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    Hunting Down Saddam: The Inside Story of the Search and Capture
    Hunting Down Saddam: The Inside Story of the Search and Capture
    Hunting Down Saddam: The Inside Story of the Search and Capture
    Ebook386 pages6 hours

    Hunting Down Saddam: The Inside Story of the Search and Capture

    By Robin Moore

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    About this ebook

    This authoritative and gripping narrative plunges the American public into the real and personal story of the United States forces in Iraq, and their successful maneuvers in capturing one of the most vicious dictators of our time.

    Hunting Down Saddam contains up-to-the-minute material and provides never-before-heard accounts of the triumphs and frustrations, strategies and attacks, of those who put their lives at risk to track down Saddam Hussein.

    * The first book to tell the whole story of the pursuit of Saddam, from pre-war to his capture.

    * Candid accounts straight from the soldiers on the frontline, which have not been sanitized or filtered through the media, the military, or the Pentagon.

    * Exclusive interviews with key military leaders, including Colonel "Smokin' Joe" Anderson, Commanding Officer of the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne (Screaming Eagles), who led the attack on Saddam's sons.

    The capture of Saddam Hussein is the defining event for this generation's military. Action-packed and controversial, Hunting Down Saddam teems with inside information. Robin Moore gets the real story from these fighting men as only he can.

    Doris Kearns Goodwin calls Hunting Down Saddam, "A fast and furious read . . . when the historians try to put together the real facts of the two wars the U. S. has fought since September 11, 2001 this book will be a valuable contribution to their research."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateMar 4, 2014
    ISBN9781466865341
    Hunting Down Saddam: The Inside Story of the Search and Capture
    Author

    Robin Moore

    Robin Moore, whose family has lived in the Pennsylvania mountains for two hundred years, makes his living as an author and storyteller. Since 1981, he has presented more than two thousand programs and workshops at schools, museums, and festivals. His programs combine both traditional and original North American stories with demonstrations of old-time living skills. Before turning to storytelling, Robin served as a combat soldier in Vietnam, earned a journalism degree from Pennsylvania State University, and worked as a newspaper reporter and magazine editor. He now lives with his wife, Jacqueline, and their children, Jesse and Rachel, in a stone farmhouse on a small patch of land in Montgomery County, just north of Philadelphia. Mr. Moore is also the author of MAGGIE AMONG THE SENECA, the sequel to THE BREAD SISTER OF SINKING CREEK.

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      Book preview

      Hunting Down Saddam - Robin Moore

      PROLOGUE

      A Special Forces funeral always brings me to tears, and this was no exception. I was at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, with the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), who had been deployed in Iraq since they left Afghanistan in May of 2002, and who were the first to go into Iraq before the war was officially declared.

      We were here to honor and pay our respects to two Special Forces soldiers who had been killed in a predawn firefight in the Iraqi town of Ramadi, about seventy miles from Baghdad. Seven others from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group were wounded in the raid.

      The Special Forces motto, De Oppresso Liber, or To Liberate the Oppressed, was embodied in the deeds of these two fine soldiers who gave the ultimate sacrifice: freeing people from tyranny and oppression—first from the Taliban, and now from Saddam Hussein, and at the expense of their own lives.

      Sergeant Major Kenneth W. Barriger was asked to take the roll call of the team of Green Berets to which the fallen soldiers belonged.

      As he read off their names one by one, the men attending the funeral of their lost friends replied: Here, Sergeant Major.

      Finally, the sergeant major called the name of Sergeant First Class William Bennett, but there was no reply from the team.

      Once again, Sergeant Major Barriger called out Sergeant First Class Bill Bennett.

      Again—no answer.

      After a long silence, the sergeant major called out the name of another member of the team.

      Master Sergeant Kevin Morehead.

      Once more, a long silence filled the Fort Campbell chapel.

      With the answer of a twenty-one-gun salute, the two Green Beret sergeants were accounted for as Killed in Action.

      Master Sergeant Kevin Morehead and Sergeant First Class Bill Bennett were two of the first Special Forces men in Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of September 11. They had been in Afghanistan with Captain Mark Nutsch’s team (ODA 595), and went on from there as part of the first Special Forces on the scene of the new war in Iraq.

      I had crossed paths with both men while writing The Hunt for Bin Laden: Task Force DAGGER. Both I and Chris Thompson, my coauthor and project coordinator on the Bin Laden book, had met with their wives only months ago. Bill Bennett was a talented Special Forces Medical Sergeant, in the Army since 1986 and active in numerous overseas deployments and combat operations, including the Gulf War. Kevin Morehead was one of a few Special Forces soldiers who had buried a piece of the World Trade Center in an Afghan battlefield. He was killed two days before his thirty-fourth birthday, and less than two weeks before he was to return home.

      SADDAM

      Saddam Hussein was born on April 28, 1937, in the village of Owja on the outskirts of Tikrit, Iraq, a city northwest of Baghdad. As a young boy, Saddam was raised mainly by his maternal uncle, in the town of ad Dawr, a mud-brick village on the banks of the Tigris River. Saddam Hussein’s parents had been simple farmers, but his uncle, an officer in the Iraqi Army, gave him a glimpse of a life other than that of a humble peasant. He greatly influenced the young Saddam and instilled in him a deep passion for politics and the military.

      Tikrit had always been Saddam’s base of power; his birthplace held a special meaning for him, and was also part of his full name, as is the custom in Iraq: Saddam Hussein (Husayn) al-Tikriti. This connection to place was a part of his very identity. In his teenage years, Saddam moved to Baghdad, where he joined the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party when he was nineteen years old. The Ba’ath Party was new then, and sought to overthrow the nation’s prime minister, Abdul Karim Qassim.

      As he entered his twenties, Saddam was ambitious and daring. He knew he did not want a life as a poor peasant or farmer, and the only way he saw out of that was through force. In 1959, when he was twenty-two, Saddam was involved in a brash coup attempt—an attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Qassim. The assassination attempt failed. Saddam was shot in the leg by the prime minister’s bodyguard, but fled with his life. Showing a judicious knack for escaping, he fled to Syria.

      On February 25, 1960, Iraqi courts sentenced Saddam to death, in absentia, for his part in the failed assassination attempt.

      Saddam left Syria shortly after his arrival and journeyed to Egypt, where he studied at Cairo’s College of Law. Three years later, his comrades in the Ba’ath Socialist Party were successful, and overthrew Qassim, in what is known as the Ramadan Revolution. Saddam was thrilled, and returned to Iraq, where he was soon elected to a leadership position in the Ba’ath Party. At this point, Saddam was just in his mid-twenties.

      A very short time later, in the fall of 1963, Colonel Abdal-Salam Muhammad Arif, Qassim’s partner and co-leader in the coup that brought him to power in 1958, staged a successful coup against the Ba’athists, once again putting Saddam on the run. Colonel Abd-al-Salam Muhammad Arif began rounding up and cracking down on the remaining

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