Rumsfield Sends In Hunter-Killer Teams

TxDoc · February 24, 2003

HUNT-AND-KILL SQUADS SET TO TAKE OUT SADDAM & SONS

February 24, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - Special "hunter-killer teams and aircraft would target Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein - and his two evil sons - within 48 hours of the launch of any military campaign, The Post has learned.

The moves would include a series of massive, surgical airstrikes and commando raids in the opening hours of the action. Specially trained operatives would target Saddam, sons Uday and Qusay and other key aides.

Qusay, who heads Saddam’s personal Republican Guard unit, has orders to unleash weapons of mass destruction should something happen to his father, according to British intelligence.

Saddam’s eldest son, Uday, is said to command Iraq’s vicious paramilitary groups in charge of sabotaging infrastructure, such as bridges, and committing atrocities against their country’s own civilians to blame on the United States.

In the past, Uday has been accused of personally brutally beating Iraqi Olympic athletes, as well has having ties to terrorists. He also is considered the money man who helps fund Saddam’s regime.

Taking the fiendish father and sons out would be part of what U.S. military officials and outside defense analysts say is a bold and radical battle plan for Gulf War II. The plan aims to use exotic new weapons and the full range of U.S. military power in a series of nearly simultaneous air and ground attacks on the citadels of Saddam’s power in the opening hours.

A massive intelligence-gathering effort - involving electronic eavesdropping and clandestine contacts with potential Iraqi military moles - has been under way for months to try to track the world’s best-protected tyrant.

U.S. military officials now believe that the best way for them to nail him will be out in the open, as he runs from place to place, trying to escape their forces.

U.S. war planners believe that Saddam, once attacked, will resort to "scorched earth tactics, including use of chemical and biological weapons, burning oil wells and creating some kind of a humanitarian disaster to slow down a U.S. invasion.

"This is why you have to go in early and go after the critical targets first, rather than have a long build-up and take the more systematic approach that we have seen in past conflicts, retired Gen. Daniel Christman, the Army’s chief war planner during the Gulf War in 1991, told The Post.

"The longer we wait to go after leadership targets and weapons of mass destruction sites, the more difficult it is going to be.

Retired Gen. William Nash, who commanded U.S. forces in Bosnia, agreed.

"Because of the nature of the threat from Saddam, you have a number of early missions that have to happen almost simultaneously. It has to be real intense, real quick, he said.

Defense analysts said the planned massive early thrust into Iraq is designed to end the war quickly without directly taking on its army - and with special care given to avoiding civilian casualties and winning over the local people.

Warplanes from six aircraft carriers and air bases in Turkey, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean are expected to attack as many as 3,000 Iraqi leadership and weapons targets a day with the new generation of smart bombs and bunker-busters.

The air forces also have two secret new weapons - the powerful "e-bomb that disables electronics through a powerful microwave pulse, and the Agent Defeat Weapon, a bomb that creates intense heat and chemical reactions to burn and then disinfect chemical and biological weapons sites.

At the same time, thousands of elite troops - Special Forces, Army Rangers, Marines and paratroopers from the Army’s 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions - will be airlifted by helicopter. They’ll take control of airfields, oil wells, leadership sites and chemical-weapons sites in the war’s opening hours, analysts expect.

Then, light, mobile computerized Army units will move from Kuwait toward Baghdad. Meanwhile, the Army’s 1st and 4th Infantry Divisions will move toward Saddam’s stronghold Tikrit from the north.

The invasion concept is called "rapid decisive operations, or "shock and awe, in military parlance.

"You want to create a situation where you have a military commander in a bunker in Baghdad confronted with a 360-degree attack who has just heard 20 command centers have been taken out at once and then has his communications taken out, said Harlan Ullman, a defense strategist who helped develop the "shock and awe concept for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.