Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 15, 1991 TAG: 9102150725
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: ED BLANCHE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NICOSIA, CYPRUS LENGTH: Medium
Kurdish guerrilla officials, who have good intelligence reports from northern Iraq, have said U.S. aircraft destroyed the Enieshkey and Serseng palaces in the Amadaya region Jan. 25 and the Sare Rash palace in Erbil four days later.
The officials of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also reported an unsuccessful raid on a palace in the residential al-Arouba district of Mosul on Jan. 26.
Saddam's heavily guarded Baghdad palace along the Tigris River was among the targets when the allied air offensive began Jan. 17.
Kurdish and other Iraqi exile sources as well as diplomats in Baghdad said Saddam is constantly on the move in and around the capital, flitting from one bunker to another to escape the relentless bombardments.
Saad Jabra of the anti-Saddam New Umma Party said Saddam's security is so tight that even close aides, such as Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, have trouble locating him.
To find Saddam, "Aziz must find Udai, Saddam's son, who in turn relays the messages to his father in whichever bunker he may be, then Aziz is contacted," Jabra said.
U.S. officials deny that the allies are trying to kill Saddam, but say they are hitting his command bunkers in Baghdad.
Some analysts think the Americans are going for targets where they can kill the Iraqi leader, but don't spell that out for fear of undermining the morality of their campaign to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.
"Clearly cutting off the head, Saddam and his clique is a military objective," Middle East military analyst Hans-Heino Kopietz said.
Don Kerr, an analyst with London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: "I doubt that killing Saddam is part of the operational plan as such. But they obviously hope they might get lucky. There would certainly be no concern felt if Saddam were to become a casualty."
Before the war, U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Dugan was sacked for publicly talking of "decapitating" the Iraqi leadership, and spelling out what targets would be hit when the air offensive was launched.
The pattern of the bombardment seems to have closely followed Dugan's scenario.
Nailing Saddam is not easy. He has survived Iraq's bloody politics by being more ruthless than his rivals and because of his obsession with his security.
Saddam is rarely seen in public. Most recent television footage of him shows him inside rooms with lieutenants.
Sources in Baghdad say that since his troops invaded Kuwait, Saddam has intensified his security. He reportedly moves around with hundreds of handpicked bodyguards drawn from his intelligence and internal security agencies.
They are all men from around Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, 75 miles north of Baghdad. Many are from the Bedouin Shammar and Obeid tribes.
Their main mission is to protect him from assassination. Iraqi dissident sources say Saddam has survived at least seven assassination attempts and several coup plots since he took power July 16, 1979, by shunting aside his uncle, President Ahmed al-Bakr.
Some Western officials say Saddam's movements can sometimes be tracked by the volume of radio traffic that accompanies his entourage.
But without agents on the ground and some access to Saddam's group, that's pretty much a hit-and-miss operation.
Saddam's all-pervasive security apparatus is considered one of the most effective in the Arab world, making espionage extremely risky.
That would rule out an assassination, unless one of Saddam's generals, fearful that the president's actions will spell destruction for much of Iraq's army, decided to get rid of him.
by CNB