Can't Catch Anyone of Consequence Eh?

[MKSheppard]

Army Raids Catch Saddam's Northern Deputy

Me Love Long Links

As recently as two days before his capture, Saddam Hussein dined with a top lieutenant who was co-ordinating guerilla attacks on the so-called Highway of Death from Baghdad north to Tikrit.

He also gave him more than $US1 million ($1.35 million) to finance the attacks, a US military commander said.

The deputy, Qais Hattam, was arrested at a farmhouse south of Tikrit early on Tuesday with 73 suspected Saddam Fedayeen guerillas, a huge cache of explosives and paperwork accounting for $US1.9 million to finance attacks, said Colonel Nate Sassaman, who led the raid.

Raids against suspected guerillas are continuing. US forces sealed all roads into the city of Samarra early on Wednesday and arrested about 30 suspects.

The show of force, the biggest since the US-led occupation began in April, signalled an escalation in the anti-insurgent campaign and reflected a growing sense that the military has to change tactics if it is to counter increasingly well-planned attacks in Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland.

Hattam, believed to be Saddam's top lieutenant for guerilla operations north of Baghdad, has been on the military's wanted list for months. An Iraqi informant came to a US base just hours after Saddam's arrest was reported in Iraq and said that Hattam was meeting regional Fedayeen militia commanders.

It is unclear how much control Saddam had over the guerilla campaign centred on Samarra, where at least 54 Iraqis were killed in a gun battle this month and insurgents mounted a sophisticated two-stage ambush against a US patrol on Monday, two days after Saddam's arrest.

There was civilian outrage in Samarra over the troops' strong-arm search tactics. The US said it would pay restitution for any property damage.

Officials would not say whether financial documents found in Saddam's hideout directly linked him to Hattam or other guerilla money men.

However, in the northern city of Mosul, Major-General David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, said documents found with Saddam confirmed that he had had contact with several suspected Iraqi insurgents long sought by US forces in north-western Iraq.

The top commander of US forces in the Persian Gulf region, General John Abizaid, said on Wednesday that Saddam's capture had given US authorities valuable insight into the structure and operations of the resistance.

Information gained from the capture, coupled with intelligence gathered over the past two months, had contributed to "a good haul" of more suspected insurgents, General Abizaid said.

Army intelligence officers reportedly tracked more than 9000 members of extended families loyal to Saddam, using arrests, interrogations and occasional rewards until one of Saddam's most trusted tribesmen pinpointed his location.

Officials have said that the key information in locating Saddam came from a man arrested in Baghdad on Friday and taken to Tikrit for interrogation on Saturday. Gunmen loyal to Saddam killed an official of Iraq's largest Shiite Muslim political movement in Baghdad on Wednesday, the group said yesterday. The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq said Muhannad al-Hakim was shot dead near his home in the Amil district following death threats from Saddam backers.

[Vympel]

Never heard of him.

where at least 54 Iraqis were killed in a gun battle

I see they're still peddling this ridiculous lie. And that's quite a big farmhouse, 73 guerillas eh ....

[MKSheppard]

Never heard of him.

He was quite important and of 'consequence', I'm sorry that he
wasn't splashed all over the TV screens in Ozzieland.

I see they're still peddling this ridiculous lie.

What lie?

London Sunday Telegraph thru the Wash Times

Saddam sent instructions to insurgents

By Philip Sherwell
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

BAGHDAD — Saddam Hussein was personally directing the postwar insurgency inside Iraq that has claimed the lives of more than 200 coalition troops, playing a far more active role than previously thought, American intelligence officers have concluded since his capture.

Despite the bewildered appearance of the deposed dictator when he was hauled from his hiding hole last weekend, he is believed to have been issuing regular instructions on targets and tactics through five trusted lieutenants.

This conclusion could have serious implications for his status in U.S. custody. U.S. officials have made clear that he will lose his rights as a prisoner of war if he was involved in the postwar violence.

Documents found in his briefcase when he was caught indicated that he had been kept informed of the progress of the insurgency, but did not suggest he had overall control of operations by former Ba'ath Party loyalists.

However, since the arrest and interrogation of guerrilla leaders identified in the paperwork, U.S. investigators now believe that Saddam was at the head of an elaborate network of rebel cells.

They have put together a detailed picture of Saddam's support structure while in hiding. This network enabled him to issue commands without the use of satellite phones that monitoring devices could pick up.

