Very interesting indeed.
David L.
A liberal is someone who feels a
great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with
your money. -- G. Gordon
Liddy
Charles
Mims
Another "Take" on Hussein
Capture
There's a lot of chatter coming out of the UK raising various
questions about the circumstances surrounding the capture of Hussein.
This one is interesting; the author has written a respected history of the
Mossad (Israeli intelligence service), and his sources indicates an early
Israeli electronic intelligence effort to track Hussein through one of his
wives that pretty much had Saddam pinpointed.
The Blonde Who Snared
Saddam by Gordon Thomas in the UK Sunday Mail, 21 December 2003
SADDAM
Hussein was captured through the demands of the one woman he still trusted.
She is Samira Shahbander, the second of his four wives.On December 11, she
contacted Saddam from an Internet cafe in Ba'albeck, near Beirut. Samira and
Saddam's only surviving son, Ali, have lived under assumed names in Lebanon
since leaving Baghdad months before the war started. Samira, whose curly
blonde hair came from the same French hair product company that provided
Saddam with his hair dye, was the married woman who first became Saddam's
mistress and then his wife. In March, with the Coalition forces closing in
on Baghdad, Saddam arranged for her and Ali to flee to Lebanon. She took about
$US 7 million in cash and a trunk of gold bars from the vaults of the Central
Bank of Iraq. She told friends she was going first to France and then Moscow,
because Russian President Vladimir Putin had secretly promised Saddam he would
give her sanctuary.
Instead, she went to a pre-arranged hideout - a
villa - in the Beirut suburbs. That's where the Israeli intelligence agency
Mossad found her. Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, sent a team of surveillance
specialists to bug Samira's every move.
They discovered that the
Lebanese Government had given her and Ali Lebanese passports and new
identities. Samira was given the name of "Hadija". But Ali, who has the same
deep-set eyes as his father, insisted he would keep the family name of
Hussein. The Israeli team noted that Samira had transferred most of her
money out of Lebanon to a Credit Suisse bank account in Geneva. In the past,
the bank had been a repository for some of Saddam's own fortune. A month ago,
Samira cashed in her gold bars for US dollars with a Beirut money
dealer.
Then she started to call Saddam. Supported by Israeli Air Force
surveillance planes, Mossad tracked the calls close to the Syrian border. "The
calls were affectionate. It was clear there was a close relationship still
between them," said a high-ranking Mossad source in Tel Aviv after Saddam had
been captured.
That one of the most reviled tyrants in the world - a
man who had personally supervised the terrible torture of thousands, including
women and children - could speak of love, both fascinated and repelled the
Mossad team. But behind the endearments, the listeners heard through
their electronic equipment that Samira wanted more money. Time and again, in
further calls - each made to a different number the Mossad team pinpointed as
in an area in the desolate sands of the Wadi al-Myrah inside the Syrian border
with Iraq - Samira repeated her request for money.
Samira, the daughter
of a wealthy aristocratic Baghdad family, had never lost her taste for the
good life. During their marriage, Saddam had showered her with gifts,
including two palaces.
At the start of their courtship, Samira was
married to an Iraqi air force pilot. Saddam simply kidnapped him and said he
would be set free only if he agreed to divorce Samira. The husband agreed. In
return, he was made head of Iraqi Airways - and given a choice from one of
Saddam's cast-off mistresses. Samira became Saddam's favourite wife - though
he took two more wives and scores of mistresses. The marriage was cemented by
the birth of Ali. The child's arrival deepened the hatred of Saddam's older
sons, Uday and Qusay, towards Samira.
On the day Uday and Qusay died,
the Mossad eavesdroppers heard Samira laugh for the first time. The Israelis
knew that across the border in Iraq, a secret US special forces intelligence
unit was roaming up and down the border looking for Saddam. Other Israeli
agents inside the Syrian side of the border had heard radio chatter between
the unit - known as US Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force 121 - as
they set about trying to track down Saddam.
The force was made up from
Delta Force, the US Rangers, Britain's SAS and Special Boat Service, and the
Australian SAS. "For political reasons, we had not been formally invited to
join the party," said a source close to Meir Dagan. Mossad - not for the first
time - decided to keep to itself the information it was gleaning from the
surveillance of Samira. But on Thursday, December 11, that changed. The Mossad
team picked up a conversation between Samira and the man they were now certain
was Saddam. He told her he would meet her close to the Syrian border. Details
of the meeting were enough to have the Israelis finally alert Washington. In
the meantime, US forces had received their own tip-off and Samira and Ali
heard the news of Saddam's capture on the radio. She burst into tears. Ali's
reaction is not known.
In Tel Aviv, Mossad analysts, like those of all
the major intelligence services, were poring over the video footage that
showed the likeness of Saddam the world had never seen before. And the Mossad
analysts, as part of their work, began to ask intriguing questions:
.
WHO were the two unidentified men armed with AK-47 rifles who stood guard over
the hole? Were they there to protect Saddam - or kill him if he tried to
escape?
. WHY did Saddam not use his pistol to commit suicide - and
become the martyr he had long boasted he would be?
. WAS it cowardice
that stopped him - or was he expecting to make a deal? To not only reveal the
truth about weapons of mass destruction, but also about his deal with Russia
and China, whose secret support had encouraged him to continue to confront the
US.
. THE hole he hid in had only one opening. It was blocked. He could
not have escaped. So was it in effect a prison? Was he being held there as
part of a trade-off?
. WHAT was the $US 750,000 (about $US 1 million)
found on him for?
. WAS that intended for Samira? Or was it a payment
for someone who would help him escape?
. WHY did he have no
communications equipment? Not even a mobile phone was on him.
. DID all
this point to the remnants of his own followers had come to regard him as a
spent force - and that they were ready to trade him in for their own
freedom?
"It may well emerge that Saddam, as such, was not actually in
hiding, but was being held down there against his will," an Israeli analyst
suggested. That may explain why he was so "talkative and co-operative" when
his captors dug him out - bringing to an end his 35-year reign of terror in
such a dramatic manner.
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