Word: tikrit
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...barks to the men loaded in the back of the vehicle. "Boots!" they reply. Again. "Dirty!" "Boots!" The infantrymen barrel out of the truck toward a two-story home perched on the edge of a sandy bluff overlooking the Tigris, some 10 miles north of the city of Tikrit. They reach the compound's metal gate, M-16s locked and loaded. A translator bangs on the door. When an old woman opens up, the troops sweep through the garden and into the house. An intelligence report had said Taha Yasin Ramadan, Saddam Hussein's Vice President, might...
...rotting chicken parts. The soldiers also found a Republican Guard uniform and posters of Saddam, and from a field beyond the house they unearthed a telltale box of star-cluster signal flares. "They initiate ambushes with these," says Lieut. Colonel Steve Russell. The flares are further evidence that the Tikrit area, home base for Iraq's fallen leader and his most fervent supporters, is a center of resistance to the U.S. forces...
Raids like this, designed to flush out Saddam and his top aides, happen every few days. On one level, they have been successful. In their recent operations around Tikrit, U.S. soldiers with the 4th Infantry Division's 1st Brigade--known as the Raiders--have enjoyed several big scores: they helped special forces nab Saddam's trusted aide Abid Hamid Mahmud, seized more than a ton of plastic explosives and hundreds of weapons and uncovered at a farm more than $9 million in cash plus a buried chest of jewels worth more than $1 million that belonged to Saddam's first...
...classical guerrilla-type campaign." While there is no evidence that Saddam is directing the attacks, U.S. war planners believe that as long as he is at large, he will continue to galvanize his followers. "Until the myth dies," says Lieut. Colonel Russell, who oversees the town of Tikrit, "people are going to show unnatural fear of his return." Capturing Saddam would also give a lift to the Bush Administration, roiled by allegations that it misled the public about Saddam's weapons. "Time to find Saddam," said a top Republican operative last week. "Time to change the subject...
...more former regime members U.S. forces nab, the more they are learning about Saddam's underground network. Brigade commander Colonel James Hickey says a core group of bodyguards around Saddam apparently is moving his money around the area, from Baiji, 20 miles north of Tikrit, to Balad, 50 miles to the south. At the end of June, the brigade intercepted a nephew of Saddam's who was carrying $800,000 in a Samsonite briefcase, presumably moving it from a hidden stash to a delivery point. The farm where the brigade found millions of dollars and Sajida's jewels is believed...