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Us escalates attacks on leadership { April 8 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2542341,00.htmlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2542341,00.html
U.S. Escalates Attacks on Iraqi Leader
Tuesday April 8, 2003 3:30 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) - Hoping to tip the balance of power in Baghdad, U.S. forces are escalating their attacks on Saddam Hussein and the close friends and relatives that form his inner circle.
Pentagon officials said Tuesday that it could be days before they know if Monday's bombing aimed at Saddam was a success.
Pentagon officials say they hope to cut off Saddam and his advisers from the rest of the country, if not kill or capture them outright.
American forces bombed a building where they suspected he, his sons and other leaders would be meeting Monday, while ground troops raided two of his palaces and destroyed statues of the Iraqi leader in his capital.
U.S. officials have not determined whether Saddam was inside the building in Baghdad's upscale Mansour neighborhood when four one-ton, satellite-guided bombs hit Monday afternoon. Workers must sift through the building's rubble to locate any remains, then test them, Defense Department officials said.
In a telephone interview with reporters at the Pentagon from an undisclosed location in the Persian Gulf, a member of the B-1B crew that attacked the Baghdad site said the bomber had just finished an aerial refueling over western Iraq when it got the order to fly to the target. Twelve minutes later it dropped the four bombs, said Lt. Col. Fred Swan, the B-1B's weapons system officer.
Swan said they dropped two standard versions of the 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition, known as a GBU-31, and two special ``bunker buster'' versions that penetrate a target before detonating.
Of the intended target, he said he and the rest of the crew ``knew it was important,'' and ``might be the big one.''
``We thought it was, given every thing we heard,'' he said.
Swan said the crew was told by an airborne air controller that directed the B-1B to its target that it might be ``the big one.''
He said the B1-B crew did not actually look at the target after the bombs were released from an altitude of more than 20,000 feet.
Even before Monday's bombing, Iraq's leaders were finding it difficult, if not impossible, to direct troops and other government loyalists, Pentagon officials said.
``We may not know if or where he is,'' Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said of Saddam before news of the Mansour strike broke, ``but we do know that he no longer runs much of Iraq.''
It wasn't the first time the U.S. tried to kill Saddam with bunker-busting bombs. A March 19 strike on another compound in a residential Baghdad neighborhood opened the war. Leadership targets of many kinds, including government ministries and command and control centers, have been hit numerous times throughout the campaign.
Meanwhile, testing for possible chemical weapons continued on samples taken from steel drums found at an Iraqi government compound near Hindaniyah, 60 miles south of Baghdad.
Laboratory tests in the United States are needed to confirm whether the drums contained chemical weapons, pesticides or something else, Pentagon officials said.
If confirmed as containing chemical agents that could be used in weapons, the drums would be the first components of weapons of mass destruction discovered in Iraq during the war. Finding and eliminating Saddam's weapons arsenal is a goal of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and finding some could mute international criticism of the war.
Earlier reports about possible chemical weapons finds have turned out to be false alarms.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
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