Word: tikrit
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...Saddam. It is testimony to the depth of his tyranny that rumors spread of how he survived yet again, this time escaping the four tons of bombs dropped on the house that a spy thinks he entered on Monday. There were claims that Saddam was whisked to his hometown, Tikrit, or that he was on his way to Syria for medical care, that he was hiding in the Russian embassy or in a mosque or was seen rising from the sunroof of his limo in downtown Baghdad, come to let the crowds kiss his feet. No one in Washington could...
...This morning we sped along the road back toward Tikrit. I dozed a little, no longer looking for dangers all along the road, until we suddenly saw figures running away from a large gas station, and heard long bursts of automatic fire. My driver Karim, who had not fully recovered from the previous day, saw other cars turning in front of us, did a U-turn and floored the gas. I forced him to stop and we checked the situation with oncoming vehicles...
...into the station. A well-armed checkpoint waved us by with salutations just outside the gas station. Twenty or so men with automatic rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades waved from the ditch where they had taken up positions. We drove on past the usual sights along the Tikrit road: a missile laying on its upturned transporter for the past few days - the transporter had been picked clean of any useful parts but the missile was untouched - and the boxes of munitions lying neatly spaced in the fields to preserve them from U.S. air attacks...
...Then, in Tikrit, panic broke out. Cars flew past us in the opposite direction, their drivers frantically waving for us to turn back. We went on a little further to see what was happening. Bad idea: Bullets whistled past us, much closer than we needed, and we pulled back a few hundred meters. People retreating from the area said it was the Ajil again. The tribesmen had dug in by the roadside, said they'd come under attack from looters, and were in a very ugly mood. The Ajil reinforced the point by spraying us again, from closer range. They...
...People in Mosul were the most pro-Saddam in Iraq - some say even more so than in Tikrit, his famously loyal hometown. Iraq's third-largest city, Mosul is also known as the biggest source of Iraqi army officers. Other cities in Iraq have graffiti like "Thank you Mr. Boush and Mr. Blear." Here, instead, there are Iraqi flags flying defiantly at mosques and vigilante checkpoints...