks, and shooting down their aircraft in large numbers, whereas in reality total Allied casualties were minimal compared with the devastation that had been inflicted on the Iraqi armed forces.

Within two days of the breakthrough at Karbala, U.S. troops had reached the outskirts of Baghdad and stormed the international airport on the western approaches to the city. The aerial bombardment of the Republican Guards had been so effective that by the time U.S. troops reached Baghdad, intelligence reports suggested that Saddam possessed only two Republican Guard brigades and approximately fifteen thousand Fedayeen defenders. On the morning of April 5 the entire airport complex was under American control, and later that day U.S. forces began the first of their “thunder runs”—heavily armed reconnaissance missions—into the heart of Baghdad to test the strength of the Iraqi resistance. At this point Saddam and his two sons were still inside Baghdad, desperately trying to coordinate some form of counterattack. But after the devastating losses that the Iraqis had suffered on the battlefield, most of the survivors from the regular armed forces realized that they were fighting a lost cause and simply took off their uniforms and went home. Saddam was left with undisciplined bands of Fedayeen, which were no match for the Americans' vastly superior firepower. For the next three days American troops, backed by Apache helicopters and A-10 ground-attack aircraft, fought a series of running skirmishes with Fedayeen, who would rush at the U.S. armored columns, wildly firing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, before being killed by the Americans' overwhelming firepower. While hundreds—if not thousands—of Iraqis and other foreign fighters, who had come to Baghdad to join the jihad against the United States, were slaughtered by the dozen by the superior American firepower, Saddam's fighters only managed to inflict damage on a single Abrams tank. As Saddam's
Fedayeen were being decimated throughout the city, the Information Ministry was still trying to convince an increasingly skeptical international press that the Americans had suffered defeat and taken massive casualties.

At 2
P.M.
local time on Monday, April 7, while U.S. forces were fighting their way into the city, Allied commanders received an urgent intelligence report claiming that Saddam, together with his two sons and some senior members of the regime, had entered a restaurant in the city's upper-class Mansour district. The agent providing the information may well have been the same person who tipped off the Americans about Saddam's whereabouts on the opening night of the war. At this stage Allied intelligence specialists were still uncertain whether Saddam had survived the initial decapitation attack, as many were still convinced that the “Saddam” making the television appearances was in fact one of his body doubles. If Saddam was still alive, the commanders believed, the new intelligence was so strong that they felt they had no alternative other than to act. The whole purpose of the conflict, after all, was to get rid of Saddam. Forty-eight minutes after receiving the intelligence, the pilot of a B-1 bomber circling above Baghdad was given the order to attack. Ten minutes later the restaurant was hit by four 2,000-pound bunker-busting bombs. Initially the CIA was confident that Saddam and his inner circle had been killed in the blast, but it soon emerged that, even though Saddam had been in the building at the time the Allies received the initial intelligence report, he and his entourage had left the premises soon afterward and made good their escape. The only people killed in the bombing raid were a family—including several children—who were in the process of preparing a late lunch. It was later suggested that Saddam, suspecting he had a spy in his midst, had deliberately set a trap by letting it be known to only a few of his inner circle that he planned to visit the restaurant at a specific time. When the bombs struck the restaurant, Saddam was able to identify one of his senior bodyguards as the spy. He was immediately executed by a single shot to the head.
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