Saddam, sons targeted in strike

MSNBC.com ^

[GulliverSwift]

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 8 — A U.S. Air Force warplane dropped four enormous bombs Monday on a residential neighborhood where “extremely reliable” intelligence information indicated that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his two sons were staying, senior administration officials told NBC News. The sources would not rule out the possibility that Saddam could have moved before the planes struck, but they said it was highly likely that he and his sons were dead if they were still there when the bombs hit.

BASED ON an intelligence source on the ground in Baghdad, U.S. military officials were confident that Saddam and his sons, Uday and Qusay, were attending a meeting in the neighborhood, senior officials said.
Officials quickly called in Air Force jets to strike the location Monday with four GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munition weapons, the 2,000-pound smart bombs known as “bunker busters.” Diplomatic officials and officials at the Pentagon told NBC News that they were highly confident that they killed everyone at the meeting.
Military officials at U.S. Central Command forward headquarters in Doha, Qatar, confirmed the airstrike but would not comment on its possible effect.

BUSY DAY FOR COALITION
If Saddam was killed, U.S. military planners would have achieved one of their prime objectives in the war. It would cap a dramatic day in which U.S. forces established a foothold in one of Saddam’s palaces in Baghdad after swooping into the city the day before.
Coalition forces moved to cut off escape routes from the capital. Meanwhile, in a city near Baghdad, the military was led to a site where suspicious chemical compounds were stored — a discovery that, if verified, could prove that Iraq had continued its banned weapons programs.
U.S. troops remained in the presidential compound on the west bank of the Tigris River, apparently determined to deliver a powerful message to residents and Saddam loyalists that his regime was broken.
They had been part of an early morning assault by more than 70 tanks and 60 Bradley fighting vehicles from the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division. The attack was a power play designed to prove to Saddam and the Iraqi people that “we can come and go at our pleasure,” a U.S. military official told NBC News on condition of anonymity.

[dsc]

Poetic justice requires that Saddam fall either into a vat of acid or into a plastic shredder.

This kind of death is too good for him.

[jiggyboy]

I'd bet that the WTC disaster sharpened up our DNA skills considerably. It will take time; let's hope that we have some people there making sure that not too many of the red rocks are carted away.

[Mr. K]

MSNBC was not first on this I saw it first on FOX for over an hour before any other channel had anything