The Sunday Telegraph also has learned that millions of dollars to support the insurgency were recovered in raids on other suspected Saddam safe houses.

U.S. officials say he was in regular contact with five "enablers" — veterans of his feared security services drawn from his power base of Tikrit.

Each man had his own responsibility: logistics, financing, planning, operations and as chief of staff. It was the last of these lieutenants, picked up in a swoop in Baghdad nine days ago, who gave away Saddam's hiding place.

"They knew where he was, and they were able to travel to him or meet him somewhere," said Maj. Stan Murphy, the intelligence officer for the 4th Infantry Division's 1st Brigade, which captured the deposed dictator.

The enablers kept Saddam informed and passed his commands to a second layer of subordinates, who headed rebel cells in such flash-point cities as Samarra and Fallujah and who passed the orders down through several tiers to the lowest-level operatives.

"He would give very general guidance like, 'Hey, I'd like to see more attacks,' " the major said. "His enablers would then go out to the various tiers below them and give specific guidance, money and weapons."

By capturing Saddam and several leaders of his Fedayeen fighters, the Americans believe that they have dealt a serious blow to the Ba'athist insurgency. Attacks on coalition forces, however, have continued since Saddam's capture.

In Iraq yesterday, the Spanish prime minister paid a surprise visit to his country's soldiers, affirming his support for the occupation as the United States said it was deploying more troops.

In a trip resembling President Bush's Thanksgiving Day visit, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar landed in Iraq at about 11 a.m. with a 16- member delegation to meet some of the 1,300 Spanish troops in Iraq, based in the southern town of Diwaniyah. He left four hours later.

In brief comments to reporters, Mr. Aznar expressed support for the Spanish troops and said he brought them greetings from King Juan Carlos. He said the soldiers were working for "the cause of freedom, democracy and respect for international law."

In Washington, senior military officials in Washington said the Pentagon is sending an additional 2,000 troops to Iraq and extending the deployment of another unit.

Japan also said it was dispatching 1,000 troops on a humanitarian mission to southern Iraq — the country's first deployment to a conflict zone since World War II.

Meanwhile, U.S. forces mistakenly fired on Iraqi policemen staffing a checkpoint in northeast Iraq, thinking they were bandits, killing three officers and wounding two, local police said. And in an apparent revenge campaign, attackers separately killed two persons with close ties to Saddam.

The policemen were staffing a checkpoint on a road in the Sleiman Beg area, 55 miles south of Kirkuk in northeast Iraq, when U.S. troops opened fire around midnight Friday, said Lt. Salam Zangana of the Kirkuk police force. He said two other policemen were wounded.

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. military.

In the southern Iraqi city of Najaf, gunmen on a bicycle attacked Damiyah Abbas, a former provincial official of Saddam's Ba'ath Party, and her 5-year-old son in front of her home yesterday, witnesses said. The boy was killed, and his mother was in critical condition in a hospital, police Lt. Raed Abbas said.

It was the third attack in the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Najaf — apparently part of a series of revenge killings against local members of Saddam's Ba'athist regime, which brutally repressed Shi'ites. Damiyah Abbas was believed to have participated in the repression of a 1991 Shi'ite uprising against Saddam's government.

On Friday, gunmen killed former Ba'ath official Ali Qassem al- Tamimi, the district mayor of Najaf's al-Furat neighborhood, as he shopped with a friend, said another police official, Lt. Raed Jawad Abdel Saada.

And in Najaf on Wednesday, an angry crowd dragged former Saddam official Ali al-Zalimi from his car as he drove through town and beat him to death. He also was believed to have helped repress the 1991 uprising.
c This article is based in part on wire service reports.

[Vympel]

He was quite important and of 'consequence', I'm sorry that he
wasn't splashed all over the TV screens in Ozzieland.

And he was splashed all over the TV screens in America? Come on. They catch some schmo, they say he's important, all of a sudden he's important? Call me when the attacks stop.

What lie?

What I quoted: The lie where 54 Iraqi guerillas were supposedly killed, never mind they couldn't find that many bodies, only 8 wounded civilians showed up at hospital, and the US excuse that the insurgents took the bodies away before they could be seen was patently absurd because there were only 60 Iraqi guerillas total (6 Iraqi guerillas hiding well over 40 bodies in the space of hours: yeah right).