Posted on 05/10/2003 5:33:59 PM PDT by Ranger
Ba'ath Party activists loyal to the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein have launched a series of attacks against the offices of politicians involved in setting up an interim national government in Baghdad.
This has raised fears that Saddam is still alive and directing sabotage operations from within the country.
In the past week, armed gangs of Saddam loyalists have attacked the homes and offices of several prominent politicians, some of whom have received death threats said to have been issued on Saddam's orders.
In one attack early yesterday, gunmen opened fire on the home of Dr Ayad Allawi, the head of the Iraqi National Accord and one of five leaders appointed by Jay Garner, the outgoing United States administrator, to participate in the country's five-man interim national leadership.
"These attacks show that Saddam, his family and senior members of his regime are still in Iraq and still pose a threat," a spokesman for the interim government said.
"We have received reports that Saddam is hiding in the area between north Baghdad and Tikrit and is attempting to direct guerrilla attacks against Coalition forces and to disrupt attempts to set up a new government in Iraq."
Interim leadership officials have also received unconfirmed reports that Saddam has made night-time visits to Baghdad in the past two weeks for meetings with loyalists.
The reports that Saddam and his entourage are still active in Iraq may prove deeply embarrassing for US officials who insist that the dictator was most probably killed during the two bombing attacks on his headquarters during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Although Washington claims to have samples of Saddam's DNA, no officials from the Coalition forces in Iraq have visited either of the two bomb sites in Baghdad to collect samples.
Last week municipal officials were clearing rubble from the second blast site, a house in the Mansour district of the city in which a family of five was killed.
Members of America's elite Delta Force, the US equivalent of the SAS, continue to search for survivors of Saddam's immediate circle, including his two sons Uday and Qusay. But although more than a dozen members of the Pentagon's "pack of cards" of most wanted Iraqis have been detained, they have had no success in tracing the movements of Saddam and his immediate family.
Old Baath Party members need to be too worried about living until tomorrow to worry about fomenting a pro-Saddam dirty war.
Put a bounty on Baath Party officials.
Pay the bounty with Saddam's own stolen cash.
If the CIA doesn't have the stomach to fight this new and expected phase of the war, we'll lose.
Yeah, and you would think the press would found out Hatfill's home address by now. Er, do you think maybe the press comprises a bunch of docile, easily-manipulated non-entities who know on which side their bread is buttered?
And this horse puckey about Saddam leading a resistance movement, as if he has suddenly mutated into a 65-year-old multibillionaire version of Chez Guevara, is the latest phony talking-point to distract attention from what really happened to Saddam, Uday, Qusay and the Tikrit mob. That was settled at the meeting with Tirentenko, just like the fate of Tariq Aziz.
They don't have to be "in" on the coverup. They just have to be malleable and lazy and less smart than the people who are manipulating them. All of which, of course, they are.
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