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Reported hussein sightings increase { July 24 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37488-2003Jul23.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37488-2003Jul23.html
Reported Hussein Sightings Increase
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 24, 2003; Page A12
U.S. military and CIA officers in Iraq are receiving and trying to verify a significant increase in the number of Saddam Hussein sightings by Iraqi citizens, according to a senior administration decision maker.
"We are getting a lot of different sightings every day," the official said.
The killing of the former Iraqi president's sons, Uday and Qusay, on Tuesday by U.S. troops reinforced the view within U.S. intelligence agencies that Hussein is alive and still in Iraq.
U.S. intelligence officials yesterday expressed optimism that the finding of Hussein is imminent. "Saddam is further isolated," one official said. "Others will see that the regime is truly falling apart. There are fewer places he can hide with impunity."
An Arab satellite television station broadcast yesterday a new audiotape recording, purportedly of Hussein, calling on former Iraqi soldiers to resist the U.S. occupation. The speaker said the tape was made on Sunday, two days before Uday and Qusay Hussein were killed.
The fact that Hussein's sons were discovered to be in a distant relative's house, an obvious target for the U.S. teams organized to hunt down the former Iraqi leader, "suggests the circle of safety is pretty small," the intelligence official said.
The circumstances surrounding Uday's and Qusay's killing, particularly the fact that they had been at the house just a few weeks before they were attacked by U.S. forces, suggests that Hussein and his sons "have no particular stronghold, no underground bunker; they are living on the run" and much more vulnerable to detection, said Kenneth M. Pollack, an Iraq expert who formerly worked at the CIA and the National Security Council.
During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Hussein was also forced to move around the country, Pollack said. "It's the same M.O."
Hussein's capture is critical to convincing the Iraqi people that they no longer have anything to fear in cooperating with U.S. forces. The hope among U.S. officials is that the population would then be more willing to cooperate openly in rebuilding the country and that much of the insurgency against U.S. forces would fade away.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters on Capitol Hill yesterday that the United States will release photographs of Uday's and Qusay's bodies to convince the Iraqi public that they had been killed.
"We are going to make sure the Iraqi people believe us at the end of the day," Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz said at a Pentagon news conference.
Wolfowitz, who returned Tuesday from a brief trip to Iraq, said "the level of suspicion and paranoia" among the Iraqi public "is unbelievable."
"There is a certain fear," Wolfowitz added, "that we will repeat the performance of 1991 and we will leave, and Saddam will come back."
"It is important to kill Saddam or capture him because his continued uncertain state has allowed people to play on that uncertainty and make the argument that, in some fashion, the Baathists would come back," said L. Paul Bremer, the senior U.S. administrator in Iraq. "Of course, killing his two sons reduces the force of that argument. But capturing or killing him would put a conclusive end to that."
Pollack said that being on the move constantly makes it harder for Hussein to be in control of the insurgent operations that are continuing to claim U.S. military and Iraqi civilian lives. The lack of a haven for the sons "also suggests the level of support for Saddam is low" among the population and members of his former security apparatus, he said.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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